Why am I still waiting on an order I made on the 11th of december? I suspect alot of you are used to this but I find it insane that they do this holiday sale every year, they obviously expect a large volume of orders and then they seemingly just disappear for a month plus on their holidays with zero communication. I have had not a single email about this unfulfilled order. I mean I ordered from Sentai and CR in america after the 11th and both orders came earlier this week. This delay is unacceptable imo, to just take the money and go radio silent for so long is not good enough. To run such a sale and not put in infrastructure or extra hours to fulfill as many of those orders as quickly as possible also I find surprising, as I said they must at this point expect the volume of sales they get but seemingly haven't put in place the infastructure to deal with it better.
Like I sound more mad than I am, I can wait but it has bothered me greatly that I haven't got a single update about this order. And over a month to send something inside the uk is not good enough, end of.
I only recieved my final Xmas sale order from them yesterday. It took 18 working days to arrive.
I imagine they will carry on this practice until it affects their sales. I mean, where else are you going to go if you really want a particular product? It's not like there are a plethora of other UK anime distributors providing an alternative. Sure you can import US or Japanese releases of the same AL series or film, but they can be more expensive once you account for shipping and any potential customs cost.
We pay premium prices for 'boutique' anime blu-rays, so I would expect a timely delivery - even during a sale period. I wouldn't mind paying a small delivery fee if it meant they could get shipments out quicker over sale periods.
Like you say, if they are truly inundated with orders, then they must be making money, so why can't they improve their infrastructure to help deal with the increase demand? If they can't because the profit margins are that slim and are unable to reinvest, then it doesn't sound like a particularly viable business (although I'm no expert). I could deal with the longer wait over sale periods if they just communicated that it
could take up to 20-30 days for your delivery to arrive and some orders are likely to arrive after the new year - instead the customer is left in limbo, not knowing what is going on unless they contact alltheanime directly. It pretty much seems like luck of the draw as to whether you'll get an order arrive before Christmas.
Anime Limited use a fulfilment company called Limewood Media - which I believe distribute a variety of boutique TV/film products, so who knows how many other companies use Limewood Media as well for shipping services. The fact that AL don't seem to have a dedicated fulfilment centre is probably why they can't get orders out quicker, especially during sale periods. I imagine it's a lot cheaper for them to use a fulfilment company than to handle shipping themselves.
