Quick Update for US Backers
over 4 years ago – Tue, Jul 27, 2021 at 08:26:05 PM

Hi Everyone,

Great news! After being told our shipment was fully received and 673 games were missing, we woke up this morning to see the arrival of a few expansions to an Amazon fulfillment center with even more marked as “in transfer.” We are shocked but hopeful, as this could mean the pallet has been found and all the games will be available to us to send soon!

Since our last update, we have already sent out enough orders so that we don’t need to send a second wave to Amazon. The first wave of orders has taken nearly six weeks to even begin arriving at Amazon fulfillment centers, so this means no one will have to wait for a second shipment to arrive. We will continue to send out games ourselves in addition to sending games through Amazon as they show up.

The finish line is in sight!

Thank you so much for your outpouring of support as we navigate this. Y’all are the best!

-Gwen and Sam

July Update 2
over 4 years ago – Wed, Jul 21, 2021 at 01:06:00 AM

Hi All,

Hope everyone is doing well! For those of you who have received your games, we are so excited! Love hearing from you about your experiences.

SHIPPING OUTSIDE IN THE USA

Shipping to the EU, UK, Asia, Canada, and to the rest of the world is well underway and you should be receiving your games soon if you haven't already. Woohoo!

SHIPPING IN THE USA

We have received some bad news for the orders not yet shipped in the United States. As you know, we have been waiting for over a month for Amazon to receive two pallets of games so that we can start sending the rest of the orders. Unfortunately, they have only confirmed receipt of one pallet (all Fire Tower: 2nd Edition). We have confirmed that both pallets were delivered to Amazon, but the second one is now missing, which means that all 673 Rising Flames expansions from our first wave are currently lost by Amazon. 

In the past few years working with Amazon we have never experienced anything like this, and are currently trying to get it resolved. However, as policy, Amazon has refused to investigate the issue before September 18, three months after our pallets were shipped.  

This is devastating news for us, as it has delayed the delivery of your games to you and put nearly $30,000 worth of product at risk. It also means that we cannot send the second wave of US orders through Amazon, not only because of the long delay but because we no longer feel confident that they will safely arrive. 

We don’t want you to have to wait, especially when the future of this pallet is uncertain. We previously spent over a week shipping out 530 orders ourselves and enlisted Fulfillrite to ship out over 700 more in an attempt to speed up this process due to the pandemic delays. Now, we are gearing up to send out over 1100 orders on our own (let's go, Medium Flat Rate boxes!) in order to get you the games as quickly as possible. We hope to start this process next week.

Shipping games from the east coast to the midwest and beyond through another company or through USPS costs significantly more than shipping through Amazon, something we did not budget for when we charged between $4-$7 for shipping. We don’t want any of these charges to go to you, and so we are not asking for extra for shipping. That said, if you would like to make a donation to help us take on these costs, we would greatly appreciate it! Here is the link. And thank you so much to those who already tipped us in the pledge manager!

We are truly sorry for the delays, as we expected most of the games to be delivered weeks ago. Thank you so much for your patience and support while we reconfigure the final stage of this KS campaign. 

Despite these hiccups, we are still on track to deliver to almost everyone within a month of the original estimated delivery date. You are the best backers we could ask for, and bringing this game to your table is a life long dream of ours that has come true. 

Best,

Gwen and Sam

Monthly Update: July
almost 5 years ago – Sun, Jul 04, 2021 at 03:03:25 PM

Hi Everyone!

It is great to hear from those of you who have received Fire Tower and the Rising Flames expansion! These are some of the of the best moments of the campaign - finally seeing games on tables and hearing about your experiences with them. We have heard some great feedback on social media, in the comments, and in emails and messages from so many of you, and we are thrilled with the response so far. If you are enjoying the game, please leave a review of Fire Tower and the Rising Flames Expansion on Board Game Geek, as good ratings on that site will really help our young company and spread the word about Fire Tower and Rising Flames. Thank you for your kind words!

Few quick notes for those who have received their orders:

1. The Super Deluxe includes the Deluxe expansion, the Wooden Bucket Mini Expansion, and the Megahawks Mini Expansion. Please check inside the box before reaching out to us about missing mini expansions.

2. If you experience any issues with your order, please contact us directly at [email protected] or through a private message on Kickstarter. We can't see backer information if you write a public comment, so it slows down the process of resolving your issue. 

Shipping

Now, for those of you who don't have the game yet (still about half of all backers): We are unfortunately stuck in the whirlwind of pandemic delays. Those of you backing other Kickstarters have probably heard about some of these, and Quackalope gets into some of the details in this video. We are doing all that we can to speed things along, but we don't have a lot of options in most cases. Let's break it down by region:

EU: The games arrived in Germany on June 12, about 2 weeks later than the original delivery date. They then sat in customs for over 2 weeks, and, finally, arrived at the ShipQuest fulfillment center yesterday! While this part of the process took a full month longer than originally planned, we still consider ourselves lucky to have the games with the fulfillment company and no other issues. We haven't gotten a date yet from ShipQuest about when they will begin fulfillment, but hopefully soon! We are hopeful that the EU will be delivered in July.

USA: Sorry in advance that this is a little long-winded, but we want to explain the whole process to you. 

Our original plan for the US was to ship everything through Amazon multi-channel fulfillment, which we did with our first campaign. That allowed us to charge a low flat rate for shipping for everyone within the US. However, due to the increase in online sales during the pandemic, Amazon started limiting the inventory that we could send to their fulfillment centers. If we were to send everything through Amazon, it would take several months, sending only 1000 items at a time. In order to speed up the process, we decided to send around 700 orders through Fulfilrite and even took on over 500 orders to pack and ship ourselves. This was more expensive, but we were able to take on the financial hit for certain orders (like those with more items or those close to us in the northeast). However, the rest of the orders are between $6-$12 more per order, which made shipping outside of Amazon cost prohibitive. 

With this technique, we will be sending out the Amazon orders in two waves, instead of four. The first round of Amazon orders were picked up nearly two weeks ago, and are still waiting to be accepted by the Amazon fulfillment center (another delay caused by the pandemic, as usually this only takes a few days). Right now it says the delivery will arrive on July 6th. Amazon is saying that the pandemic is also causing delays during the "checking in" process, which happens after the games are accepted at the center, and could take 10 days or more.  This is all out of our hands, unfortunately.

As soon as the first wave of orders start sending, we can send in the second wave of games, which will finish fulfillment in the US. It is hard to say now how long this will be, but the second wave of games will likely arrive in August. We are sorry to these backers for the delay, and we wish there was something we could do to speed up the process. Rest assured, we are doing all we can to get the games to everyone as quickly as possible.

CANADA: The shipment from the US to Canada should be going through customs shortly, and will arrive at Pick & Pack Logistics soon after. Pick & Pack Logistics  tends to do a fast turnaround with the games, so we hope that Canadians will begin receiving orders soon! 

AUS/NZ: If you have not yet received your games in AUS or NZ, please reach out to us at [email protected]. 

EVERYONE ELSE (UK, Asia, South America, Africa, and everywhere else): The ShipQuest hub in the UK is responsible for shipping out all these orders. They have received the games and should begin shipping them out very soon! They told us they would likely start shipping by next week. 

Thank you!

A huge thanks again to everyone for your continued support and understanding through this unprecedented time in board games! You have all been amazing. If you are supporting other projects, we really hope you can be patient with the publishers. We are all doing our best and dealing with issues we could have never imagined. 

Best,

Gwen and Sam

June Monthly Update
almost 5 years ago – Fri, Jun 18, 2021 at 11:05:09 AM

Hi Everyone!

A few of you have asked for an update, and while we were waiting a bit in hopes of a more solid timeline, we decided to go ahead and update you on what we know.

1.  Australia and New Zealand shipments have delivered! Aetherworks has fulfilled all games, and we are very excited to hear about games getting to tables on the other side of the globe. We’d love to see pics if you have a chance! And if you’re enjoying the game, please drop us a rating on Board Game Geek!
2.  ALL BOATS HAVE ARRIVED! The boats to the UK, EU, and US were all in a neck-and-neck race through the Suez Canal. At one point, just after exiting the canal, we swear all three boats with Fire Tower were within waving distance. And now, around the same time, each boat has arrived at port at the final destination.
3.  The EU shipment has arrived, but has not yet made it through customs. We have heard that Germany is backed up and the average time in customs is about 10 days. With that in mind, we hope the shipment will make it to ShipQuest by the end of next week or early the following week. Originally, the shipment was due to arrive by the end of May, so with this additional delay we expect the games to ship out in July.
4.  The UK shipment (shipping to the UK and ROW) has made it through customs and is delivering to ShipQuest this week. Hopefully shipping will begin soon after and you will see your games at the end of June or July.
5.  The US shipment (shipping to the US and CA) has also made it through customs and should be arriving at the Fulfillrite warehouse shortly. We will be trucking a shipment up to Pick & Pack Logistics as soon as possible to reach backers there. We are still on course for July/early August delivery for everyone, and some might receive it as early as the end of June. One note about the US: Originally, we had planned to ship all games through Amazon, but Amazon has changed their policies due to the pandemic, and is limiting the number of games that we can send them. Because of this, we will be shipping the games from Amazon in two waves, and will also be shipping orders through Fulfillrite and through the post office ourselves. With this method, we hope to get everyone their games as quickly as possible, but not all games will arrive at the same time. That said, you will receive tracking updates prior to receiving your game. 

We are sorry again for the delays caused by the pandemic, but we are getting closer to the arrival of your games!

Thanks so much for your patience and support throughout this. Can’t wait for the games to be on tables worldwide!

Best,

Gwen and Sam

May Update: Boats on Water + Locking Addresses
almost 5 years ago – Sat, May 15, 2021 at 02:02:03 AM

Hi Everyone,

Good news! All games are on the water, heading to fulfillment centers! That means that we are one step closer to getting the games to you. We will be locking addresses shortly, please check your location for your address deadline. 

Here are updates by location:

AUSTRALIA/NEW ZEALAND: Games have arrived at port and still need to go through customs. We are hoping to get these to the fulfillment center soon and begin shipping to customers in June! We are locking addresses for backers in these regions in 48 hours. If you are unsure about your address, you can check it here: https://fire-tower-expansion.backerkit.com/

US/CANADA: We are very excited to say that the games boarded a ship on May 6! They are set to arrive in NY in mid-June and we hope to start shipping out games by the end of June. Most backers should be receiving their games in July! For US/CANADA backers, we are going to lock addresses on May 20th, so please update your address here if you need to: https://fire-tower-expansion.backerkit.com/. If you plan on moving in July, please update your address to your July address and then send us an email at [email protected] so we can be sure to accommodate you. If you have already notified us, you are all set!

EVERYWHERE ELSE: The two boats headed for the UK and EU are on their way as well, and we will use fulfillment centers in those regions to ship to everyone else. It looks like these ships will be arriving to port in early June, though we have heard reports of delays at customs, so we might see a slow-down there. We expect that backers in these regions will be receiving their games in late June and July. We are going to lock addresses on May 20th, so if you need to update your address you can do so here: https://fire-tower-expansion.backerkit.com/. Again, if you plan on moving by the first of July, please update your address to your July address and then send us an email at [email protected] so we can accommodate you.

Can’t wait to get these games in your hands!

Thanks,

Gwen and Sam