"Magister Militum Shipping Time to US" Topic

Hi,

What is the expected time for a Magister Militum order to reach the US? I ordered Saturday, so I know "usual" estimates are possibly useless, but it would be nice to know what others have had for wait time.

I think it took several weeks if I recall from the one time I ordered.

I want to say 2-3 weeks. US Customs can complicate things.

In general I've found orders from responsive UK miniatures producers take a little over a week, sometimes two. Actual shipping time should only be about 5-7 business days, but there's variable fluff in processing the order, passing customs, postal service issues at stops along the way, global weather events, etc.

This year I had one order from the UK lost at sea (or perhaps in the sky…?) and discovered that the Royal Mail demanded waiting until 25 days *after* the expected arrival date to resolve the issue, so I had to wait a month for the vendor and the Royal Mail to work that out and then try again. Since the items I ordered had been the remaining stock, the replacement order had to wait for the caster to make more, but even with all that, I had my order about 5.5 weeks after I placed it.

I can't help with MM specifically because the only time I put together an MM order (last year) I discovered that Scale Creep in the US stocked everything I wanted (from MM, QRF, Black Hat, and a couple others). Of course that order only took 4 days to arrive. It took me longer to agonize about what to order…

- Ix

Most of my orders from the U.K. Take about 10 days or less

My experience with UK orders for the last two years have been consistently chaotic due to problems with the postal systems and customs. In one case, the package arrived empty, with about 40 percent of the shipping container missing, and looking like it got stuck in a wood chipper. Orders have taken between 8 and 54 days, multiple orders (like 1 in 3) have taken over 30 days. I've had shipments from the same company in multiple instances range wildly, like 10 to over 30 days in transit from one order to the next.

I haven't ordered from Magister Militum in awhile, but had really good service from them in the past with shipping in the 10-17 day range.

Thanks for the prompt responses! However, do you all mean 10-17 days (or so) from the time the order is placed?

I know all about orders held up at customs, and I won't blame any company for that!

And USPS seems to be in a time warp. 5 weeks for a letter size package to get from Vancouver to Waco while a larger package from the same source arrives in 2.

I've had no trouble so far with any shipper from the UK, including Magister, and I have ordered from most of them. My experience has been about a week from the date shipped.

Terry

Alright.

I definitely can relate to your issues with the USPS. Hopefully the President-elect 'Makes the Postal Service Great Again'.

The USPS is a magnificent operation. Unless you have seen the scope of the operation, it's far too easy to find reasons to complain about it.
As for shipping times from the U.K., my experience has been four to five weeks from prompt sellers.

I do appreciate the Postal Service, and I simply meant to make a quick joke about it. I suppose conveying the exact tone of a statement on the internet is difficult, so I apologize if my quip was taken to be an attack on the Postal Service.

I do agree that the USPS is highly underappreciated; no one ever points out the many thousands of letters, packages, and commercial materials that arrive at their destination on time.

I've not ordered from MM before, but never had any issues with any of the UK companies I've purchased from. The longest wait I had was two weeks.

Ironically, the only bad experience I have had a with US or UK company was Victory Force Miniatures. It took over 4 weeks to get my order and two of those weeks were spent trying to get a reply to my emails.

We are kind of 2-30 days, depending on:

How busy we are – we cast everything to order and if your £5.00 GBP order gets backed up behind several £100.00 GBP orders it can take us a while to get to it

What you want – if you have asked for 57 packs of something we only have one off in a mould we have to spin it in tranches and let the mould cool down every few spins, so it takes longer. Equally it's easier to spin off one pack of figures than it is to make 32 trench sections, and latex depends on the weather to dry.

Postage – while we'd like to guarantee 24 hour delivery, it can be a bit all over the place. We've sent things air mail only to find that the postal system, in their infinite wisdom, has decided to send it by surface…

Customs – well they are a law unto themselves. It only takes one customs officer to randomly pick on your parcel for inspection and any attempt to suggest a delivery time is out the window.

Thanks for the reply! I received notice my order was dispatched Monday. The turnaround time for the casting is great, considering the holidays. I'm sorry if I appeared to be critical of anyone. I appreciate the quality of miniature producers and understand you are not running multinational operations so you require time.

Now it's out of your hands and up to the postal services.

Yeah I've used MM before and the turnaround has been a few days to get it in the mail, so maybe 1-2 weeks total? Excellent minis and service all-round, btw!

It arrived Saturday! Great service and hopefully I'll have a chance to order some of your figures again soon!