Alan McNeilly takes a look at the Churchill Mk III/IV Interior, a new conversion set from Inside the Armour.

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If you have comments or questions please post them here.

Thanks!

I like the idea of a CD with the instructions in PDF format especially for those whose eyes are not what they were, however not including printed instructions limits this product to those with a PC that not everybody does.

Hi Darren,

A bit of clarification from Chris, more do do with ordering in general rather than any particular set. Customers can request hard copy instructions for a small extra fee of £2.00 & postage. Also when ordering they can specify either Mac or PC for the dics or request hard copy instructions at that point.

As Chris is the point of contact for sales then these are things I assume he deals with on an individual basis and like all good AM producers he will exchange any part that is damaged or might be missing from the kit.

If you feel it might be useful to include ordering infomration in the review then I can add another paragraph in but that's not normally the case.

Hope that helps and it wasn't data I was fully aware of at the time.

Al

Thank you for the clarification Alan. It does still seem a little strange not to include printed instructions with a product, don't get me wrong the PDF format is ideal and a brilliant inclusion for me as it would help my eyes no end. It does seem wrong to me somehow to charge for printed instructions when if there is an option when ordering it would need to be spelt out loud and clear and there should not be an extra charge depending on your choice.

If interiors are your thing this company seem to provide an excellent selection, which from reviews I have read are accurate and well caste. The point I am trying to get across is I would have an expectation of printed instructions being in the box, and if then asked for an extra amount to get printed instructions would not bother with them as a supplier after that. I am not telling them how they should think but how I would think and suspect I am not alone in that.

Hi Darren,

Not really so strange if you think of the costs involved in printing which is probably why as a smaller AM producer Chris has chose to go the CD way.

I could be wrong but I would imagine you can specify at time of purchase if you want CD or hard copy, but if you opt for both then there is an additional cost.

I am sure Chris will pop in with the answer, but as he aims his products at a specific limited market then why run up the costs of printing instructions unless people individualy want them?

Just my thoughts.

Al

Put very simply Darren, the disc costs me 13p. Paper and ink for c40 pages of instructions costs me over £2.

In addition, using a disc allows me to keep the box below a certain size. Relaistically there is no way you could fit 40 A4 pages into a box the size I use for my kits. Bigger pboxes means more material cost and more postage cost

So to sum up, using a disc means I can make the kit c£3.50 cheaper for those customers that are fine with a disc. These are the vast majority of customers. So far only one actual customer has requested paper instructions and three have requested a Mac compatable disc

This represents less than 1% of transactions. So put simply - over 99% of customers have benefitted from this decision through reduced cost

Chris
Inside the Armour

Sorry Alan I misunderstood I thought you meant there was an extra cost if you wanted printed instructions not only if you want both printed and PDF.

There is an extra cost if you want paper instructions, as explained above Darren. Small AM businesses like mine are balanced on a knife edge regarding profits. I make the kits as inexpensive as I can, with an extremely narrow profit margin and every additional cost inevtably has to be added onto the kit.

As explained, this is an issue of cost for me, if I offered free paper instructions, people would take them anyway in order to avoid having to print them themselves, which would push up my costs and the price of the kits

As I said, only one other person has ever complained about this, and only one other person (other than the customer and yourself) has ever enquired if paper instructions are even available (free, at cost or otherwise). Based on this experience I am inclined to think it has not damaged sales of my kits in any way

Thank you for joining in with this discussion Chris. As I have said your products look excellent and being based in the UK I can appreciate how hard it is to keep price attractive to the customer while making a return that makes it worth the needed effort. My concern would be that in the belief your products are not only advertised online (meaning the potential customer has a PC or access to one) would all customers be aware that there are only instructions included that can be viewed with a PC? My only complaint would be if not aware that this is the case being charged extra for them unless I knew in advance.

I look forward to your reply and thank you again.

Customer care and the small amount of extra thought it involves is something sometimes a bit lacking in this business, so consequently I always make customers aware of something like this when I think it might be an issue Darren. In the case of the instructions, if someone made an order by mail ('snail' that is) or by telephone, or even if they have used a friends email address to order, anything that might hint that it could be an issue, I make them aware before I charge them for the goods

I am a firm believer that customers deserve all the facts before they part with their money. I only wish I could afford to provide the paper instructions for free on demand, but sadly I can't and maintain the price. I do try to provide the extras that make a customer a long term customer, but when I can't the least you can do is make people aware of what a kit includes and does not, and any potential issues with that

Chris

Thank you Chris and it is good to hear customer service mentioned.

Just for information the link in your tag and the link in your profile to your website needs editing as you need to remove the https://armorama.kitmaker.net/ from the address portion that you have.

I know Darren, but every time I delete it and save my signature, it seems to reappear by itself. I think the site adds it automatically, and after several attempts I've given up!