"Disappointed with Fernando Enterprises" Topic

I have placed several orders with Fernando Enterprises Painting service from Sri Lanka in the past. I was always happy with the results. I have sent 15mm figures and had them painted to "Showcase" or "Collector" standard which are the highest and medium quality paint jobs respectively. The last batch I sent was a bunch of ACW Union Infantry to be painted to "Collector" quality. What I got was FAR below the quality that I expected. Green blobs of paint from the back-packs to the pants. No ears painted on most. Flesh blobs of paint on half the rifles. Half of the belts and straps not painted. Obviously several different painters did the job because about 1/5 of the figures were well-painted (what I expected). The rest were crap. No shading or highlighting at all – which was advertised. I will not be sending any more work their way.

Did you contact them? If so, what did they say?

DJD used to have a policy about returns (I don't know if they do anymore, as I have not used them for awhile), so you might check them out.

I am curious then. Who is your next go-to painting service?

Whenever we have had an issue with their service, they have always been very happy to correct it.

You should contact them and explain your concerns.

Whenever we have had an issue with their service, they have always been very happy to correct it.

But how to correct blobs of paint is the question other than a major strip of the original paintjob.

Sorry to hear of your ordeal. They are usually pretty good. Maybe their quality control and standards are dropping?

I don't see, given how pleased you have been in the past, how one poor job and not giving them an opportunity to rectify or even tell them about it, you can drop them like that?

I'd like to see a side by side example if you could. I would be interesting what you mean by collector standards
Cheers

As for correcting the problem – they are in Sri Lanka. Getting the figures to them would be more of a pain/cost than simply re-painting them myself. Several were already damaged in the first shipment. The "quality control" is definitely the issue. Somebody did a great job on a few of the figures, but the rest were a mess. When you live on the other side of the world things need to be done right the first time. If I had paid for their lowest quality "Wargames" standard paint job, I would not be upset. But that's not what I paid for. I sent them an email but have not heard back yet. They have photos of the various grades of painting on their website Zargon! I definitely got the "Wargames" standard or lower! Dale – I am a pretty good painter myself, so I will probably bite the bullet and do my own work. I just have way more figures than I will ever be able to paint in my lifetime (unless I live to be 150 or more…), so I had decided to send off batches of figures to Fernando. Got any good suggestions for me? ;-)

Perris, my two cents (not that anyone asked):
Send pics of a good sample alongside several bad ones. Give him a count of each and ask for a partial refund. If he has customer service sense, he should also offer you a big break on a future order to earn your trust back in his service. Explain to him you are not interested in the inconvenience of shipping them back for repair. Oh and in the future, insist on receiving clear photos of a random and representative sampling of the figures before they ship them back. Gosh, that was a nickle's worth!

That was why I was asking what your alternative would be. I am in the same boat as you. I can paint pretty well, but I have way more than I can ever paint.

I have been finding people in the US with competitive prices for 15mm, but have not yet found them for 6mm. Trust me, it is easy to mess up a 6mm figure with stray blobs of paint, so I can see it as a real problem if QC is going down.

I sympathize with the issue of sending figures back to the other side of the world. I had one batch of 6mm from DJD where they decided that painting dark blue coats did not look materially different than the black undercoat, so they did not paint them. DJD offered to take them back and correct, but I did as you are and simply painted the jackets myself (with a brighter blue; 6mm needs brighter colors than normal). I did not want to deal with the hassle of additional overseas shipments either.

For 6mm figures, Fernando is far cheaper than the other services. That is why I looked at this thread.

Good advice rmcaras! I will wait to see if they respond to my emails.

Dale – I am thinking about trying Matthew Schreck in the U.S. I saw some of his work at Historicon and it was very good. I am not sure if he paints 6mm but his 15's were awesome! I would prefer to paint the minis myself, but time is short when you work 45- 60 hours per week, have a family, and other interests as well. :-(

I have never been disappointed in any work done by Fernando and I have sent him many orders for several thousand figures in both 10mm and 28mm. In some cases I've done a touch up of a figure, often taking it up a notch in quality, but I've never had a bad job from him.

I always send artwork of the exact unit, request thumbnails of the work for approval, and find communication with him very easy and responsive. He's spent far too much time building a very good reputation to allow something like this to go unaddressed.

I would always recommend contacting the service provider before posting a public complaint. Nobody here can do anything much about it, Fernando can.

Dale – ageofglory.com/oldarmy.htm

I DID email the company first. I have found that public complaints carry more weight than private ones. Future orders may improve because of the public complaints. Plus people have a right to know what they are getting IF they choose to do business with somebody. I have met Sanath personally. Great guy. Wish I could say the same as you regarding the quality of jobs. Sadly…

…and, apparently, you have not received a reply, yet? You sent it yesterday, or just this morning? They are 10 and one half hours ahead of you in time. The danger here is that when you go public the dialogue quickly becomes escalated, and you have possibly maligned someone who would be perfectly willing to offer you some form of compensation, free shipping both ways, a discount on future orders, or some other negotiated settlement.

Look, no one is arguing that you are unhappy with some of the work, and that you are a customer, and he should consider your complaints, but I would argue that your approach is not conducive to the best possible outcome. This is especially true when the company in question has been in business for over 15 years and has many happy customers and a sterling reputation.

Did they sent you sample photos of the paint jobs before finishing the job? Every order I have had they sent sample photos before proceeding. On receipt the figures all looked as in the samples. I have noticed variation in the quality but not to the extent that you have described. I'd send him back photos of the samples along with the bad figures and ask for a discount/partial refund.

As for Matthew Schreck, I have used him to paint ships and he has done a great job for a decent price.

You need to be a little more patient. You aren't going through the McDonald's drive-thru, you are dealing with someone in another country and many time zones apart.

As RepiqueOne said, your approach to solving this by trying to publicly shame after such a short time has gone by isn't going to help you. At least give them a few days or a week to investigate on their end and work something out.

I've done many orders with them in the last 10 years and any time I've had an issue they have corrected it. Because I send them an order every 2 months or so, its not that big a deal to put the figures that need to be touched up in the same box as my next order. If its something minor, like chipped paint on a hat or similar, I just touch it up myself.

In your case asking for a partial refund may be the best case since you said you won't be using them any more.

If that doesn't work, call your credit card company and protest the payment. You did pay by credit card to protect yourself as a consumer doing business overseas, right?

1. Sent the email last week.
2. As I stated earlier, I would WANT to know as a consumer when somebody had a bad experience with a retailer. Hence my post. I have also posted WAY more positive posts for retailers who have done a fantastic job. In fact this is the only negative post I have done on a retail service provider.
3. I did get pictures of two of the hundreds of figures that I sent and about 20 or so were clearly painted by a different painter. A very good painter. The rest as stated earlier were NOT good.
4. I patiently waited for several months for the figures as they were ordered in the summer as a Christmas present for my son. They came on January 7th. No problem with patience.
5. There is no "Bad Guy" here, just a bad job – which consumers have the right to know about. "Buyer Beware" is a saying for a reason here in the U.S.
6. By all means use Fernando Enterprises if you want. Just choose "Showcase" quality and don't believe the pictures of "Collector Quality" on their website.
7. I will be very quick to report back on this thread or another post IF I hear back from them regarding this issue.

Have used Matthew Shreck in the past. Super guy and quality work.

Other suggestions are Pictor's Studio, Jaime and Scott do great work (not sure about 6mm though) and Rex Painting Service, another great person to work with. Both of these two are in the TMP Painting Service list.

The problem with email is that it doesn't always arrive at the intended destination. I would send a follow-up email with a read receipt on it, so you would at least know that they are aware of your situation.

Takes them an extra day to respond because of the time difference.

Took Huscarle's advice and I received a reply to my second email. They said that they had "taken the matter seriously", discussed the matter with their experienced painters, and were "at a loss" as to how this could have happened. I received an apology and assurance that it would not happen again. I am happy to report back with positive news!

Perris thanks for the lead on Age of Glory. Their 6mm prices are competitive.

Perris, that is good to hear.

I assume you are happy with their apology and assurance? Are you going to have them fix the figures you were not happy with or touch them up yourself?

" he last batch I sent was a bunch of ACW Union Infantry to be painted to "Collector" quality. What I got was FAR below the quality that I expected. Green blobs of paint from the back-packs to the pants. No ears painted on most. Flesh blobs of paint on half the rifles. Half of the belts and straps not painted. Obviously several different painters did the job because about 1/5 of the figures were well-painted (what I expected). The rest were crap. No shading or highlighting at all – which was advertised. "

I too just am going through the same thing in 15mm as per quote above here from the the post author Perris 0707.
Their surprised???? it is because there is no longer any quality control of the painting and thus no one looking at the painting. It appears they have a very serious issue.
So far I have some that need to be complete paint removal and start over because it is taking 2 x as long to fix them to a 6/ 10 level then to just paint them from scratch myself.I am now most likely make the deadline for the big event!
But a simple apology does not fix a very big problem. Perris0707 you are being very accept-ant. Right now with the significance of my issue, I do not know I could be come happy with just that.
It will interesting if there are more from the recent commissions?

I am glad I search this today to see I am no alone here, which does make this more tolerable.

I have sent an e-mail and still await their reply.

very disappointed,
MG

COPY OF EMAIL SENT TO CUSTOMER;

Received your email,Today Saturday, 31st January at 9.30 am Sri Lanka time. Depending on the city we are 10 to 12 hours ahead of US.
When did you receive your package ?
You say figures that you saw were not painted to high standard and you have already repainted ( 27 pcs). Ok what was wrong with them? can you explain and send me a picture highlighting our Mistakes.
Lot No 3 British Inf figure count was 27 pcs and lot No 3 /1 was 3 pcs. you claim that we have not quality controlled any of our figures. We scanned EVERY LOT ….again every lot
to you before sending it . If there was a mistake we corrected it and re scanned to you. Is my statement correct or not?You approved them. Isn't it?.
So how can you say that we didnot quality controlled the figures?
If we didnot checked the figures before sending how can we send scanns and re scann after corrections. In my service, we send a picture of every lot before sending it to customer and if there are any problems they are corrected to satisfaction of customer. Both lots in question were painted by very good painters. Please also note that lot no 1, you say good quality, was painted to showcase quality and lot No 3 and15 were painted to collector quality. So obviously there is a difference in quality. If there is problem I can ALWAYS solve it in favour of customer. You have without waiting for my explanation or just not given any
time whatsoever for my reply gone to TMP and made a complaint. What a rude way of doing things. The other customer who complained about my service too posted on TMP even without giving me time to reply to his complaint. This is not the way of doing things. I saw lot of people posted on TMP that Perris should have waited for my explanation before going public.
I look forward to hear your comments about rest of my shipment, onceagain I want to remind, that you saw every lot before they were shipped to you. Please go to TMP and admit that fact too by yourselves .
Finally if there is a problem in quality I am ready to solve that in your favour.
I take every comment seriously.Last time I didnot see Perris comment early enough to submit my response.

I thought this issue was over. Apparently not.

I responded (to your email reply) that I was not satisfied that I had received the quality that I paid for. Not sure what the "Lot NO 3 British Inf figure count" is referring to. I sent you 200 ACW Union Infantry figures to paint. You emailed me THREE pics of an officer and a drummer. That's it. The pics looked fine so I approved of "those two figures". Had the rest of the order looked like them there would NOT be a problem. You also sent me a query if I minded the green bases being chipped as a result of ungluing them from the painting sticks – which also I was fine with. I was NOT fine with 150 figures with green paint splotched on their pants, hands, guns, swords, hats, backpacks, etc. This I also explained to your representative when they finally emailed me back as well as in my initial post.
Of course I repainted the crap. It was a Christmas present that I did not get back until January, and the person that they were a gift for was anxious to get them. I am sorry that you think it rude to comment on low quality jobs. I am not being rude, just truthful. Why would I have cause to lie about the paint jobs??? Had it been a good job I would have been singing your praises. I did not ask for my money back, or a discount, or a free job, or anything else of the sort. I even stated that the "Showcase Quality" figures that I had ordered in the past were fine. This entire lot was "Collector Quality" – but what I got was worse than the "Wargamer Quality". I do think that the photos on your website of the 15mm French Line Inf (Collector Quality) are definitely misleading based on what I received. I just wanted other people to know what they were "possibly" in for if they order "Collector Quality" figures from Fernando Enterprises. My time is too valuable to be dealing with shoddy work. I am not asking for anything from you or your company, so please don't expect me to apologize for your mistakes.

Perris- my reply refers to marshalGreg posting not to you please. we have no issue with you. I am sorry that I didnot make it clear that the reply was for marshalGreg.
.

This is all very sad.

The Fernando Web site is great, but the distance and shipping costs are a problem if it all goes wrong.

It's a risk, and there is no doubt in my mind that the two posters with problems will have affected confidence in Fernando's painting services. I'm certainly thinking twice about who I might use for my 28mm and 15mm Napoleonics.

Three photos are not enough in a digital age of virtually free photography for the Internet.

I have had some issues with painting but not many. My biggest concern is how they handle figures. They appear to take little care in removing figures from whatever base on which they mount them for painting. My last order contained figures that had been severely bent at the legs and I had to be extremely careful in straightening them out. Thankfully I managed it without losing any.

I have always had great results from Fernando. And, if requested, they will and do send pictures before figures are posted. They may even do as policy

I do have some sympathy with this issue, many years back I sent off a large 28mm AWI order all for the collector standard, some of them were superb but others came a very poor second, I suppose there are a lot of painters there, some better than others !!