THE OFFICIAL "Where is my copy of Paprium?" Thread

[PreZZ]

Like many of you, my order says its being shipped since dec 15 2020, My order consists of 3 classic paprium edition, one investor, 2 joysticks and 1 piers solar for DC. No news, nothing, very fishy. This is not a paprium thread, its a WM shipping thread. Shout out to Baloo!

[zredgemz]

Inb4 lock but i got two US investors and 1 investor grand stick mine has been shipping status since dec 15th as well.

[deadpixels]

I've got a limited edition US copy and a Grand Stick III that have been marked as "shipping since December 13. It's very clear something is up, and it's not merely people who mistakenly believed their 2nd round pre-orders would be shipped straight away who are causing problems for Fonzie.

My stuff has been sitting in a third party shipper's possession for 57 days. I don't work in logistics, but I've mailed enough stuff out to find it very odd that a shipping company would take on a high volume of packages to mail out before receiving their payment. None of this makes any sense as far as I can tell. I know others have speculated WM needs to scrape together funds from new sales to get existing orders out and that's certainly believable. Though again, I'm not sure a shipping partner would take on stuff and allow him to pay as packages go out. That just seems odd, but what do I know?

Additionally, others have speculated that not all of the Grand Stick III's have been produced. However, in my case, my parcel is described as "packed." So again, that doesn't really add up either. I'm entirely out of patience with this entire fiasco at this point. Fonzie refuses to provide any sort of clarity for his customers. And while Luis has been trying to keep us in the loop, I feel it's quite clear the messages he's relaying from WM don't quite add up.

[Dirt Ball Gamer]

I might be a bit cynical but my fears are that those of us still waiting for games etc may ultimately never receive our items. WM sent out enough items to somewhat satisfy the general public, at least enough to make them appear credible enough to hilariously ask for more funding for their newest mystery game. Meanwhile a few weeks ago (haven't checked recently) I was seeing tons of paprium carts and uber special gold edition carts & sticks going for bonkers prices on ebay many of them all from the same seller if I'm not mistaken.

I couldn't help but wonder could one of those carts be my poor long lost cart?

[avlon]

I asked about this on Twitter, and Luis responded with a screenshot of someone requesting a refund on a January purchase.

https://twitter.com/Raycommend/statu...006973444?s=20

Taking a little time to read the reason as to why they canceled, it seems reasonable. They are spending a lot of money on a game and their emails are being ignored. If they did any kind of search online regarding the situation with WM, they probably panicked after seeing how poorly things have been handled and canceled. I wouldn't doubt this to be the case with many possible customers. At first I thought that maybe it is folks trolling WM but it's likely a mix of people dodging a dumpster fire and some trolling.

WM said that Paypal extorted them, and then they went with them as their sole payment processor anyway which makes no sense. If you look at many small operations, they have multiple payment processors.

The provided proof shows an example from the end of JANUARY. Most of the missing packages & shipping notifications are from MID-DECEMBER. The two should situations should have nothing to do with each other. Especially as those customers PRE-PAID for their items and shipping. There isn't even a shipping label generated that I can check up on.

Refunds don't need to be shipped. That should have been handled ages ago. I guarantee you that even if folks emailed with their direct banking details, there would still be excuses.

As always, communication is poor and as usual comes through a proxy. Too bad that I can't reverse the situation to where everyone got their packages and WM had to wait for their money. Maybe then they would be a bit more considerate of other peoples time and investments.

[deadpixels]

I might be a bit cynical but my fears are that those of us still waiting for games etc may ultimately never receive our items. WM sent out enough items to somewhat satisfy the general public, at least enough to make them appear credible enough to hilariously ask for more funding for their newest mystery game, meanwhile a few weeks ago (haven't checked recently) I was seeing tons of paprium carts and uber special gold edition carts & sticks going for bonkers prices on ebay all from the same seller if I'm not mistaken. I couldn't help but wonder could one of those carts be my poor long lost cart? I learned from Star Wars that fear and anger lead to the darkside, but I do sense a disturbance in the force.

I've wondered the same thing. I honestly wouldn't put it past Fonzie to be selling carts on the second-hand market at a huge markup. After all, he himself mentioned how they balloon in value in his rambling screed. It makes a lot of sense.

[stlpaul]

As far as WM order status goes I have always assumed it means:
Packing - Fonzie is assembling the pink boxes full of ordered Paprium items
Shipping - Pink box is done, waiting on Fonzie to send the finished pink boxes to the Las Vegas shipping company
Shipped - LV company put it in a brown box and gave it to the USPS

I do not know where in the world Fonzie is living with his inventory of cartridges & arcade sticks & paprium panties these days, so I don't know how much effort and costs it is to send a large pile of hundreds of boxes to Las Vegas. If it was sent by sea, it can take several months.

He has known exactly how many orders there are for years now, there should have been no reason not to have all orders in place prior to release.

We can guess and speculate about reasons why, I have my own theories, but who really knows?

Total lack of communication, with cryptic excuses and such is what we expect of WM, but it is still quite aggravating.

On the bright side, the Paprium threads on Sega-16 and Gamopat Forum have provided me years of entertainment.

[stlpaul]

Taking a little time to read the reason as to why they canceled, it seems reasonable. They are spending a lot of money on a game and their emails are being ignored. If they did any kind of search online regarding the situation with WM, they probably panicked after seeing how poorly things have been handled and canceled. I wouldn't doubt this to be the case with many possible customers. At first I thought that maybe it is folks trolling WM but it's likely a mix of people dodging a dumpster fire and some trolling.

WM said that Paypal extorted them, and then they went with them as their sole payment processor anyway which makes no sense. If you look at many small operations, they have multiple payment processors.

Pre-orders are against PayPal's policies. As a seller you are required to deliver product within 20 days of payment. If PayPal realizes you are doing pre-orders they will absolutely freeze your money until you are able to prove you have the goods in hand and are shipping them. They will in some cases demand copies of purchase orders and invoices from your vendors/suppliers/manufacturers to prove you're not a scammer. (Amazon does the same thing to sellers who have too many returns or complaints, but like nuclear times 100).

The correct way to accept PayPal for pre-orders is to have the customer authorize a future payment, but not actually take their money until the order ships.

Placing pre-orders on PayPal is risky to buyers, too, as the purchase protection ends after 45 days.

[avlon]

Pre-orders are against PayPal's policies. As a seller you are required to deliver product within 20 days of payment. If PayPal realizes you are doing pre-orders they will absolutely freeze your money until you are able to prove you have the goods in hand and are shipping them. They will in some cases demand copies of purchase orders and invoices from your vendors/suppliers/manufacturers to prove you're not a scammer. (Amazon does the same thing to sellers who have too many returns or complaints, but like nuclear times 100).

The correct way to accept PayPal for pre-orders is to have the customer authorize a future payment, but not actually take their money until the order ships.

Placing pre-orders on PayPal is risky to buyers, too, as the purchase protection ends after 45 days.

Interesting. Limited Run uses PayPal without issue and practically all of their inventory is based on non-refundable pre-orders. I have yet to have any issue with them shipping stock when they receive it months later and AFAIK, their account has never been frozen either.

[zredgemz]

Interesting. Limited Run uses PayPal without issue and practically all of their inventory is based on non-refundable pre-orders. I have yet to have any issue with them shipping stock when they receive it months later and AFAIK, their account has never been frozen either.

That would require a certain amount of people to refund within a period of time and or leave a message to paypal telling them they have been breaking the rules. If someone wanted to troll Limited run and get them in trouble they would be in the same boat.

[avlon]

That would require a certain amount of people to refund within a period of time and or leave a message to paypal telling them they have been breaking the rules. If someone wanted to troll Limited run and get them in trouble they would be in the same boat.

I doubt that. It's been six years and they've never had such an issue. They are also intelligent enough to have multiple payment processors and sources of income, support that responds to customers, and they communicate if they do have issues. If I get a shipping notification, it's usually shipped next day with all relevant tracking info. There are no guessing games.

[Prince Talmit]

Pre-orders are against PayPal's policies. As a seller you are required to deliver product within 20 days of payment. If PayPal realizes you are doing pre-orders they will absolutely freeze your money until you are able to prove you have the goods in hand and are shipping them.

And that is exactly why you all purchased "gems", and why it was clear to me from day one that Fonzie was setting things up so exactly what happened could happen.

[zredgemz]

I doubt that. It's been six years and they've never had such an issue. They are also intelligent enough to have multiple payment processors and sources of income, support that responds to customers, and they communicate if they do have issues. If I get a shipping notification, it's usually shipped next day with all relevant tracking info. There are no guessing games.

Shut down their paypal sure all of the payment options no but we are talking about a one guy operation that makes less money then Josh from LRG. I assume paypal takes the least amount during transactions and that is why fonzie used it in the beginning. After what happened before it was dumb of him to use it again but this is not really the issue right now. Fonzie was likely taking money out of that account everyday since the site came back up. On another note the preorder for new sticks is the only thing to sell out before payments were closed and that would mean he already had a number(as in not unlimited like investor/2017 preorder sticks) in mind before ordering new games,sticks from whatever factory he uses in China.

[stlpaul]

There was a big story a couple years ago of a drone maker that had like half a million dollars in PayPal preorders and got frozen out of their account by PayPal, and ended up going bankrupt because of it. I don't recall the whole story but it was a real shit show. I think they had done a successful kickstarter round of fundraising and followed it up with PayPal preorders on their own website. Due to PayPal holding their account hostage, they fulfilled the newer PayPal orders before the original kickstarter orders from a year earlier and everybody was pissed off. A cautionary tale...

For WM I believe from 2017 onward (and currently) it wasn't gems or investing anymore right? It was just straight up pre-ordering?

[zredgemz]

There was a big story a couple years ago of a drone maker that had like half a million dollars in PayPal preorders and got frozen out of their account by PayPal, and ended up going bankrupt because of it. I don't recall the whole story but it was a real shit show. I think they had done a successful kickstarter round of fundraising and followed it up with PayPal preorders on their own website. Due to PayPal holding their account hostage, they fulfilled the newer PayPal orders before the original kickstarter orders from a year earlier and everybody was pissed off. A cautionary tale...

For WM I believe from 2017 onward (and currently) it wasn't gems or investing anymore right? It was just straight up pre-ordering?

The gem cut off for new people ended in 2014 or 15 and only people in could continue to put more money in for gems till 2017 but it was was cut off before preorders. So yes all the preorders in 2017 was not gems.