Scrutiny: Secretweapon washes (part 1)

Its been a while since I've done a scrutiny so here is one I had been eagerly anticipating. The Secret Weapon Miniatures washes. I have had my eye on these for quite a while. It is a set of 30 washes (or less if you don't want them all) that should really help with the washing and tinting of miniatures.

The online experience was adequate, nothing bad at all. The usual Paypal option applies and shipping to Europe was not excessive, but not cheap either. It should be said that companies like these cannot compete with shipping costs like Amazon. Amazon loses money on everything they send, and they have a much better deal with the postal services due to their sheer size.

That's where things hit a snag. I waited for over a month, and no washes. I contacted them and was surprised by quick and really good customer service. They informed me that it should have arrived, that they 'have had a few packages dissapear recently to europe' and that they would re-ship it. They even provided tracking numbers for the first and second package. Good stuff.

I waited another bunch of weeks and had just hit another email at them (to which was responded really quickly and sincerely) when the second package arrived. Sweet! I got to unpacking, and look at these beauties.

Yes my precious washies!

This prompted me to quickly build another paintrack to dedicate solely to washes.

Starting to look like something

The colours themselves have colourful titles like 'concrete' and 'baby poop', but are actually quite descriptive. The set comes with all the strong base colors like very red, very green, etc. but it also has a great selection of things like dried blood, concrete, flesh wash, etc. Some of them are glossier then others. Nothing a good matte medium or matte sealer won't fix though.

Then came the actual testing. I shook every bottle thoroughly before beginning (some thickening was to be expected after such a long travel afterall). Unfortunately I ran into another snag. Pretty much all of the bottles seemed hopelessly clogged (27/30). I had big splotches of wash over my painting area twice. I started popping off the tops of the bottles to see what was up. This is what greeted me.

Not what I was hoping for

This was a problem. I tried mixing some of it back in, but I believe the actual intent of the washes was ruined. What I have gotten to use has been fine so far, but most of these were unusable. So I went back to mailing the Secret Weapon people. Once again I got extremely good customer service. They have since send out another package, with another 30 washes. They have personally inspected this shipment and apologized quite a bit. I almost felt guilty for having to knock on their customer service door again.

So the actual verdict will have to wait until the replacement batch comes in. In the meanwhile I can give these guys a rating on customer service. Also USPS? Please sell the company to some people that actually know how to deal with postal services. Idiots.

Customer service: 10/10