Shipping Phase 2 Update - December 2018

We are in the middle of Phase 2 of shipping physical pledge rewards to eligible backers, and are happy to hear some of you have already received yours. If you got an email from Stamps.com with a tracking number, that means your package is on its way!

If you have not yet received an email from Stamps.com, don’t worry: We expect to resume Phase 2 of shipping mid-January.

As a reminder, please make sure your shipping address is up-to-date and confirmed in your Profile Settings and that if your address is outside the United States you need to have an International Shipping voucher listed on your Account page. You can purchase International Shipping here if you do not have this voucher yet.

If you are not sure whether you are eligible for physical rewards, please email support@portalarium.com from the email address associated with your account.

Thank you for your continued patience and support, Avatars!

 

Thanks so much! Just got my box (3rd account) so all is good and complete! I got the stamps.com email as well. Shipping took two days, but then again, I'm 2 hours from Portalarium.

Oh it had a big fish inside it! ( just kidding )

May everyone have a wonderful holiday season! Do some ice fishing, hey, ya know!

 

Got a few friends (known them for 15 years and were decent sized kickstarter backers) who still haven't received theirs.........for them the ongoing fiasco surrounding receiving their physical items just fuels their disappointment. It isn't surprising that they don't have anything good to say about anything SotA related.

I received all of my items, so I can't complain.......however if I hadn't, I'd be pretty furious right now.

 

Well, they're only 19.99 on amazon atm so if you really want one and can't wait, it's not like there's not an easy alternative. I got mine 3 months ago. I followed the instructions and never had issues.

I was going to leave a review about how awesome the box set is, and how Ultima fans should get it, but because of the amount of trolling going on online with respect to the game they disabled the reviews, sadly.

I don't think I'd be furious. I would be annoyed... but furious over not getting a game box ? First world problems.

 

I wish this wasn't an ongoing issue, but if you don't understand how failing to fulfill shipping of important items in a timely matter affects both the customer and their view of the SotA product in a negative light, I don't know what to tell you.

I won one of the early cloth maps during the R54 telethon last June, for spending a not insignificant amount of money. I was suppose to receive an email the following week asking if I wanted it right away, or if I wanted it signed by the whole team or just part of it (I wanted the whole team to sign). Take a guess if that email ever came. I finally received the map last week, a mere six months later and with only LB's signature. I wasn't mad, but sure felt dumb for going the extra mile to support the game and not have this fulfilled in any way the way it was advertised.

The execution of this stuff matters, and will continue to matter to some of us.

 

I know it's frustrating to wait for your rewards, but I would ask you to be patient. Eventually you will get it. I also had to wait for R54 livestream reward several months. It will come. Most people have gotten theirs, including several people in this thread. This is understandable with any kind of shipping, that some get missed, addresses were not deliverable, especially internationally. It takes time.

I don't think it makes any sense to start doing the regret dance about the game over something like this. I think the majority of backers got their reward, and the rest it should be on the way for soon. Again, you can get them for a tiny amount of cash in 2 days if it's a must, like for a gift or something.

 

My problem with this whole this is this... you can purchase the rewards for the holidays and get them before your backers have theirs. I have been waiting patiently for years for mine. I was told at the end of Q3 that I would have it in Q4. Now I get an email telling me that there is another batch going out in Mid Jan.. so it's a guessing game if mine will be in the that shipment or not...

 

As someone who works in a small company and ships on a daily basis.... Portalarium, I feel your pain! Whether it's simply processing who supposed to get what or actually having to physically put it all together.. There's only a few people available to see to thousands of packages on limited time. Delays do not surprise me. This isn't Amazon.

Our company deals with a lot of medical needs. We just had a lady who needed a certain product that was backordered by a certain date. Of course, we said we could get it to her on time. It was on order, we knew when we'd have it. No problem. Right?

It was late. Tracking on the package said 12/17... well the truck didn't arrive to the distribution center on time. 12/18.... was on the truck for delivery.. which never showed up despite calling FedEx and being assured it would arrive by 5:25... Nope. 12/19... Finally turns up. We upgraded that pool gal's shipping to 2nd Day Air.. then had to upgrade it to next day.. 12/20.. "where's my package?!?!?".. Out for delivery that's where.. fortunately she got it.

Point of that little story? We're not Amazon but we did our best and got there in the end.. at our expense.

I feel kinda bad today cause I had to leave work with 71 processed orders sitting on a table for my boss to pack and ship because my work day was done and a lot of backordered product was expected to arrive and it hadn't yet. She got most of them out.. woohoo!

Anyway, point I'm trying to make is things don't always go smoothly. You never know what's going on behind the scenes to get stuff to you in any manner, timely or otherwise. Portalarium's under a lot of pressure to get this stuff out. Yet, I don't recall any absolute promises. It's rough when you're trying to set what you believe is the correct expectation and things shift under your feet and suddenly you find you can't meet that timeframe anymore. What can you do? But do your best with what you have. You act in good faith to the best you can and yet people don't seem to want to get it.

So I don't know the exact situation. I thought I'd get my new desk clutter a few months ago. Still waiting.. but I can enjoy the game without it. There's nothing in that box that's going to do anything apart from take up space somewhere. It's not going to solve any of my problems or alleviate any pains. Portalarium (mostly Serafina it seems if you pay attention to the stand up notes.. you go girl!) is still working to get my desk clutter to me. It'll get here. I can wait. In the meantime, I've a game to play.

 

Sure, Portalarium isn't Amazon, but over 6 month for the shipping process?!
And why were the Boxes to buy at Amazon when the Kickstarter backer were not even all delivered?

Priorities...

 

Not super happy about another delay... Live stream said Chris had to light a fire under them.... that means they did not have it as a priority... lack of priority explains why the boxes are not getting out the door.

Merry Christmas... apparently will not be a box from SOTA under my tree.

 

[QUOTE="Arcanoxer, post: 1188590, member: 785"
And why were the Boxes to buy at Amazon when the Kickstarter backer were not even all delivered?
[/QUOTE]

Pretty obvious...NOT the same box........

 

It took quite a long time, but I just want to let everyone know that I eventually did receive all my boxes.

 

And yet I didn't say anything that was untrue. I'll be the first to admit they could've done better on the communication front, but if you found yourself in their shoes you'd probably feel very differently. People act like they forget that businesses are made up of people and small businesses have it pretty rough. They're working hard and people complain over and over. Think about what you're getting all worked up about. I'm a big Ultima fan myself. I like the boxed goodies too, but where are they now? Inside my tattered Dragon Edition UIX box sitting on a bookshelf that hasn't been opened in years? I'm not trying to downplay anything in regards to others, that's just how I feel about it. I'd just rather play the game. If you want to be all worked up that's your prerogative, but really the end result is you only make yourself unhappy. When they're done shipping if I still don't get it, then I'll email support, politely.

I'm glad you got your boxes. May the 4th arrive swiftly.

 

I think what you're missing is that the reason the entire thing got into this mess is because Portalarium had a bug with their website for years, that they knew about, and didn't fix. That bug caused people's "verified" shipping addresses to get reset any time a purchase was made from the AddOn store via credit card (which many people do). So you could go and verify your address repeatedly (such as I did), and still end up in the state I'm at -- No box. Because of a bug that was known and unaddressed. I'm going to assume that having a bug like that exist for multiple years is not something your company would tolerate (or it probably wouldn't still be in business?).

 

That bug didnt affect everyone. I never experienced it. I imagine it affected a small number of users.

 

I, being one of the ones in question that was affected by that bug.. did not miss it. I do not however, recall Portalarium saying they knew about it all along. Anyone have a link to where someone said they were aware of the issue before it became an issue? I remember well enough when it came up. I can't say I remember a "whoops we knew about this but never bothered to fix it" . Yes that would annoy me but does not change my view of the here and now.

 

I experienced the bug first time around on 1 of 3 accounts. Fixed it, waited. Finally read @Serafina message stating to email support, I did. Got the letter, then received my last box a few weeks ago.

 

The fact that people's confirmation was being reset was reported repeatedly on the forums pretty much as soon as they added the capability. So the bug was reported fairly quickly. It was not addressed for a very, very long time.

 

Assuming that's true.. one bug out of how many on a list? You can't expect anyone to memorize the entire list of bugs. On the list is not the same as knowing it's there. It's like asking someone to remember what they had for lunch 2 weeks ago last Thursday.

Should somehow have thought "hmm this could affect shipping our boxes next year" Probably. But what's done is done. Bug's fixed and Portalarium is doing their best. There's no point in dwelling on past errors (perceived or otherwise) when there's an honest effort here and now to make good.