In an effort to maximize our most valuable resource—our employees—Wizards of the Coast will end the Direct Sales Program on August 31, 2018, in the United States and Canada.

Our goal is to free our support team to spend more time working one-on-one with WPN members.

As of today, we have stopped processing new Direct Sales applications, and we will stop fulfilling orders on August 31. If you would ordinarily choose Wizards for your Prerelease product, you'll want to select another option when you schedule Guilds of Ravnica.

Meanwhile, our Authorized Distributors stand ready to meet your needs.

Here's what else you need to know:

Why now?

A few reasons.

First, the program is simply anachronistic. When we launched it, way back in 1999, hobby distribution was wildly different. Product was often scarce. Distribution was typically handled regionally, with unpredictable costs and shipping times. Wizards Direct was meant to be a stabilizing force.

But today’s distributors have warehouses all over the continent. They’re faster, more efficient, more reliable. They're better equipped to get you the products you need, when you need them. After all, it's what they do.

And finally, the program simply uses more of our resources than can be justified by the value it delivers to retailers. So we're reallocating those resources to where we believe they will be more valuable to WPN members.

This change frees our support reps to work one-on-one with WPN members—for example, all stores will have a dedicated representative. (Read about this and other changes to our support team—including new phone hours—here.)

Big news day! Here’s what else is happening:

Updates to Alcohol and Age Restrictions. We’ve updated a couple policies. Details here.
Support Changes: New Hours, Dedicated Reps. Details here.

How does this affect Retail Support?

The sunsetting of direct sales brings some big changes to our support team, and we’re excited about it.

Read about the changes in full here. In the meantime, here’s the short version:

Reps will work with you one-on-one. Our support staff consists of two teams: “support” and “development.” Support troubleshoots while development works with stores to help them make the most of their WPN membership. This change allows us to expand the development team, and each member will have a fixed list of stores.
Troubleshooting help will continue as-is. Questions like “where are my FNM promos?” or “how do I run this event in WER?” will continue to work in a traditional call center format: call in with your question, get an answer from the first rep available.

New Hours: 9–5, Monday–Friday, with an hour-long closure at noon. Starting now, phone hours are limited to weekdays.

If you have any questions, please reach out to Retail Support.