Hey Chiffy
Got to say first - nice Jet trooper - i am glad i've stayed away from the Black Series as that would be a rabbit hole too far for me - it looks great.
On the on line shop front i have to disagree a bit.
I don't for a moment think anyone sets out to provide a bad experience and people as a rule really want to do their best. But there is a world of different between that intention and the reality and most comes down to individual interactions. In this case my frustration comes from multiple orders not quite going right. Delays with one, the wrong thing sent with another (although refunded), zero communication... That is a very personal experience.
That said in the 21st C there are just basics of online shopping that should be expected and having customers adjust their behavior and pay more to cover shortfalls in feature capability is not the correct approach. The rational for not splitting orders to save on shipping is one that makes sense, but also it is just wrong. That said IDT do the same, but they had the sense to build some logic into their platform that prevents in-stock and pre-order items being in the basket together - problem solved (Still not great though). adding business logic to allow part shipment and simple multi-charge shipping is something fulfillment systems back in the 90's could do... or eat the shipping cost and retain the customer loyalty over years, the long term income will more than make up for a few quid on shipping.
I don't think anyone expects smaller stores to be Amazon, but unfortunately that is the baseline for expectations in this day and age when it comes to online shopping. In SAF's case i would say ForbiddenPlanet is their big online competitor so as a minimum they should measure up against them feature and experience wise. Having stock is critical of course, but the experience and interaction is just as important and if the latter is below that of your competitors (and your stock and price isn't vastly different or more compelling) then eventually you will have an issue. It's why Lego just overhauled their ecommerce platform. Despite their brand loyalty and stock etc. people still preferred to shop online elsewhere as the experience was just so bad on Legos old site and actually damaging to their reputation, especially when they ran promotions and the site crashed. (although not exactly a like for like comparison, nearly an example). although it does lead me to another point, sites crashing in this day and age when busts capability in places like AWS is ubiquitous is unforgivable, and if you can't afford AWS there are thousands of smaller outfits. Force Friday was always going to be a big thing and any company linked to it should have scaled accordingly.
Perhaps i have a more unrealistic exception in this area (years running online platforms and fulfillment systems) but it does really annoy me when people don't pay attention to these sorts of features (while i think about it the ability to cancel, track and amend an order seems pretty simple as well).
I am sure SAF want to provide the best possible service and as a small outfit have to look at where they invest carefully, however, for me the basics just haven't worked out, so it will be ForbiddenPlanet whenever possible, at least for now...
