"What is up with Black Tree Miniatures?" Topic

Hi – Does anyone know what's going on with Black Tree??? My wife ordered some figures from them well before Thanksgiving for me as a Christmas present but they still haven't arrived. We have sent them several emails and voicemails but have gotten no response. Has anyone else placed an order with them recently? Their service seems pretty poor.

Mark Fastoso

A quick search on these boards may be illuminating…

Well…It seems that they DO have poor service. I guess I will see if my wife can get a refund. It's too bad…Black tree has great figs.

Thanksgiving – gee I ordered mine on the 18th September, and I am still waiting. I did get a response at the start of December from them, and so far all I have received is an apology… still waiting for the figures

They do have some good figures, but with all the negative feedback they get, it's a wonder they still do business. Any indy vendors that carry their historical and/or fantasy figures out there?

Damon.

How the heck to they stay in business? I could say the same for a number of other companies and stores. Stop ordering, forcing them to sell the molds to a company that can actually produce them!

Man, i really wanted to order some
of their Arabs and LOTR Orcs.

They carry some fine stuff, but I swore I'd never do business with them again after last time.

They are really hit or miss… I have not had a major problem with getting my figures in a slighly more then normal amount of time.
Took about a month to get each of my orders, though there were some replacement figures for things that were out of stock and were going to take awhile to get.
Also some free figures to make up for the trouble.
They are rather hard to get in touch with from time to time, but part of that is they are constantly running big sales and I am sure that they get lots of orders during this time.
The guy here in the states (Texas I think it is) even called me to make sure my order arrived in time for the tournement I bought it for. That is when we made arrangments for replacement figures.
I have noticed that figures are vanishing from their site. Some of the ones I first noticed gone were some of the items I was told were out of stock from my order. So I wonder if some of these things are being discontinued.

Their releases don't make sense either. Why release a line of Italians and Poles for WWII and not do machine guns? It's stupid.

I had bad service from them years ago and have found much better figs and service elsewhere from folks much more deserving of the money I spend.

I once waited over 3 months to get a large number of BTD Celts. My experience is that your figures will arrive but perhaps not in a timely manner. Lack of communication is probably the biggest concern.

My most recent communication with them indicates that the US distributor/branch is pretty frustrated as well. He didn't have what I wanted on hand and placed the request to fill with the UK home office. They sent "my order" to him six months later with only one pack out of the requested list.

Taking his communications with me at face value, BTD UK has become thoroughly and silently disfunctional and BTD US simply cannot do enough damage control with what they have to work with.

I'm from Wales you see, and there is certainly is not enough Welshmen working for BTD for my liking!!!

I ordered some Cybermen as a present for my wife's nephew on Dec 4th, I spoke to someone at BTD to confirm the stock level and was told that an order was arriving from the US the following week.
By Dec 22nd nothing had arrived, not even a reply to the two voicemails I left, lo and behold, on the 23rd they arrived, I even managed to paint and base them in time for Christmas!

I have some outstanding stuff from about 6 months ago, I found the notes from John at BTD (UK) on my panzer painting trolly last night!

Tally Ho!

I used to buy their stuff all the time and would again if I know it would arrive.

Well i ordered some stuff to get some holes filled in my British WW2 platoon, i got charged the incorrect amount. Then eventualy recieved half an order with some freebies but no explanation of where the rest of the order was. after a couple of emails turned out they didnt have stock of the rest of the stuff i ordered. They eventualy came through with some more freebies.

The models themselves are fine. I just think they have a major problem with communication. He tried to put it down to the fact that they had there big sale on that caused delays, and that they had a card issue so had to process my payment through in america.

I really dont think ill be ordering from them again.

Perhaps they don't have a reliable figure caster, and their stocks are never kept up to date?
Still, this doesn't excuse poor communication.

Ordered from them in the US in November. 1 pack out of 6 was sent with the rest back-ordered. Back-ordered stuff arrived 2-3 weeks later.

I had an order for Boars come in dribs and drabs, Had another order of Arabs arrive where i got the riders but not the horses.

One thing i do hate thou with their mounted Arab units you dont get musicians but 2 leaders and a standard bearer.

Nice figures but poor costumer service IMHO i guess they dont carry all their advetised stock and rely on bulk orders to cast more.

I had no reply to e-mails for part of an order I didn't get a couple of years ago. I finally gave up.
This about the second thread I've seen since then complaining about them.

I washed my hands of them a long time ago when I started having problems with their late deliveries and lousy customer service, so I went to other figure manufacturers that actually do COMMUNICATE with their customers and go all out to ensure the products ordered are sent/received expeditiously. Once I cut BTD out of my list of suppliers and went to another supplier the ordering experience became much better…

It is really sad that a company that makes so many ranges of nice figures can't provide decent customer service and get their products to the consumers in a timely fashion.

Hasn't this been an ongoing issue for almost a decade?

I absolutely love my Harlequin minis and would love to complete their lines of Dwarves but I can't purchase them from BTD because they absolutely refuse to ship their products!

"Took about a month to get each of my orders, though there were some replacement figures for things that were out of stock and were going to take awhile to get. Also some free figures to make up for the trouble."

Yes – that matches my experience as well. Five or so years ago orders always arrived in reasonable time (although they were never that fast). Lately if you order 10 packs, 6 will turn up in a few weeks plus maybe 2 others you didn't order as makeweights, 3 packs in another 2 months and the final pack another 2 months later. I have always received all my orders – eventually, plus the bonus figures I hadn't ordered.

If you want to buy for next Christmas order them now and there is a chance you will get them in time !

As long as you get everything you ordered…

Order lod of ancient, never received them until they said they have ship them……..

Over three months and order not complete. And over charged to my credit card. Not exactly happy.

I've been waiting for my order since early October, still no sign.
Do they employ staff or is it one man in his garage casting miniatures after a day in the office?

Oh dear, I wish I'd read the threads on TMP before being sucked into putting a reasonably sized order with BTD! They're very nearly at the 28 day point with my order. They took my money the day of the order, so it looks like they can do some things in a timely manner!

I have to admit that I don't tend to mess about when my consumer rights are being trampled on so here's hoping my order arrives on Monday. If not they can fight it out with my credit card company and I'll spend my money with a decent company.

Given the number of complaints that are building here I'm quite peeved that the editor is letting BTD advertise on this site, it was actually because of a BTD advert here that I parted with my money in the first place.

I had received an email response to one of my emails finally back in mid december stating that one of the guys, John I think, was going to the UK office the next week and would make sure that my outstanding order was shipped and was flabbergasted that the order hadn't shipped yet. I haven't seen the bolt throwers or any more emails from them either.

I thought some years back no one was "ever" going to purchase anything from them again because of alleged sock puppetry??? ----Anyway???
Russ Dunaway

If you are in the UK and it has been over 30 days since your last communication, contact trading standards. Perhaps an inspection will help them focus.

I order from them (in the UK) last year and the stuff came in about 3 days. I was just goign todo an order, now I'm not sure.

A few days ago I read on one of the American BTD websites something along the lines off "all things must come to an end, it's been nice", yadda yadda etc… etc… add nauseum; "so everything has been marked down to 50% until all stock is gone" looked through at the number of in stock WW II items, which was nil….

Hope you guys get your stuff.

i ordered about 3 monts ago, my card was billed on oct. 14 2009. nothing as yet. my inquiry has been unanswered.

@ Nuts in Normandy – Can you please post a reference to the US website where you read this.

It appears that there are alot of us, both in the US and UK, as well as other parts of the world, who have outstanding oders.

If the Black Tree have made a post, to the effect they are closing down, then it may indeed by time to consider legal action over here in the UK, as I believe, that black tree are still a UK Ltd company, or their UK division is. Thus they must have a registered secretary, to issue court procedures against.

It now says "Winter Sale Now On. Up to 50% Off"

What drives me crazy about BTD is that the only people who want them to fail are themselves.

Have any of my fellow UK TMPers tried calling the phone number on the website? I'm having no luck with it

I have called every day for the last 2 weeks. It always goes to an answer phone. However, I called today and was told that the number is "Temporarily out of service". So who knows what's going on.

Not good is it!

I think it's time to take some steps to get my money back. I'll let you know how I get on.

All for the want of an e-mail

I'm now over 5 months of waiting for a pair of dwarf bolt throwers. I'm getting VERY frustrated here. This is just over $17 USD I could have used on something else…

for the record I have sent an email asking to cancel my orders and demanding a refund, threatening legal action. I'll let you know how I get on.

@Authorised – Much the same here. Since my earlier post I received a few reassuring/deflecting emails from them (the 'phone number is pointless) which made me hold out a bit longer but I'm now at the point of not wanting the figures, I just want my money back.

So, tonight I'm calling my CC company up and start the ball rolling with Trading Standards.

bugstomper, please let us know what happens.

alas, it is not possible for me to demand anything via my cc company, as the standard fee for that is higher than what BTD took from me…

Interesting thing I hadn't noticed on the Black Tree site before:

"When I phone I often get an answering machine. Why?

Most of us live in the United States now so we do our administration from there. If you call us in the UK we transfer the call to our office in Texas. There's a 6 hour time difference so the best time to call is after 3pm and before midnight

"

Mike

Maybe that explains why when I order via the UK site last week, they processd my payment in dollars and my bank charged me for exchaning it. Which did not happen when I ordered last year. I emailed to ask about this, any takers for the what happened next prize?

How would we go about lobbying TMP to ban all BTD advertisments?

@Mikasa – "How would we go about lobbying TMP to ban all BTD advertisments?"

I guess we contact the Editor, who must already be reading these BTD threads.