Firestorm Armada, First Contact

Update: I contacted Spartan Games via their web site on 7 December. Within five hours they responded and shipped replacement parts. That's astonishingly good customer service.

These Firestorm Armada models are, hands down, the worst quality minis I've seen.  Even the worst quality Forge World resin model is a peach compared to the best of these Spartan models.  Let's take a tour, shall we?

Bubbles revealed when trimming misaligned mold edges

Mis-aligned molds happen.  I can work with that.  Even ones so misaligned that a hobby knife and twenty minutes are required to clean the model.  Even ones where a couple millimeters of material must be removed.  But to do that only to find bubbles -- many bubbles -- is frustrating.  Flaws concealing flaws.  This will require Green Stuff all around.

2-3mm of excess resin; more bubbles

This amount of excess resin will require a serious sanding effort, probably from an orbital sander.  And because it's epoxy resin, that means a respirator.

4mm shrinkage on a 90mm model

But, it's not worth it to sand this model, because one half has shrunk so much that it no longer fits together.  Poor, poor, poor quality.

Amazingly, all three ship models demonstrated all of these flaws. We're three for three here at the Baxcave. And, stunningly, it's not just the models.  Each of these ships comes with a beautiful, clear acrylic flight stand to suspend it in space.  Only one of the first six I checked actually fit within its pre-drilled hole.  The rods are slightly too large, so the bases must be re-drilled.  And the ship stat cards which arrived in the pack are all mis-cut, missing edges of the printed tables.  What a mess.

I am deeply disappointed and seriously considering any further time or effort on Spartan Games' products.

And it's not just me.

Am I mad?  Is it a conspiracy of bad luck?  I'd love to hear your experience with their models.