Saturday 12 September 2009

Black Tree Design

BTD have a terrible and well-deserved reputation for abysmal customer service. On 4th August 2008 I ordered some BTD Normans to use as Border Kingdoms armies in our Talomir Tales campaign. About three months later, part of my order turned up. The infantry were fine but I was not impressed with the quality of the cavalry; one of the horses only had three legs and others had minor casting defects. Still, given how long it had taken to get even these figures, I was not going to send these horses back. For all I knew, I might never see them again or any others besides! So, I painted these figures up and waited for the rest of my order. A couple of months down the line, I enquired about my order by email and through their website queries forum. I received no reply. I repeated this every couple of months, even adding a couple of written enquiries by post. I received no reply. Then suddenly I actually received a response completely out of the blue on 31st July 2009 informing me that the rest of my order would be due in a few weeks and offering me a free pack of figures of my choice. I replied immediately that I still wanted the figures and informed them which free pack I would like. It all went quiet again and I never expected to see the figures.

- Cue fanfare -

Today (12th September 2009) I received the rest of my order! One year, one month and one week after I originally sent it in, it turned up on the door mat. It even included a pack of free figures as an apology. The freebie pack was not the one I had asked for, but it is still useful to me, so that is all to the good. I doubt I shall ever use BTD again. I shall certainly not use their mail order service again despite the hefty discounts available. I might consider buying from them at shows if they are present, because I do like the style of the figures. At least at shows I could check that the figures are not miscast, and I would know that I was getting what I wanted when I wanted it. It's a good job I still want these figures for our games. The Border Kingdoms can now recruit some new troops to their army.

4 comments:

  1. Good for you it didn't turn out too bad. Wanted to order from them too but the feedback at TMP made me change my mind. I do hope they solve that problem. They have nice minis.

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  2. I recently bought some minis from them and had excellent customer service, it may be they have improved their service in the face of bad reviews/the credit crunch? I was swiftly informed via email that my debit card could not be processed due to a technical error with their machine, but that a Visa or Mastercard would work and was given detailed instructions on how I could proceed. I followed these instructions and recieved confirmation shortly thereafter, again via email. My minis arrived within a few days and all were in excellent condition. I have no complaints about Black Tree but I can understand from your experience why you would be wary of them, as I would be of any company that had treated me in that way.

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  3. Hi Paul, I am pleased your order worked out well. I have heard of others that have had good or at least tolerable service from BTD in the past. I hope your experience is a sign of things to come though. I would certainly be pleased if I could order from them reliably because they have good prices and some good figures. That said, I would need to be 100% certain that they were going to come up with the goods before I ever spent money with them again.

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  4. Surely somebody somewhere must be getting good service, how could they keep in business otherwise?

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