Sunday, May 22, 2011

Getting Ripped Off by the Internet




So a while back I was surfing the old interwebs and found this really cool army concept on The Warhammer Forums. A guy had taken chinese heads from a company known as Amazon Miniatures and put them on Bretonnian Men at Arms to create miniature versions of the terracotta warriors seen here:


His version of the army looked like this:


Having spent the summer of the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989 with my Dad in China I felt a certain connection with this army. To be specific right after all the craziness was happening in Bejing Dad and I were in Xi'an (home of the terracotta warriors) for a month. My Dad taught and I was his unpaid lackey.

I decided to paint up a terrcotta warrior army for Dad and went to Amazon Miniatures to buy the heads. The heads were surprisingly cheap so I bought an armies worth and bought a few boxes of men at arms anticipating their arrival. Well kids that was months ago and still... No heads. I have contacted the company to no response. Tried to get a refund through paypal and recently discovered that Amazon Miniatures website has gone the way of the dodo...

While I am only out something like $40 I am fairly disappointed that the heads never showed up. My parents don't really get my hobby but I really thought my Dad would dig this particular army.

The site in question was... http://www.amazonminiatures.com/

For pictures of the original thread that I found these pictures on... Look here (it is worth a look):
http://warhammer.org.uk/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=61222&view=previous

Too bad.... Too bad...

6 comments:

  1. i was gonna do this years ago for a tomb kings army, literally about 8 years ago when i saw eureka mini's green's for terracotta warriors

    so, since i wont get around to it for years to come feel free to lol, so yeh try eureka mini's they might still have the range avaiable

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  2. Ach, that suuuucckks! Especially for such a sweet idea. I've been similarly tempted to do a Tomb Kings terracotta army, I did pick up the terracotta warrior zombies when they were available, to use as tomb guard. They were a bit good. The company did jade mummies and chinese vampires too, but alas no more.

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  3. So... Did you pay with PayPal or a credit card?

    If so, you should seek/have sought a refund before the advised cut-off period.

    This has happened to me before, and after I trusted a seller on one occasion and missed the time slot to make a claim when the stuff never showed, I have been very conscious of it since. Noting the claim period and making sure that I reported the situation in time has in fact saved me from losses on a couple of occasions already!

    I know it sucks, and I am sorry for you, but hopefully you'll know better for next time. Small consolation though, I know... =0(

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  4. Contrary to your personal experience, it's normally quite safe to buy things online. I'm afraid you've been a bit unlucky. :-(

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  5. Man, I got ripped off by the internet. The internet said that Sisters of Battle are awesome ...

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  6. Amazon miniatures have gone out of business, but it's pretty bad that they didn't stop their server accepting payments.

    A similar thing happened to me with an Italian miniatures company and i thought they'd just conned me, but it turned out the person who ran the company had died and his sons eventually started up again a couple of years later and sent me all the figures i'd paid for (not guaranteeing this will happen with Amazon minis - unfortunately probably won't).

    It is rare though.

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