But we do get updates from Brendon from time to time here. I’d consider that being proactive in a sense.
Remember, Unknown flat out ignored @Anthony on an order he placed… And gave him the runaround on another order once.
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But as big as tfaw is, and if they are the #2 online retailer, they should have more than 2 people in their customer service department. With as many damages as they are shipping out lately and books just not being shipped, Kyle can’t handle it all himself. (I know they just hired a 2nd person but still, 2 is not enough)
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Brendon is cool. I sometimes feel bad bashing the place he works for but I know he doesn’t take it personally and I am not bashing him at all. He is the hero Tfaw deserves but not the one they need right now. They need a meeting of the minds and to get their act together. Some things they cannot control like damages and late shipments from publishers but they can control how fast they process and ship out the stuff they do have. They can control who they ship their stuff with. They can control alerting customers of delays and damages. They can control how they package every order that goes out their door. The answer to get better shipments from Tfaw is to not order bags and boards or to order enough so they don’t use a crappy mailer??? Really??? That’s their answer to getting less damaged books? Come on man! The proper answer is for Tfaw to not mess stuff up and tell customers they need to change how they order things. That’s actually just terrible customer service on their part. The best things about Tfaw is their website and the ordering system in place along with their incentive pricing being better than most places but they fail in every other area in my opinion.
I can only speak for me when it comes to Unknown and I have never had a problem receiving any order from them. I am sure there are others but Anthony is the only person I remember from here to have problems with Unknown. I don’t recall other complaints about Unknown on a regular basis while there are mostly constant complaints about Tfaw from more than one person.
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They’ve (Unknown) seemed to cleaned up their act some but in the past, they weren’t so perfect. I’ve heard horror stories and a few members here won’t ever conduct business with them again.
As for TFAW, I haven’t had to contact their customer service for damages or what not in over a year or longer I think and even then, they shipped out replacements and didn’t ask for the damaged ones. Maybe some people just have horrible USPS hubs and employees. The only thing as of lately is the delays, which I’ll forgive them for since a lot of that was out of their power. But I’m also pretty patient when it comes to getting the stuff I ordered. As long as it’s not 3 - 6 months later, I’m fine for the most part.
I can only speak on my own experiences though. TFAW is still top notch I think.
In the end though, there will never be a truly perfect shop. Something will always go wrong at some point whether it’s in their power or not to control.
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I know it’s not an excuse but I’m pretty sure for ever 1 order that Unknown does, TFAW probably does 10, 20 or 30 orders on top of that, maybe even more… that’s why you’ll hear more stories when things go bad cause they’re more likely to go bad when a shop is shipping out way more product than the other.
This sums up my grievences with tfaw also, the things they CAN control they seem to not address at all while only talking about diamond being late or damages.
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Not sure if I agree. I’ve been ordering from TFAW for years and I’ve seen vast improvements over the past year in fixing their packing woes. At one time it seemed much worse (I even stopped ordering from them a few years back for a while cause everything came damaged it seemed) and has only gotten better. Right now I just feel they got knocked out with a KO all at the same time a few months back and they’re scrambling to get back on their toes. Give’em time, they’ll come around. How many times did Rocky get knocked down by Apollo but still came back? 
There was a bunch of rough experiences with Unknown posted here a while back. The reason you mostly hear about TFAW is they are heavily promoted here so most order from them.
Last year I ordered 4 books from Unknown. One of the four the corner of the cover had been folded over then folded back. So not during shipping. I messaged them. Took me a few messages and I finally got a reply. They requested pics which I sent them. They confirmed seeing the crease. Then they asked for pics of the packing slip so they could tell which of their employees packed the order. I complied with that as well. This was a $3 book by the way and we are several days in going back and forth. After I complied with everything they needed, they said they would only send me a refund or a replacement if I tore the book up and sent them pictures of the book that was torn up and destroyed. I felt this was a pretty ridiculous request. The book was no longer for sale on their site, so not sure if I’d even get a replacement. I explained if they wanted me to mail it back, I understand. I’d donate it to a kid. Keep it as a reader copy. I don’t mind any of those, but I don’t feel right ripping up a perfectly readable comic just to give them evidence I’m not conning them on a book that cost them $1.75 and I paid $3 for. Also of note I had several pending orders with them at the time probably over $100 in books and they are giving me a hard time over $3 when the book was damaged before they mailed it. I had no prior history with them either. They refused saying it’s company policy that they need evidence the book has been destroyed. So after a week of messages I just gave up.
The same week I got a big box from TFAW. Huge order. 100 books. Post office beat it bad, not their fault. I sent one email with pics, $100-150 in books including ratios. Got a single reply back with a refund of over $100, told me to keep everything, and sent me a package with any replacements they still had.
So who has better service?
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As for the proactive measures, we are trying to figure out a way to update pre-order pages to let people know if something isn’t shipped why. (Damages, shortages, allocations, etc.) But obviously with a 100% custom system it takes some time. In the meantime I’m looking into how much time it would take each week to have a static page (or a blog or something) where we can just post titles that have had damages/shortages each week so people can have an idea if something is missing why.
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In your one experience you got better service from Tfaw. In my experience I have not had a problem with Unknown Comics yet so all I can say is I have had better experiences with them than I have had with Tfaw. It’s great that Tfaw fixes things. They have absolutely fixed things the 4 times I have contacted them. Part of the problem is actually having to contact them that many times to fix things. And then there are the things I can’t really contact them about like how nearly every week several books don’t ship and it takes 2 weeks to get half the books I ordered. Every week. Not just once in a while. Every week. And every week every other place I order from has my books processed and shipped right on time. Every week. Not just once in a while. Every week. And on the off chance something is damaged or delayed I am made aware of it by the company. Every time. I am not just left in the dark wondering where half my order is.
And I don’t care if they do ten times the volume of other places I order from so there are likely to be more screw ups from Tfaw than other places. That’s not my problem or concern. That’s their problem to work out and make as many of their customers happy as possible. They won’t ever make everyone happy but I do believe there are some things they could do to make things better. And actually I bet they are working on some of them because Brendon has made it clear that he listens to us in here and takes things to Tfaw to discuss…and as I type this there is Brendon posting about some of the things they are looking at doing to make things better.
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This is what Unknown does…it just comes in an e-mail and is sent to (I assume) anyone subscribed to their mailing list. Hopefully the link works
That seems less “here’s stuff that was damaged and shorted this week that we may not be able to fulfill” and more “here’s stuff where the release date changed.”
I think that’s probably your best bet. Trying to contact each individually would be a mess sorting out.
True but now I have been placated because I see that and go, Oh there’s a bunch of crap going on with a bunch of books and I wont get them right away. I don’t know if that list contains damaged books or not but I do know every place I order from has communicated when they recieve damages. Now the way you guys do that may be different because of the volume you have but there has to be a simple way to do it. Mass email, blog, whatever
Ya those are just books whose release date has changed. You’d get the same info by checking the release date on the TFAW listing which they update each time a book is moved.
You are talking about two different things with books whose release date moved Vs stuff where there are damages/shortages.
That sounds like a effing nightmare considering how many customers TFAW has on file.
I also think there’s different levels of customer service being presented as well.
Seems some people want customer service to be more proactive on potential delays compared to when you call in to request customer service. Both of these I think are completely different levels of types of customer service.
In one scenario, a shop is just sending out a generic email notifying people of what books might get shorted. This might not even apply to all customers. Honestly if TFAW sent out an email to tell me My Little Pony #100 is delayed due to damages yet I didn’t even order that title I would find highly annoying if I kept getting such emails on titles I didn’t even order.
Is this great customer service though with the one all generic email notification? Maybe for those where it applies to but I think this would actually annoy me more than anything. It’s easy to write up a single email with the info and just blast it out to everyone in their email database. This approach is to likely prevent people from calling about their orders. I would love to see how one is treated if they decided to still contact Unknown about the damages, delays, etc. This leads into actual customer service inquiry where most people here and myself included seem to claim that TFAW customer service is top notch in handling your issue directly whereas if you read Comp82’s experience with Unknown and I know a few others here who have had really horrible experiences when they contacted them.
Each experience is truly unique and different but what I think I’m hearing is some people want the heads up prior to prevent them from calling compared to when you actually have to call them. In my opinion, these are two separate beasts and levels of customer service.
If TFAW could implement a field on why a book didn’t get processed, that sounds like an awesome implementation if done correctly. No email required, one can just view under their pre-orders/orders tab.
It’s not really a different level of customer service. It’s just providing customer service or not providing customer service. If we go to a restaurant and order food and it takes 45 minutes to get to the table they have two choices. Provide customer service and let us know what the hold up is and maybe comp us our drinks or something or don’t provide customer service, say nothing and charge us full price. There is only do or do not! 
Yeah, your basically describing proactive vs reactive customer service. I think depending on the circumstances, there’s a time it should be done and other times not so much. When is the happy medium of when and when not to contact? Yes, if you sit down at a restaurant to eat food where people serve you, you should be greeted within a few minutes to get drinks ordered, perhaps take your actual order, etc. The expectation is you should be able to start eating in a certain time frame, not hours or days later.
Now we go on to a retailer site where you’re ordering books weeks or months in advance. Then you got different shipping options, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly… Your expectation of delays is different from say, my own expectations. When do they determine who and who shouldn’t be contacted? If I’ve already waited months for the book to come out, what’s another week or two weeks in waiting? Perhaps after a month they should definitely contact people to say, hey, sorry but due to delays and or damages, we’re still waiting on new books to arrive to fulfill, etc. But even then, a generic email of delayed books might not even apply to those people who do monthly shipments as they saw no delay in the books cause they got replacements in time to ship out during their next scheduled shipment pre-order, etc.
I guess it’s going to differ from customer to customer. I’ve read numerous times here when @RipCityGamer has mentioned delays, they’re playing catchup, etc. So I’m being patient myself and for the most part, most of mine are only a few weeks later than they should have arrived under normal circumstances.
I wish people would stop using the weather excuse for TFAW. That was months ago and they really need to get their shit together before they lose me as a customer. I emailed them about damages a week ago and no response. Why have I not gotten a response? Is their internet broken? I can’t always use the chat feature during business hours and a week with no response is bullshit.
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