Pathfinder 1E Paizo vs Amazon.com

[Philotomy Jurament]

I ordered the The Anubis Murders from Amazon and received it right away. I ordered the next two Planet Stories books from Amazon, and received delay emails for both of them. Today I received a *second* delay notice, so I canceled the order with Amazon and placed it directly with Paizo.

For in-stock items, Amazon can't be beat. But it seems like they suck with anything not sitting on the shelf.

 

[Arnwyn]

Yikes.

That's an especially tough pill to swallow for Canadians (where even the great Cdn$ has a hard time keeping up with the total ripoff US shipping prices if we have to suffer through ordering from US sources).

I still gotta shake my head at the absolute crap distribution system for RPGs outside of WotC. Pathetic.

 

[JoeGKushner]

And today's message...

We're writing about the order you placed on July 25 2007 17:53 PDT
(Order# 104-3380844-4485564). Unfortunately, we are unable to ship the
item(s) as soon as we
expected and need to provide you with a new estimate of when the
item(s) may be delivered:

Jason Bulmahn (Author) "GameMastery Module: Conquest of Bloodsworn
Vale (Gamemastery Module)" [Paperback]
Estimated arrival date: 03/29/2008 - 04/01/2008

Since the last time I approved a delay it wound up in the order being cancelled anyway, no way thiso ne gets approved.

 

[Tetsubo]

And today's message...



Since the last time I approved a delay it wound up in the order being cancelled anyway, no way thiso ne gets approved.

I justed Googled that under their Products listing and found a number of other dealers...

 

[buzz]

I won't order from RPG Shop ever again. EVER. I don't care what the product is. Fool me once, all that stuff.

Seconded. (Thirded?)

As for Amazon v. Paizo....

I love Amazon. I order stupid amounts of stuff from them. I even have an Amazon Visa that earns me points towards Amazon gift certificates.

However... I never buy anything from them that is not discounted, nor that has a long shipping estimate. If I'm not going to get a discount and/or I have to wait for Amazon to wrangle the product from a third party, I'd rather just go right to the source. It maximizes the publisher's profit and minimizes my shipping time.

I.e., I buy Paizo product directly from Paizo. I also buy some smaller press books (that Amazon does not discount/handle) from Paizo. Indie stuff I buy from IndiePressRevolution.com or direct from the publisher.

 

[JoshuaFrost]

UPDATE:

I think we fixed the glitch.

Our book distributor placed a massive order today to fill enormous back orders of our products in the book channel. I'm pretty sure that most of the back orders being filled are orders pending on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, I don't have 100% concrete information to back up my gut feeling, but I have pretty good circumstantial evidence that this order is going to take care of the glut of pending Amazon orders for Paizo products.

By identifying and fixing this, I think we've fixed the timeliness of future orders via Amazon as well.

For those of you with orders pending at Amazon on already released product (as opposed to products currently on pre-order), if you don't see those products filled by the end of the month let me know. Matter of fact, if you have issues ordering our products from anywhere please don't hesitate to contact me.

 

[jeffh]

I've had both good and bad ordering experiences with both Amazon and Paizo. My rule of thumb is only to order something from Amazon when they show that it is in stock and ready to ship immediately.

Yes. My experience has been that anything other than saying they have it in stock is not to be trusted. My best experience with such a product was having it take about two and a half times the high end of the time they claimed it would take. My worst was delay after delay after delay after delay until finally I just cancelled it. (And found a used copy for cheaper the next day.)

 

[JoeGKushner]

Interesting. So is Crown of the Kobold King out of print? Amazon is not selling it directly.

UPDATE:

I think we fixed the glitch.

Our book distributor placed a massive order today to fill enormous back orders of our products in the book channel. I'm pretty sure that most of the back orders being filled are orders pending on Amazon.com. Unfortunately, I don't have 100% concrete information to back up my gut feeling, but I have pretty good circumstantial evidence that this order is going to take care of the glut of pending Amazon orders for Paizo products.

By identifying and fixing this, I think we've fixed the timeliness of future orders via Amazon as well.

For those of you with orders pending at Amazon on already released product (as opposed to products currently on pre-order), if you don't see those products filled by the end of the month let me know. Matter of fact, if you have issues ordering our products from anywhere please don't hesitate to contact me.

 

[Deuce Traveler]

I have the feeling that amazon gets worse and worse in this regard. I had a Necromancer book (a White Wolf one, not one of the others), and this arrived just now after half a year wait (last delivery estimate was January 2008). But it's not only RPGs. I've been waiting for three DVD sets since May 9 now.

The most annoying point is that, in all cases, they claimed to have the item in stock when I ordered. This misinformation is what makes me somewhat hesitant when it comes to placing new orders with them.

I'm a manager for Amazon.com and last week one of my employees came up to me with a damaged book (cover had a corner that was bent back), so I told her to damage it out and find another copy. There was no other copy in our building, nor was there one in any other building throughout the country. So we cancelled an order that we had in inventory (bringing our total inventory of that book from 1 to 0) and sent a message to update the link on the webpage so that it could show 'out of stock'. The company policy is to cancel an order rather than send it out to the customer damaged. Eventually the book will go into circulation again as a damaged item (priced at a discount) or be returned to the company in exchange for a new one. Still, it does feel like a punch in the gut when we have to cancel an order and send the only such item we have to the damaged pile.

 

[Turjan]

I'm a manager for Amazon.com and last week one of my employees came up to me with a damaged book (cover had a corner that was bent back), so I told her to damage it out and find another copy. There was no other copy in our building, nor was there one in any other building throughout the country. So we cancelled an order that we had in inventory (bringing our total inventory of that book from 1 to 0) and sent a message to update the link on the webpage so that it could show 'out of stock'. The company policy is to cancel an order rather than send it out to the customer damaged. Eventually the book will go into circulation again as a damaged item (priced at a discount) or be returned to the company in exchange for a new one. Still, it does feel like a punch in the gut when we have to cancel an order and send the only such item we have to the damaged pile.

I wouldn't complain if it was some kind of isolated experience. With non-WotC RPG books, it's more or less the norm that the "in stock" message has absolutely no meaning. I had numerous Goodman Games or Necromancer orders that all took several months, despite all items having been marked as "in stock" when I ordered them.

And I only leave that DVD order from May 9 standing because I want to see how long they will draw it out. Perhaps they haven't canceled anything yet because they deemed me worthy of a partial delivery on June 27. Which means that I can at least watch the end of the series.

OK, anyway, to me the whole mess looks more like intent than accident. Of course, not the intent to annoy me - that's only a side effect - but the intent to focus the service on high volume items and to accept the collateral damage to customer satisfaction when the rest of the product range is neglected.