Update - the Balin&Dain I ordered on Monday were waiting for me on the doormat when I got home today. 80% off and delivered within 48 hours of ordering! Clearly they can deliver in some circumstances. However I appear to have depleted pretty much the last of their LOTR stock! The moral of this story - small purchases of items in stock may be worth the risk after all!!

Great to hear they came through elliodoc. Maelstrom have always been my favourite supplier in the UK, and they've always given such great service before. When they first started selling off their stock, I picked up some Carnavale minis at a reasonable price and they were delivered on time no problems.

So it's been such a shame to see them (apparently) imploding like this without any explanation from their management.

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Dagster

And for me that's the biggest problem. I had been using maelstrom for years with good prices, free postage and promt delivery. This all changed at the start of 2011 where I would pre-order stuff (mainly Dust Tactics) months in advance yet they would NEVER get the items in stock in times.

EVERY order to date was cancelled by me as they could not deliver on (or near) release date and that equates to several hundred pounds! And on each occaision I asked why they could not deliver, in trying to understand what's happening and support them, but I never got an answer so got my refunds instead. Maybe with a bit of honesty I might still have been ordering from them. I guess if others were having the same problem and canceling orders only added to their cash flow probem.

LOL type in Maelstrom to google and the second auto choice is "Maelstrom Games in Trouble"

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My Wargaming Store: http://www.greendragongames.co.uk
10-25% off LOTR.

- Model Painting Service also available.

Well one of my orders turned up today. Thankfully it was the larger of the two - a bunch of Gamezone dwarves, the Griffin, orc impact chariot etc.

I sent yet another email about my other order and finally got a response saying they split the order beause some items weren't in stock (although they were when I ordered them). However, it seems that the majority of these items are now being packed and hopefully will be dispatched soon. I guess I will trust them and hope for the best.

So it seems that these guys are trying to fill orders when they can and most problems are with items not in stock. However, the lack of communication and transparency is a real turn off. I'll certainly be going elsewhere in the future.

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"...that there's some good in this world Mr Frodo - and it's worth fighting for."

I see that their site has been down for a while now due to 'maintenance'. I wonder if this is the end now?

Yeah, I opened a dispute with Paypal today. Interestingly my dispute was upgraded immediately to a claim rather than go through the process of trying to resolve the issue through communication between seller and buyer. It seems Paypal may have given up on trying to resolve these disputes via communication probably because Maelstrom is not communicating. I'm annoyed the site has gone down. Last I heard my missing order was being 'packed' (5 days ago).

Will see if Paypal issue a refund.

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"...that there's some good in this world Mr Frodo - and it's worth fighting for."

Thanks for the info. This explains why Wayland's delivery times had started to slip. I ordered two sourcebooks from Maelstrom in July, waited six weeks for delivery, then cancelled and re-ordered through Wayland and had to wait another three weeks. At least we have some concrete information now. It sounds like Wayland have been acting responsibly throughout. Hope they (and other small independent retailers) aren't too badly burned. It would be a shame if only GW were left. Their profit margins must have been tiny if they were supplying other discount sellers.

Update: The blogoshere is rife with discussion on this, with opinion split between those blaming Wayland for putting the knife in as a way to corner more of the market, and those praising them for an act of mercy that protects the wider gaming community. The jury is still out but the latter seems more plausible.

Interestingly, Eye Of The Storm now have a website that looks remarkably similar to the old Maelstrom site (www.eye-of-the-storm.co.uk). Even the logo is the same. I see their list of suppliers is massively reduced however, including the lack of any GW stock now.

I won't be signing up, to say the least.

Wow, I've just got back from holiday to all of this! I'm happy to say that Green Dragon Games has never failed to fulfill an order and don't intend to slip up yet, yes our range is small at the moment - it takes a very long time to set prices and upload products but I'm making progress every day and feel that the LotR range at least will be up in the next two weeks. It proves that people like me, rockethobbies, totalwargamer etc really need to be vigilant, paying attention and keep the trade T&Cs handy at all times!

Another interesting point is how much money Wayland Games is turning over to be able to do a thing like that. Now I'm not taking a stand against them, rather I do agree with some of the points in their letter and think Mealstrom had been conducting business in a hap-hazard manner over the past year.

And the philosophical kind of question, would I sell MY business to a competitor for £100k just so they can have more of the market? Probably, then we'd soon see Red Dragon Games or similar with a custom made gaming centre. =D. Still...

All that aside, its very dog-eat-dog, you show your belly/a weakness and others will drive the knife in. I wasn't aware that Flames of War was 10% maximum discount, ran a promotion at 15% and was rung by Battlefront after "another company" had complained and told to bring it back to 10 or they'll be unable to supply to me.

Interesting. But on the other side of the coin, I have complained about a retailer who was cutting out the White Dwarf barcodes to gain a credit back then still selling them at full price. Purely because it took away 90% of my White Dwarf business for 2 months and isn't playing by the rules.

If we all play by the rules and put the customers first, we should be okay. So I do also agree with the other viewpoint that maybe Wayland spared us from more bad service from Maelstrom and freed up some of the smaller suppliers from this tangled web of financial difficulty.

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My Wargaming Store: http://www.greendragongames.co.uk
10-25% off LOTR.

- Model Painting Service also available.

Admittedly I don't know much about how business works, but Wayland didn't say they offerred £100k to buy out Maelstrom, and I suspect it would be alot close to a nominal £1 rather than £100k.

Glad Greendragon unaffected and look forward to seeing your stock levels rise.

That side of things clears it all up a bit, but wow - bit of a shock. Had to break the news to some players last night that they wouldn't be recieving their orders from Maelstrom and should chase it up with paypal.

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My Wargaming Store: http://www.greendragongames.co.uk
10-25% off LOTR.

- Model Painting Service also available.