Some survey follow up FAQs
9 months ago
– Tue, Dec 19, 2023 at 11:19:10 AM
Hey everyone!
Hopefully you've all gotten your surveys and have been able to navigate the Backerkit process. If you still haven't gotten your link by email, please message us here on Kickstarter and we'll help you out.
We've gotten a few Frequently Asked Questions so far, so we thought we'd cover them here.
Where's my pre-registration credit?
If you pre-registered for the campaign, you should now see that reward credit in your Backerkit cart. We had to apply that manually, so it may not have been visible right away. You should see it now.
If you would like to be eligible for reward credits and bonuses for upcoming campaigns, be sure to watch and respond to our email announcements! As a current Backer, you're now signed up to get those notifications in your inbox (you can unsubscribe if you so choose). Just keep an eye out for those to take advantage of those pre-reg benefits!
Where's my Day-1 bookmark?
If you backed in the first 24 hours, those should now be in your cart as well. Those also needed to be manually awarded. Please note that they were only applied to physical tier carts -- if you pledged at a digital or no-reward level, they were not added so as not to add any unexpected required shipping fees. If you qualify and upgrade your pledge to a shipping level, or would like your free bookmark anyway and are willing to pay the shipping, let us know and we'll add it back to your cart.
Are the statuettes really sold out?
Not really -- there was an error in the number of copies available in Backerkit, which is fixed now. If you tried to add a statuette but it appeared as Sold Out, please try again. 😊
Now, here's the big question that's been flooding the comments section:
Why is shipping so expensive??!!?!?~!11?
The short answer: we wish we knew.
The longer answer: we wish we had more control over those rates.
Shipping is the number one challenge we face, and we have been chasing solutions for years now. What worked for us in year one -- my wife and I packing boxes by hand on our kitchen table and hand-labeling each before driving them to the local post office -- no longer works now that we're facing 1500-3000 orders per campaign, and multiple campaigns per year. With our warehouse in a separate state, we have to rely on their fulfillment services to get things done, and that means things like packing material and warehouse staff labor have to be accounted for. We do our best to negotiate those rates as best as we can, but the courier costs and postage rates are hard (well, impossible) to haggle. And they have gone up exponentially since the Pandemic irreversibly changed the way the world works. They may stabilize occasionally, but rarely if ever go down. And with the world now trained to rely so heavily on home delivery, those couriers and services can set their prices to suit the skyrocketing demand. That's just the new commercial hierarchy.
We are at that awkward size where we're too big to hand-pack every package ourselves, but too small to have the infrastructure of Amazon or other larger publishers who can absorb those rising costs. We are growing! But that growth takes time... hopefully, in 2024 we'll find some more efficiencies and can "level up" for everyone's benefit. 😊
In the meantime, we are always trying to offer suggestions to help make shipping costs more efficient. Here are a few that have proven helpful in many cases:
1) Add-ons. Yes, we recognize that sounds pretty brazen -- "buy more stuff!" -- but having more things in a package does help amortize the shipping cost across more items. The base/starting shipping cost in most regional tiers covers 0-48oz (up to 3lbs). That means shipping one softcover book would cost the same as shipping two. And if it bumps up to 4lbs, the difference is usually only $1 or two. Maybe there's a gift-giving occasion coming up...? Someone you know who might want to join in on an order? Something to think about...
2) Campaign bundling. When the timing works out, we can often combine pledges to help reduce the cost of one or the other. Much like the Add-ons strategy, combining orders can help offset that base 3lb minimum. This is particularly helpful with International orders. So to that end, we'd like to extend this bundling offer to International backers who also pledged to either MIDNIGHT ORDERor the recent CASSEGRAIN COLLECTION Backerkit campaign. If you are an international backer who also pledged to either of those recent campaigns, we can calculate what the savings would be by bundling those into a single package and then crediting one of those campaigns accordingly.
Please note this is a manual process, so you will have to request this via Kickstarter message, to be sure we don't miss your request. We may not get to it immediately (we're getting ready to travel for the holiday), but we promise to do what we can for you. Since none of those campaign orders lock until February 2nd, we have time to calculate and make that adjustment for you before any credit cards are actually charged on February 4th. 😊
If you didn't back either of those two other campaigns, you still have time to pre-order via their Backerkit pages! We can combine late-pre-orders just the same as campaign pledge orders; Backerkit treats them the same way. Simply click those campaign hotlinks above to check them out!
3) US Postal Forwarding services. If you often order things from the US and are facing rising shipping costs from those other vendors as well, you may want to consider using a US Postal Forwarding Service such as USA2Me.com or iPostal1.com. (Note: we have no experience with either of those randomly Googled examples, so don't take this as an endorsement of either.) There are many such services that provide you with a temporary USA address -- they collect items sent to you there, and then forward those to you in your home country in a single shipment when you're ready to receive them. Domestic US shipping rates are MUCH less expensive than some Int'l FedEx Zones, so the amount you save per order could more than justify the cost of the collected shipment to your home country later. (Plus, I think many of them handle the customs and duty forms, too...)
4) Credit toward future purchases. The Ambassador Points awarded in each of our campaigns can be saved and exchanged for Gift Cards to our webstore. These points can add up very quickly if you are a regular backer! We just updated someone's account this morning adding points from 6 previous campaign pledges at once... that came to well over 10k points, good for $100 worth of Gift Cards! And the beauty of Gift Cards is that they apply to the bottom line of a webstore order, not just the price of the items, but the shipping and taxes as well! If you aren't an active member of the Ambassadors Club program, you should really give it a try. 😎
Thanks, everyone! If you have any questions or suggestions, let us know!
![](https://ksr-ugc.imgix.net/assets/043/423/933/3b26dc7babf9fd9efa5fdf5ceeaef9e1_original.jpg?ixlib=rb-4.1.0&w=700&fit=max&v=1703013025&gif-q=50&q=92&s=bd9e21eb5593d388141d33c3ab9efa78)