Getting started - Wayland Games

I guess the ideal place to start would be what I bought myself to get started in the hobby again, what it cost me and where I got it from.

It had been years since I had been into a model shop and even back in those days the amount of stuff they had overwhelmed me, so I started looking online to see what sort of shops were available.

What I found was slightly shocking, not in a scary way but in a holy sh*t I'm going to spend too much money way.

One website I found was Wayland Games (www.waylandgames.co.uk), they're based in Southend and have a website which is just bursting with goodies.

This is a brief review of their service.

After a few days of browsing I settled on a list of goodies I wanted and hit the buy button.. That was on the 22nd Feb 2015... on the 5th of March I went on holiday for 2 weeks, it still hadn't arrived. When I got back from holiday it still hadn't arrived. If I remember rightly it eventually arrived around the 25th March. That was after I had contacted their customer services (who are brilliant by the way, don't get me wrong) and cancelled half my order. My original order of £100 was cut in half. I did get a full refund and it all went smoothly, I also needed to give last minute delivery instructions too (due to crazy neighbours) and all of that was handled extremely well, the only problem was the wait.

I don't want to give the wrong impression, I can't fault the service I got from Wayland Games when I was in direct contact with them, they replied quickly and knew exactly what they were doing. The problem was their online stock system. In my eagerness to order I didn't look properly at the small print, I believe they've updated this more now and their stock levels are accurate. What I understood by "available ready to ship in 5-7 days" (or whatever it said) was that the item was in stock and that it would be sent within 5-7 days so I might expect it in 11+ days. Nope. It means that if they can order it from their supplier they will do so in 5-7 days, which then means they have to wait for the order to arrive to them.

Anyway, long story short I had to get the things from elsewhere - I eventually got them from ebay only slightly more expensive.

In short I would order from Wayland again - I would just be certain to make sure they had the items I wanted in stock (I've just checked the website and they do have live stock levels now). If I did order something that wasn't in stock I have the confidence in their customer service team to fix it for me!