20-50% price increase for forge world, even in the US despite now having a local store. FW deleting all criticism on Facebook.

[Nin Win]

1 hour ago, Cinncinnatus said:

On the plus side, you can now pay with PayPal Credit, which gives you 6 months interest free financing on orders over $100 USD. The lack of this option actually stopped me last year from purchasing a Legion army, as I like to buy models in bulk but also want to keep cash on hand. This change alone might have just ensured I buy a Legion army in 2019!

I would highly recommend against getting in the habit of borrowing money to spend on unnecessary consumer goods.  For anyone already doing that, stop.  Please.  You'll thank me in 10 years.

As for banning forgeworld, locally it's already on a "approve on a case by case basis."  Forgeworld can't seem to get their rules and points right so people are very hesitant to play with or against their stuff.

[Drofnum]

The banning thing is so weird to me.  FW is no worse off than some of the mainline GW stuff, Lord Kroak pre-FAQ comes to mind.

[amysrevenge]

Yup, it's never come up for even a second in any of my circles (in AoS time that is - plenty of folk, folk who largely didn't make the jump to AoS, were in favour of all sorts of arbitrary sweeping restrictions in previous editions).

As far as pricing goes.  It's sad, but inevitable.  If FW is (as it seems) attempting to move from a local mail-order boutique and into a store presence (or at least into a deliberately international sales presence), this was inevitable.  It's the exact same way that GW pricing works - fixed local prices, not directly tied to pound conversions, and specific local shipping consideration.

[tokek]

1 hour ago, the_master288 said:

 

Also, moderation is one thing, but they are deleting comments that outline how bad this practice is.  They aren't taking their global player base's concerns into consideration, and are instead deleting any type of post that mentions the hikes.  I've seen numerous posts get deleted and they were just stating financial facts.  I don't think it is fair to lump everyone in as an overly negative troll.

Unless any of that commentary was actually from experienced and knowledgeable exporters with a clear understanding of how Brexit is going to work out[1] then it was probably best removed from their facebook page. Everybody is entitled to their opinion but if it is not well informed then it is likely to mislead those reading it. and cause nothing but negative feelings.

People tend to make highly simplistic assumptions about currency exchange and associated costs as part of an exporting process. In volatile economic times such as these those assumptions are probably quite wrong. 

[1] I strongly suspect that no such person  was posting on a GW facebook page. People not in a position of expertise should not be making claims of bad practice.

[the_master288]

28 minutes ago, Charles said:

FW have changed their pricing into local currency, they will not do this on live exchange rates, that would mean your prices changes every minute of every day. 

They will have a business exchange rates for this year (and probably the next two) already set. These rates will be used to create all the pricing in local currency. This BER will be set to protect them against currency fluctuation. What you are seeing is the confidence buffer in your local currencies long term strength.  

This way FW can be confident whatever happens in the Global currency markets they will make the contribution margins they want on their products.

This explanation falls short when you look at the US price increase, despite having a local FW facility in Texas now.  The FW facility wouldn't have to worry about currency conversion for their own country.

In my view, I think FW is using an extreme "buffer" for the £ .  It looks like they may be valuing the  £  at around the pre-brexit strength of two years ago.  Meanwhile, the  £ is the one losing its buying power and strength on the global markets.  I understand that it is impossible to fluctuate the local prices based on currency conversion on a day-to-day, however, their "buffer" is using an outdated extreme, rather than a current rational value for the  £ .

[Charles]

FYI this will have nothing to do with brexit and everything to do with budget exchange rates I described on the previous page.

@the_master288 no it doesn’t. Even if a store is based in the USA the company (FW) is not it’s a UK company where they report their profits. This is standard practice for any blue chip multinational company.

[Vhordrai]

1 minute ago, the_master288 said:

This explanation falls short when you look at the US price increase, despite having a local FW facility in Texas now.  The FW facility wouldn't have to worry about currency conversion for their own country.

In my view, I think FW is using an extreme "buffer" for the £ .  It looks like they may be valuing the  £  at around the pre-brexit strength of two years ago.  Meanwhile, the  £ is the one losing its buying power and strength on the global markets.  I understand that it is impossible to fluctuate the local prices based on currency conversion on a day-to-day, however, their "buffer" is using an outdated extreme, rather than a current rational value for the  £ .

Not to mention FW would hardly need any sort of price "buffer" to begin with when they have long since been selling models at such  an excessive profit margin to begin with.  Here in Canada they are selling 1 unit of 3 small plague toads for NINETY SIX dollars now.  The amount it costs to make 3 recasted pieces of very old resin designs is incomparably fractional.

[the_master288]

11 minutes ago, Charles said:

FYI this will have nothing to do with brexit and everything to do with budget exchange rates I described on the previous page.

@the_master288 no it doesn’t. Even if a store is based in the USA the company (FW) is not it’s a UK company where they report their profits. This is standard practice for any blue chip multinational company.

That's understandable.

At the end of the day, I guess we'll just have to see how this bodes for them on their Financial Reports.  I'm no expert in global trade, but, I don't see many FW customers being excited that this change is going to cost them heavily.

[Charles]

That’s true they very well may see a reduction in sales volume, but that may not hit the profits because as you can see they have built themselves a nice additional margin and if currency markets fluctuate the other way it will give them an even bigger boost.

 

 

[Vhordrai]

24 minutes ago, tokek said:

People not in a position of expertise should not be making claims of bad practice.

So even though a customer sees that FW made a local branch in the US to save money- yet still drastically increased the prices for US customers- you're saying that their average customers needs to basically have an international economics University degree level of understanding before they have the  right to call FW out for hiking the price of their overpriced recasted pieces of resin further to the moon?  I don't think so.

[LLV]

I think that if you're in US or Canada or Aus and want FW products now that, sadly, many will look to, As Mr.Trump would say , "CHAI-NA"

 

[tokek]

3 minutes ago, Vhordrai said:

So even though a customer sees that FW made a local branch in the US to save money- yet still drastically increased the prices for US customers- you're saying that their average customers needs to basically have an international economics University degree level of understanding before they have the  right to call FW out for hiking the price of their overpriced recasted pieces of resin further to the moon?  I don't think so.

I am rather at a loss to why you think GW running additional warehousing and filling it with more stock to  achieve shorter delivery times would save them money. Where exactly do you think they are saving money by comparison with using their existing stock and warehouse space right next to the factory in Nottingham?

These sorts of unsupported assumptions are exactly the sort of thing that I would expect any reputable company to want removed from *their* social media space so that people coming along and reading it are not misled into all sorts of false conclusions about what is happening and why. 

 

[NemoVonUtopia]

As unfortunate as the price increases are, I figured that it would be the case because it was already a price increase to buy at events in the US using the set catalogue prices. It seems like the exchange rate they are using is about 1.5 which isn't bad if you look at the past 10 years. I think the main issue is that we are used to the lower rate of the last few years. Though that only applies to the US.

I fully understand them deleting comments on facebook. When I looked at the comments quite a few were just saying how FW is scamming everyone and posting the same angry post as a reply to most other comments and insulting anyone who didn't share a negative opinion.

[Vhordrai]

4 minutes ago, tokek said:

I am rather at a loss to why you think GW running additional warehousing and filling it with more stock to  achieve shorter delivery times would save them money. Where exactly do you think they are saving money by comparison with using their existing stock and warehouse space right next to the factory in Nottingham?

These sorts of unsupported assumptions are exactly the sort of thing that I would expect any reputable company to want removed from *their* social media space so that people coming along and reading it are not misled into all sorts of false conclusions about what is happening and why. 

 

First off, you’re still missing the point that I’m purposefully expressing the view of how an average customer like myself is affected and therefore will end up feeling- to an average customer there is a sudden increase in price on an already absurdly overpriced item that before they had to *specialty* order internationally, despite now being either produced or available locally. The ACTUAL inner workings on whether FW will make use of local production to save locally is sort of tangential to what consumers will expect.  If consumers are financially screwed by this change, and FW isn’t able to save money from this, then why the heck did they make this change in the first place? I’d rather have wait times for an international order than pay far more to get something from nearby.

[tokek]

10 minutes ago, Vhordrai said:

First off, you’re still missing the point that I’m purposefully expressing the view of how an average customer like myself is affected and therefore will end up feeling- to an average customer there is a sudden increase in price on an already absurdly overpriced item that before they had to *specialty* order internationally, despite now being either produced or available locally. The ACTUAL inner workings on whether FW will make use of local production to save locally is sort of tangential to what consumers will expect.  If consumers are financially screwed by this change, and FW isn’t able to save money from this, then why the heck did they make this change in the first place? I’d rather have wait times for an international order than pay far more to get something from nearby.

You seem to be missing my point that people posting incorrect assumptions on a GW run Facebook page is just going to mislead and misinform people if those posts are left there. For which reason it is reasonable for GW to remove those posts. You stated assumption that this would save GW money is almost certainly mistaken, why would any company leave that sort of mis-information on their social media platforms.

Your feelings are your feelings but they do not reflect business reality. 

[Cinncinnatus]

2 hours ago, Nin Win said:

I would highly recommend against getting in the habit of borrowing money to spend on unnecessary consumer goods.  For anyone already doing that, stop.  Please.  You'll thank me in 10 years.

As a rule I agree on credit cards, but interest free is a whole different beast. You need to be disciplined, plan out how much you can afford each month, and stick to that plan. If you pay a cent of interest on promotions like this you are doing it wrong. I've paid for my wife's engagement ring, wedding band, honeymoon to Hawaii, TV's, computers, you name it. Didn't pay any interest, kept my cash levels high, and the payment periods were long enough the payments did not impact our monthly income in any way. But you have to be disciplined and looking at your money all the time like it is a resource management game and know exactly what you can realistically afford given unexpected things come up all the time. For me, that is just second nature even before taking about promotional interest free offers. But if you don't have that kind of discipline?  Yeah, then stay away. Finance isn't for everyone.

[Vhordrai]

1 hour ago, tokek said:

You seem to be missing my point that people posting incorrect assumptions on a GW run Facebook page is just going to mislead and misinform people if those posts are left there. For which reason it is reasonable for GW to remove those posts. You stated assumption that this would save GW money is almost certainly mistaken, why would any company leave that sort of mis-information on their social media platforms.

Your feelings are your feelings but they do not reflect business reality. 

If that were the only type of post being deleted I would say fine that's fair.  Unfortunately they were and are deleting any posts that even mention the price increase for most people outside of the UK.  That is not 'feelings', that is a hard reality.  

[Yoshiya]

So just looked at the Japan store and the prices are pretty ridiculous. The smaller knights cost an extra £50 before you even account for sales tax. That's about an extra 20% compared to the normal markup on GW products in Japan once you include sales tax.

Whilst I know it's not the same to do it on a larger scale for business, I got charged around £75 tax when I sent my collection from the UK to Japan when I moved here and that was well over £1000 worth of models including a same sized knight (probably approaching £1500). As such, I just don't see where forgeworld is required to add an extra £50 to the model cost even if it's supposedly for export costs.

[Overread]

What I still don't get is that GW knew people internationally didn't buy due to price, part of which was shipping, so they raised the prices on the product after investing in overseas warehousing and better transport infrastructure. So they've built a system to lower costs to increase sales to a market that was about to welcome fairer pricing and then - slapped on a very significant price hike on all the products for the world (barring the UK). 

I just don't get what GW's intent here was; raising the prices means less customers not more; instead of record FW sales today they will likely only make some marginal gain in the UK market with little to no overseas sales at all. All that money and time and resources gone to waste and a reputation damaged after a year of very solid work gained!

[Slayerofmen]

So Australia as I understand it doesnt have a local warehouse so itll still come from the UK and keep in mind that prices have gone up between 30% -70% before shipping.

 

It basically ranges out most if not all of the FW range out of affordability 

[kenshin620]

3 hours ago, Vhordrai said:

 have an international economics University degree level of understanding

Hey thats me!

Ok well I admit I didn't take anything about international commodity trading....?

 

The only thing I'll say is that it sucks to like anything FW that isn't Horus Heresy because I don't think anything else is going to become plastic. I still wanted a plastic Tau Barracuda...

[PlasticCraic]

FWIW Brexit helps GW massively as an exporter.  Immediately before the Brexit vote, if they charged AU $100 they received GBP 49.02

Yesterday if they charged AU $100 they would receive GBP 56.82

And today for a product with 30% price increase they will charge AU $130 and receive GBP 73.86

So their revenue is increasing massively, partly due to price hikes, partly thanks to Brexit.

It's interesting that they have the Contemptor in their article.  That was a really good illustration of the price differential - the FW Contemptor with 2x weapons came out at AU $96.80

The plastic GW Contemptor is listed at AU $100.00 on the GW AUS site.  Given the perception of FW as being very expensive, lot of people were surprised that we in Australia were already essentially paying FW prices for everything.  So actual FW was relatively affordable in comparison.

Paying the actual price at the actual exchange rate was nice while it lasted, but I'm not surprised they have brought their pricing model in line with the core GW range.  It's a shame but for me personally it just means exploring alternative channels (i.e. getting mates in the UK to send stuff over for me).

[PlasticCraic]

(Also FWIW the FW Contemptor Dread with weapons now costs AU $150, which is an increase of roughly 55%).

[PlasticCraic]

4 hours ago, Gaz Taylor said:

I will agree with that but I know how “passionate” some people can get. It’s a tough one but I imagine in six months time if I visited the page as a new customer, last thing I would want to see is complaints about prices. That’s why I imagine all these types of comments are being deleted. 

I actually agree with this pretty strongly.  It's an official channel, of course they're going to want to keep it on-message, and quite right too. 

I would even go further and say that I don't think constructive complaints about pricing are appropriate for the FB page, and they are right to delete them (if that's what they are doing).

It's just not the right forum for complaining about prices, however constructive, and it can only serve to deter new members of the community.  I think they're well within their rights to moderate their own channels as heavily as they see fit.

(That might seem strange given my posts above, but becuase I've stuck to the facts as I see them, I believe that they fall under the "constructive" heading, which is officialy OK on this forum... and I'm sure someone will let me know if not!).

[Chikout]

@Gaz Taylor

The problem with the comments on Facebook is that they aren't just deleting offensive comments. Simple requests for information regarding the price changes have also been deleted. 

It is understandable that a company would have a set rate for international prices. Noone would want prices to change everyday alongside the exchange rate. 

The problem is that the rate they have chosen for certain countries us ridiculous. Here in Japan many products have been marked up by as much as 50%. 

This happened with regular GW products about 5 or 6 years ago.

If I ask my sister to buy a GW product in the UK at full GW price, ship it with priority shipping, and pay the 5% import tax, it still works out about 20 to 30% cheaper than buying from my local GW shop. 

Forgeworld was more reasonable but now in some cases it will be even more expensive relatively than standard GW products. 

The most disingenuous thing is that GW is hiding this price increase behind a message about improved service. 

With regards to brexit, the likelyhood is that the value of the pound will drop, which will actually benefit GW as a global company. 

There is a possibility that GW will have to pay import taxes to send products to Europe but they already do that here and as I said the rate is just 5%.