The good and the bad....

I wanted to do a post about two shops that ive recently had contact with. One to give you a warning to stay away from, the other to recommend with the highest respect!

So first, lets deal with the bad. I placed an order several months ago with Arcane miniatures for a big collection of miniatures. First thing that i noticed was the slightly odd ordering system. Rather than having an online "shopping cart" you had to email them with a list of what you wanted and then pay via paypal. Anyway, i sent my email off to them and within about 6 hours i had a response with details about what was in stock and how to pay. I duly paid through paypal and then waited. And waited. And waited.
When the miniatures hadnt turned up after several weeks, i thought that i would send an email to Russ at arcane miniatures to find out what had happened to my models and recieved no response. After several more emails (and a bit more waiting), i phoned arcane and was met by an answer phone. In total i sent about 8 or 9 emails and phoned half a dozen times. All emails and calls went unanswered.
In the end i had to resort to a claim through paypal. Even with this, Arcane didnt get back in contact. In the end (today) Paypal refunded my money because they could not contact Arcane to deal with the dispute.
So my recommendation is to stay well clear of Arcane miniatures. I dont want to say that they are rip off merchants (Indeed, i dont know if this is the case), but there is definately something odd going on. Im just glad i paid through paypal, rather than by cheque, because at least i got my money back.
If anyone else has had dealings with Arcane, id be interested to hear your comments / experiences.

Now the good. I cant recommend Antenociti's Workshop highly enough. Great selection of products, high quality casting on their models and very helpful staff. I've met them a few times at Salute now and they are always helpful and knowledgable about the products that they sell. An order placed late on a monday night was with me by the end of the same week. Make sure you check them out.