Another New Exclusive at Gentle Giant

[AmShak]

Gentle Giant = Angry Collectors

the following was sent out to members of the Gentle Giant Collector's Club members 3 days ago ....

BLACKHOLE STORMTROOPER MINI BUST
The US release has finally arrived, we have our stock of Blackhole Stormtrooper mini busts and are finally ready to go.

The Blackhole Stormtrooper mini bust will go on sale Friday June 9, 2006 at
9:00am pacific.

You can click on the link now to check out the pictures of the piece. Don't bother trying to add to your cart now (You will get an out of stock message) as available quantity will not be added until 9am o! n Friday.

Blackhole Stormtrooper mini bust
http://www.gentlegiantltd.com/catalog/?code=f773926064d7d641e3fbca09868e5afc

*PLEASE NOTE*
The following measures are in effect in an effort to make these items widely available as possible:

Previous online releases have been met with non-Collector's Club traffic attempting to order items and the resulting crashing of our online store. In an effort to curb this, we are sending this email with the link to the product page all at once. Limit one per person, per order. Only one order will be accepted per Collector's Club member per day. Any attempts to place multiple orders with the same email address, shipping address, or credit card number will be
canceled without notification.
Due to our contractual requirements, we can only directly ship Star Wars produc! t to the U.S., Canada and Puerto Rico.

Available @ 9:00 am on GG Price $55
Sold Out @ 9:01 am on GG
Available @ 9:01 am on ebay Price $500​

This is the type of thing that makes me rethink if i really want to be collecting from a company like this who does this type of thing to their Loyal consumers.

This is not the first time that this has happened and probably will not be the last. For those who attended C3, you were able to see first hand how their system works .... Limit the availabilty so that it is impossible to get the item to only have it being sold 10 yards away at another dealers table for 5 times the price.

Like many others, i lined up this morning at 9am to order my bust. i had the item in my cart, went through all of the check out procedures only to be met with a page that told me that between the time i placed the item in my cart and the time that my card was to be charged, the item had sold out. this all happened within a minute.

I have more complaining to do but it will have to wait until later. Anyone else try to get this bust today or have any observations on the way Gentle Giant treats their customers?

 

[AmShak]

Re: Gentle Giant = Angry Collectors

Mistakes made on this exclusive ....

Mistake #1: Production was way too low on a popular character, even for an exclusive.

Mistake #2: Four variations exist causing some collectors to go for all four.

Mistake #3: Their Collector's Club isn't really for collectors.

Mistake #4: They have nothing in place to protect the collector from the scalper.

Mistake #5: They have a terrible website for this type of activity.

Solution #1: Produce more. if the thing can sell out in 1 minute, the demand is there .... recognize it. Instead of making 7500 greedos, use characters like greedo for the exclusives and produce 7500 of the troopers with 4 variations.

Solution #2: Have a REAL Collector's Club, get rid of the scalpers. Give the people in the collector's club a chance to pre-order the bust to help determine what the production run should be and to cut out the huge wave of people hitting your site to try and place an order.

Solution #3: Not really a solution ... improve your site.

Solution #4: Stop using Hasbro as a template for doing business.

 

[AmShak]

Re: Gentle Giant = Angry Collectors

Here's a list of people not very happy about Gentle Giant at the moment

 

[darthskellington]

Re: Gentle Giant = Angry Collectors

very disappointing

 

[Barada]

Re: Gentle Giant = Angry Collectors

WOW,

Does that ever make me glad I'm not a GG collector...

Barada

 

[Jedi_Joel]

Re: Gentle Giant = Angry Collectors

I tried ordering the stupid bust yesterday, and their servers are bantha poodoo! It took me 15min just to put in my CC info, but by then it started telling me that the server was "busy helping out other collectors, and please try again later". So I open up a new window and I still have in my cart, but when I finally make it through all the steps, it's out of stock!! Arrrggghhh!

 

[Darth Boru]

Re: Gentle Giant = Angry Collectors

GG basically screwed over their entire fan base with this one. Total fiasco from first hint of it months ago, to the final insult yesterday. They seem to be giving all their fans and collectors a firm middle finger salute - and its not the first time.

I think I may have been EXTREMELY lucky and got one of these in the server disaster that was 'the sale', but it hasn't shipped yet, so I'm not going to be totally convinced until its in my hands.

 

[AmShak]

Head over Gentle Giant right now to get the latest exclusive.​

UPDATE

You don't need a shopping cart
We're sorry, but we are currently out of stock for this item. Between the period of time when you first read about this and when you took your next breathe we have sold out of this item. We had no idea that people would actually want to buy this item, so we only made a few. Please check eBay for availability. We can not continue with your order with this item in your cart.

Looks like we were all too slow again​

*end sarcasm*​

 

[Darth Aussie]

Re: Gentle Giant = Angry Collectors

Sounds very unfair indeed...makes you want to turn off buying their products.....

 

[AmShak]

apparently, there were 1000-1500 people (I was one of them) who had the Blackhole Stormtrooper mini bust in their basket friday morning when only 500 existed.
If they are going to continue to do business this way (and i have no doubt that they will), this is something that really need to be corrected along with all of the other problems that exist with Gentle Giant's process.

The actual quote you got when you tried to purchse the item that WAS in your cart was as follows .....
We're sorry, but we are currently out of stock for item "WEB6896". Between the period of time between when you placed this item in your cart and when we attempted to charge your credit card we have sold out of this item. We can not continue with your order with this item in your cart.

 

[AmShak]

I think what i find the most irritating is not that i was unable to get one of these and maybe not even the edition size .... but that Gentle Giant is unwilling to admit that their system SUCKS and they do nothing to try and improve it.

Did anyone else try and get the sandtrooper at C3? were you able to get it using their method?
Here's how that all played out ....
They handed out tickets, at their booth, to the first however many people they allowed that day. they reserved a certain amount for each day. you could bring the ticket up to the booth at any time later that day and purchase the bust. only the people with the tickets were allowed to buy the bust.
This might sound good. this way they don't sell out on the first day and it gives people who are not going to be there every day a chance to get one. but here's the problem, by doing it this way, it gives all of the people, including the dealers a chance to get one every day. this would be the people who get access to the inside of the building before everyone else. so, in my example, there might be a dealer who has their booth only a few yards from gentle giants booth, who has brought a staff of 20 people to work their booth throughout the show. each day, he has all of his people show up and get a ticket, then later buy the bust. this would work out to around 80 busts over the weekend. then they proceed to sell the bust at the same show for 5 times the original cost. that's just one dealer. that does not include the other dealers or the other people who line up looking to make a profit by buying more than they need. does anyone else see a problem with that system?

This is a typical way of business for GG and at C3, the typical way someone found out that the bust was sold out, was that they heard someone annouce it while they were still waiting in line just to get in the convention center.

 

[AmShak]

threads merged

 

[Darth Boru]

I remember that C3 fiasco very well. Got in line as early as possible every day - ran to the GG booth soon as I got in, only to be told "Sorry, todays allocation is gone" every time. Pretty annoying when I could clearly see a mountain of the things right behind the guy telling me!

Even more annoying was to see a bunch of them at vastly inflated prices on the dealers table next to GG as I was forced to walk away!

Only the kindness of a dealer who didn't want to be a scalper ended my disappointment. Jim from Federation Toys is a star and deserves much thanks.

Nobody minds (I dont anyway) if they miss out on an exclusive, as long as there was a fair method of distribution. To have the persistent 'mushroom management' of customers by GG is another matter entirely. They care nothing whatsoever for their customers it would seem. No amount of requesting info or explanation from them appears to work either.

They have a PR disaster on their hands and simply dont care!

 

[AmShak]

To get mine, i literally had camp out ALL night in the rain (it might have even snowed) and i was in no means alone in my wait. Jim over at Federation Toys was one of the dealers not taking advantage of his situation but was kind enough to help me get this irish fellow i know one

 

[Darth Boru]

Lets not forget that GG absolutely saw this coming a mile off - and VERY cynically pushed for a total disaster, it would seem.

Lets do some maths, shall we?? There's 500 busts going on sale. The 'collectors club' (joke!) mailing list is probably in the region of 3000-5000 (only GG know how many - but THEY DO KNOW HOW MANY!). This leaves no-one with much of a chance to get one (1 in every 6 to 10, given the guestimate above).

Rather than sending out a link that had the email address in it (thus restricting it to one email, one person shopping), they send out a generic link. This allows all the scalpers to pass it round to their friends, thus increasing the distribution of the link to some incalculable figure (probably a couple of thousand more than the original list). This puts the odds at maybe 1 in 12 or higher.

Compound that with servers still using valve technology (or possibly steam!) and you've got a guaranteed disaster. Well engineered publicity by GG - gotta hand it to them!