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Tuesday 23 July 2013

082 - Wyrd Postage Rates

With GenCon only a month away, we're all getting a bit antsy to hear which new toys Wyrd are going to make available for us to order online while the convention is happening. We know that the Malifaux M2E book is going to be available, and that many of the first wave Masters' boxed sets will be up for grabs, but we don't know which ones, with the exception of Nightmare Tara.

As usual, Wyrd will be including a limited edition "Miss" model with every order over $100 which, for those of us thinking about combining orders with our friends to minimise postage costs to the UK, presents us with an interesting dilemma. How much does it cost us to split up the orders into $100 chunks?

I spent half an hour on the Wyrd online store yesterday putting dummy orders into their system, to try and work out the best way to combine orders. I used the Rail Crew boxed set ($35) and the Storm of Shadows book ($30) as a best estimate of the size and weight of the stuff we'll all be ordering next month, and input various multiples of these into the checkout, noting the UK postage cost for each combination. The results were interesting.


The top green table shows the postage cost for multiple books and multiple boxed sets. The dark green indicates an order that is valued over $100, so would qualify for a free Miss model.

The 2nd table shows how much the postage goes up for each book you add to a single order. For example, my local gaming group will want at least 5 books, and the table shows that for each book you add to the order after the first one, it costs an extra $11.60 in shipping. This table should be read by going across, from left to right.

The 3rd table shows the same thing for adding extra crew boxes. You can see that adding an extra crew box to your order will cost you an additional $2.60, *except* if the order doesn't include any books, in which case your second and third crews do not cost any extra. This table should be read going down, from top to bottom.

The interesting part of the tables is the top left of the second table. You can see that if your order contains boxed sets, adding a single book to the order will cost you slightly less than $11.60. It's not a massive difference, but worth noting.

The lesson we can take from this?

If you don't want books, but you want as many Miss models as possible, group your crew boxes together in threes. Your first Miss will be effectively free. Your second Miss will cost you $4, and your third Miss will cost you only $3. Seems like a bargain to me!

If you want books, don't group them together in a separate order to the models. If you do, each book will cost you $11.60 shipping. Admittedly, you only get a very marginal benefit by grouping a single book in with 1 - 3 boxed sets, but it's worth taking. If you do this, your orders will probably be in groups of 1 book & 3 boxes, saving you $2 on each book. It's not a lot, but every penny helps right?

DISCLAIMER: Wyrd have the power to alter their postage rates for GenCon. If they do so (and I have no idea if they will or not), all of the above becomes irrelevant.

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