Why can't I email you directly?

There are a number of reasons.

The most significant are ...

• We do a lot of pre-orders
• We mostly do not sell 'normal retail items'
• Most Releases do not have 'set' guaranteed release dates
• Our release dates are different to 'normal retail' release dates

Because so much of what we do is 'pre-order' the scope for people to want to ask for an 'order status' is HUGE. We usually have a large number of different products on pre-order at any one-time and hundreds of individual orders. That is a lot of items and a lot of potential emails. And importantly the information can be satisfactorily handled by the 'Release Status' page.

Most items we sell are not 'normal retail' items (Nor are they available in 'retail shops').

The difference is a 'normal retail' release date is the date that title will be in the shops.

The releases we (mainly) sell are different in many ways and in particular here the release date is when the manufacturer makes it available to be sent to us. And VERY often these dates are not exact, there can be delays.

From there the time it takes to arrive to us can vary from a few days to two weeks. Then there is the time taken to (properly) pack and send the orders. And often we receive more than 1 new title in at the same time so we can literally be swamped with a lot of packing work.

A few other important Reasons

1. e-mail can go 'missing'
2. Smart Phones make it too easy!
3. So many would not give us the required information

Email can go missing and not arrive

Regular email sent to us could be blocked by any number of overactive Spam filters and not reach us and we would not know about it and neither would the customer sending to us. So the sender would be left wondering 'why don't they reply to me?' Not good. Indeed we discuss on this very page the problem of people not receiving our emails!!!!

Smart Phones

Ironic as it may be, smart-phones make it all too easy to send an email asking for an 'order status' for a pre-ordered item. Unfortunately all too often unnecessarily.

We understand being fans ourselves what it is like waiting sometimes and let's face it we can all be a little impatient to receive items. But this does not change the fact that we can't allow ourselves to be bogged down answering hundreds of emails that there is either no answer too or that can much more easily be answered via our 'Release Status' page.

We understand the importance of keeping you informed as much as possible thus we use the 'Release Status' page which covers every important detail.

So many would not give us the required information

So often far too many people would email us a message and not give us the information we need and we would have to go back in multiple emails to obtain this.

For the example below we will use the name John Citizen'.

'Hi can you please tell me when you will send my order?' - 'John' (and then the typical 'Sent from my iPhone' tag that many phones add.

Then we would reply and ask for the order number and the customer's full name.

Then typically a common occurrence with emails these days is if you ask multiple questions, people (almost everyone) answer only 1 of the questions.

So the answer might well be ...

Oh sorry it is 'John Citizen'.

So we then would have to reply again, 'what is the order number'?

Then once we get all that sorted out. (And even we get all the required information up front) we probably have to say something like 'We don't know').

An enormous amount of time spent here you see?

So the Help Desk solves these problems along with making it much more efficient.

Information Overload

Many people will not even read this page. They will not even read the Contact Page and if they don't receive our email will never work out why. Can you believe that? We think a big reason for this is the 'Information Overload' that the Internet gives us these days. It is a fact that we have to live with.

The same applies to us so we need to protect ourselves from it and not answer unnecessary emails that simply overload us. This frees us to do so many other things.

They also make sure people check the 'Release Status' page.

Why Does the 'Release Status' page not say when we have received a new title?

Simply too many people think that 'In Stock' means we 'should' have sent their order since we have it. But what people can't know is we might receive ten (10) new and different titles in at the same time and have as many as 500 orders to send out. That does not happen magically by itself, it is hard work, particularly when we pack well so items do not arrive damaged (unlike every other retailer we know). This cannot be rushed unless one wants a 'fresh fish special' effort.