As a resident of the U.K., it hasn’t escaped my attention that we rarely get some new products at launch and our stock levels are always much lower than those in other territories.
The latest PLA Basic filaments still missing despite being available last week in other territories.
Light Gray (10104)
Dark Gray (10105)
I can’t even request to be informed when it might hit our shores.
The same delays were true for the PETG HF ranges.
The announcement of the second-anniversary sale wasn’t included anywhere on the U.K. site until two days after it appeared on the other country versions.
Stock levels are rarely great.
PLA Basic stock levels of filament with spools are less than 50% of all available colours.
PLA Matte stock levels of filament with spools are only just over 50% of all available colours.
I was going to weigh in with Australian stock but just checked and it seems the container delivery has hit the warehouse and theres a good amount of stock that I haven’t seen in a long time. The thing that stands out to me are refills being pushed more and the colour availability is leaning towards that side too. Could this be the reason behind the lack of stock? Maybe full spools becoming redundant so now we need to purchase spools separately.
I’m not supporting the refill angle, just something I’m noticing. The stock situation has been rubbish here for a while too, thats why I was shocked seeing very little empty slots. I think they have way too big a catalogue to manage at their warehouse level and supply suffers the moment someone releases a model with a certain colour/material palette which everyone wants.
I don’t use BL anymore due to the situation like you have in UK, I still watch with interest though and find it disappointing for those who do want basic filament.
This is one of the reasons why I only buy spare parts from them at the moment as you can’t reliably get the filaments that you require over here. Not to mention the tape on the spools and the variation in the colours of some batches that I have come across in the past.
Only used their store once in the past year as I wanted a couple of nozzles and some PTFE, other than that I gave up on the filament mainly because of the lack of stock.
I must of got lucky when I ordered my nozzles last year as they were all in stock at the time, got a couple of each so I didn’t have to bother for a while because of the issues I was having with getting the filaments.
I haven’t got any Bambu filaments at the moment but I probably will when I have the points to spend on some so I will probably suffer with the same woes at some point. I have been pretty lucky with my P1 as it’s been very reliable and not needed anymore than some grease and nozzles.
We apologize for the stock issues, but we want to assure our customers that our team is doing their best to supply the UK shop with the required inventory.
Due to recent adjustments in international shipping routes, some vessels are now required to reroute via the Cape of Good Hope to ensure safe passage. This change, along with increased pressure on global logistics networks, especially in the UK, has led to potential delays in shipping times. Currently, the overseas shipping cycle is expected to take a minimum of 2 months.
We prioritise shipping to the UK, especially for new products, and our team is actively working to build up additional inventory in the UK to mitigate the impact of these delays.
We appreciate everyone’s patience and understanding during this period, while the current delays are resolved.
This makes some sense, as I’m aware of shipping issues due to the international conflicts, although it doesn’t explain the periods prior to this.
Annoying
I awoke to find this response marked as the solution, given I didn’t mark it as the solution, it means someone with sufficient rights did and it didn’t trigger an alert to show it was marked as solved.
I suspect this means @SupportAssistant decided their response to my concerns was great and despite it being my post, had the audacity to mark themselves as the solution.
Whilst this response may well be the definitive solution, that is MY decision to make.
At first glance your answer seemed reasonable, but, with a little bit of thought it failed to explain why Europe doesn’t suffer these significant outages of stock, lack of new stock and massive lead times for common stock despite also being on the same shipping routes as the U.K. should the detour be required.
It also doesn’t explain why the U.K. store doesn’t even show the two new PLA Basic colours or allow me to request a stock notification.
I’m about to order another AMS, and there is a two-week lead time. The only territory to have a stock outage.
I understand your frustration, I am also from the UK.
I do remember a while back their was a big delay of stock coming into the UK due to some import customms issues also, the whole Brexit has defiantly made it harder and more complicated for companies to things imported & exported out of the UK.
Whilst I know it don’t fix the problem, no company is going to want to not have stock available to sell, so I am sure BL is doing what ever is within their power to get the stock in the UK and available and keep it available.
For a while now the A1 Mini Combo for example was showing week long lead times, but in the past week has changed to In Stock. So things are slowly getting better, but always going to be a balance of high demand and the ability to replenish stock quick enough.
