UnitedCardists.com - The forum for Cardistry, Magic, Custom Decks and All Things Playing Cards.

So anyone receive this yet?

Nope. I got the "Complete Mana Box Set" though so it's not quite as simple as getting just the regular cards. This all said, I probably won't be backing another project from them, and this has justified my reasoning for not backing Buskers.

It's pretty sad to see a campaign start July 2014 with a estimated reward/fulfillment by January 2015. If it's now heading into November and people haven't seen the decks.... Does that even make sense?

I see their last update was August 19 explaining the decks were on their way to the US from Taiwan. It does not take 2 1/2 months of travel time for decks or anything else to come across sea. Something is obviously up with this project. I for one did not back this project but did back the Buskers..

If the projected fulfillment for Buskers was September it only makes me wonder how long it will actually take for the Buskers to fulfill. Why do creators chose to use oversea companies if shipping is an issue? Is it overall costs?

Over time, projects by some creators will not fund due to the printer companies not fulfilling their end of the deal. If their telling the creators 6-8months complete, in your hands, and it's actually 8-10 months they need to have better communication for the backers. I think EPCC, USPCC just tell the creators 6-8 months to get them to commit and sign the contract and then use every excuse in the book later on down the road to delay the project.

I, like CostlyAxis, is on board not backing future projects of some creators. I don't want to name creators but I think most know who they are. I just find it funny how the creator gives an update explaining the delay of the printer or shipper and not pass the savings back on to the backers. I know in the real world, issues pertaining to delays usually have some sort of kickback to the buyers. Contracts are very specif when it comes to printers commitments, deadlines, refunds, shipping and costs.

Seems like a lot of backers are upset and Erik is losing backers for future projects. This reminds me of Circle City and others. Good artists but terrible at project management. No idea why Erik refuses to post an update which takes all of 2 minutes, especially since he does log on anyway. He could also respond to comments. Silence is never a good idea.

jerichoholic wrote:Seems like a lot of backers are upset and Erik is losing backers for future projects. This reminds me of Circle City and others. Good artists but terrible at project management. No idea why Erik refuses to post an update which takes all of 2 minutes, especially since he does log on anyway. He could also respond to comments. Silence is never a good idea.

Indeed. And unlike Alien Ink and Elements where I am only out $30, I backed this for a few hundred $$. That being said I will a very long time. Patiently. But the lack of updates is beyond bearable.

Also waiting on my Mana & Sybil Signature decks, just like everyone else. Luckily it was Canadian dollars which is like Monopoly money, right? J/K

What bothers me and I don't understand is how everything could have arrived at the fulfillment center and yet he still has to organize the shipments himself as per the update in September. Isn't that what fulfillment centers are for, having other people organize and ship items so you don't have to? Otherwise it's just a warehouse here in the US so he can store and ship from the USPS while living in Canadia. Maybe the Border Patrol is hassling him or something so he hasn't been able to come into the US and get things going.

Just hope it doesn't take as long as the Cthulu Writhing Dark decks did.

chach wrote:Isn't that what fulfillment centers are for, having other people organize and ship items so you don't have to? Otherwise it's just a warehouse here in the US so he can store and ship from the USPS while living in Canadia.

Yes, many unanswered questions. What part of the work is the fulfillment center actually doing?

If Erik sent an update, just saying that he was awfully sorry but due to his work commitments (or something) I could probably be a little forgiving. His promise of further work in the following Monday (5th October) in the last update appears to have come and gone, and 3 weeks later nobody seems to have seen any decks.

The timeline we know;

• 19 August - Arrived in the US
• 22 September - Arrived at Niagara warehouse/fulfillment center
• 28 & 29 Sept - Erik at warehouse/center organising decks
• 30 September - Update #44 sent out

What had happened since? Who knows. Erik definitely isn't telling.... Collectively the backers have paid $56,857 for these decks, this alone should demand regular updates - even if it's "sorry guys, haven't been able to get there" - at least we could then be sympathetic.

Sorry, double post... but 130 minutes later...

Update 45!

Erik wrote:Just letting you all know that I'm still alive and I'm still ploughing through this project and I am finally getting our first batch of decks shipped this week.

First batch is a start...

Not much info in that update - first batch can mean 100 orders, or just one - but at least its an update. I always find it amusing when deadbeat KS creators go silent for a month(s) and then apologize for the lack of communication, and then promptly go another month(s) failing to communicate. Hopefully this won't be the case with Erik.

I got the feeling that he isn't in any hurry to get these decks, that are over I months overdue, actually shipped immediately. Does he not have funds to ship now? Do we have another Dan Kriss?

Really is a shame that Erik hasn't been keeping everyone up to date, which is basically all we ask. Obviously he had some major issues with the tuck boxes, and we knew that, but the details and at least monthly blow by blow updates - even if they were bad news - could have avoided this nasty taste in many people's mouths (and minds).

We're not mushrooms, as the comparison goes. We don't want to be kept in a corner in the dark, we want the sh¡t to roll downhill and hit us right between the eyes (or otherwise?). Pretty simple, and I understood him being frustrated, but it was mishandled - more so as time went on. I sure hope that the results are worth the wait, because it's too late to redeem the lack of communication problems.

The lack of communication is what torqued me off. If I could take back my Buskers pledge, I would.

PrincessTrouble wrote:The lack of communication is what torqued me off. If I could take back my Buskers pledge, I would.

Let's just hope both projects will deliver.

Has anybody received their decks from this yet? He said he was starting to ship a while ago, but I never heard anything. This is ridiculous!

BenMorrisRains wrote:Has anybody received their decks from this yet? He said he was starting to ship a while ago, but I never heard anything. This is ridiculous!

Not I said the Rooster.

Not even any tracking nos. ?

Really ?

These decks have been on U.S. soil since August 26 - that's almost two-and-a-half months ago! Erik claimed to have shipped out his first batch (however many orders that may be...) over two weeks ago. If he really sent out a bunch of orders, surely we would've heard something by now, but no one here nor anyone on his Kickstarter page have indicated they ever got anything from Erik. It just doesn't add up.

Anyone want a imaginary arm wrestle .... ?
O, gowaarn, give ye's an imaginary arm wrestle .... !
Lot more fun than making assumptions, bad assumptions, or worse, totally wrong assumptions with slander and libel side dishes. And more productive !
Tell yer what, I'll nick off away, and while I'm gone why don't you get together in a huddy and come up with some reasonably good bad assumptions yeh ? Yeh?
Let's all do that.
See ya's when I get back.

Another few weeks, another (apparently) missed promise... unfortunately this is nothing new really. (I'm not definitively alleging Erik hasn't shipped any decks, but ... if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, sometimes it simply is a duck).

After putting down $310 CAD for this (and a larger purchase of v1 Oracle decks - 28 decks + uncut), I doubt I'll be supporting any further Mana ventures.

Nice art/designs are only part of this caper, delivering on your promises and customer service are arguably at least as important.

Bruno wrote:Anyone want a imaginary arm wrestle .... ?
O, gowaarn, give ye's an imaginary arm wrestle .... !
Lot more fun than making assumptions, bad assumptions, or worse, totally wrong assumptions with slander and libel side dishes. And more productive !
Tell yer what, I'll nick off away, and while I'm gone why don't you get together in a huddy and come up with some reasonably good bad assumptions yeh ? Yeh?
Let's all do that.
See ya's when I get back.

He delivered well on the previous project...really wish we knew what was going on here. If it's done, ship it! If you can't afford to ship it, tell us! Just throw us a bone...let us know what's going on.

exactly. That's all we need. An entire year for a card project is ridiculous.

Not sure there is anything left to say

First off, I want to thank many of you who’ve been so supportive and positive over this project. Your patience is unbelievable! It is your kind messages of support, encouragement and understanding that keeps me going and for the most part focused on getting the job done. Thank you!

That being said, today’s update couldn’t be any more difficult, frustrating and disheartening for me, because I know I'm letting everyone down again and I will have to face yet another string of violent reactions, personal attacks and nasty hurtful messages from some backers. Giving this kind of update is never easy for anyone to do so I hope you'll understand what I'm going through here - even just a little. Here’s the latest problem I am facing…

You didn’t get your package yet? Here’s why…

Not a single order has been shipped yet - even as I begged and pleaded with the fulfillment company to get it started. And even knowing that this company has never serviced this kind of project before – meaning they’ve never shipped out playing cards or handled a manifest of this size, I still believed that this part of the process would be fairly straightforward to manage and they convinced me that it would be. Because why wouldn't it be? The thing with that is this company has their own system of doing things, they have a chain of command and they don’t like to deviate from that system even if it means getting the job done faster.

Ironically, I thought by hiring a Toronto based fulfillment company with an affiliate facility in Niagara, New York, that things would be more efficient. That is not the case here. The only thing that was productive about this arrangement was the fact that I was able to freely visit the Niagara warehouse to prep orders, which took 7 days collectively over the past two months.

Organizing all 1000 of both the Reserve decks
Matching the Reserve decks with their respective partners and placing them in their boxes
Placing each matching Reserve certificate in each box
Organizing all the Signature Series box sets, numbering them, placing the holographic stickers on certificates, boxes and decks, and wrapping the coins. Signing and numbering uncut sheets, signing decks and certificates
All while organizing each of these elements so that they would not get mixed up or lost in the picking process. The entire task of prepping these orders took a lot of time, it was meticulous and borderline paranoia.
My last update was wrong. I was foolish enough to think that all I needed to do was to give the fulfillment company the go ahead and they would start shipping. I even prepared some major packages in Niagara, organized the stock for them to pick and even gave detailed instructions to the Niagara staff. I thought I was finally getting the ball rolling. I was wrong.

Instead, the Toronto office slowed everything right down to a crawl. They wanted to get a weigh in of every package before it went out. They never told me they would do that. That was a ridiculous process especially when we are talking about almost 700 orders. For the past two weeks I’ve been begging to get at least some of the orders out. They know the urgency and I have not yet gotten a response from them since my last communication with them this past week. And here we are now.

I put myself in this position. But I’m not running away from it. I’m not disappearing off the face of the earth like others have. I’m still here. I’m still fighting for this project to get delivered.

This was an ambitious project. I wanted to give you guys something different, something special. With my past experience I was confident that I could pull it off. I am now almost a year late in this project. People say I’ve lost credibility; I’ve lost trust, that this project is a ‘joke’, a failure, and that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew. People are upset. I get it. I’ve read it many times over the duration of this project and I know I won't see the end of it anytime soon. I’m enduring as much as I can, but I hope you’ll understand that I may not respond to hurtful messages and comments, because it’s just poison, it drags me and other good people down, it’s counter productive and it really doesn’t help the situation.

A lot of things went wrong. Some things were out of my control, and others completely my fault. I’m not proud of that. This is not what I wanted and it’s not in my best interest to keep almost 700 backers waiting for their playing cards. And obviously I’m not looking for more hate.

Things are a mess right now and I’m trying to fix it. I don’t know when you’ll get your cards, but I promise you that you WILL get them. I pray that I have a better update for you soon. I know you guys deserve better. I’m doing the best I can.

My apologies yet again for another setback.

Respectfully,

Erik

We are all of us somewhat miffed, disconsolate and even desolate in Erik's despair, but I would add "Thanks Erik !", for his soldiering on against all his issues and encumberances.
It (this update) will not stop the white-anting from the usual suspects.
That shit does more to keep Erik off balance than anything.
Don't bother excusing your own unacceptable sfb's crap.

Vocalize some support please people.

Thanks Erik. O, and

Thanks badpete69,

I guess Erik will take this as a lesson learned and will consider not using this fulfillment center anytime in the near future. It's sad to see a business which is obviously their primary job to receive and ship orders giving their customer a hard time about shipping products that sit in their warehouse for quite sometime. You'd think this company would want to ship these orders out as soon as possible and avoid any complaints and possibly getting a bad reputation.

It's extremely sad to see clients getting pushed around because of business policies and what not, but at the end of the day, Erik must've paid this fulfillment center to do what they told him they could do, and it seems their taking their sweet time and continue to give Erik every excuses in the book.

Erik would be better off to take his product from this Niagara Falls fulfillment center and find a Toronto base company to fulfill his orders. By his last update, it doesn't even seem that this company can and/or will give him an update of when shipping would commence. I feel for this campaign and all the backers. Good luck to you Erik and the backers that supported this project. Keep your head up. This is a hard lesson to learn and a lot of people do understand your frustration and is truly sad to see others impatience and frustration be directed to you solely.

Lastly contracts. Was there one?
If you signed a contract and it specifies in detail about dates, then turn this around and use it against them. Once everything is on paper, the company is then obligated to fulfill their end of the deal or face reimbursements or possible court actions towards them.

Does anyone know if fulfillment centers in general sign contracts with regards to the above?

Oh yes, thank you so much Erik for the update after months of nothing. I'm not upset about not receiving my rewards yet. I'm upset due to the lack of communication. Then we get this message that he's having issues with fulfillment. Now we should be forgiving for all these issues. All he had to do was state that he was having an issue with fulfillment after a couple of weeks and all this "poison" being spewed could've been prevented. It's just like with any relationship, if you don't have communication the relationship is doom to fail.

I have no doubt that the decks will come. They are late. Probably no one feels worse than Erik. It's obviously not what he wanted to happen.

I think the last Kickstarter update must have been difficult to write. You can tell he's frustrated.

I wish him the best. I look forward to receiving my cards.

Finally some news. I agree with others, had he bothered to communicate and post updates sooner than he could have avoided a lot of the backlash.

Well it's about damn time! Finally these arrived but i'm even more peeved off at Erik than before because I had to pay almost $42 for stupid UPS import charges. I NEVER get these charges through USPS! I hate UPS and don't know why the fulfillment used them, idiots!

Did you get any kind of shipment notification?