Dan & Phil Part 101: Gays In The Wild

Our two favourite full time internet nerds who never go outside!
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kavat
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Dizzy is just working for the other side now, huh?

Some very cute things this round! Both the journal and the blanket are very tempting, but I just can't justify it right now. But everything looks beautiful. I also find it funny that they decided to attack us from two angles, Dan on the twitter front and Phil on the IG front. Cover all bases.
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alittledizzy
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rizzo wrote: Fri Nov 26, 2021 9:42 pm and this exchange had me dead:
test me again, howell. i'm waiting.
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madzilla84
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These are just actually really nice things, like they’re genuinely things I’d buy if they had nothing to do with D&P (and in fact I do, I buy journals and candles and blankets all the time). And the price drops on some stuff are quite incredible, like the £1 shirts, £5 corgi jumper and £10 hoodies? Even the couch club is reduced?? When I think of what I paid for a lot of this stuff full price :facepalm: but that’s the gamble, that you wait and then it’s sold out, but that doesn’t seem to be as much of an issue these days. I’m excited for the new stuff though; obviously can’t fully tell from pictures but the throw looks like it’s really good quality (and the colours!!!), and I love that they’re handmade! The aesthetic of Dan’s set is really pretty, because it’s using the book’s look and a tarot idea. (Oh, and I feel like the card he chose to showcase in his pictures wasn’t an accident :lol:) Also I’m obsessed with the idea of Dan keeping a planner, always thought he’d be an ‘every reminder/appointment on my phone’ guy, but maybe that’s another area he’s trying to be more offline in.

I know we rag on it quite a bit but I do really like how their approach to merch has evolved as they have (and we have); it started out with things like pencil case sets and bags for school, small items like wristbands and stickers, graphic tees, and now a lot of the items tend to be individually more expensive, but are more, like, lifestyle things - things for your home, or more generally useful things (smaller/different size of bags), with some smaller items in there for all levels of affordability (mirror, keychain, bracelets etc). I dunno, I just like it, though I admit I’m totally biased as it’s all the kind of stuff I like anyway. (The clothing is a mixed bag because it depends on your own fashion/comfort preferences of course; I like quite a lot if not most of it)
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Catallena
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I am weak for a good sale, so I put the Don't Talk To Me longsleeve and the Purple D&P Hoodie in my basket and it told me that shipping would be A WHOLE THIRTY SIX EUROS AND NINETY NINE CENTS so I was like Pause. That's a lot of money. On some days I can get a plane ticket AMS -> LDN with a shitty airline for that money. Is It Really Worth It?

Then during the pause the longsleeve sold out, which meant that suddenly shipping for just the hoodie was like 12 euros. So I bought it. :shrug:

*clown music playing in the distance*
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flarequake
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I love the merch, though I can’t justify the cards and idk that they’re something I’d use, but they’re so pretty. I nabbed a few £1-a-pop things with the candle and journal. Love the sneaky cheeky peek at Dan’s with ‘Google dog adoption’ for us all to spot. The shipping problem is beyond, it’s such a shame for people who’d love to buy the things. Too lucky being in the UK for these two, Brexit has really not helped, but I see on twitter it just doesn’t all make sense anyway.
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Catallena
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The shipping costs make absolutely zero sense and the longer I think about the more confused I get.

I just checked to see if the longsleeve that I had wanted would've also shipped at €11,99 if I had been able to order it separately, like the purple hoodie that I did end up ordering. But it was €36,99 again, just like it was on my first attempt of ordering both items. For a shirt?? Absolute insanity. Surely a hoodie is the bigger and heavier package (barely but ok) so where the hell are they pulling those shipping costs for the longsleeve from??

I can't see on what these costs are based on at all, this doesn't even seem to have much to do with Brexit anymore. I understand that small businesses like IRL can't usually get the type of cheap shipping rates that large retailers do, but is having your own merch company even worth it at all if these costs are legit?? It always used to be kind of expensive of course, but now they're even chasing away the customers who were more than happy to pay that.
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I bought the cards. They’re so pretty. Am I going to use them? Probably not. Was it a good use of money? Absolutely not. Did it anyway. The shipping was $22 (which I gather is a steal of a deal compared to shipping to other places!). #noragrats

I saw IRLmerch suggest that Canadians should buy merch from the US shop to lower the cost, but it wouldn’t let me do that. There was no option to ship to anywhere outside of the US… which is weird because you’d think it would be cheaper to send stuff to Canada and Mexico (maybe even to South American countries too) from the US rather than from the Uk?
I'm having a stress.
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alittledizzy
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IRL is getting raked over the coals for the shipping costs today. To the extent that they issued this warning which really makes no sense because I don't think most people's issue is that they were in the wrong store, it's that the shipping is wild if you're anywhere but in the UK ordering from the UK.
They're still maintaining that they don't make profit off of shipping though.
... and defending the high costs.
They only replied once to someone saying that the shipping cost was a glitch and they'd fix it.
They did also respond to a thread on their sizing.


And not from them but I also saw this tweet earlier about the shipping for a t-shirt from the worldwide shop to Asia. Dan's shipping is ten times as much as Dean's, and both are IRL stores.
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shan
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I really don't understand their game plan here. Why are they not acknowledging the elephant in the room that it's the sale items that are driving shipping costs so high? The only sense I can make out of it is that they have recently changed to a new warehouse but the remaining stock at the old one is to be fulfilled by them until it's gone? Still not a perfect theory as apparently there are one or two sale items that aren't causing the same crazy shipping but I genuinely can't think of any other reason for it.

Whatever the answer is, do they really not see how bad it looks to have everything on sale for around $2 then charge $77 for shipping? This is in my local currency but seems pretty consistent with other countries from what I've seen on twitter. With no explanation it looks like the cost of the full priced item plus normal shipping costs. I don't believe that is what's happening but I can see how it'd be very easy to get that impression. A bit of transparency would do them wonders in garnering people's good will. Would people pay the costs? Probably not, but at least we could understand where they're coming from and it wouldn't look so sketchy.
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:shrug: I bought the candle and from the US store and was charged 9.95 shipping. AND I live in the same state as their warehouse :shrug:
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alittledizzy
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Oh I didn't see this one earlier - I guess this confirms they abandoned District Lines for the individual merch lines. Wonder what company the individual ones are through then?
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Catallena
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Some of those explanations are sorta reasonable, but some are uhh... questionable? At best?

Like I saw that the holographic tote bag I already have (and love dearly) was also still on sale, so I added it to my basket to see what the shipping would be rn without the additional items I bought back then.
HELLO?? :shock:

I get it, there are many factors like COVID and Brexit fucking with things rn and I'm sure your explanations aren't completely wrong. But you're talking about air shipping rates getting doubled, meanwhile this is like FOUR TIMES what I paid in January of this year? For less items? If I got a particularly shitty Ryanair flight I could come collect it personally for about the same price.

And I'm assuming this isn't a glitch because after fixing that one item they checked all the others as well right? ...Right?
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I realize I haven't posted here in years but reading this made me curious so I compared the shipping prices for the doodle planner + corgi hat I bought back in July 2021 with how much the doodle planner is by itself now (both on the US store) and uhhhh what....
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alittledizzy
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ritardando wrote: Sun Nov 28, 2021 4:07 am I realize I haven't posted here in years but reading this made me curious so I compared the shipping prices for the doodle planner + corgi hat I bought back in July 2021 with how much the doodle planner is by itself now (both on the US store) and uhhhh what....
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This is the kind of shit that HAS to be in some way a glitch and they're just dismissing every complaint because they... don't believe us? Don't want to check? Want to pretend this launch isn't as messy as it is?
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dontpanic
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Have they tried using stamps.com

Lol for real tho, I mail things a lot for work and this is odd to me. To be fair the past two years in the US the post office has really been gutted and prices have legit gone up a disappointing amount, but it’s the weird differences in prices of shipping based on weight that looks kinda glitchy to me. An eight to fifteen dollar shipping is believable for clothing, but idk how shipping for a planner can be so expensive when you’ve just gotta use a soft paper envelope. They might be overpaying on packing supplies or something because with these shipping prices there’s no way they’re getting bulk prices on supplies or something like that. There are packing companies small businesses use for this side of the business, they need to use something like that if they’re having so much trouble with shopping
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liola
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My company pays less for tracked DHL packages from Asia with double the weight like LOL wtf is this shit
Will probably never be over the BONCAS and the beauty of Phil Lester.

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alittledizzy
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No response from IRL on any fronts today re: prices... but I did notice that Dan's replies were filled with mentions of it when he promoted his merch. I can't help but wonder if Dan and Phil have any discussions about it. Or do they just... blindly trust Martyn with all the merch decisions.
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alittledizzy wrote: Tue Nov 30, 2021 4:28 am No response from IRL on any fronts today re: prices... but I did notice that Dan's replies were filled with mentions of it when he promoted his merch. I can't help but wonder if Dan and Phil have any discussions about it. Or do they just... blindly trust Martyn with all the merch decisions.
Yeah, I wonder how that dynamic works. I've always had the impression that Phil idolizes Martyn. Whenever he mentions him in relationship to IRL it's always with words like "brilliant" and "genius". I can't picture him challenging Martyn's answers or pushing back too hard if he disagrees with something, and that unfortunately doesn't lead to the best business practices. I hope they all figure this ongoing mess out soon though because I don't know how they can look at those shipping prices and be like "yep, that seems reasonable."
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shan
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I've not followed the previous dramas with IRL too closely, is this their normal response? Pick and choose one or two comments to provide a half-assed reply or ignore it completely? I get the feeling that they just plan on letting it blow over but every time this happens the negative reaction from their would-be customers seems to get stronger. I can't get over how unbelievably stupid it is for them to say nothing, surely they have to realise how they handle these situations has to shoulder some of the blame for poor merch sales? There are candles still in stock on the AP store for goodness sake, the first lot usually sell out before I'm even awake!
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alittledizzy
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Looks like IRL is finally acknowledging that there was genuinely a screw up with the shipping prices. They started responding to DMs (a copy/pasted response from what I can see) saying that they'll make an announcement on twitter later, and I saw someone post an email they got saying that there was an error with shipping costs and they will receive a refund on it.
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kavat
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The statement:
They should have reacted a lot faster instead of dismissing people for pointing it out. As always, the communication is the biggest issue.

But I do have some sympathy, as I myself just the other day was trying to figure out why a bunch of orders were getting shipping fees when they were above the free shipping limit (it was a setting that took hours of searching and testing to correct).

Anyway, new google video featuring antlers!

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Catallena
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adorable uncle alert! :rainbowtears:
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shan
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kavat wrote: Wed Dec 01, 2021 8:30 pm
Anyway, new google video featuring antlers!

The amount of times I audibly gasped during this video... Phil should not be allowed to have anything to do with peppermint. This one was actually quite fun despite the absolute chaos going on. Larissa seemed equally clueless and I wanted to scream at my computer watching them both completely miss the huge bunch of mint sitting directly in front of them.

If this is the Christmas themed episode does that mean it was the last one?
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alittledizzy
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It's been a week without a Phil short! I wonder if he was just giving the hometown showdown time to breathe still or maybe he didn't want to post something because IRL worked out the shipping issues.

Or he's just been busy being happy and an uncle and didn't care to. (Though imagine a Phil short that's just him playing with Freja.)
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Catallena
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Speak of the devil.



I'm so glad that Phil is happy with his perfectly normal teeth and didn't #spon veneers because ew.
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