Greetings to all our customers in Andorra, Afghanistan and Anguilla!
Yes, we may mean you ;-)
Anguilla and rockets? Our first web lad scaled the osCommerce learning-curve and included some some original ideas that took later generations a while to unwind from the site. The upshot of his coding was that many of our customers in England, Scotland and Wales suddenly found themselves with exotic foreign addresses (usually beginning with an A) before we got things fully sorted out. For instance, Deepsky First Mate Andy suddenly found himself in a dangerous duty posting in Afghanistan while Captain Tetrahedron found himself on a Caribbean paradise island - management has its privileges ;-)
Please check YOUR account address and reposition yourself to a more cozy place on the Deepsky home planet if necessary.
This is important not only to prevent the CIA and MI6 from taking an interest in your rocketry pursuits but also for smooth integration with our new credit card capabilities. One unfortunate customer in Oxon got his order delayed because HSBC was suspicious of his British card/foreign address. There was no 3am knock on the door but the order did get delayed by a day.
However, other than one or two initial hiccups, our on-line card payment capability is now working great. Your transaction is protected by 128 bit encryption and HSBC's ever vigilant Secure ePayment fraud squad. Another embarassing (but harmless) problem we have had with Secure ePayments is that two orders didn't get entered in our system although the credit card transactions were just fine. Please check that your shopping cart is empty when you finish... but if it isn't, we would soon add the final checkout click for you.
Neither our (now) smoothly running Secure ePayment module nor the legacy address peccadillos are the reason we are going postal. It's the %*#+^$ United States Post Office. Inexplicably, things that usually take a week or so to arrive are taking a month... or more. A box of parts for our new Skyburner cluster rocket were posted AIRMAIL by Fliskits on 18 January and they arrived 3 March (UK customs got them the day before - fast working leeches!). The box was covered with Air Mail stamps but it probably went on a sea voyage. This is the US posties fault, not our own. Apologies for those waiting for Skyburners.
"Going Postal" is a quaint American expression coined a few years back when a disgruntled US government employee turned up at a local post office and shot everyone. Common usage has softened the phrase to meaning "really angry" from "homicidal maniac with automatic weapons".
We don't think that this would improve the bad service we are currently getting no matter how appealing the idea may become. However, a few "pour encourager les autres" (French shorthand for motivational beatings) examples might be just what the US posties need ;-)
Our post, on the other hand, are near saints. We have lost fewer than a handful of packages out of the 1000+ sent. In fact, the British post office has done better than our expensive couriers!
We are embarrassed and concerned about delayed/missing shipments from West Coast Hybrids, Pratt Hobbies, RATT Works, Binder Design, Estes, Quest, HyperTEK, Cesaroni and a few others. Consequently our cupboard is a bit bare of some of the more popular kits and bits.
Help is on the way. We have ordered a slew of motors to be delivered by FedEx so that we won't be stalled by whatever is causing the slowdown in the US postal system. We will have copious amounts of D motors next week as well as other Deepsky specials such as C11-3, 1/2A6-2 and the very cool A8-5. The FedEx shipping costs three times as much as the normal sea carriage but we are taking the hit so that you can fly your rockets. But not this week.
Captain Tetrahedron is going over to the US on business next week to collect some kits personally so we should be well and truly stocked up by mid month.
In view of the low stock levels, missing special orders and a generally unpleasant cold and windy forecast for this weekend, Deepsky's expeditionary forces are NOT going to attend the usual EARS monthly (muddy) launch in Cambridgeshire this Sunday. Those of you who placed orders in advance have our apologies and we will work with you to make sure you get your bits ASAP. Deepsky could possibly stop by the launch on the way to Lincolnshire (previewing a potential Tripoli Rocketry UK launch site) so any vital bits could be dropped off. Contact us if we can help.
Team Deepsky are planning to be out in force for BKs warm and sunny launch at Milson on the 20th (utter still air, absence of cloud and 15 degree minimum temperature is to be guaranteed by Mark Perman, Esq., AC, DI). We will bring our multimeter! It will be available to all to confirm the OFFness of any launch controller on the site whether we sold it or not.
We also hope to roll the Deepsky Mobile Launch Facility out for its maiden flight. It's covered in snow in our back garden at the moment...
Team Deepsky
Yes, we may mean you ;-)
Anguilla and rockets? Our first web lad scaled the osCommerce learning-curve and included some some original ideas that took later generations a while to unwind from the site. The upshot of his coding was that many of our customers in England, Scotland and Wales suddenly found themselves with exotic foreign addresses (usually beginning with an A) before we got things fully sorted out. For instance, Deepsky First Mate Andy suddenly found himself in a dangerous duty posting in Afghanistan while Captain Tetrahedron found himself on a Caribbean paradise island - management has its privileges ;-)
Please check YOUR account address and reposition yourself to a more cozy place on the Deepsky home planet if necessary.
This is important not only to prevent the CIA and MI6 from taking an interest in your rocketry pursuits but also for smooth integration with our new credit card capabilities. One unfortunate customer in Oxon got his order delayed because HSBC was suspicious of his British card/foreign address. There was no 3am knock on the door but the order did get delayed by a day.
However, other than one or two initial hiccups, our on-line card payment capability is now working great. Your transaction is protected by 128 bit encryption and HSBC's ever vigilant Secure ePayment fraud squad. Another embarassing (but harmless) problem we have had with Secure ePayments is that two orders didn't get entered in our system although the credit card transactions were just fine. Please check that your shopping cart is empty when you finish... but if it isn't, we would soon add the final checkout click for you.
Neither our (now) smoothly running Secure ePayment module nor the legacy address peccadillos are the reason we are going postal. It's the %*#+^$ United States Post Office. Inexplicably, things that usually take a week or so to arrive are taking a month... or more. A box of parts for our new Skyburner cluster rocket were posted AIRMAIL by Fliskits on 18 January and they arrived 3 March (UK customs got them the day before - fast working leeches!). The box was covered with Air Mail stamps but it probably went on a sea voyage. This is the US posties fault, not our own. Apologies for those waiting for Skyburners.
"Going Postal" is a quaint American expression coined a few years back when a disgruntled US government employee turned up at a local post office and shot everyone. Common usage has softened the phrase to meaning "really angry" from "homicidal maniac with automatic weapons".
We don't think that this would improve the bad service we are currently getting no matter how appealing the idea may become. However, a few "pour encourager les autres" (French shorthand for motivational beatings) examples might be just what the US posties need ;-)
Our post, on the other hand, are near saints. We have lost fewer than a handful of packages out of the 1000+ sent. In fact, the British post office has done better than our expensive couriers!
We are embarrassed and concerned about delayed/missing shipments from West Coast Hybrids, Pratt Hobbies, RATT Works, Binder Design, Estes, Quest, HyperTEK, Cesaroni and a few others. Consequently our cupboard is a bit bare of some of the more popular kits and bits.
Help is on the way. We have ordered a slew of motors to be delivered by FedEx so that we won't be stalled by whatever is causing the slowdown in the US postal system. We will have copious amounts of D motors next week as well as other Deepsky specials such as C11-3, 1/2A6-2 and the very cool A8-5. The FedEx shipping costs three times as much as the normal sea carriage but we are taking the hit so that you can fly your rockets. But not this week.
Captain Tetrahedron is going over to the US on business next week to collect some kits personally so we should be well and truly stocked up by mid month.
In view of the low stock levels, missing special orders and a generally unpleasant cold and windy forecast for this weekend, Deepsky's expeditionary forces are NOT going to attend the usual EARS monthly (muddy) launch in Cambridgeshire this Sunday. Those of you who placed orders in advance have our apologies and we will work with you to make sure you get your bits ASAP. Deepsky could possibly stop by the launch on the way to Lincolnshire (previewing a potential Tripoli Rocketry UK launch site) so any vital bits could be dropped off. Contact us if we can help.
Team Deepsky are planning to be out in force for BKs warm and sunny launch at Milson on the 20th (utter still air, absence of cloud and 15 degree minimum temperature is to be guaranteed by Mark Perman, Esq., AC, DI). We will bring our multimeter! It will be available to all to confirm the OFFness of any launch controller on the site whether we sold it or not.
We also hope to roll the Deepsky Mobile Launch Facility out for its maiden flight. It's covered in snow in our back garden at the moment...
Team Deepsky
