vicvic - I just checked your email address and according to my records your vinyl was delivered quite some time ago. If this is not the case, can you please contact
teamchaos@amandapalmer.net with your information so I can investigate with the post office?
astrozombie1971 - check your email for an update on your order. I'm sorry you did not receive one since our last correspondence. It's good news!
for everyone: what insignifikunt says is true, the cost to our customers for overseas shipping with JSR and other big fulfillment houses was a major reason we decided to start doing fulfillment in-house. we tried to keep the shipping costs down as low as possible, and in most cases they were close to what shipping actually cost us, both for domestic and international. JSR's domestic shipping charge IS less than we charged for Radiohead, but that's for first class mail without tracking. ALL our domestic orders, and all international orders of $250 or more, were shipped Priority Mail so we could track it. We chose to use first class for international orders under $250 so that the cost of shipping wouldn't be prohibitive.
During the Evelyn Evelyn preorder, a lot of people either didn't order or felt gouged by the shipping charges and we wanted to change that. And as totalfrog pointed out, our experience with merch companies other than JSR was pretty bad. I personally spent more than six months fixing mistakes musictoday had made, from sending out wrong shirt sizes, to not sending parts of the order out at all, to tossing vinyls into boxes with no padding so they arrived wrecked. At a certain point we all looked around and said, okay, if we're spending so much time doing damage control, wouldn't it be better to do it ourselves in the first place?
A very very small percentage of red orders were missed. The vast majority of the 1700 packages we sent during the first round of fulfillment arrived at their destinations safely soon after. The rest are in the process of being corrected and will land in their owners hands very soon, along with a few extras and our sincere thanks for being patient with us. For our very first major project handled completely in-house, I think that while it may not have been a home-run, it was definitely a triple.
The orange vinyl ran into production problems which have caused delays. Those customers who did not wish to wait have been offered full refunds with our apologies. The ones that are waiting will receive their orders as soon as humanly possible. As soon as the vinyls get to us we are ready to have our team of shipping help descend upon them and get them out, and I'll post an update both on Twitter and in this thread as soon as that happens.
We are very, very thankful to those of you who ordered Ukulelehead. Your purchase is helping keep our business running, and the experience of running fulfillment ourselves was an educational one. We have exciting projects in the works that will run better because of what we've learned through this, both through the good parts and the not-so-good. I am truly sorry to the people who are still waiting on their orders--- even though there are other projects coming up, you are still at the top of our list, and we'll drop everything else when the orange vinyl comes in to get it out fast. And as we've said before, if you are tired of waiting, just forward your receipt to
teamchaos@amandpalmer.net with the subject line "CANCEL" and we'll refund your money.
I hope that these bumps in the road won't cause too many of you to skip ordering AFP or Dresden Dolls products from us next time, although I understand if they do. Our system is not perfect yet, but we're getting there. We have extra failsafes in place for the orange fulfillment and for the holiday ordering seasons, and I know they will go smoothly.
I am always available and eager to hear your feedback, questions, complaints and compliments. You can contact me and the rest of the merch team at
merch@amandapalmer.net, which will be our permanent address for merch-related emails. And thank you, always, for doing what you do so we can do what we do (even though we don't do it perfectly yet.)