Hey folks, had a chat with Carlo and conveyed your legitimate concerns.
Updates below, between quotes in italic is verbatim from Carlo.
But first, as you're well aware, we don't silence people for criticizing retailers and speaking their minds, however we do insist on everyone following basic courtesy guidelines and not throwing insults and name calling in every other post.
So with that in mind, I'd like to remind you that it's always best to take a step back, think calmly before judging and pointing fingers. And let's refrain from the name calling or the generalisation about an entire nation such as posts the other day regarding Italy and Spain.
Any country anywhere in the world, has good people and bad people. If you take a look at our bad traders thread, you'll see many of them from the Netherlands and other countries, that doesn't mean all Dutch people are scammers, does it? Nor did it push us to put a ban on anyone from that nationality lol
Anyway, here goes:
"
Casino, Rocketman shipments completed: 85%
Johnny Mnemonic shipments completed: 90%
The Shining will be ready for shipment in 15 days (single versions 10 days)
Birds of prey is almost ready and it will be shipped within end of November
The Goonies preorder is confirmed the 27th of November (release date Christmas 2020)"
On the topic of why the radio silence on here, I had my suspicions but wanted to hear it from him:
Basically he's been spending a lot of time in the new warehouse getting things set up and working to try and shorten the enormous delay. They had to stop production for 45 days while the new warehouse was being set up. That threw a huge wrench in their plans.
Then the Goonies project and its requirements came along and that messed up their release plans even more. Not forgetting covid obviously - which many seem to forget judging by many posts in many other non CM threads as well. That and the fact he's not really looking forward to coming here to read insults. Imagine the roles being reversed and you have to read this in every thread and you'll start understanding how someone could feel alienated. Don't get me wrong, there has been a lot of faux-pas along the way but let's not forget there has been admission of said mistakes and the promise of doing better.
I don't agree with not giving an update on the forum but I can also respect and see things from his perspective.
I can also see things from collectors' perspectives who've invested quite a lot and are yet to see any tangible results. Totally understandable. Under normal circumstances, totally justified to sound the alarm. But things are rarely that simple, are they? And definitely not that simple under the current circumstances.
On the topic of people getting banned when asking for a refund, the truth is somewhere in the middle. Carlo says that those customers have sent rude messages multiple times when they didn't get an immediate answer, and frankly I have no difficulty believing that. We've seen it happen elsewhere with other retailers. Some customers tend to forget that they are dealing with people and tend to be abusive when they don't get what they want right away. So if that is indeed what happened, can we really blame the retailer for banning them? They got their refund but the retailer chose to avoid having to deal with their abusive behavior in the future.
As for future plans:
"
now we have new structure
we'll ship 2/3 titles every month
and covid didn't helped
step by step we're fixing problems"
Re: Batman listings resulting in a 404 error:
"
Box sets are 100% confirmed
We’ll ship what we sold
I think my assistant
She’s still learning
How site works"
Re: Goonies specifically:
"
Lenticular cards and FUll Slips are printed
i'm waiting for booklets, postcards and Box Set from manufacturer
it will be in hands before christmas"
He added that he won't be announcing any more new titles till the backlog is cleared.
I advise to wait and see.
Till then, breathe
