Note Mostly To Myself: Try Timewellspent Next Time

[shannon_a]

I just spent a wee bit of time price-comparing the various west coast gaming stores that dougo suggested. You see, funagain.com has now sat on my gaming order that they said "usually ships in 24 hours" for 4 days. They very quickly confirmed the order and verified my price matches, but since then ... nothing. They haven't even bothered to respond to the two pieces of email I've sent asking the status of my order, one sent two days ago, one this morning.

Anyway, Timewellspent seems to have very low prices, comparable with or a tiny bit lower than Boulder Games in general. Their stock looks to be at least as good as Boulder Games (which isn't necessarily saying much since every time I've considered using BG, half of what I wanted wasn't available). They also have a decent web site--not as informative as Funagain's, but they have some news and some info on what's just arrived and a medium amount of info on each game and some good cross-referencing. I've also sent them a mail asking about their shipping policies.

I think Timewellspent gets my next order, whenever that is. (Most likely early next year when I sell off my copy of Outpost, which is the other totally unplayed game I have scheduled for eBay, though not in quite as good of shape as that Titan.)

I'm really frankly amazed at how terrible funagain is doing now. You'd think someone over there would understand that customer service keeps a business alive. I'd send them my top ten rules for customer service article, if I thought it'd make an iota of difference ...

Comments

[shannon_a]

Timewellspent says that when they have the items in stock they typically get an order out within 1 business day, same day if it's before 2pm. They said that today they were so caught up that they might be able to ship packages up till 3.30pm or so (in the hope I'd be placing an order, I suspect).

They use USPS for orders under 3 pounds and UPS for over. Theoretically USPS has 2-day shipping while UPS is 3-day from Broomfield to Berkeley. That's a day longer for the UPS than Funagain's FedEx, but considerably quicker if they actually do their handling as they say. (If I'd made this last order with them, I'd be receiving it either yesterday or today, depending on if it'd been early enough on Monday, as opposed to my current best case scenario from Fuangain which is Tuesday and me seriously not holding my breath.)

UPS also has more reliable package tracking than FedEx and these folks responded to email within a couple of hours rather than ignoring it for days. All around a plus.

The only downside is that our local UPS driver is somewhat unreliable. Packages regularly arrive at 7pm or later, which means I've had to sit around rather than going to dinner or to the gym while waiting for a delivery.