I have decided to do a post whinging about how overseas retailors determine the postage they will charge we benighted colonials, as there seems to be no rhyme or reason to it.
I have recently made a number of different purchases, none of them huge, and have found the postage rates charged vary greatly, as per below:
Victoria Miniatures US – Heads at cost of $US8 – postage $US10
Col Bills UK Various figures at cost of £45 - postage £12.60
Brigade Game US Various figures at cost of $136.50 - postage $18.55 (special deal if you buy over $125 worth of figures)
Anvil UK heads at cost of £3.50 each set - min postage £10
Statuesque Miniatures - heads at cost of £4.60 per set - min postage £4.85
Caliver UK - about £35 worth - post FREE!
So the main issue I had was with the minimum £10 Anvil had on their checkout - I would probably have only bought one set of their heads at £3.50, but I refuse to pay more for the postage than the product costs, so bought three sets! (I had this issue with Wee Wolf in the US recently - I wanted to get three mounted figures in total at $25 I think - and the minimum postage was around the same - making them very expensive figures which I did not purchase)
I understand international shipping costs something and I also realise the USPS rates have increased significantly since the US strong armed the international postal union but lets be honest, 8 or 10 28mm heads in resin could be placed in bubble wrap and sent in an ordinary A4 envelope for a fraction of the cost of most of these.
OK moan over!
The more astute of you may have realised the reason for the subject of this post is that I have made little progress on the second batch of Swedish dragoons. With this unit, I have taken some advice from my gaming friend Andrew and painted the horses first - but it does not seem to have speeded things up noticeably! I took a couple of images to show progress - with the first six, I undercoated the horse and rider separately, painted the horse, then attached the rider and painted him in situ. This time, I attached the rider then undercoated both and am now painting the horse before starting on the rider. I am not sure which method is better - how do others paint their mounted troops?
The first coat
I always glue the rider on and paint both at the same time when doing units
ReplyDeleteThanks Neil - that's what I have done too for the last forty years - but I know both Nick and Andrew (excellent painter) do them separately, so I have decided to give it a try!
DeleteNo, not me! I glue rider to horse before undercoating, then I only have to stick one thing to painting mount, and don't have to remove paint from surfaces glued together.
DeleteYes, and down with US postal charges!
Ok that's how I am doing it this time Andrew
DeleteFor cavalry with separate mount and trooper, i undercoat both then paint the horse first and then stick the trooper onto the mount and paint him second.
ReplyDeleteOk thanks Jon. That was what I did with the first six bit seemed to take as long to paint the horse as it did to paint the rider!
DeleteI paint them separately then put them together - but only after undercoating them and leaving them for at least 6 months in the cupboard. I check on them from time to time and give them a really hard stare. I hate painting cavalry.
ReplyDeleteLol I do have one or two figures in a similar boat JBM!
DeleteI also paint them separately! :)
ReplyDeleteThanks Michal...your results certainly add weight to your method...
DeleteI vote for glue first and paint later.
ReplyDeleteI did wonder about a couple of time about getting fellow gamers to post on to see if it was cheaper to receive domestically and then forward on, but there does not seem much in it, apart from potentially protecting us from the custom man :-)
Gaming companies do seem to lack consistency, I do now tend to avoid those that charge more than the figures themselves.
Cheers
Stu
Thanks Stu. We sometimes combine orders or just seek out the best postage offers eg I bought a bunch of figures from The Assault Grpup and I deliberately bought more than i really needed because once past £58, post was free! I also buy anything possible from Caliver...Copplestoe, Perry plastic etc never come from the original manufacturer
DeleteHi Keith,
ReplyDeleteYes- I'm befuddled by overseas postal charges - some Companies I've dealt with in the past charge a hefty 25% value of the total order placed for their airfreight- very expensive. These days I tend to not go along with postage rates which are more than the value of the product ordered. Best yet- I recently ordered a big batch of Dwarfs from Wargames Foundry in the UK - Postage was FREE to AUS and I was very surprised and elated - a pleasing change. Have a great weekend there in NZ. Cheers. KEV.
Thanks Kev. My mate Mark gets all his Perry orders post free too but I think he has to order £200 worth, which can be problematical at this end with our Revenuemen....I think this is overcome by the twins sending in two or three separate boxes. I wanted to get a few GNW Swedes in their coats/capes from Foundry but postage for a £14 pack was £12.....so they stayed where they were!
DeletePostage costs have been much discussed among our group as well. I tend to order much from the UK, so have certainly felt the impact of the rise in international rates (I'm in the US). So far, it hasn't stopped me from acquiring what I need/want: I figures that, even with the rise in shipping, the cost of toy soldiering as a pursuit is still much more modest than others, like golfing, for instance. Point two: I feel your pain on horses--I paint them first to put them behind before moving on to the riders.
ReplyDeleteThanks Ed....I guess your point is true, and toy soldiering is also much more fun than golf!
DeletePostage without representations! It's time to rebel! Lol! Yes, I can understand your dilemma, Keith. I've seen some ridiculous postage on ebay - more than the actual item sometimes. Anyway, great looking start on the new figures. Oh, and the rain looks like what we have here in Washington State about 40% of the year.
ReplyDeleteYou could have a point there Dean! On line auction sites are the worst for sure. Some stuff people sell commercially, they actually make their profit by margining the freight...I know that from my work experience..we had a customer importing cell phone covers etc, charging two or three bucks to get people to buy them, then charging $7 freight when they were paying my company $2 to deliver them. They were shipping over a hundred every day!
DeleteRecently I sent some Hat figures to Ausralia from CT (Eastcoast US), under one half kilo with 3 week delivery was US $20. Good thing the box was 'free.' If I had used a non-standardbox it would have been twice as much. Overseas or domestic, cheap or free freight means it is subsidized by the cost of the product.
ReplyDeleteThanks Joe. I asked Warlord several years ago if the plastic figures would attract a lower freight cost but they said no. They also came up with BS excuse about international price points for why they don't deduct VAT from stuff they are exporting...that's one reason I rarely buy their product and if I do, it's from Caliver!
DeleteI have seen some postage rates as high as 40% which is when I start to question how much I want the product. The UK companies I like the most are those offering free postage over a certain amount, and/or who don't charge VAT on overseas orders.
ReplyDeleteTotally agre on both counts Lawrence!
DeleteGlue into a single piece and then prime. Postage seems a bit of a minefield, I know here in the UK weight and the actual dimensions both influence postal price as we seem to have small letter, letter, small parcel, parcel, large parcel. Caliver Books may be banking on the majority of their sales being books /rules, which are efficiently sized ….. but free is still great.
ReplyDeleteCheers Norm...I have always assumed Caliver do something clever with the VAT, which offsets the free postage in their favour, but not sure what! I am just happy I can buy two boxes of Perry plastics for less than £20 each AND get them to NZ at no additional cost...they are literally cheaper than buying locally...as long as you don't mind the wait for them to get here...which we are used to anyway as most stuff isn't available locally at any price...
DeleteI can sympathise with you when on the postage. We’re lucky here in the UK having something many suppliers in country.
ReplyDeleteI always assumed VAT was not chargeable on sales to non-EU countries. Though what happens now we’re ‘out’ I haven’t a clue.
Thanks for your comment...I theory, U.K. Retailers should remove VAT and many do....but if they don't there isn't much one can do about it - see my comment above re Warlord (one if several reasons that they irritate me as a business!) The Perrys, Front Rank, Col Bills and many others do remove VAT...others like Warbases get around it by quoting a birth tax included and tax excluded price...but it is exactly the same, so, in essence, they charge non UK residents a 20% surcharge for no reason other than they can!
DeleteA few typos there...the main one being, it should read "quoting a BOTH tax included..." rather than birth tax!😄
DeleteI’ve done cav in two ways; stick the rider on the horse, prime and paint. If it’s hard to get the brush in a spot it’s probably not worth painting. The second way is pay someone else to paint it for me. 😀
ReplyDeleteI also will increase an order to make the postage cost worth it. Because I was ALWAYS gonna buy the miniatures and now it’s just a question of how many.
Lol I am far too mean to pay someone else to paint for me Stew! I really wanted to get the Chrkes XII mounted figure from Wee Wolf ...he was $10 on his own....and I added pair of mounted senior officers at $15 (which I thought was quite pricey to be honest ) but adding the postage meant the three figures would have been costing me about $50! Sorry, I didn't want them that much!
DeleteCavalry 😱…
ReplyDeleteIt’s not the horses it’s all those damn straps… it’s a joy when you find a unit that rode black horses and had black saddlery…
I fix the rider to the horse… which helps if the fit isn’t good … I can do some putty work before I start painting…
Postage costs are one of the reasons that I don’t really order stuff from outside the uk…
Most of the time it’s not really the cost of the postage…it’s the cheeky handling charge that the post office stick on it when it gets here….for some reason I find that bit most annoying… of course I am lucky that there are so many miniatures companies based here.
All the best. Aly
Thanks Aly, yes I agree, it is all the straps that make cavalry so annoying !
DeleteLiving in the UK is definitely a great advantage in terms of figure availability .... shows is another one. We have nothing to compare with the plethora of wargaming events that take place in the UK and US in non Covid times.
My last order from the Perry's was over £200 to get the free postage! It arrived in two different boxes,one with the separate sprues and metal and another with the plastic boxes,I understood they took off the vat for overseas orders. I glue horses and riders together and prime, I then wet brush browns (various) and greys ,doing about 36 in one evening eg rapidly and then go back and paint the riders.
ReplyDeleteBest Iain
Cheers Iain. Yes, the Perrys are one of the honest suppliers who do remove the VAT. That is an impressive number of horses to get through in one session!
DeleteI meant to say prime black, that way you barely paint the straps, which let's face it are the worst thing about horses! I spent 3 years in Nottingham at art college, it's a really nice place I thought, the figures are a bonus!
DeleteBest Iain
Yeah! The postage rates involves me in a tricky game to balance miniatures cost and shipping charge. And I can’t say I always win these games, usually the opposite.
ReplyDeleteAs for horsemen I assemble the whole miniature horse and rider and then start paint. Because it is faster. One time I had to paint miniatures of catafacts separately due to small detals which I wasn’t able to paint ones a rider had been glued.
Thanks Dmitry...seems like assembling the horse and rider first then painting is the majority solution. Recently, I tried to purchase some Russian Civik War figures from Gennady at STP Miniatures but it all failed because he was not able to generate a Pay Pal invoice for me to pay him...it was a shame because buying direct from him in Russia was a lit cheaper than getting them from a reseller in the UK...
DeleteI guess we are lucky here in UK although having recently order form the US a it felt quite painful !
ReplyDeleteAh yes, that would have been your Norwegian purchase I guess Matt! I really miss the days when Mark S at 1866 and All That ran a shop manufacturing Front Rank under license, plus some other ranges - you could go in and buy ten or twenty figures at a time, no delay, no postage-it was great. Thats the reason so many wargamers in NZ have large FR collections - all my earlier armies are their figures! Living in Nottingham (like Aly) must be wonderful....well, for wargame figure buying purposes - for other stuff, Nottingham may not be the greatest location on earth!
Delete