Now we don’t make it a habit of posting about Kickstarters after they are done but I had a few things I wanted to say about the Reaper Miniatures BONES 3 update that just went out (full email below) . Yes it contained bad news but that’s not what I want to focus on. The TL:Dr is in a nut shell is you’re not going to get your stuff until early 2017 now due to a miscommunication and an assumption. There is other information regarding refunds and more so I’d read it over if I were you.

Now I have been critical of Reaper Miniatures in the past, and I don’t do it for malice: Reaper is one of my favorite companies out there. Now let me start off by saying that this is a thank you to them. Whoa, wasn’t expecting that were you? I love staying informed and knowing what’s going on. This post isn’t too highlight that Reaper messed up, it’s to show the rest of the community what to do right. Do you run Kickstarters? Do you plan on running one? This is the bar that’s set for you!

Once again Reaper has shown how to do things right with transparency, honesty, humility, and proper service to their customers.

Thank you!

We had a very intense conversation with our partners in China this week, and discovered a communication error and gross misunderstanding on our part about the updates they were providing us.

In a previous Update, we had announced that production was 100% complete and all they had to do now was put the models into little baggies and boxes. We also said that  collating the Core Sets in this manner was the last step. We pressed for more information about the models that we believed to be done but were still not being assigned a Container, and learned that our understanding of the status was incorrect.

Where we are now is that production on the models that go into the Core Sets is complete, and they are still collating and assembling those sets from the completed models. They are not finished with all of the other rewards, which is why these rewards are not assigned to a Container.

After a great deal of back and forth over e-mail, we were able to get them to give us a status update that included what they estimated as a timeline for completion of everything. They were not able to give a precise date, but they anticipated being finished, and having all product on the water “shortly before American New Year”.

We’re very sorry. We have been announcing no significant delays, and promising things to begin any day now, and we were wrong. This failure rests entirely on our shoulders, and we will do whatever we can to improve our communication with China for the future, to avoid compounding this error.

Our assessment of the information given was based on flawed assumptions about the details we were provided with. For example, when we were sent the invoice for all non-core-set models, we assumed that they were being prepped for shipping. This had been standard practice in our previous orders from them, and we just made an assumption. The invoices we were sent, however, indicated they were starting work on those parts, not finishing them, apparently due to some policy changes because some customers weren’t ready to pay the bills when the invoices arrived after the work was done, resulting in lost time and money. We should have been more diligent with our communication.

There is nothing we can do to speed this process up, and we have no explanations for why work on some product had not been started until now.

We will be happy to work with those of you who feel this unacceptable to let you out of the project with your pledges back, minus kickstarter’s fees. We would like to ask that you bear with us, however, as we think the product from this project is some of the best we have ever made, and you will be satisfied with the results.

If you wish to contact us directly, you can use the Kickstarter messaging feature or send an e-mail tohelp@reapermini.com.

If you are wanting a refund or have issues with your rewards, please be sure to include your login-email, any relevant order numbers, and mention which project you’re referencing (Bones 3).

If you have any other questions we would be happy to discuss them.