Oh god. You guys aren't going to believe this. I'm home. I have the keys. All 3 giant boxes of them. I open them up to sort through everything, and SP... made every base set with red modifiers instead of white. So that 1st picture you saw before, of the whole keyset including what we all thought was the red mod kit instead to show how that looks... that's what we got for base sets. I just got off the phone after a fairly painful phone call (particularly for Melissa I'm sure) and they're going to make all the red on white keys that should be there... but that means I now have 200 red mod sets (not including the spacebar.)
What does that mean? Well first off it means I'm not going to get them mailed out this week like I planned, which sucks because I know everyone wants them yesterday and I kinda just drove 8 hours to do it. That also means that effective today, this accidental red mod set will be price adjusted to $20 so that I can off them as quickly as possible. I will refund the difference to those orders who paid the group buy price of $27 and the leftover price of $35 (I haven't sold any leftovers that weren't on sale, so none at $40.) If you do the math, that's about $1000 that I don't have right now since I have to keep money on hand to ship them. Once enough proceeds are made from selling the extra red mod sets, I'll be able to refund them. So now is a GREAT time to buy them as contrast set for another keyset or if you didn't get one in the group buy.
This is where you say: "But wait Dave, hold on a minute!" Because you're thinking if I have almost 200 sets and I'm selling them at $20 a pop, isn't that near $3000 (less refunds) that goes into my pocket? No. I will be paying most of that to SP in order to help them absorb the loss from having to remake that many keys. That way SP stays in business and Melissa doesn't get fired. Also I highly doubt I will be able to unload 200 extra red mod kits in a reasonable time frame, if at all. SP knows they screwed up, and I'm doing them a big favor by doing this, (instead of just sending them back so they can get a couple hundred in materials costs back,) so as much as I can get them back I'm sure they'll be happy with. That also means more people get cool custom keycaps. That's the best situation I can think of, if anyone has any thoughts or ideas how I can do better, I'm all ears. Unfortunately I can't just give everyone a free mod kit, as much fun as that would be.
The main question that remains is when they'll be able to get me the keys by. I've got an extremely busy schedule these next few weeks leading up to school on the 20th, and I've gotta go back up to Canada in about a week. That means if they can't get them to me by then (I can swing a day or two, but I do have to go back up there before school) then they won't ship out until I get back on or around the 14th. Melissa is talking to production right now trying to see if they can get it done but I haven't heard back yet. Considering the differing sizes etc, it may actually take them a week just to make them, even if they put everything else on hold. We'll see.
^Disregard, Melissa says they think they can get them done by next Thrusday, overnight them to me so they'll be there on Friday, and hopefully I can get them all packed and shipped out by Saturday. I will have every box labelled and ready to go in order to do it as quickly as possible. I dropped everything once I found this out so I could get it fixed and let you guys know, so give me a bit to finish unpacking, pay my rent, and I'll get some pictures taken of what we have so far in a bit.
One final note to all SP group buy organizers, SP will now be sending out some form of template showing exactly what production is going to run before they make it so that there are no more mistakes like this... That also likely means that if you don't catch a mistake, you may be SOL, as the burden of correctness now lies on you once you give the go ahead.
Dave out
