Auto Assembly

Ticket Discount Rate For Auto Assembly 2014 Ends In 25 Days!

We just want to remind you all that you’ve only got 25 days to get your tickets for Auto Assembly 2014 at the specially reduced Auto Assembly 2013 rate. After 31st December 2013, prices will be rising. We’ve held off on this price rise as long as we could with the convention but sadly with […]

Auto Assembly 2014 Bookings And Hilton Update

Things are moving along at a breakneck speed here at Auto Assembly HQ and we wanted to bring you all another brief update on where things are with next year’s convention… Booking Confirmation Emails First, as of this afternoon we’re now up-to-date with all of the booking confirmation emails so if you haven’t received yours […]

“Early Bird” Discount For Auto Assembly 2014 Ends Soon

We just want to give you all a quick reminder that the special discount rate on tickets for Auto Assembly 2014 is ending soon! At the moment, as a special offer for those of you who have decided to book early we have frozen ticket prices for next year’s convention at the Auto Assembly 2013. […]

Auto Assembly – Important Information

We’re still working away behind the scenes to get things back up-to-date with all things Auto Assembly right now and things are going really well right and after all the trials and tribulations we experienced during the summer it’s great to finally have a stable PC set up allowing us to give all of you […]

Auto Assembly Is Back!

It’s been a turbulent time for us here at Auto Assembly. For over two months now, our forced hiatus has left many of you frustrated, confused and quite frankly left wondering what has been happening regarding Auto Assembly 2014. As we have said on here, we have been in the incredibly unfortunate position of being […]

Ticket Discount Rate For Auto Assembly 2014 Ends In 25 Days!

December 6th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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We just want to remind you all that you’ve only got 25 days to get your tickets for Auto Assembly 2014 at the specially reduced Auto Assembly 2013 rate. After 31st December 2013, prices will be rising. We’ve held off on this price rise as long as we could with the convention but sadly with our rising costs each year in running the convention this increase has been inevitable so if you want to save at least £5 per adult weekend ticket then hurry and book now before it’s too late.

Auto Assembly 2014 is looking likely to be even bigger than Auto Assembly 2013 and with hotel accommodation details coming very shortly this could not only be our biggest convention ever, but could well be our first ever sell-out event!

Auto Assembly 2014 Bookings And Hilton Update

December 4th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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Things are moving along at a breakneck speed here at Auto Assembly HQ and we wanted to bring you all another brief update on where things are with next year’s convention…

Booking Confirmation Emails

First, as of this afternoon we’re now up-to-date with all of the booking confirmation emails so if you haven’t received yours please check your spam / junk mail folders incase your confirmation email has been redirected into there by accident. If you still haven’t received it, please get in touch. Please remember that we send ALL confirmation emails to the email address that is linked to your PayPal account so this is the one that you need to check!

A few of you were in the position of needing to transfer your passes from Auto Assembly 2013 to Auto Assembly 2014 and these will be processed in the coming days – we have to trace all of the details of the bookings through our records to ensure that these are done properly but rest assured that these will be sorted as quickly as possible.

Hilton Accommodation

We know that you’re all eager to book your rooms at the Hilton and this is something that we’re getting very close to being able to make available to all of you. We’ve been working very closely with the Hilton and we wanted to get everything just right before everything went live, especially with many of you travelling from outside the UK to the convention, and we have a few things in store that we think you’ll love… and some just happen to involve the return of a certain bartender who made his debut at AA2013…

One Day Tickets

We have been asked by many of you when the one-day passes will be going on sale for the convention. We don’t have a specific date for this yet, but it won’t be happening until early next year but at the rate bookings are coming in right now, these may be limited as we will have to give priority to weekend attendees.

Ticket Discount

As you know, we have been offering tickets at a reduced rate for the last few months, keeping them at the same price as Auto Assembly 2013. This discount offer expires on 31st December 2013 and after that, ticket prices will rise so if you want to get your tickets for Auto Assembly 2014 at the best possible rate, then book now!

“Early Bird” Discount For Auto Assembly 2014 Ends Soon

November 16th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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We just want to give you all a quick reminder that the special discount rate on tickets for Auto Assembly 2014 is ending soon! At the moment, as a special offer for those of you who have decided to book early we have frozen ticket prices for next year’s convention at the Auto Assembly 2013. However, because of ever-increasing costs we are having to increase prices for the convention so sadly this special rate can’t last forever…

As such, this offer is only valid until 31st December 2013 so you’ve only got six weeks to get your bookings in before the deadline and after that the price rises on all tickets – adults, youth, senior citizens and family passes. Don’t worry if you’re planning on bringing the next generation of Transformers fans with you though as Under 6s will be unaffected and these will still be free! From 1st January 2014, full weekend adult ticket prices will be £55 and for those of you who want one day tickets, these will be going on sale in the Spring.

Finally, for those of you still asking about accommodation at the Hilton, Auto Assembly Deputy Head Billy Edwards has been working incredibly hard meeting with the Hilton this week and has finalised most of the details with them and we’re expecting to have everything sorted and in place for all of you to be able to book your rooms at the hotel by the end of the month. As such, this is what we will be doing on that front…

We will be sending out the remaining booking confirmations for Auto Assembly 2014 over the next 7 days as normal (but minus the hotel booking details)
Once we get the the hotel details finalised, a second email will be sent to all attendees with the hotel booking link
All future bookings will have a new version of the confirmation email with the hotel details included
At the end of December we will send all attendees a reminder email about hotel accommodation with the booking link to ensure that everyone has the hotel details

Because of our agreement with the Hilton – and at their request – we are not able to make the booking details available publicly or on a direct link here on the website but once we have it we will make every effort to get it to all of you not only as quickly as possibly, but send it again several times throughout the coming months incase any of you have trouble accessing earlier emails. Obviously if you do need it urgently please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Travelling from overseas? Don’t worry as we’re trying to sort out something special for all of you as well as we know some of you experienced problems last year!

Anyway, we’re looking forward to seeing you all in August!

Simon Plumbe

Auto Assembly Committee Head

Auto Assembly – Important Information

November 8th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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We’re still working away behind the scenes to get things back up-to-date with all things Auto Assembly right now and things are going really well right and after all the trials and tribulations we experienced during the summer it’s great to finally have a stable PC set up allowing us to give all of you the support that we’ve wanted to for such a long time!

We do still have a little way to go to play catch up right now though but we are doing our best to keep delays to a minimum although we can’t give you all an exact timescale right now. We do want to thank you for your continued support of the convention, especially all of you who have booked for Auto Assembly 2014 already, but we would ask if you could try to be patient with us still over the next couple of weeks. It is our intention to continue to post regular updates here on the website and our Twitter page on where things are in relation to processing of bookings, hotel accommodation issues, the Non-Attendee Packs and everything else relating to the convention so please bear with us with regards to where we are with everything and if we’re not able to respond to any of you directly it’s not because we are ignoring you specifically but that in order for us to be able to deal with everything as quickly as possible we’re aiming to use the website and our social media outlets to answer all of the common questions that we are being asked far more effectively.

We would ask all of you please that before you consider contacting us with any enquiries for the time being that you check here on the website first for any news or announcements. We know that many of you are eager to book hotel accommodation at the Hilton this year but this is something that we’re working on finalising with the hotel at the moment and we’ll update everyone here about it as we have more. Please rest assured that you’ll all know as soon as we do and for those of you who have already received your confirmation emails, you’ll be emailed again immediately once we get the hotel booking details. One thing we will say is that for Auto Assembly 2013 the Hilton had plenty of rooms well into early 2013 so there won’t be any problems for any of you getting rooms at the moment once bookings go live!

Talking of confirmation emails, we are working through these as quickly as possible as well. We know that some of you have friends who have already received theirs and if you have booked and not received yours, please bear with us and yours will be sent out in due course as we’re working through the backlog of these. Once we’ve completed processing all of them, we’ll post an update on the website so if you haven’t had yours by that point please get in touch and we’ll look into it for you.

One thing we do want to remind everyone is about our working hours for the convention. As you all know, Auto Assembly is run in our spare time on a non-profit making basis and as a team we do have time away from the convention to spend with our friends and families. While we have set up a dedicated “office” for the convention (okay, a spare room in my house with a PC and paperwork!), I’m only using this room weekdays during normal office hours. Outside of this time I’m rarely at the PC so I won’t be able to answer convention-related emails. Also while the convention has a dedicated telephone, this is a mobile phone and we do ask again that calls are kept to within these times. I’m not always in the office / computer room so don’t always have immediate access to any convention records and outside of office hours is time I spend with my family. We do have a weak signal where we live (literally in the middle of no-where) but if you leave a message we will try to get back to you when we can. If we’re not able to take your call for any reason (personal or household reasons or if we have had to go out at all) then again please try to bear with us and just leave a message or email us!

Anyway, on a lighter note, we will be bringing you news of more guests for Auto Assembly 2014 next week including some familiar faces making a return to the convention so stay tuned… we think you’re going to LOVE what’s coming!!

Simon Plumbe

Auto Assembly Committee Head

Auto Assembly Is Back!

October 30th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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It’s been a turbulent time for us here at Auto Assembly. For over two months now, our forced hiatus has left many of you frustrated, confused and quite frankly left wondering what has been happening regarding Auto Assembly 2014. As we have said on here, we have been in the incredibly unfortunate position of being restricted heavily in terms of what we have been able to do with regards to the convention which has left us frustrated here just as much as we know it has done for all of you.

As we have said on here, we were without a working PC immediately after Auto Assembly 2013 meaning that we were not only unable to process bookings for 2014, but also had no access to the majority of our records or emails leaving us unable to work on these. Accessing emails by any other means proved nigh on impossible and simultaneously we were thrust into an impending house move just four weeks after the convention had ended. Anyone who has moved house will testify that it is one of the most stressful things that you can go through in life but doing this in the aftermath of an event like Auto Assembly – having to organise everything at such short notice when we didn’t even know that we were moving until a few days after we returned – became a logistical nightmare!

Moving into a larger house has had its benefits. We have been able to convert a spare room in the house to one that I am using as a library / games room and office for Auto Assembly giving me more space to work in. We do know that some of you may have been under the impression that we have been moving a professional office elsewhere, but having this space in our house is proving to be a real boon, but that has come with problems as well. We’ve had to find everything to unbox (and we still have a large room full of boxes!), and this room needed to be decorated and furnished before it could be used – something that took time after an extremely expensive move.

That would have been sorted then if it hadn’t been for connection issues. We were offline completely for several weeks after moving in, and then had a wireless network in the house. We did get a wireless connection to my room upstairs but because of the construction of the house we found that we had virtually no signal – even with a wireless booster – and managed little more than 5 minutes an hour of active (and very slow) internet. That simply wasn’t going to work. So what were we going to do to get the convention back up and running?

Well, more expense has ensued and yesterday I purchased a powerline networking solution for the house and not only is it proving to be fast, but it’s stable as well. As a result from today we will be doing the following:

Processing bookings in the order that they have been received
Distributing Non-Attendee Packs (With these we are awaiting the delivery of t-shirts. Also, we now live several miles from our nearest post office and need to use two buses to get there so we won’t be able to post as many in one trip as we used to but we will ship them as soon as possible)
Release details of Press Pass applications
Release the 2014 Volunteer Application Pack
Release the 2014 Attendee Information Pack
Upload new videos to our Youtube Channel
Answer all your emails and questions
Finalise details with the Hilton regarding accommodation (initial confirmation emails will be sent without these but the room booking details will be sent shortly afterwards)
And much more…!

I have said it before but please bear with us on this. There is over two months of catch up for us to deal with and well over 1,000 emails for me to trawl through and weed out a lot of spam. It will take a few weeks for us to get back up to speed but we will get around to everything so if you don’t get a reply to emails straight away, please be patient and we will get back to you as quickly as we can.

Anyway, thanks for your understanding and we’re looking forward to seeing you all in August 2014 for Europe’s Largest Transformers Convention. Let’s celebrate the 30th Anniversary of Transformers in style and have an incredible weekend!

Simon Plumbe

Auto Assembly Committee Head

Auto Assembly Important Update

October 20th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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Hi everyone,

After a forced two-month hiatus following a series of major techincal repairs to our office equipment and a long-distance house move for Auto Assembly’s Committee Head Simon Plumbe and his family, we are now pleased to announce that we are back up and running again! Over the last couple of months since Auto Assembly 2013 we have been thrust into one major event after another which has meant that – from the core at least – we have been unable to work on the convention. Briefly, almost immediately since the convention we had the following:

A major PC failure meaning that we were without the computer used for Auto Assembly for almost a month
As soon as we returned home from Auto Assembly we were offered the opportunity to view a house to move – something that we weren’t expecting until the end of 2013. In the space of two weeks, we had to make a 160 mile trip to visit the house and decide whether or not to accept it and then move in from start to finish within a month!
Once moved, we were without a phone line / internet for several weeks leaving us cut off from the outside world completely!
With the plans to set up the new office for Auto Assembly, this meant that the room needed to be completely decorated / carpeted to make sure that there were no future disruptions. This was completed last night, and the PC was finally re-connected about an hour ago.

However, we do ask for you all to be patient with us in the coming weeks. We still have a lot of unboxing to do… a large amount of paperwork and convention related material is safely packed away but it will still take us time to sort the office out and get everything onto shelves and make sense of where everything is. Our internet connection in the office, while working, is relatively unstable so we need to re-wire this and we have a LOT of emails to process. We have a lot of spam to filter out from all our email accounts as well as processing bookings and answering your questions but we will get around to them all as quickly as we can.

With regards to those of you waiting for Non-Attendee Packs, again these will be sent out as soon as we can. We are waiting for delivery of the t-shirts for these but we will keep everyone updated. We will send them out in batches as we can although we now live consderably further from our nearest post office than we used to (10 miles instead of a 2 minute walk) so we won’t be able to send as many as we used to in one go as we are dependent on public transport!

Finally, for those of you who haven’t booked for Auto Assembly 2014 yet, don’t forget that the current discount rate on tickets ends in little over two months so if you want to save money on next year’s convention and see all the great guests that we have lined up – David Sobolov, Mike McConnohie, Townsend Coleman, Peter Spellos and Flint Dille then make sure you don’t miss out. We have a lot more guests to announce very very soon so watch this space…!

Simon Plumbe

Auto Assembly Committee Head

Auto Assembly Moving To New HQ

September 8th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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Many of you can’t have failed to notice that things have been relatively quiet from all of us here at Auto Assembly HQ for the last few weeks. Well, we can now reveal why… we’re moving!

That’s not as drastic as it sounds… Auto Assembly 2014 is still taking place at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel over the weekend of 8th – 10th August 2014 but Committee Head Simon Plumbe, his wife Trish and daughter Hannah are moving to Wales on 11th September. For the last month (from the day Auto Assembly 2013 ended) things have been chaotic at their household preparing for the move not only dealing with as much of the post-convention work as possible and sorting through all the boxes they brought back home, but also packing an entire house ready to move half way across the country!

That’s been compounded by Simon’s ongoing PC problems that have plagued Auto Assembly for the last few months. Since returning from the convention, for the most part he has been without a working PC and unable to do any online work on the convention at all making life even more difficult… but we have great plans in store following the move! Until now, we have been running the convention from home out of cupboards, storage areas and a PC desk set up in a corner of a room at home but not for much longer. Once the move is completed, Simon and Trish are turning a room over in the new house to a home office to run the convention from giving us faster access to paperwork, records and more besides!

The downside is that we will be without any form of internet connection until 23rd September but by that time we hope to have a fully furnished and decorated office ready to roll! In the meantime, Auto Assembly bookings will still be live through the website and we will be processing these and all current bookings once we are back online. We hope to have the discount rate ready for the Hilton shortly and with rooms selling out well in advance of the convention for 2013, booking early is your best way to guarantee your room.

Finally, if you do have any questions about the convention, we will aim to answer your emails as quickly as we can after 23rd September.

Auto Assembly 2013 and 2014 Update

August 19th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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We’d like to thank everyone who attended Auto Assembly 2013 last weekend. We’re still recovering here at Auto Assembly HQ and despite trying to cope with PC troubles we’re hoping to upload the first batch of photos to the website shortly and videos to our Youtube Channel. We’re already reading a lot of the feedback that we’ve seen online and we’re hoping to incorporate a lot of it into next year’s event but we’re glad that so many of you loved the convention… all 833 of you in fact who helped us smash last year’s attendance figure and yet again helped us to set a new European attendance record!

One thing you can’t have failed to notice was that we weren’t alone in the Hilton this year… As well as a couple of other events taking place in the hotel itself, the adjacent National Exhibition Centre played host to the annual Festival Of Quilts (which we have renamed Quiltcon!) taking up an astonishing three halls of the NEC. This had the surprising impact on Auto Assembly that a large number of people attending the event had booked rooms in the hotel splitting residents equally between Quilters and TF fans – a surreal combination and this was the primary reason for the Hilton running out of rooms prior to the convention this year.

Now, this brings me on to a very important message to all of you planning on attending Auto Assembly 2014… once again, the Festival Of Quilts is taking place at the NEC the same weekend as the convention. Now, the Hilton can NOT reserve all of their bedrooms for us so if you want to secure your accommodation for AA2014 we strongly advise booking for the convention sooner rather than later. We have a block of rooms reserved in the hotel for us and this can be extended if we need it but as the hotel sold out well in advance of AA2013 we don’t want any of you to be disappointed.

The best way to make sure you don’t miss out on a hotel room is to book as soon as possible for the convention and then book your room straight away. You won’t need to pay for your room in advance but we don’t want any of you to miss out and have to stay in alternative accommodation. Tickets for Auto Assembly 2014 can be booked on the Auto Assembly 2014 Bookings Page and hotel details will be sent out to all pre-registrants within the next 3-4 weeks.

Simon Plumbe

Auto Assembly Committee Head

First Guests Confirmed For Auto Assembly 2014!

August 11th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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As is traditional for the convention, last night we announced the first guests for Auto Assembly 2014 and this year we unveiled our biggest ever line-up. As well as some great comic guests, for the first time ever we are going to be joined by no fewer than FOUR voice actors! The first batch of confirmed guests are:

Guests Of Honour

Mike McConnohie (G1 – Cosmos / Tracks, RiD – Hotshot / Ironhide)
Peter Spellos (RiD – Skybyte)
Townsend Coleman (Transformers Animated – Sentinel Prime / Tracks)
David Sobolov (Beast Wars – Depth Charge, Transformers Prime – Shockwave)

Plus

Livio Ramondelli – IDW artist
Flint Dille – Autocracy / Monstrosity author, writer of Transformers: The Movie

And we have many more guests to be announced in the coming weeks. Come and join us as we celebrate 30 years of Transformers on 8th – 10th August 2014 at the Hilton Birmingham Metropole Hotel, Birmingham, England. You can book online NOW on the Auto Assembly 2014 Bookings Page.

Auto Assembly 2013 Urgent Update

August 9th, 2013

Simon Plumbe

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Dear friends,

It has come to our attention that a demonstration is taking place in the vicinity of the Hilton today (Friday 9th August 2013) and there are people who will be in costume taking part in this. To ensure that Auto Assembly attendees are not confused with these demonstrators, we ask that attendees refrain from wearing any costumes at Auto Assembly today. While we know that this will be a disappointment to many of you who have put effort into your costumes, we want to ensure that the well-being of our attendees is of top priority so we ask for your patience and co-operation.

We expect this to be over before the end of today and everything to be back to normal tomorrow but please listen out at the convention for updates.

Simon Plumbe

Auto Assembly Committee Head