Post PM closing update
2 months ago
– Tue, Dec 17, 2024 at 03:36:05 AM
Greetings Crusaders!
As promised, we locked down all completed orders last night. This took a LONG time so cards are only being charged this morning. You will get email updates as things progress.
If you receive an email saying that your order is locked and card charged then you’re good! You don’t have to do anything else for now! You can also check your account if you would like to make doubly sure.
What to do if my CC payment didn’t go through?
Wrong card details
If the credit card is declined, you’ll be reminded to update your card. The new card will be charged as soon as it’s updated.
Manually retrying cards
In most cases the card is declined due to insufficient funds or the charge is flagged as fraudulent by the bank, which may not require updates to the card itself. You can retry the charge to see if the issue is resolved and the card charges successfully. If it doesn’t, please contact your bank to check and approve the charge. Please note that the system cannot do this for you and we have no access to your payment details.
Pledge Bundle add-on issue
Because of course everything couldn’t go perfectly smoothly, it seems there was an issue with taxes being charged correctly for the pledge add-on bundles. These were only implemented properly yesterday just before we locked orders. To make sure that you were made aware of this change, if you included any of these items and it increased the tax costs on your order, then your order has not been locked or your cards charged so that you have time to review this. We will be contacting you with more details via email shortly. Our apologies once again for yet another issue with this, I can assure you it’s as tiring for us as it is for you all. Rest assured that this will not delay the delivery of your rewards, physical or digital.
Address changes
The shipping address you provided will be the one used to ship your books to you in June. Should you need to update your address, you can do this manually by visiting your account and changing it. Addresses will not be locked until just before orders start to ship and rest assured we will warn you all before that happens.
Paypal refunds
As mentioned in the previous update, those of you who paid via Paypal and now have outstanding credits, you’ll receive a refund automatically within the next week!
What happens if I don’t complete my survey?
If you read this after the cut-off date, don’t panic! Your pledge isn’t locked down or lost yet! You can still fill out your survey via the link provided previously or by visiting this link. However there may be delays in getting your rewards:
Digital rewards: We’ll be doing a fresh export of backers every week or so (Xmas holidays permitting), so you’ll have to wait until your order can be processed and attributed to you.
Physical rewards: You may be contacted after the initial wave for shipping confirmation which will put your order to the back of the line.
The hard cut-off date for the PM is the 5th of January 2025.
After this date we will not be able to fulfil your pledge and it will be considered a donation.
Where is my survey email?
If your invitation doesn’t look like it arrived, please check your spam folders as well as “promotional” tabs on email clients like Gmail.
All invitations will be sent to the email address linked to your Kickstarter account, so please check your account here on Kickstarter if you’re unsure.
You can go to this page on Backerkit to have your survey resent if you have lost it.
Please do all of the above BEFORE contacting us to ask for assistance.
If you cannot access your email or need to have it changed for any other reason, you can contact us here and we will make the changes for you.
Apple Pay IDs
As a reminder: Backers who have pledged to the campaign using their AppleID but haven't completely set up their Apple Pay account (linking their email address to their Apple Wallet) will have issues receiving their emails from BackerKit. Please contact us here and provide us with an alternative email address.
Next steps
As mentioned above, once your payment is confirmed you’re good!
Apart from chasing up any remaining issues with the PM I’ll be focusing on getting the Digital rewards out ASAP. The plan is still to have these done by Friday. I’ll put out an update with more details on how things will go down once I have confirmation.
Now that we’re finally getting to the end, I want to take a moment to thank you all for your patience and understanding during the PM process. I get that all the changes could seem pretty vague and confusing for which I apologise. Having to pivot to calculating and integrating taxes on such short notice was a painful experience that I hope I never have to put myself or you folks through again. I did the best I could and would like to also thank the BK team for all their support.
The most complicated part is now behind us though folks, you can enjoy your Xmas break with the knowledge that you’ll be off to the trenches soon enough!
For those of you with outstanding issues, rest assured that I’m not going anywhere and will be working over the holidays to make sure everyone is sorted ASAP!
Thanks folks!
Pledge Manager: 24 hours remain!
2 months ago
– Sun, Dec 15, 2024 at 07:56:05 AM
Greetings Crusaders!
This is your 24h reminder to complete your Pledge Manager survey!
We still have about 10% of backers who have yet to fill out their surveys so please do try and complete it by tomorrow in order to avoid any delays!
This time tomorrow we’ll be “locking down” all completed surveys and charging cards. All these orders will then be processed and numbers sent to our suppliers for production and fulfillment.
What happens if I don’t complete my survey?
If you read this after the cut-off date, don’t panic! Your pledge isn’t locked down or lost yet! You can still fill out your survey via the link provided previously or by visiting this link. however there may be delays in getting your rewards:
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Digital rewards: We’ll be doing a fresh export of backers every week or so (X-mas holidays permitting), so you’ll have to wait until your order can be processed and attributed to your MMF account.
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Physical rewards: You may be contacted after the initial wave for shipping confirmation which will put your order to the back of the line.
The hard cut-off date for the PM is the 5th of January 2025.
After this date we will not be able to fulfil your pledge and it will be considered a donation.
Please note that tomorrow is also the cutt-off date for refund requests and late pledges.
Where is my survey email?
If your invitation doesn’t look like it arrived, please check your spam folders as well as “promotional” tabs on email clients like Gmail.
All invitations will be sent to the email address linked to your Kickstarter account, so please check your account here on Kickstarter if you’re unsure.
You can go to this page on Backerkit to have your survey resent if you have lost it.
Please do all of the above BEFORE contacting us to ask for assistance.
If you cannot access your email or need to have it changed for any other reason, you can contact us here and we will make the changes for you.
Apple Pay IDs
As a reminder: Backers who have pledged to the campaign using their AppleID but haven't completely set up their Apple Pay account (linking their email address to their Apple Wallet) will have issues receiving their emails from BackerKit. Please contact us here and provide us with an alternative email address.
Fulfilment
Once the PM phase is completed, we move onto fulfilment!
Physical miniatures
You can expect an email from Only-Games in January to confirm your shipping address and pay for shipping fees. We’ll be back with more details before this goes out.
Digital miniatures
Once surveys are locked, it will take a few days to sort and import all the data into MyMiniFactory. We’ll be back with an update before these go out. We would like to have these done before Friday the 20th but please bear in mind that the bridge between Backerkit and MMF is myself and the MMF team, it all has to be done manually. I ask for your patience as we get everything into place.
Dice
You can expect an email from Baron of Dice early next year to confirm your shipping address and pay for shipping fees. We’ll be back with more details before this goes out.
Books
These are still slated for delivery in June. We’ll of course let you know how things proceed and you’ll receive tracking numbers when everything ships out!
Pledge Manager Tax Updates
3 months ago
– Fri, Dec 13, 2024 at 04:12:56 PM
Greetings Crusaders,
Today we’re going to talk about the changes to the PM that we discussed in the previous update. These should now be live and we just wanted to give you some more info on what has changed to avoid any confusion.
Taxes and books and miniatures.
As promised, all taxes concerning books have been removed.
There are also no longer any taxes on minis for backers outside of the US/UK. Remember that this does not mean you won’t be paying taxes on the minis but that you will just be able to do so later.
If you “paid” via Stripe, then you don’t need to do anything. Your new total will be adjusted automatically and your card has not been charged yet. If you paid via PayPal though, please see below.
PayPal
As you all saw recently, PayPal is now working on the PM. However, as mentioned on the update, it charges you immediately when completing your order. This meant that a lot of people who used PayPal have probably been overcharged. We were considering removing PayPal until the new rates were in place, but could not confirm that doing so would not start the “validation” process all over again (i.e. the reason we didn’t have PayPal payments active at the start of the PM).
If you are due a refund, you dont have to do anything. Backerkit will be checking who needs a refund, and will start processing these refunds next week once everything is in order. The refunds are usually processed instantly or within 1–3 business days.
If you would like to check your pledge to see if you are indeed due a refund on Kickstarter, you can do this by returning to Backerkit via the link that was sent previously. If you need it sent again, please go here. If your account shows that you have credits remaining (i.e. the final sum is in green) then we will process a refund for you.
If you have any questions you can ask them through the Backerkit help centre.
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Digital Files for some US states and Brazil
These have been fixed for the concerned areas.
Shipping VAT
Backerkit’s system is excellent but does have a few limitations. The result of one of these is that shipping taxes will now be rolled into the cost of shipping for all non US backers. This means that, on the summary, it will look like shipping prices have gone up, but they haven’t, they just include tax now. When setting the new prices, we also rounded the numbers down so you’ll actually be paying slightly less than before.
Shipping reminder - As detailed on the PM and in previous updates, you are only paying for the book during this Pledge Manager. You will be contacted after it closes concerning shipping for the minis and dice.
Future Issues
So to do all of this I had to prepare an Excel document with 25k+ lines of info. I tried to be as precise as possible but it is possible that an error has snuck in. Should you see anything unusual, please feel free to let us know and I’ll get it sorted.
That should cover everything. Once again, our thanks for your patience and understanding with this folks. If it looks complicated from your perspective, I can assure you it’s much more so behind the curtain, so cheers for sticking it out with us!
Paypal is now working.
3 months ago
– Fri, Dec 06, 2024 at 08:39:27 AM
Good morning Crusaders,
A quick update to let you all know that Paypal is finally working on the PM.
Important: contrary to stripe payments, Paypal DOES charge you immediately.
We're sorry this took so long. We were told by Paypal that it would be handled much sooner.
Also, a quick update on the tax news: I've almost finished everything but BK need to implement it. You can probably expect all the changes to be live by Tuesday.
Have a great weekend everyone!
Death & taxes (but with GOOD news!)
3 months ago
– Wed, Dec 04, 2024 at 01:18:08 PM
Greetings Crusaders,
As you all well know, we had to pivot away from using Gamefound for the Pledge Manager due to their system not being able to support the way we’ve structured the logistics for this campaign. One thing that GF does really well is calculate and collect taxes for you. BackerKit does not do this so, suddenly, we had to go from not worrying about taxes to worrying about them a lot.
Additionally, this is not an easy project to handle. We have 4 different products, 2 of which are fairly simple: Miniatures and accessories (the dice). Digital files are normally taxed like any other physical goods with some exceptions that we’ll talk about later. But the real issue is Books.
VAT on Books
A lot of you have messaged us to inform us that our tax rates for your country on books is incorrect, notably in the EU. Despite the EU having an overarching tax system, each country also has a complex and myriad set of rules on book VAT, influenced by the content and the cover of the book, whether it has an ISBN code and many other factors to determine whether a book is actually considered a book and charged normal VAT or a reduced rate. This puts people on an uneven playing field around the world, and sorting it out is a gigantic headache for all of us. We do not want to delay the delivery of the campaign whilst we sort this either.
Instead, we want to give as many people as possible the opportunity to acquire the Trench Crusade Rulebook that we have worked so hard to make something we are proud of. Our dream is to make the Trench Crusade Rulebook a tome to stand the test of time, like the Mordheim rulebook has become a gaming icon, so it will bring joy to fans of tabletop gaming, fantasy art and fiction for years to come.
Thus, we will be picking up the entire VAT tab on ALL of the Trench Crusade rulebooks for this Campaign. This extends to all regions no matter what your local taxation system is called (Sales tax for the USA, GST for Australia, etc). The community has shown us such tremendous support to our fledgling game that we decided the only correct path forward is to return the same kind of generosity and goodwill we have received from you.
We hope this will also be seen as a gesture of goodwill to those that were « surprised » by the inclusion of VAT.
Happy holidays, or Felicem Nativitatem Domini as they would say in New Antioch!
Please note that this fix is not currently live on the Backerkit. Along with the changes we’re also going to talk about below, I need to make some significant changes to the Pledge Manager that will take a few days. We will let you now once the changes are live but you’ll also be able to see it on your account as the platform will recalculate the reduced cost automatically. Also, you have not been charged anything as of yet and will not be until the 16th and all these changes will be implemented before then, so don’t worry about needing a refund.
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Taxes on Digital Goods
We wanted to clarify for those of you that were surprised by the inclusion of taxes on these that digital goods are indeed taxable.
This is not the case everywhere however, such as in Brazil and some states in the US. We’ll be fixing the tax rates for digital files in these locations.
Shipping Costs
Some of you have expressed surprise at the shipping costs for the books. As explained on the KS page, the logistics are not as optimised compared to some campaigns because we are going for speed with the objective of having the miniatures delivered before the books even start to roll out of the printers.
The cost represents a premium shipping service with a fully automated tracking system and customer service platform as well as proper packaging to ensure your tome arrives in pristine condition wherever you are in the world.
The prices shown represent the real cost. We make absolutely no money off of shipping. Additionally, we have also subsidised the costs for multiple destinations such as the UK, Australia and a fair few others.
Also, some of you have pointed out a discrepancy in the costs shown on the KS page and what is on the Pledge Manager. We did cover this in a previous update but, to summarise: We were warned by our suppliers that due to the physical products being shipped next year, there will be a general price increase across the board like every year and this was not factored into the original quotes. The increase roughly translates to a $2-$5 increase in shipping depending on your location. We apologise for the inconvenience.
Shipping Method
On top of eliminating the VAT on books. We are also going to simplify the taxes on miniatures by moving to DDU (Delivery Duty Unpaid) shipping.
What this means is that for backers outside of the USA and the UK, you will not be paying any taxes on miniatures during the PM. This does not mean you won’t be paying any taxes on the miniatures in the long run, it’s just that these should instead be collected by your local authorities when your package arrives in your country.
Concretely, what this changes is that, whilst we cannot avoid taxes on the miniatures, it does push the payment of said taxes back to a later date. With the holidays on the horizon we hope that this helps. Additionally, this could avoid you paying taxes on the minis altogether as, depending on your local regulations, packages under a certain threshold may not be taxed or slip under the radar altogether.
As an added bonus, it’s much easier to ship packages this way so it should help get more of them out the door each day.
US and UK backers, I’m afraid that we will still need to collect taxes from you during the PM as the miniatures are produced locally for you and there isn’t really any other way around that for us.
Also, please note that the same applies to the dice for non-US backers as these will also be sent in a similar fashion.
Also, US backers in states where there are no taxes on shipping costs, when these changes go live it will cause a small issue with BK’s system: you may see taxes on your shipping costs. We’ll be fiddling with the rates to correct this, just give us a bit of time to sort it out.
UK Backers
My UK compatriots, as you may have already gathered, none of the above changes much for you as UK VAT on books is 0% and we’ll still need to collect taxes for the miniatures from you during the campaign as they are produced locally.
Therefore, so that you don’t feel left out, we’re going to subsidise a bit more of the shipping on the books for you. It won’t be a huge amount I’m afraid, a few bucks at most, but we hope it will help.
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There you have it folks. Sorry for such a long update to talk about something as boring as taxes but they are, as we all know, one of the few certitudes in life.
We are aware that some of you feel caught out by the inclusion of taxes on top of the price shown and whilst we did talk about it on the KS page and in updates, it wasn’t clear enough for everyone, for which we apologise. Hopefully everything above will show you that we really don’t want anyone to be paying more than they need to.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. We’ll continue to fix any issues that arise as we go forward.
