I reached that point 6 months ago, at least. They refuse to keep their servers up to speed with the demand, and they could give a shit because they sell out every time. Very frustrating, so I just stay away to avoid that shitty feeling of a missed drop.
We are actually always looking into ways to improve the website (we are currently hosted on multiple dedicated servers, costing a stupid amount of money), but the most common answer we get is "I'm really not sure how to handle these acute loads". If anyone knows any great programming companies that can help us out, please contact me.
Also, they should increase the print runs and the prices of the prints so that its more manageable.
The vast majority of our customer base seems to feel differently, and we try to respect that.
I just don't like them because they treat their customers like a pack of mules. Notwithstanding the opportunity to respond to criticisms like mine here on the forum, the Mondo crew dodges and leaves defense to good folks like you.
Other than sometimes not being able to meet demand (which is always a hard thing to pinpoint. we'd never have thought Gremlins 2 would be up for sale for so long), if folks are unhappy with the customer service they're receiving, they can always feel free to contact me directly.
BUT, because of their rise in popularity and the lack of recognition of long time buyers, I no longer buy everything that they put out and in fact have started trimming out the unnecessary prints from my collection. As for recognizing long time buyers .. I wonder if that has anything to do with management .. Now I want to preface this by saying that I feel that on a business level as well as artistic level I feel that the current Mondo team is great and they are doing a great job. But... I have been buying since Doyle was running things. But Mondo seemed to really get into the limelight when the current team took over .. So maybe they have a harder time recognizing who has been a long time buyer and who hasnt. I mean Im sure to this day after every drop they still get emails from "huge fans" who "Love the art" and "hates flippers" and they "really want this piece to hang on their walls" blah blah blah .. But they cant tell the difference between someone that just started buying or a flipper with a new email address.
It's true, it is very hard to tell. Plus, the reality is that some of the folks that have been buying every print for years put them straight on eBay too, so it's a large ball of yarn to try to untangle. If you guys have any examples of customer loyalty programs in the collectible markets that you've been happy with, I'd be happy to take a look at them.
We are not some huge company that doesn't care about our customers. We value them greatly. We've tried to solve every problem that we're currently having (website issues, rampant flipping, etc), but have not found solutions that are viable. RE the flipper thing, which tends to garner a lot of discussion lately...I've watched poster artists get popular and try to weed out flippers, and most times they end up banging their heads up against the wall. Emek failed miserably at it. Shepard Fairey tried to police eBay for about six months, then gave up. We are lucky enough to work with artists that people will flip no matter what (look at Tyler's lotteries, which are a one-on-one interaction, still plenty of flippers), so it will probably always be an element of our business (which does at times suck). We just try to make posters that anyone will even give enough of a shit about to discuss.
Cheers.