[GZG] From GZG - update on mail-order situation....

Update on mail-order progress....

IF YOU ARE WAITING FOR GOODS FROM US, OR ARE THINKING OF PLACING AN 
ORDER NOW, PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING!

Well, things are still behind, but there is at last some light at the 
end of the tunnel (and no, this time it's not some ****** with a 
torch, bringing more work!). I still have a large number of orders to 
process and send out, but having been working practically non-stop on 
them over Christmas and into January, the pile is finally starting to 
go down a little. Most of the orders placed during the Christmas 
offer period have now shipped out, and the remaining few of them 
SHOULD be done by the end of this coming weekend. Please be aware 
that if you placed an order AFTER the offer ended, these are almost 
all still in the queue to be processed and will be done in the next 
couple of weeks, all being well.

I had really hoped to be a lot further ahead by now, but the huge 
demand has completely wiped out all my on-hand stock of an awful lot 
of codes - so virtually every order I process and pack is now having 
to be cast up almost from scratch. This has slowed down the rate of 
order packing considerably, as I'm sure you will understand. The GOOD 
thing is that everything is cast in-house (by me), so they can be 
freshly made and then immediately packed and sent out - the down-side 
is that it all takes time to do!

Orders are still coming in, of course, but not at the frantic rate 
they did on the run-up to Christmas. I had seriously considered 
shutting the store down to new orders until the end of this month in 
order to catch up, but at the moment I'm keeping it open - but 
PLEASE, if you are thinking of placing an order (or have done so in 
the last two weeks), be prepared for a wait - I'll get to them when I 
can, but it is unlikely to be until around the end of January. If 
you've asked to pay by Paypal on a recent order, and haven't yet had 
a payment request, it's because I (a) haven't had time to do it, and 
(b) I don't want to take the money a long time ahead of dispatching 
the order - you'll get the request in due course when your order is 
getting nearer to being processed.

On top of our own delays caused by the amount of orders, things have 
been compounded by delays and backlogs in the postal services, 
apparently on both sides of the Atlantic. The unexpected early snow 
in the UK before Christmas has hit deliveries hard, delaying both 
internal movement and flights out for international mail. I can only 
assume this has then had a knock-on effect with the US and other 
overseas postal services, because they also seem to have huge 
backlogs that they are only just now clearing. I have just this week 
heard from several US customers that their orders have only just 
arrived, having been mailed from here in early December (or, in a 
couple of cases, in late November!). While I'm very sorry about these 
delays, when they are due to the postal services and weather 
conditions we really don't have any control over them.	What I can 
promise is that if you've placed a valid order with us, then you WILL 
get your goods, it may just take a while.

Obviously I'm getting a lot of email from concerned customers 
wondering where their orders are - I'm trying my best to answer these 
emails, but sometimes it takes me a couple of days to get round to 
them, and even then some that I do reply to are bouncing back - if 
you have emailed in the last couple of weeks and haven't had a 
response yet, please drop me a reminder - and if at all possible, do 
it from an alternative email address - yours may be one of the ones 
I've tried to reply to but can't get through. If you have aggressive 
spam filtering, please ensure that jonATgzgDOTcom is on your 
"accepted" list.

Thanks once again for you patience and understanding. If The Gods are 
willing, then normal service will be resumed as soon as possible, as 
the old saying goes.....

Jon (GZG), 13th Jan 2011.

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