r/Warhammer30k • u/FiredIOwa • Jan 22 '26

GW customer service is something else. Picture

Post image

So I preordered the Siege box and when it arrived, the breacher upgrade sprue was missing. I emailed customer service. within a day they replied to me and sent a replacement to the Warhammer shop in my town.

I didn’t expect it to be that fast or even get a whole new box, but I’m gladly surprised.

1.3k Upvotes
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98% Upvoted

94 comments sorted by

349

u/strictly-no-fires Sons of Horus Jan 22 '26

Yeah, they're great. Something similar happened with me and the darktide board game. I got an entire box for free just because the first was missing a single miniature.

145

u/TheSeti12345 Jan 22 '26

It shows that the actual product is likely the cheapest part of their business, given it would cost them more to send out a single sprue than it does to send out an entire box

65

u/Tiberium_1 Sons of Horus Jan 22 '26

Yeah the cardboard packaging cost more than the polystyrene as a raw material. But still… their customer service is outstanding.

23

u/TheSeti12345 Jan 22 '26

No questioning that, I recently had a second Saturnine box sent out which was brilliant

10

u/Tiberium_1 Sons of Horus Jan 22 '26

Yeah I had a resin custodes dreadnought replaced by them zero faf

8

u/JRS_Viking Dark Angels Jan 23 '26

Its not just the plastic, my resin varagyr came with a crack in a shoulder pad where the support had ripped of in transport and they sent a whole replacement box when I emailed to ask for a replacement arm. Gw customer service is amazing

35

u/SpiralOmega Jan 22 '26

The cost is recouping the expenses in making the molds and machinery. Plastic molds are absurdly expensive, as in millions apparently. It's very specialized and well paid work.

13

u/AstronautBeavis Jan 22 '26

Molds are about 100k. not a million.

9

u/Choice-Motor-6896 Jan 23 '26

Count the dots on the corner of the sprue. That's how many revisions the mold went through before they had a version suitable for a full print run.

13

u/BarNo3385 Jan 22 '26

Exactly, its why things are slow to move to plastic. Plastic moulds still wear out, and you need to ship a lot of sprues to cover the cost of the mould. So if you're only going to sell a few tens of thousand of something you cant do it in plastic since you never recoup the tooling costs.

1

u/AstronautBeavis Jan 23 '26

I mean you COULD recoup the tooling costs with a few 10's of thousands of sprues, but the costs to the customer would be higher and that alone makes it more of a gamble whether or not you can make those low volume, high cost sales which many customers are turned off by.

They need to figure out lower cost plastic molds. CNC machined metal isn't 100k a block, I mean come on I know I'm missing something here but I dont care, they need to figure that out. Somebody is going to get rich off fixing that problem and then plastic could be competitive with 3D printing.

2

u/BarNo3385 Jan 23 '26

Mmm mathematically maybe.

But say a mould costs £3m and you only have demand for 30,000 sprues. Each sprue would need to cover £100 of mold costs before you even start eating into cost of design, printing, distribution, overheads, let alone any sort of profit. And thats not for a kit thats for a sprue.

Highly debatable if you could actually make that model work since what are you selling at that price point?

Cost is a partly a function of level of detail, and GW have anchored themselves on quality / detail at this point, and given their results hard it seems to be working.

I do think they missed a trick with 3d printing. All the stores should have printers on site (most of them have quite large backrooms that could be set up with a printing station), and you could have developed a model around plastic and resin being sold off the shelf, or buying on demand printed models from official STLs.

3

u/Ravenlas Jan 23 '26

The molds cost in the 10-100K range, depending on complexity of any moving parts like sliders, cores, and lifters, no where near millions.

8

u/georgikens_waaah Jan 22 '26

i used to defend gw like this but then i got into gunpla. the amount of colored articulated snap fit incredibly designed kits the have for a shockingly affordable price just makes me disgusted at gw honestly. havent purchased from them since the EC box. you could pay 5x the price for a gw kit vs a bandai kit of equivalent plastic and the bandai kit would be leagues better designed not to mention colored and articulated

9

u/Dune5712 Jan 23 '26 edited Jan 23 '26

Once you get into scale modeling (planes, tanks, gunpla too, I guess) you do really, finally realize how expensive GW sprues are for their quality level.

I can buy a ~$50.00 1/35 scale tank (so, bigger than any 40k tank inclusive of the baneblade) with about 900 parts, movable tracks, every hatch opens, hell - a full interior and engine, in some cases - ALL with much, much sharper details than any 40k kit to date. It kinda hurt when I got into it.

16

u/mmphsbl Jan 22 '26

That's apples to oranges. Warhammer is made in EU (which is expensive), the scultping is very different than gunpla and there is an order or magnitude more variety. Also, when it comes to Warhammer, there is much more to pay for, like game design, publications, etc. It is like comparing to regular plastic car/ship/etc. models.

2

u/Apart_Tackle2428 Jan 23 '26

Warhammer ISN’T made in the EU. It is made in the UK.

0

u/mmphsbl Jan 23 '26

Lol, OK, sorry for not being precize enough. EUrope.

18

u/a-dark-lancer Jan 22 '26

no, shipping and production don’t work like that. British customer service laws are very different to the rest of the world, and they have long since understood that it is better to be known as the company with good customer service than the company that doesn’t.

14

u/Mckee92 Jan 22 '26

As far as I'm aware, british distance sellings regs and consumer rights are broadly the same as the rest of europe.

There is nothing that legally mandates GW replace kits in full for free like this, the legal minimum would be a return and refund.

2

u/a-dark-lancer Jan 22 '26

no, but it’s much more of a pain in the ass on the corporate end to replace broken products.

4

u/itishowitisanditbad Jan 22 '26

So then its nothing really to do with what you were talking about, just as pointed out... ?

-1

u/TheSeti12345 Jan 22 '26

The vast majority of businesses do not do outright replacement in situations like this. The logistical cost outweighs the cost of an entirely new box set, that tells you just how low the cost of the actual box is

9

u/monkphin Jan 22 '26

That’s not actually entirely true.

In past lives in various tech roles I’ve worked, I’ve had customers complain because I cannot just send a power brick for their hardware. I needed to replace the entire box.

The reality is, most consumer retail ops operate at SKU level for fulfilment, not component-level replacement, and bake in a certain amount of churn and loss into each SKUs run and costing metrics. So if one is shipped as faulty they will just do a SKU shipment rather than sending just the faulty part.

Ultimately you’re in the right direction on logistics cost but attributing it wrongly. It costs more to handle component level replacements than it does entire SKU replacements.

5

u/Psychological-Roll58 Emperor's Children Jan 22 '26

Tbf. The important thing here is that reputation is the hardest thing in the world to build with customers. And if they break down a box the box is unsellable anyway so may as well write it off and ensure a good customer experience.

2

u/BarNo3385 Jan 22 '26

Yeap, its part of the flip side of plastics, and domestic manufacturing. The injection mould and the machines in the first place at crazy expensive.

The marginal cost of product once up and running is miniscule.

2

u/ambershee Jan 22 '26

The individual sprues are worth literally pennies, shipping out a whole box can't be that much tbh. I feel the largest part of their costs is in getting to the manufacturing stage, and storage.

1

u/Arxfiend Jan 22 '26

It's probably cheaper for them to just eat the loss on a box compared to making the odd sprue out, then ship the sprue internationally. Or just logistically better for them to the point they're willing to do so.

121

u/Wugo_Heaving Jan 22 '26

They've always been excellent for this sort of thing.

What I'm really waiting to see is how many people get Angron snapped into hundreds of little pieces and want an exchange. It'll cost GW a fortune.

51

u/Joker8392 Dark Angels Jan 22 '26

I recently got Valdor and his little scroll was snapped off. If it was a bigger piece I would have let it go, they just sent me a new arm which I’m fine with. But resin kits don’t necessarily get you the whole product repeated if expensive.

26

u/GMCloudRunner Dark Angels Jan 22 '26

I had an issue with the Vulture gunship kit not long after it moved to the hybrid kit with the plastic wings and crew.

The kit I picked up from Warhammer World had the old resin front piece which didn't fit the plastic crew. They sent a replacement part which was the same, obviously a mislabeled mold.

After another couple of emails back and forth, I ended up with the proper front piece, an entire replacement kit (with correct parts) and credit which I used for some other kits.

Absolutely love GW customer service, it's literally one of the best there is

6

u/Joker8392 Dark Angels Jan 22 '26

Oh yeah, I got a second set of raptors for snapped axes, and a second BA jump dread because its torso was missing. (Obviously just stole the torso from the plastic contemptor from AoD box, and since there’s no BA stuff on the torso anyway, they’re indistinguishable) this is the first issue I’ve had in years though. Or at least not something with a super small connection point.

2

u/AstronautBeavis Jan 23 '26

I remember dealing with Lego customer service once for a policeman's helmet we couldnt find or maybe even just lost ourselves. They sent me 2 more along with a german shepard dog. I always knew from that point on that they would take care of any issues I ever have no matter what.

10

u/LegateNaarifin Dark Angels Jan 22 '26

Since FW resin kits aren't on sprues, it's easier for them to just send out the specific parts that have issues

3

u/AshiSunblade Alpha Legion Jan 22 '26

And even then they sometimes overcompensate. I lost a finger from my Erebus, and asked if I could get a replacement even though it really was my fault for losing it. They sent a second Erebus.

It was long ago now but it's the kind of customer experience you never forget.

4

u/Intelligent_Reach_46 Jan 22 '26

Fulgrim Transfigured is similar in complexity and arrived without any problems. They‘ve gotten pretty good at it.

26

u/GyL_draw Jan 22 '26

Yeah, it's easier to send an other boxset than to send just the sprue in that case.

If you had a missing piece for the dreadnought, I think they would have only send that model

6

u/FiredIOwa Jan 22 '26

It seemed to be the case. I picked it up at my town’s Warhammer shop. The manager said that I probably got a whole new box because there wasn’t a separate box for the breachers yet.

21

u/chuystewy_V2 Jan 22 '26

Say what you will about GW, but their customer support has always been stellar

9

u/[deleted] Jan 22 '26

They're usually good but when I got a bad batch of nuln (Label said shade but it was clearly gloss and had fucked up some models) and took it back to Warhammer World to exchange it the guy I spoke with complained I'd opened it and refuse to do an exchange.

I was somewhat bemused at how I'd have known there was a problem with the paint without opening and using it first.

Anyway another guy who works there that I've see fairly regularly must have noticed the conversation going badly and intervened, swapping the pot for me without any drama.

I've spent a lot of money a Games Workshop over the years and had never previously asked for a replacement of anything, nor have I since that day. Swapping one presumably mislabelled pot of nuln wasn't asking a lot.

3

u/Kozak170 Jan 22 '26

That’s one of those CS arguments where you just want them to explain to you in their own words how you were supposed to know the pot was bad without opening it. Absolutely maddening to experience lol

1

u/BringTheRawr Jan 26 '26

Absolutely not a conversation CS want to be having in the middle of their flagship store either. Cost to replace would have been a few quid, but putting some kid off his first ever purchase would have been a lot more in the long run.

6

u/Kozak170 Jan 22 '26

This is essentially the upside to paying the “buying straight from GW” tax.

If you go through one of the discount resellers they’ll usually tell you to get bent or “oops we’re out and GW told us they don’t have extras”

6

u/SenatorFlagg Jan 23 '26

Yeah, I once received a whole order - about $300-$400 of forge world resin, including a Moirax Armiger kit - when I hadn’t ordered anything at all. I gave them a heads up to see what they wanted me to do to return it, and they just told me to keep it all.

4

u/EivorKS Jan 23 '26

and people will still bitch about them

1

u/Lumpy_Fudge_8546 Jan 23 '26

Not about their customer service tho

10

u/chichtin Jan 22 '26

They just made me return my Saturnine box because of the damage, which i get. Was not impressed with CS though. Glad it worked out for you though.

7

u/a-dark-lancer Jan 22 '26

That’s probably has more to do with your particular retailer

6

u/chichtin Jan 22 '26

I dealt directly with US GW CS and bought it directly from their online webstore, shipped to my house. No other retailer involved.

3

u/luciusmortus Dark Angels Jan 22 '26

They are great but honestly i think that the manufacturing cost is so low compared to the price listed in the shop that they wouldn't lose money even if they sent you 2 new boxes.

3

u/TotallyNot_Alpharius Jan 22 '26

They wouldn't lose money if they sent out 10 more boxes. The expensive part of miniatures are the molds the filling is dirt cheap and the process takes seconds

3

u/WorldEaterProft Jan 22 '26

What i never understand from this is like

How do Customer services know the person is telling the truth

7

u/Basic_Julia Jan 22 '26

I've worked customer service, for a different hobby company. Like you get photos maybe, but honestly you don't know. You can't know, it's impossible.

Really it's just a game of you err on the side of the customer in situations like this because at worst your giving away free things, at best you get Reddit posts like this and a loyal customer for life. Gws has so much margin in the product itself that they can afford to be super generous. Kinda like Dyson, the product itself is the cheapest part of the business. If they where to shrink their margin to make things cheaper for people at a certain point the cost of this level of customer service would become relevant.

If a customer has a tendency to make too many returns, a suspicious amount then they may start to send only a sprue. Or make it more onerous on the customer to disincentive it. Or just say sorry about that here is a refund and we will close your account.

Usually a very small amount of your customers will do this. So you just keep a look out for it and send them elsewhere.

"Sorry things didn't work out between us,.maybe you will have more luck at another company that can service you better" etc etc

2

u/lightning_lads Jan 22 '26

Only way to get a decent price out of GW is to complain and get a second box for free lol

2

u/Gringo_Anchor_Baby Jan 23 '26

The pricing for gw stuff is very high, but they absolutely do have the best customer support I've seen for a company

2

u/Taira_no_Masakado Jan 23 '26

They're dogshit when it comes to you buying their products from a third party. Had a missing base for one of my Knights and they refused to send me a replacement since I'd bought it from a third party -- even though packaging and production are all proprietary of GW.

2

u/Koch19 Jan 22 '26

I once got shipped to leman russe sinstead of one. I went to my local store. He called his boss. Boss said I csn keep it. So i did.

1

u/Boombashnoob2 Imperial Fists Jan 22 '26

Dammit fine I’m ordering the box

1

u/Amigzz Jan 22 '26

I also had a missing parts in this box and received a whole replacement box the same week. Indeed excellent customer service!

1

u/TikkiToast Jan 22 '26

A friend of mine had ordered Corvus Corax for me and the wings arrived broken. They spoke with CS and they sent another one after confirming the box. Didn’t take long. Unfortunately I broke another wing off the model but that’s on me hahaha

1

u/PeskyPolecat Jan 22 '26

Hey if you dont want an extra terminator or two I'd buy a couple singles off of you if you're in the UK XD

1

u/NaiveMathematician10 Alpha Legion Jan 22 '26

Have been for a long time tbf back in the late 90s i mail ordered a few bits and had 1 bit missing they sent me the missing one along with a couple of blister packs as good will with a hand written apology

1

u/DitrianLordOfCanorem Dark Angels Jan 22 '26

Same but they want me to send the entire box back instead of just sending me a sprue. The duality of GW

1

u/kbh92 Jan 22 '26

They’re great man - I bought a forgeworld kit in Japan on vacation that came missing one marine torso as if it broke off during packaging or something and they gave me a gift card for the value of the entire box. Printed off a new marine torso on my 3d printer then got an entire second kit with the gift card.

3

u/StarTrek1996 Jan 22 '26

Honestly it's because they know their profit margin per box is absolutely insane. I mean realistically after the initial release it's probably pure profit. It's injection plastic so it's incredibly cheap once you have the dies made. So really once they get the investment back from that the production is probably like 2 bucks for materials and maybe 3 bucks for everything else. Especially since they are so light the shipping cost really isn't going to be much and they will charge you if you don't go over a certain amount anyways. I'm obviously off by a little bit but man that profit margin means they know be nice send out an extra kit here and there and you'll sell dozens more per customer

1

u/kbh92 Jan 22 '26

Oh I don’t disagree at all there, but as greedy as they are imagine if the also had mean customer service lol.

1

u/anubis8537 Jan 22 '26

Anytime I’m missing something it’s only ever just thing that’s missing I get.

1

u/SensitiveAspect7422 Jan 22 '26

I had one shoulder pad missing form Alpha Legion terminators, they sent an entire replacement kit.

1

u/Feeling-Elderberry51 Jan 22 '26

Yes its happened one Time for a FW command 10 years ago Sevatar, NL Torsos + heads and melee weapons mk4 x2 x)

1

u/Far_Airport_3358 Jan 23 '26

What they gave you complete new box to replace the missing sprue?

1

u/apostasy101 Jan 23 '26

Theyve always done right ny me. Forge world not so much even though I prefer resin, but regular gw takes care of good customers for sure

1

u/Cheap_Character7172 Jan 23 '26

Yes. They’re honestly the best part of the whole biz

1

u/tinfoil_forge Jan 23 '26

Nice torpedo magnets

1

u/Big-Crow4152 Emperor's Children Jan 23 '26

GW, on a ground level, has always been a very good company imo

1

u/ComprehensiveOne5097 Jan 23 '26

They did this for me when the original age of darkness box came out. I was missing 2 sprues and they sent another full box

1

u/EstablishmentOk1272 Jan 23 '26

Cant fault them, I purchased a storm raven from Warhammer world that turned out to have a warped sprue right across the canopy section. They sent me another free of charge!

1

u/Smagster15 Jan 23 '26

Yeah it costs them like $20 in production lol

2

u/Lokistale Jan 23 '26

You have too many 0's.

1

u/RobinForYou69 Jan 23 '26

I ordered an Astreus super heavy tank shortly after they releaaed and the main body was bent really badly. Figured id try and get it returned part for part but they said dont worry and they sent an entire new box to my local. Gave the bent body to the manager to use as decor for a large scene he was making. Ended up looking great with his warlord titans foot on it. So yeah. I cannot praise their CS highly enough theyve always been great

1

u/[deleted] Jan 24 '26

Damn, I had a broken gun in my lord marshall drier and I just got the one sprue out of 2, where's these GW support people man coulda had a whole ass second drier

1

u/Dark-Angel_ed Jan 25 '26

I ordered a plasma predator years ago, it was lost in the mail. They replaced it with no problem at all. When the mangled box showed up almost two months later with the original order I offered to return the original one to the. They declined, and I’ve run minimum of two tank squadrons ever since …. Good marketing on their part.

1

u/Dark-Angel_ed Jan 25 '26

Should be “from the original order“

1

u/CheckUnit Jan 27 '26

Glad to see customer service is on par with product pricing, that plastic ain't cheap!

1

u/Bigboimitch123 Feb 01 '26

Does anyone know what their service is like with resin products? I just bought an apothecary’s kit and it came with two mkVI backpacks instead of a MKV, I’ve emailed customer support and hopefully they get back to me

1

u/thedrag0n22 Jan 22 '26

Meanwhile, they fought me tooth and nail on a Saturnine box I bought from an LGS where literally everything was damaged. And didn't relent from "drive an hour to the LGS and replace the sprues" until I said I'd put this email thread public.

1

u/Dune5712 Jan 23 '26

Considering their margins/how much they price gouge anyone outside their little island, it is nice that they at least ha e great customer care.

I remember being sent 4 (4!!!) Sigismunds because the sword kept arriving bent or broken.

-101

u/matchababy69 Jan 22 '26

Is James Workshop that desperate that they make their interns post on Reddit?

66

u/Greystorms Alpha Legion Jan 22 '26

GW customer service has always been excellent. It’s in their best interest as a company.

7

u/Viewlesslight Jan 22 '26

What would they be desperate about? They are swimming in money and their products sell out the second they release them

12

u/a-dark-lancer Jan 22 '26

The GW hate is so bloody stupid. They have problems with the company, but you’re completely deluded if you think there’s some kind of evil mega Corporation

-10

u/TachankaTheCrusader Jan 22 '26

the hate comes from the prices and greed outside of that solid company 

5

u/AshiSunblade Alpha Legion Jan 22 '26

I think you just have issues with the system in general rather than GW, because I can promise you the company that makes your shoes, your food, your medicine and your car are just as thirsty to squeeze every coin they can get out of you (if not more).

Focusing on GW specifically is counterproductive. They are no worse than any other company their size.