With pre-orders it was a necessity to pool orders in order to keep the shipping cost per item reasonable...but that option has been stymied for the future as the postage for more than say 3 or 4 scenario packs from MMP was seriously obscene.
Withe the 50% increase, it's no longer worth my while (especially once you factor in the overseas transaction charges, etc for making an order). So I've cancelled all my Pre-orders from MMP: particularly for the non-ASL boxed games where the postal charges were already ruinous at $50+ for the 2 Storm over.... games, the new postage will be more than the combined price of the games.
Rivers to the Reich and Best of Friends will have to wait for another day...probably ASLOK. Festung Budapest will be ordered from Milsims. I am very glad I went on the pre Xmas splurge that I did.
Milsims will be seeing a lot more of my money, and I will probably increase the proportion I buy at ASLOK over the next three years.
The real spinner in this is that the new postal rates are almost certainly the death knell for the purchase of miniatures and other games from my usual suppliers like Fine Games, Noble Knight and Gamer's Armory, let alone picking anything up via eBay from the IUS. It will be interesting to see how Amazon's charges go up.
I have been at this point for a few years. The last pre-orders I bought actually cost me more due to shipping and taxes than it would have cost me to buy from a vendor here in the UK and to add insult to injury my per-order arrived after other people received theirs from said other supplier.
ReplyDeleteI think the post hike will do American small scale exporting some real damage. Nothing much if you look at individual cases but added up it would be far more painful.
Ian