Jagjaguwar

For better or worse, I guess, these recent helmets look a lot better than the Wave 1 examples I have seen (or at least the Wave 1 helmet I received.) Seems they've upgraded the shoddy packing materials mine arrived in, too. No exaggeration, it looked as though my helmets (all 3 of them: the 1st that was cracked in transit, the 2nd that had subpar weathering that I rejected, and the 3rd that was somehow the exact same helmet as the #2, with exact same paint job I had asked be fixed) were just wrapped loosely in a single piece of bubble wrap, and placed in boxes that half-filled with packing peanuts, the majority of which came to rest inside the helmet and thus offered no protection whatsoever. Hopefully these do get offered again, I think they're nice lids, in spite of my less than stellar personal experience. More people should get to have one. edit: would be curious to hear whether any Wave 1 orders got that little info booklet. Didn't get one of those.

Beautiful! (Side note since the main RS thread locked, but is anyone else from wave 1 still waiting for any kind of email from them about a replacement?)

Very nice, that looks great Sergiu. Anxious to hear what the packaging material is like. Also haven't gotten any email yet... Hopefully this week.

Yep, wave 1 waiting on that email about my replacement. I feel like we're close though. ...I hope.

New image up on Facebook showing what's apparently the 2nd wave, painted and weathered up. Weathering looks great I think, has a few more nicks than just the black spray paint mine has. Could also be the pic, but wondering also what's going on with the replacements, still.

Wonder if I'll see a replacement before September. Coming up on 4 months since my email letting them know the helmet I'd received was damaged, and 3 months since my most recent follow-up status email inquiry, which is as yet unanswered. I don't even care when it comes, I just want to hear something back, and for them to get it right the second time.

Yep. Wouldn't have expected an email before Celebration, knowing how hectic things must be, but then once again hope is raised by words like this. I don't see the situation as negatively as the guy who wrote that long Facebook post, and I don't think there's any malicious intent to mislead or lie to customers. I think they're just in well over their heads, both with the number of orders to process and with the complexity of these scouts. I wonder if they shouldn't do something to start limiting the amount of work they have at one time? Perhaps some sort of limited stock system which would allow however many units of each item to be sold within a given time frame. That way, maybe people wouldn't be able to buy what they wanted right when they wanted to, but they also wouldn't have to be waiting for months and months and getting angry. Would some people be impatient and buy elsewhere? Sure. But I think a lot of those lost sales are the same people who are most frustrated when there are extended delays.

Going beyond that, has anyone gotten a word out of RS since the middle of April? That was my last response to anything.

Heh, shame on me for thinking they were on their way, I guess.... I had planned to put together the Anovos TK kit I have, and then depending on how that went (and how I liked doing the work), either get an RS TK armor kit or go for the completed TK commission. Much less certain of that now. Everything will really hinge on how the two things I have on order go.

Do you mean we have to cover the shipping, or just that we have to send back the bad one first to receive a replacement? I'm assuming that since you were earlier in the 1st wave than I was, that I'll be getting a message to do the same in the next week or two. And your damage looks a lot worse than mine, even. Ugh. Seems like a good bit of the issue is inadequate packaging, although my visor wasn't attached correctly either, and could close all the way or open more than about 1/2 way. Not sure if the packaging will be improved with the replacements, though I would hope so. *edit: Re-read your comment and saw that you answered the question already. So it's basically both paying to ship and having to send the bad to receive the replacement. That's really disappointing.

Had to scale down the image size, but here's part of my set of issues... Might or might not be able to see that the crack extends from above the light-reflected area of the cap, down past where the back flares out. All told about 3-4" in length IIRC. Sent an email asking if this was going to be the norm for these, due to the "rough, wonky," everything, like the other RS stuff I have, and was told it's definitely not supposed to be like that. Maybe an easy fix for some here, but I think the only thing I could manage would be damaging it FURTHER to try for a sort of "as it appears in present day" kind of beat up look. Heh, not my first choice.

Not planning to send mine back until I have a good one in my possession, they tell me they actually want it shipped back and not destroyed, and they confirm that they'll refund my shipping costs. Can't really fix the damaged/cracked paint/primer/helmet, nor do I feel like I should have to I guess.

I believe wave 1 was about 25 helmets. Unsure of the size of wave 2. Hoping to hear more about replacement helmets soon. Glad they're updating again.

I'm beginning to think we won't be seeing these things until after Celebration Europe. I'm also reconsidering the plan I'd had to order RS TK armor (kit or commissioned, unsure which), as I'm already waiting on a complete TIE commission and don't really feel like doing this again any time soon.