Certainly not looking to place blame for any shortcomings. As I said, we own where we need to improve and I’m trying to do my best to explain on a written forum, which is always inadequate.

Covid has caused a lot of issues, it’s a fact. As far as any past issues, of course as a fast growing company there’s always growing pains and errors. But I would respectfully disagree with the statement of ripping people off. We’ve never not delivered or refunded. Slow shipping, mistakes on inventory, what have you have happened at times. But we also have a 98% repeat buyer rate, have New record sales every month, and just made the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies in the US. The internet is where we as collectors vent. We are much less likely to post positive experiences. If we were as you described, we wouldn’t be around and having the success we’ve had.

We’ve never listed new items in stock that are not. There seems to be some confusion around that because some of our customer service reps have mentioned something just arriving or about to arrive, but this is because we have more than one facility we ship from. We have been consolidating because shipping in certain areas has been more affected. It’s referring to bringing stock over from those warehouses. Certainly we’ve had items go out of stock at times like everyone, but never have we listed an item before it’s in one of our warehouses. Ever.

The restocking fee policy was put in place in the past because when items are at a certain point in processing it’s very difficult to stop them without delaying the process for all customers. Also with payment plans we are charged fees. With covid and everything working in slow motion, we are much more flexible about it. Our team is doing their best with a very difficult situation, but like I said we know it hasn’t been good enough and needed an overhaul to be at the standard we expect of ourselves and customers deserve. There’s no argument there.

You won’t catch anyone on our team saying we do everything perfect. We’ve learned through huge growth, and covid, and whatever other challenges exactly where we haven’t been. So, the key is owning it and fixing it. That’s what we’re doing, and those that shop with us will be thrilled with the changes. And those that don’t have lots of great options to choose from in Collectibles. I appreciate your feedback.

 

The only thing I would suggest in defense of this is that they seem to be using Shopify to run their store. I had an account with Shopify for a few months and it left a great deal to be desired.

 

I have to say at the beginning of Covid (Mid April) I had good experience with Megalopolis. Sure my order took about a week or so to enter shipment (as in Fedex/UPS attaching my packages to bloody snails) but that was fine. In July and August I got concerned that it seemed to be taking longer than reasonable delays (2 weeks for me) so I reached out. I was told that the fulfillment, like much of the world, was fucked 9 ways to Sunday (personal wordage btw). In an attempt to be realistic, I’ve been and still am patient given that at the end of the day I’m just impatient for toys. I can completely understand everyone’s frustration though and I’m glad someone from Mega has reached out at least to the general community

 

This is EXACTLY the same experience I had. I had G1 Scorponok and it was one giant pile of disappointment. That robot made was the WORST. I had the Marvel comics and scorponok looked so awesome. Everytime I pulled that toy out, I remembered why I never played with it. Now this new Scorponok came out and it looked like it did in the comics. But alas, like you, everywhere I checked was sold out, so I found this place that had it in stock and bought it as well. Just like Cool Hand Lubinator said, "If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is."

 

Holy crap! That's some great news. Now I can get a discount on the amount of money I'm being ripped off for. Best news I've heard all week.  

 

Your CS won't cancel/refund existing orders of multiweek delay of in-stock orders without first shipping it out (the problem in the first place!!!) and then having us send the stuff back. This is BS! Either send us the items or let us cancel the orders, do not hold our money hostage for 4-5 weeks for an instock item! I saw you post a similar response in a facebook TF group 2 weeks ago and nothing has changed, so forgive me for being skeptical. Until there's results, these are just words to calm people, but the actions (or inaction) are speaking loudly right now. If you would reasonably let people cancel the orders without penalty, you might have a shred of credibility with this (which nearly every online vendor would do - you don't need to hire a consultant to tell you that!!). If you can't get the orders out, then give people the option to cancel, it's that simple. Instead you are burning permanent bridges with customers. The Megalopolis twitter replies are savage at the moment. 98% repeat? Sure...

 

All remaining Scorponok orders will be out the door this week.

It may seem like inaction when it hasn't launched yet, but we've been working like crazy to get things on boarded. It just isn't an instant thing. As far as refunds issues, I will bring this up Monday in our team meeting. There should definitely be more flexibility happening in that regard and it sounds like that needs readdressed. I appreciate your feedback.

Thanks for the understanding. You are right, shipping in general is a nightmare right now and these issues are not just with us.

Entertainment Earth is rated "Poor" with 2.1 / 5 on Trustpilot

Read these reviews for EE and see if they sound familiar. They're almost identical to what is being posted about us, and the issues stem from the same time period. They're dealing with the same exact disruptions we are, and it's hard when you have a lot of automated systems and processes that just don't work in this environment. Not throwing anyone under the post so I hope that's clear. My point is EE has been around 20+ years and is also having the literal identical issues.

Definitely understand everyone's frustrations. The next couple of weeks will see the backlog of shipments caught up, and soon after a completely new system. Between now and then I realize people are skeptical, frustrated, etc. That's understandable.

 

"We are owning it"
NO YOU AREN'T!

I don't care WHAT your excuses are.
What I do care about is that I've been writing you for weeks and I want a damn refund.

There is NO excuse to not refund people if they request it. I was patient for months, I was always polite. And the minute I decided to ask for a refund you ghosted me?
And the fact that you DARE have a no refund policy during "These unprecedented times" as everyone loves to call it.

Trust me, we ALL understand it's an f'd up year.
But you do NOT get to just ignore people like this. Your form emails are not communication.
Answering for your mistakes is just part of the job. I didn't pre-order a damn thing. I ordered something that was SUPPOSEDLY "In Stock". That means you should have it in a warehouse. So you lied to me in the first place and now you are lying now trying to save face.

I promise you, I am gonna bomb your facebook every single day telling your customers how rotten you are until you refund me in full.
It's going to be a fulltime job for you to have to delete them over and over like you keep doing.
And I'm going to bomb every single toy reviewer that reviews your MadBalls and Barnyard Commandos telling people watching videos to not shop with you. You can't delete those!

"We are owning it"
No, this is what owning it looks like:
"We know its been a tough year and we are so sorry for these delays. We promise we will be sending this out as soon as we can, but we will honor any refunds, without question, that are submitted to us".

I don't want your damn discounts. Because I am never giving you a cent again.
I want a refund now.

 

I just need to ask: why doesn’t everyone in the Us just use Pulse, Amazon, Target, BBTS, Showz or TCP? If you’re even remotely on top of things you can always get stuff from those places. Pulse just did a big restock for example. I just hear people getting burned from this or fleeced from TFSource or burnt by some obscure retailer and just wondering “why not stick within the ones everyone knows works”.

Target Stores seemingly got one case each of two Scorponoks. They will get another before Christmas I’m sure. Same with Skylynx. Even with regards to more rarefied items.... TCP and BBTS are always the play.

I stated this thread because I thought it cool to support a small business. But the existence of Pulse and the way TFs flow to Amazon and Target now changed everything. Really, folks should stick to the main pipelines.

 

When I ordered originally, they had some items in stock that had gone out of stock at other places...Pulse had not had the grand restock at the time and some items looked like this might be on their last run. Omega Supreme was skyrocketing on eBay and people were saying it was "one and done" and wouldn't return - I didn't want that to happen to me on Scorponok and Megalopolis was the only major site with stock. Looking back, it would have made sense to wait, but at that time (a month ago) it was not hitting stores and people were saying that Titans weren't going to be available in stores, online only. A bit of a panic and a lesson learned, but I've seen other things stock out at preorder/release and never come back and did not want to lose out. I was fine waiting a couple of weeks with slow shipping, but this is ridiculous. Like I said, I've ordered stuff from China that is already here since I ordered at Megalopolis...

There's a ton of options they could have tried to fix this situation - rent a Uhaul and drive the month+ packages to their UPS hub, to the one in Vegas (or the next town without "shipping hub issues" - very sketchy answer), use Fedex, send some of these out with another carrier. Having issues with warehouse staff calling out? Hire some temp workers. Can't handle the volume of customer service emails? Hire some more temp workers. These are easy solutions which even the most average management team could pull together and would have solved. There's been complaints about some of this before COVID, this very thread is an example. Instead, they decided not to do anything, throw up COVID as a convenient excuse du jour, and send blunt emails to customers reasonably asking for refunds, telling them to shove it (if they even get an email).

Why would we trust any management team that is clearly inept going forward? As you mentioned, there's so many other options and its our job to educate people and warn them about our experience here so it doesn't happen to others. Until we see some real people come forward with consistent stories that things are fixed, there's no reason for anybody to take a chance ordering from here. These touts like the INC 5000 list (which is just a list that you can pay a fee to be on after meeting some basic requirements - there's some Amazon and eBay sellers who could meet that criteria) and pointing to Entertainment Earth's reputation score as a deflection - EE doesn't have a dedicated thread in this forum about how bad they are, their thread clearly shows they are a working company who actively addresses their issues, unlike this one.

 

In my case it's because this is the transformer I've always wanted. Like asked my mom for every birthday and Christmas for 5 years, all my friends know what you I'm talking about because I've mentioned it so much, and needed my friends all avaliable. Well before finding out my mother was just gonna have me put it on my credit card. Well let's see how fast hasbro pulse ships it. Would be nice to get my gift actually within the same month as my birthday.

 

Nice to see a reply from the team at Mega. I'm going to take a "I'll believe it when I see it" approach here - at this point, my order is already in, and the money already spent, I can wait a bit longer and see if they come through. I'll sit back and let cautious optimism take over for now - worst case scenario, they're blowing smoke, and I file a dispute. Best case, they turn things around, I get my stuff, and they get a returning customer. Time will tell!

 

Is there an ETA on the physical store opening back up?

 

Well, no you cannot pay to be on the INC 5000 it's an independent list from INC magazine of the actual top 5000 growth companies in the US. Regardless, to your points, we agree and are doing exactly many of the things you are suggesting, they take time to implement. Others just aren't feasible for a company that does our volume. I'm not trying to deflect anything. I could very easily never comment here if that's the case. We get people are upset, and we agree with you on most of the reasons, and are making changes. I recognize that those changes need to be seen before people just accept that and that's ok. I also recognize that trying to answer every question about complicated logistics on a forum is going to be very difficult if not impossible to do. I'm doing my best. I hope it helps for some. And ultimately we are working on this to get the items in people's hands ASAP which is the most important piece.

 

It's really a wait and see how everything continues to play out with Covid. We have high risk members on our team and we just don't feel comfortable that it's safe for them to have the doors open yet.

 

Too little, too late.

 

You can easily google their application page which details their fees and criteria...we will just leave it at that.

 

Yeah, no kidding. I don't believe for 1 second that a Scorponok will be shipping out to me next week. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.

 

I realize whatever answer I give there's still another question and people are going to be upset until their stuff is delivered. But I will do my best!

"There's a ton of options they could have tried to fix this situation - rent a Uhaul and drive the month+ packages to their UPS hub, to the one in Vegas (or the next town without "shipping hub issues" - very sketchy answer), use Fedex, send some of these out with another carrier."

We have 3 trailer loads of packages that go out every day. So, a Uhaul truck wouldn't really make a dent. As far as using other carriers, we do. But there's various issues with everyone, and when customers have chosen a certain carrier at checkout and we change it, they also get upset. So, it's not that simple. USPS is the worst right now with everything going on there. Fedex where we are is the best currently and how we've been catching up. The bigger issue has been our shipping partner in California. We use that drop point for Hot off the Truck stuff, and that's where it's been hardest hit and we've had the most issues. We are currently working on getting more of that freight to Utah, which has been happening, and also why we are building out the multiple warehouse partnership with shipbob so we can ship same day regardless by working around local disruptions. The reason the local shipping hubs are important in understanding is because they process huge amounts of freight through here from all over the west. Both small parcel and rail comes through here. That's been a factor in the speed of moving stuff from California as well as the bottle neck of packages going out. That bottleneck is why there's supply shortages of all sorts of products in various industries.

Having issues with warehouse staff calling out? Hire some temp workers.

Tried this for Black Friday 2018 and what we learned is it's very hard for people unfamiliar with toys to just jump in and not make mistakes, even with safe guards in place. So, the better solution was partnering with a high level partner in Shipbob that can handle the volume fluctuations and and maintain 100% accuracy and speed. So that's the route we've gone with. It's a permanent soultion rather than a band aid, which is what we need.

Can't handle the volume of customer service emails? Hire some more temp workers.

Similar answer. That's what we have done right now, and as you've seen that's not working. It's very hard for people not familiar with the nuances of toys to understand how to give good customer service to our unique needs as collectors. So, going with an experienced specialized team is again a long term fix rather than band aid. To be frank, our customer service sucks right now. We're not happy with it at all. So, a major overhaul is happening and overdue.

These are easy solutions which even the most average management team could pull together and would have solved. There's been complaints about some of this before COVID, this very thread is an example. Instead, they decided not to do anything, throw up COVID as a convenient excuse du jour, and send blunt emails to customers reasonably asking for refunds, telling them to shove it (if they even get an email).

I think they're quite easy when you're small. They become much more difficult at scale. To your point about issues before covid- yes that would happen sometimes as we've grown. We'd get a fix in place, and it would stop working as we scaled another revenue tier. We've been inconsistent. That's why larger fixes are in order and what we are doing. We want reliability and consistency all the time for everyone. Whether were average managers or not, I guess the key is knowing where you're good and aren't and being honest about it so you can bring in experts where you need them. To me that's better than thinking you know everything. The blunt emails? Totally unacceptable. Back to your question on temp customer service- that's what we've gotten. They aren't doing what's asked at times and not reflecting the company values or helping people. That's frankly bullshit. Of course people are pissed at that. I'm pissed at that.

pointing to Entertainment Earth's reputation score as a deflection - EE doesn't have a dedicated thread in this forum about how bad they are, their thread clearly shows they are a working company who actively addresses their issues, unlike this one.[/QUOTE]

I don't think EE is bad at all. I have lots of close friends there and think they are a great company. My point was the customer feedback on that thread points to the exact same type of issues, and for the same reasons. Slow shipping in the exact same time window, poor customer service responses and no refunds, etc. They are West Coast too and dealing with the exact same supply routes we are and it's causing the same problems. When shipping is slowed, customer service inquiries go up, and you have to add people. New people tend to take a while to get their feet under them in this unique business. They are struggling with that too. That was the only purpose of that.

You are correct, they are actively addressing the issues there. I'm trying to do that here. I found out about this thread 2 days ago when one of our frequent buyers was kind enough to send me the link.
Since, I've been here doing my best, all be it inadequate I'm sure, to explain and help where I can.

I hope this is in some way helpful. Ultimately, we need to just catch up these backlogged shipments as fast as possible and we are doing that. People should start seeing more and more deliveries coming in and more announcements on the changes we're implementing as well. Can't change the past, but we can better the future.