Friends,

For whatever it is worth to a few of you, here is the boat I am in:

Placed an order on December 4th, 2 starters (1 of each) and 1 booster box.

Checked my order status yesterday, the order was marked "shipped" but I had not received any shipping confirmation. I emailed customer service and within an hour or so, I received this:

Greetings,

Your order was marked for shipment today. Regretfully, due to the ice storm here in St. Louis, MO, FedEx cancelled service for the day, and with Monday being a federal holiday, your order will ship out Tuesday, January 11th.

Thank you for choosing Miniature Market!

Chris B.
Customer Service Representative
Miniature Market

I think he meant the 17th, SO . . . if any of you are in the boat I am in, we still have about one more week!!!

It was very nice if you to give MM an interest free loan for the past month so they could keep their singles restocked.

I ordered on January 3rd from MM, 2 booster boxes, so i`m hoping i got on this shipment because i ordered when it said it ships early 2017 instead of Febuary-March.

It was very nice if you to give MM an interest free loan for the past month so they could keep their singles restocked.

Ya, tell me about it!!!!

I ordered on January 3rd from MM, 2 booster boxes, so i`m hoping i got on this shipment because i ordered when it said it ships early 2017 instead of Febuary-March.

Ya, I thought I had ordered in time for the December 22nd wave, but it looks like MM singles took precidence.

They should have pre-orders be first priority, gonna keep my fingers crossed that its gonna ship soon lol

They should have pre-orders be first priority, gonna keep my fingers crossed that its gonna ship soon lol

They don't. You're supporting a company that opted to not fill paid for orders and instead resell that same product in the form of singles. They really don't deserve your money with that type of shady practices.

I live near St. Louis, and I had them hold my order so I could go pick it up Friday instead of having it shipped. Things were really bad here Friday, even though I went to pick them up at 8am, ice had already started forming on the road. They never actually opened the physical store on Friday, but I was lucky that a worker was there and my order had been pulled the night before so I was able to get it. I drove back, with my boxes in tow, in freezing rain. The things we do for our hobbies...

I have read the comment so many times about MM and their supposed shady practices. I am glad all the people complaining have inside knowledge to the inner workings at MM. That they can say without a doubt that MM took the pre-orders that people paid for cracked those boosters and sold the singles. It never once occurred to them that maybe just maybe MM also placed an order when they knew there would be a supply issue and with their own money placed an order for 10, 30, 50 maybe even 100 booster boxes to crack open part out the singles for sale on their website.

Yes this may seem like shady tactics as other orders may have come in after they ordered for themselves, but they are a business and with the way the product sells out it was a really good business choice. I will almost guarantee if you were in their shoes owning a business of their size you would have probably done the exact same thing. I ordered my product about a week after it went up for order the first time received my product the day of release. Never once did I feel like I gave out a interest free loan and if I did not receive product on release day I would know the next time to get my order in the day I hear about a release.

I'm abundantly sure that MM earmarked part of the booster box order for use as singles. I'm sure many, even local retailers did the same thing. I, in no way, see any issue with doing so. Just as I see no issue with TC ordering booster boxes for use in constructing Saga Sets. The issue is not MM cracking boxes for singles, it's them doing so while they have outstanding orders for those very boxes.

They sold and accepted payment for product, having advertised it with general ship dates based on the timing of the restock waves. When those restock came those orders didn't go out, but their singles inventory was promptly replenished. They had boxes in hand they they could have used to fill the orders they sold and we're paid for in the advertised timeline. Instead they kept them for use as singles.

If I sold you a booster box, accepted payment for it, but instead of giving it to you decided to open it and sell the contents; you wouldn't buy from me again. You'd rightfully consider that an unacceptable practice. That's exactly what MM had done with these second and third wave restocks.

There's no disputing that they took orders in early December for product they advertised as being available in late December, recieved product in that timeframe, did not fill some of those orders, while also restocking their singles inventory. To me that is a shady business practice. If you take someone's money, you send out the product as soon as it's in hand, you do not put their order on hold while you resell that same product.

Friends,

I didn't really want this to be a "bash MM" thread, but I have had many of the same thoughts as Scottie has posted.

HOWEVER, I have always been happy with MM (except for this) and I was impressed with their quick reply with CS and didn't realize the ice storm, thanks to Rookie Pilot for eyes on the ground account too.

I just wanted to let anyone else know, who ordered early/mid December, that hopefully next week will be our week.

I will still order from MM because they are very ​nice to work with, they are friendly when you call in and there prices are hard to beat. I totally understand these delays with the limited stock.

MM is in no way responsible for the lack of supply of this product. Furthermore they have two sides to their business, sealed product and singles and had to divide up the limited supply between their different customers including single buyers.

Now if they charged you before they shipped your product, that is a no no.

I'm not going to pretend to have inside info on how MM operates and will only add that I've place many orders with them over the years and have had success.

I've never had an issue with MM, quite the contrary. It is quite assumptive to accuse them of taking advantage of their customers, when in all reality it's quite possible that MM placed "Their" order before ANYONE else, thus their delivery would go to them first. That many have assumed the worse is the nature of our current culture of imidiate gratification, self indulgence and armchair quarterbacking, sad.

It certainly seems just as much validity stands with the more optimistic outlook.

So on Friday I received notice that my order wouldn't be shipped (as did the first person in this thread) but that it would be shipped today. Now today has come and gone and no notification. My order says contents verified but still no update. Anyone else in the same boat? I noticed that singles have been restocked so now I'm nervous I've been pushed back again.

I placed an order over the weekend, no update on shipping yet. Yesterday was a holiday, so no one was shipping then. They had bad weather late last week, so they are probably back logged a couple of days.

I got my Dec 20 order of 1 case from them today! Have to wait until after work to see what I got.

Retracted due to MMs explanation.

MM doesnt seem to be the only one with shady practices. Coolstuff.inc doesn't have boosters or starters to sell but have 20+ copies of almost every single of the set.

I received an email from MM that said I wouldn't be getting my Awakenings this round. When I found that out and told them either to cancel my order or switch it to Spirit (which I think will be available sooner), they sent me a box that they had held back for "customers that had missed the pre-orders" that is now on its way. They got the result right, but I'm not sure why they didn't fill the pre-orders first.

My best guess is that they think this spread out release was going to be a continual thing (like Coolstuff, apparently).

Well the facts are average costs of rare/ultras are more than the booster cost. So yes, there is more money to be made in singles for now. The real problem is they charge preorders before they ship. If they charge their customers when they shipped what they are doing isn't an issue, but once they take someone else's money they need to do everything they can to fulfill that order, even if it means losing out on money they could make on singles. Simple solution, don't charge until you ship MM.

I think the lesson right now is maybe think twice about ordering boxes from MM?

<retracted comments after seeing the below response from MM>

I feel the need to clarify a few things because people are claiming (on this forum and others) that we are doing something shady by selling singles.

Asmodee/FFG requires our distributors to charge us different amounts for product based on where it is going. If we are selling product online (sealed product) then we pay one price. If we plan to break product for singles or sell it in our retail shop then we pay a different price.

When we placed our preorder with our distributor we ordered a certain amount via the retail/singles channel and a different amount for website sales. It is against our agreement with Asmodee/FFG to take product ordered for retail/singles and ship it out sealed to consumers. We are following the rules. Simple as that.

As for shipping sealed product we always fill preorders on a first in / first out basis. All preorders that said "ships mid-late December" and "ships January 2017" have all been filled. The orders labeled "Ships early 2017" and "Ships Feb-March 2017" are still outstanding. We are still waiting to hear if/when more product will be available. We have thousands of displays on order with our distributor so we will fill whatever we can based on our allocation of the next wave of product.