Well, I suppose it is as "resolved" as it is going to get as far as I am concerned. To be fair to l'arsenal, I have NOT contacted them since receiving my replacement order, as I am just plain sick and tired of dealing with them and hearing nothing but excuses and promises.

Shortly after posting my comments on these forums, I did hear from l'arsenal again, and in their correspondence they did accept responsibility, and promised my order was going out soon with "extra l'arsenal items included" as a way of apology. I will say that this email took me aback a little, because it also came with a sincerely written request that I remove my posts on the public forums, as it could potentially take away business from them... For my part, I chose to ignore this email and request; I was uncomfortable removing my posts until the issue was resolved, and I felt it was asking me to have too much faith in a company that has lost my trust.

The replacement order arrived last week, and honestly is confusing and frustrating. The planes were shoe-horned into the smallest box possible for shipping, each raft of planes in it's own baggie, wrapped with a single piece of thin bubble wrap around the whole lot of them. There was no chance at all that this package would arrive to the USA all the way from Morocco without damage to the contents. The planes that were not printed with the resin "cage" around them were of course, all damaged. The planes I received were of varying degrees of quality, with a few (printed in the darker resin) being absolutely beautiful gems with crisp details and easily removed from the sprue. Most of the planes were OK at best, printed in the more brittle light gray resin and had thick support stubs attached to the smallest detail parts, and the printed details a bit "softer" and not as crisp. Then there were a handful of planes that were printed like crap again, with missing wings and blobs of resin. And of course, there were one or two missing from the order completely, though they wouldn't have fit into the packed box they sent me anyway. There was no additional l'arsenal items (not that I expected any but they did say they were sending something in their email, I figured maybe they would have thrown in some extra aircraft which would have been nice and raised the chances of getting more high-quality prints out of the bunch).

So overall, the outcome is a mixed bag. L'arsenal offered me a 10% discount on a future order in the final shipping email they sent, after all the issues I have had with this order, I did find the offer to be a bit insulting, especially given the lack of attention to detail even with my replacement order (they STILL couldn’t get this original order right, yet want me to trust them with more of my money on a future order? Sorry, fool me once…).

It really is a shame, the planes that were printed properly are great, and well worth the money, but there just seems to be no quality control or consistency there. The packaging of the order, to me is simply lazy and careless; as soon as I looked at the box I knew that there would be damaged planes in there. To me it was simple common sense, there is no way a box of delicate model parts is going to survive shipping anywhere, let alone overseas, when it is packed so carelessly and crammed into such a tight space with hardly any dunnage to absorb impact or weight of other packages.

In the end, I do have enough planes of "acceptable" quality to at least populate the deck of USS Kitty Hawk, but I still do not feel that l'arsenal has actually delivered the quality products I expected when I paid for them so many long months ago. I just don't have the mental energy to put into trying to get the entirety of what I expected out of this order any more and it is not worth the headache. I know that I would still be very weary of placing an order with l'arsenal, so they are off my list of vendors/manufacturers that I will place future orders with until/unless there are some significant quality and accountability changes. .