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Post by roncmf on Jul 25, 2023 17:52:59 GMT -5
They do know they can put all the stuff in one box right? To put a bunch of things from different suppliers in one box you'd likely need a warehouse and people to operate it, and that could actually cost more than shipping things separately. I can have a package of bolts mailed to me from China for $2 including shipping but the same thing costs $15 from Amazon or locally, and that's not all profit.
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Post by BoB3K on Jul 26, 2023 11:48:38 GMT -5
Uh, I think they have a warehouse, with people operating it, with all the various items sitting in it. I think it's all been there for like a year now.
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Post by kracker on Jul 26, 2023 20:44:01 GMT -5
they had the Season 13 Blu-ray box sets finished and sitting for year before the episodes were finished? amazing.
I mean, im not in a hurry to get that Gizmoplex concession pack, that's just going in the garbage. Wish they let people opt out of those.
EDIT: i sent them an email about declining the concession pack as well as the posters so i dont have to pay shipping on those.
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Post by BoB3K on Jul 28, 2023 11:21:51 GMT -5
they had the Season 13 Blu-ray box sets finished and sitting for year before the episodes were finished? amazing. who was talking about the blu ray? people are getting charged $30 shipping for a shirt and some stickers. And yes, its right in their own posts that most of this stuff has been at some fulfillment warehouse waiting to be shipped out for quite some time.
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Post by Diet Kolos on Jul 28, 2023 21:09:27 GMT -5
If all this stuff was gathering dust in a warehouse (which probably wasn't free to rent) they could've personally driven around the country and delivered this stuff themselves for less time, money and hassle.
I know that sounds ludicrous, and it is, but...they really could've.
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Post by kracker on Jul 30, 2023 1:29:15 GMT -5
they had the Season 13 Blu-ray box sets finished and sitting for year before the episodes were finished? amazing. who was talking about the blu ray? people are getting charged $30 shipping for a shirt and some stickers. And yes, its right in their own posts that most of this stuff has been at some fulfillment warehouse waiting to be shipped out for quite some time. yeah no one here said they were getting charged that much. im getting charged that much because im getting about 8 other things on top on that. and who cares? id rather just get it all in one package. dont think anyones in a rush to get some stickers :b
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Post by monkeypretzel on Aug 10, 2023 12:47:08 GMT -5
Well, the crown jewel of new MST3K, the Gizmoplex, is down for the foreseeable future according to today's (8/10/23) update: The Gizmoplex Virtual Theater is temporarily closing for refurbishment. But don’t stress – your entire Gizmoplex library will still be available at Gizmoplex.com! ONLY the Virtual Theater will be unavailable during this time.
We’ve been working on some minor updates and improvements to the Virtual Theater portion of the Gizmoplex for a few weeks now, and while we’d hoped to do so without interrupting your access to it, we’ve realized that because we’re not currently running any events, it will be easier and more straightforward to simply close the theater for a short while to get the work done.
We anticipate that the Virtual Theater will be back and better than ever within a couple of months! We will share the reopening date as soon as we have one, and we’ll also tell you a bit more about the updates we’re making then.
Trying to access theater.gizmoplex.com results in a Privacy error from an invalid SSL certificate due to a name mismatch error. EDIT: They now have an "Under Construction" message up, which features a screenshot of the never-completed video rental/sale page that never worked at the Virtual Theater site. On the Discourse Forum, the virtual theater not working, as in not showing any video whatsoever, was reported as having started Friday, August 4th, and reported August 8th. There was no response to this issue there. I wonder if the outage was caused by the "minor updates and improvements" that were supposedly being made. If they were minor enough that they thought they could do them without interrupting the service, why would it then take "a couple of months" of having the entire site offline to complete? I would hope that such a long down time would result in a completely new look and much better functionality. And will the virtual theater be up and running before the next Kickstarter launches? If it's not, it won't look good for fundraising, in my opinion.
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Post by davidbeegah on Aug 10, 2023 15:21:18 GMT -5
Yeah I received that e-mail as well. I also got this:
Physical rewards are shipping out now!
The warehouse unexpectedly took about 12 days to start fulfilling orders after the shipping payment emails went out. We have also discovered that they are NOT shipping them in the order that payments were received, as we had been told would happen. This means many of you who paid for shipping immediately still haven’t received a shipping confirmation, and others who paid later may already be receiving your packages.
We know the email we sent had a 1-3 week window to expect shipping info, but apparently that’s not the case. We are deeply sorry for yet another delay for some of you, but if you received an email to pay shipping and you successfully paid it, then the warehouse has your order and will be sending it out, just possibly later than we anticipated.
I haven't received a ship notice yet. With all of the fumbling around. I will not be contributing to the next kick-starter campaign.
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Post by Megalon on Aug 10, 2023 15:43:40 GMT -5
Well, the crown jewel of new MST3K, the Gizmoplex, is down for the foreseeable future according to today's (8/10/23) update: This is getting rather depressing. Do they not know how bad this is for business? The key to engagement these days is consistency. You have to put out new content regularly if you want to keep your audience. If they didn't have a plan for post-Season 13 content, they should have been working like crazy to come up with one. These short bursts of activity followed by months or years of dormancy are engagement killers.
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Post by BoB3K on Aug 11, 2023 11:30:56 GMT -5
Well, all the vids are still available to watch though, just not through the theater thing? That's good. (although they probably realize that would be a total nail in the coffin if they stopped access to the actual paid product.) How much did people actual use the theater instead of just accessing their content? Any of you guys use it for anything other than the live streams?
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Post by majorjoe23 on Aug 11, 2023 13:10:59 GMT -5
I use it if I’m on my laptop. Otherwise I just use the app.
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Post by kracker on Aug 11, 2023 16:21:48 GMT -5
Yeah, you guys are misunderstanding the email to try to get your sweet fix of delicious schadenfreude. The virtual theater feature is down while it gets an overhaul not the gizmoplex.
BTW an update on the shipping. I finally got an email back from them but not before one of the knuckleheads on the forum told me I was SOL on the shipping, so I went ahead and paid. (I had gotten THREE shipping emails by that time) But they told me if I didn't mind the wait they would adjust my rewards so they can leave out the Concession Pack and the Posters, and thus wouldnt have to pay shipping. When i told them I already paid because I wasn't getting a response, they said they'd see what they can do get me a refund and get back to me. But they did confirm that those two items are jacking up shipping, the concession pack is obviously large and the posters are shipped rolled in a long tube rather than being folded.
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Post by Megalon on Aug 11, 2023 17:31:42 GMT -5
Yeah, you guys are misunderstanding the email to try to get your sweet fix of delicious schadenfreude. The virtual theater feature is down while it gets an overhaul not the gizmoplex. What I find depressing isn't the closure, it's the confirmation that they don't have any content in the pipeline for the near future. If Joel wants to turn MST3k into a profitable business, then he needs to take a page from RiffTrax's book and put out regular content -- full episodes or live events at least once per month (once per week would be ideal). The current business model doesn't seem feasible to me in the long-run. The show feels like it's on life-support.
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Post by starschwar on Aug 11, 2023 18:15:08 GMT -5
Most interactive online spaces (especially video games) have outages while updates are performed, this doesn't strike me as indicative of any major problems. I guess it depends on how long the outage lasts. I'm coming at this as a Pluto TV outsider, mind you. But I think there's some gun-jumping going on here. I admit, I was skeptical of the entire Gizmoplex concept from the get go, and still am. But even I think it's too early for doom-saying.
And if something has to get axed, let it be technical stuff like this. Better than, say, announcing that filming on a new season had to be suspended.
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Post by monkeypretzel on Aug 11, 2023 20:02:11 GMT -5
If they hadn't continually told people for the better part of a year that while watching through the apps or the VHX Gizmoplex.com site was fine, the TRUE experience of watching the new season could only be found going through the Virtual Theater, maybe I wouldn't be quite so shocked about how casually they're NOW saying, nah, you don't really need to use the website we held a Kickstarter to get up and running and that we told you the future of MST3K hinged upon, we'll have it back in a couple of months, maybe more, no big deal.
The Virtual Theater site was a focal point, maybe the focal point of the Kickstarter, and certainly Joel was much more enthusiastic about it and his vision for it than actually making content to show there.
That a website goes down to be overhauled isn't unusual, but does it usually take months to come back? I've never seen one down for a planned upgrade for more than a weekend, a week at the very longest. Longer than that and they usually don't come back.
I said before that it was a shame that the Gizmoplex got built only to be sitting unused with no new content, not even watch-alongs of old episodes that presumably wouldn't violate any strike. And hey, the writer's strike started at the beginning of May, the last MST Gizmoplex event (a clip show) was March 3rd and the RiffTrax event was end of March, so there was plenty of time to write stuff assuming they had money to pay writers, which I think is more the issue here than anything else. Using the strikes NOW to excuse the lack of content doesn't work...there was no intention of making any content beyond that which they were obligated to create to fulfill the KS promises, and that is the fundamental problem as I and others have pointed out. You cannot keep the concept of the Gizmoplex as a gathering place for fans* (like a local theater would be in reality, per Joel's vision) running without content. There is no content. Joel seems to be unable to make content without having a lot of money on hand. There is no money to make content without a big fundraiser. You can't have multi-million dollar fundraisers every year unless you're Jerry Lewis. The subscription model was supposed to ensure a steady cash stream to make content, but apparently those thousands of fans who were supposed to subscribe outside of backing the KS didn't, and NuMST didn't allow the willing backers to re-up a sub for future content...probably because they're not sure they will ever be able to make that content. Some significant amount of fans might even be willing to pay a reasonable monthly fee to watch the old episodes at the Gizmoplex, but they are making them available to everyone for free, which I honestly can't understand.
But I digress. Having your star attraction website go offline for an indeterminate amount of time 18 months after it went online is not a good omen for the future, even if the content is still available at the bare-bones but functional companion site. Is the Gizmoplex, or the Gizmoplex concept dead? Hell no. But there are warning signs here a-plenty about a significant restructuring/repurposing ahead.
*Go back and look at all the Kickstarter updates and comments about how The Gizmoplex was going to be a virtual space for fans to gather and interact with each other to share the experience, and then think about how little that actually happened, because the whole watch party thing collapsed, their chat function during events was horrible and a kludge because they never got the "real chat" running, and there was never any way to interact with anyone else outside of events. The true gathering spot is the Discourse with its live event chat thread.
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