The Refund Issue - ANOVOS Productions LLC
To quote their own language, I hope this “all sales are final” approach doesn’t backfire. Given their track record of deliveries, they will be hard pressed to take any more preorders when people can no longer request a refund...
Sean
Just saw that and...wow...
You know what Joe/Dana? The original policy should stand. If you want to cite an expected delivery of a six months or ayear from now and you can actually hold to it, that's fine. I'm sorry that using pre-orders to fund the production isn't working under the current system, but you flat out cannot expect people to invest in product that takes years to release.
You have things like the Han holster that took 3+ years to for people to get. Personally, my FO armor is closing in on 3 years. I get that the new policy just went into effect but there are still many others (not me) who've been trying to get refunds for many months now. Maybe that policy should be appended so refunds are possible after missed deadlines or something, i don't know.
I realize you started just doing runs in places like this and that delays aren't uncommon here, but people are kept in the loop on runs in places like this. You guys USED to do an excellent job of this, but abruptly stopped. I know it wasn't your personal choice, but people are substantially more comfortable when they feel they in the loop received updates/explanations. That level of involvement actually garners trust and gets people to commiserate WITH YOU when things get delayed as opposed to get mad about it.
I do understand this:
As an unintended consequence, cancelations of pre-orders caused a gradual shrinkage of overall production budget. Fewer pre-orders led to a number of issues including an increase in raw goods pricing, increase in per unit cost, a deprioritization of product (moving items to the back of manufacturing queue) and—in some extreme cases—the cancellation of items that no longer met the factory’s minimums. This not only elongated the manufacturing time for one project, but also other projects, causing a more systemic issue.
but at the same time, it's not the fault of those wanting a refund either. If i placed an order on, say, Dec, 1, 2017 with an expected delivery at the time of order of September 2018, I SHOULD NOT be expected to just deal with it until December 2020. I can understand a bit of delay, things happen, but not years worth. The quote is dead on that things are simplified when you can count a quantity and budget to work with, but it's not the people's fault when the timeline falls off a cliff. Using the example above, it's difficult for a lot of people to get out 600 dollars (or more depending on item) for 9-10 months. It's quite another to expect them to sit and smile when it goes multiple years. Things happen, people need money, but a zero refund policy screws those people when circumstances arise - family emergency, car/home repairs, etc. If that expensive item was on hand, it could be sold, but they can't do anything with a preorder slot.
I actually wonder/worry about the new policy to be honest. Will enough people be willing to foot the bill under the new policies (all, not just refund) -without any evidence that things will start shipping in a timely fashion - to enable future runs to go through and the reputation to start going back up?
These notices seem to say, we're sorry about how things have been going, but we're changing the rules to make things easier on us/simplify things and you'll just have to trust us that we think it will work.
Best of luck in the process, but it does not leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling, you know?
