Latest on Mysthea shipping and last window for a refund
about 5 years ago
– Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 01:56:57 AM
Hello there,
We want to share with you the latest on the shipping of Mysthea.
European copies
As you may have already realized, the local branch of the B2C Europe (our fulfillment partner for EU) has caused a delay in the fulfillment process, and we are terribly sorry about this.
We have been told that two possible scenarios might occur at this point: in the first scenario the shipping would start the first week of March and in the second scenario the shipping could start the third week of March.
We are very disappointed about this situation since we entrusted them with a delicate part of the process and they let us down. For this reason we already decided to change our European partner for our future campaigns.
Please consider that we provided B2C Europe the same data and support as we did for ShipNaked (North America), Unicorn Games (Australia), and VFI / Coyote Games (Asia): all these partners completed their process as scheduled and everything went just fine.
For those interested, a more technical explanation follows below.
The procedure that is holding back B2C Europe fulfillment process is specific to each customer company.
When B2C has to arrange shipping on a continental scale, they have to generate an authentication key for each European country. This key is necessary to create readable barcodes both for B2C and ALL couriers around Europe. This means that a 100% compatibility is mandatory for the delivery process.
The local branch (Italy) reassured us that the process was easy and would only take a couple of days but, unfortunately, this was not the case.
A while ago, the Italian branch created the keys and sent them to the headquarters in Netherlands for approval. They were rejected. From that moment a continuous back and forth started between Italy and Netherlands to have everything sorted out.
Without those keys, delivery would be almost impossible since a parcel could just not be recognized by a local courier and get shipped back.
Anyway we can assure you it is our interest and top priority to solve the situation as soon as possible. As soon as we will have further details to share with you or there will be any progress, we will share it with you. Thank you for your understanding and support.
American, Canadian and Australian copies
Every copy is on its way to the backers from the fulfillment centers. Canadian copies are transported to Canada, then shipped, so they may take a few more days for them to arrive.
Rest of the world copies
Regarding Indonesia, the Arab world and some Central and South American countries (like Mexico and Uruguay), some copies have been delivered whereas others, based on the area where the copies are at the moment, are not tracked yet, but they are on their way. In some case the tracking starts when the copy is in its destination country.
In China and nearby countries, due to the Chinese holidays, some copies might have experienced a delay in the delivery, but all the copies have been shipped.
Copies for other parts of the world will be shipped this week.
If you have any issues to solve, please reach our support team at [email protected] and they will be back at you on the matter.
Refund window
We would like to emphasize that our primary goal is to keep our backers satisfied and, due to the disappointment some French backers showed lately, we want to demonstrate our good will by opening again a refund window. In consequence to the back-to-work estimation of our fulfillment supplier, we can open this refund window for French backers with immediate effect until February 28th at 12:00 PM (CEST). This will not affect the actual process with additional delays. During this period feel free to contact our support team at [email protected] and ask them how to proceed on this.
What brought us to the refund
Our decision was led by two main reasons, and we must sadly admit that they work particularly well together, with exceptional magnitude toward French backers.
Mysthea was our first Kickstarter managed entirely from Italy.
In order to comply with Italian regulations toward international distribution and avoid additional accounting procedures, we decided to select an Italian fulfillment partner.
As we have seen however, this turned into an unfortunate choice that was additionally aggravated by the fact that one of our partner was able to obtain its copies before us through a different shipping service.
The other reason is that Mysthea was done with the idea of a single-print-run.
We accepted all tipologies of backers during the campaign and we invited them to pledge copies during it in order to raise funds and unlock as many SGs as possible. We wrote it both in FAQs and in the campaign body. Each backer has gained an overall improved product through SGs and better quality components for each copy produced.
On a further and deeper level of this idea, we also planned to reward our physical backers with something unique, something only made for them as a reward for our next campaign of this game world. Mysthea and Icaion have always been a single project for our company, and we wanted our backers to travel this journey with us. We wanted and still want to give them more.
We thought that this could work out as a win/win idea: good copies around the world and happy backers.
For the same reason we declined several business proposals that we received after the end of the campaign because they could not improve the game further.
Yet, this idea assumed that everything played its part following scrupulously our suggestions. We acted in good faith, but we were naive in doing so.
This all led to this moment, and now made us take action in order to amend undesired effects.
In the last days we talked with the French business partner that purchased the games during the campaign, and we reached an agreement.
They assured us that no further copy of Mysthea will be delivered before the next two months.
This way, all backers should receive the game first. Board game fairs in France are the only exception.
We also insisted on the retail price of €95, and our partner has reassured us that it will apply more effort in maintaining our request. We always declared the final price to be €95, shipping not included, but ultimately we cannot impose retailers to sell at whatever price we want, so this is unfortunately something that we will have to trust them for their words.
We are sorry for the current situation, and this is why we want to do an exception and offer a refund for all the French backers that have lost their trust or interest in the project for one reason or another.
It won’t happen again. In the future we will manage differently the overall shipping process, ensuring that each part of it will follow the order we decided. We learned a lot from this experience.
This might not be enough to soothe the situation, but please remember that there is an additional value to all the campaign backers of Mysthea.
First of all the Collector’s Edition backers and Early Bird backers have their names inside the box, and second of all we will reward all the people who pledged during the campaign as stated in Mysthea update #11.
So, if you are a Mysthea and Icaion backer, you will receive a commemorative exclusive extra item for our next game Icaion and you will also get a miniature add-on for free, that will come with its own ruleset and box.
We have always worked to let our backers feel satisfied of their pledge.
Every campaign had taught us something that was implemented in the next one and that improved the quality of the overall process, from the gameplay to customer service. We are passionate gamers and an indie publisher, and our backers together with Kickstarter campaigns are fundamental in order for our games to exist.
We would like Tabula Games to be seen as a company that puts the interest of its backers first, in any case.
We consider crowdfunding a really important process to explore, but you, all of our backers, are a way more valuable part for us than everything else.
Tabula Games
