Avoid this vendor!

[Sakzilla]

Do yourself and your wallet a favor and avoid CITIZEN GAMES - do not send them money as they will take your money and not ship product, not return email, and not answer their phone. I don't know if they are defunct or just a pack of thieves, but avoid them.

Stick with a local retailer or someone online you know you can trust like the ENworld store - give your hard earned ducats to reliable retailers and keep the industry strong.

Rant over

 

[KDLadage]

I am not entirely sure how appropriate this sort of thing is here at ENWorld -- especially given the lack of context in which to place it (such as how long you were attempting to contact them, the nature of the transaction, and so forth).

I would hope that such an accusation would not be thrown out blindly... still, I'll let the various mods decide on how long this should stay here...

 

[Morrus]

There's nothing wrong with posting about your bad experiences with companies, publishers or shops, but just saying "These people will steal your money" is just not on.

I'm sure your experiences will be of interest and value to everyone here, but please try and describe your problem in a more reasoned way.

Thanks!

 

[Zenon]

Sorry to hear you had trouble with Citizen Games.

Might I suggest contacting either:

Michael J. Eckert
President
Citizen Games, LLC
d20guru@citizengames.com

or

Rob Stone
stoney@citizengames.com

Both of them are quite active on their Yahoo forums (and are both "good people"). If you send them an email explaining your trouble, I'm sure they would be more than happy to help you out with whatever is wrong.

Keep us posted!

 

[hrafnagud]

I have to side with Sakzilla on this one. I, too, have been raked over the coals by Citizen games. You want details? Here you go...

Several months ago I ordered MasterScreen from Citizen Games. The website indicated they were out of stock, but I received an email from none other than Rob Stone himself showing me a "special" offer on a box of 15 they had found somewhere in the warehouse. Sounded good to me, and I was directed to a prearranged PayPal page.

So far so good. Yet I never received any sort of payment confirmation from either PayPay or Mr. Stone, and a couple of weeks ticked by. Several (read: 5) attempts at communication failed, including at the links previously mentioned.

I did, however, receive an email some three weeks later assuring me Stone was 'at a convention' and apologized for missing the emails. The order, he said, would ship the next day. Seemed reasonable to me, if a tad mis-managed, so I waited. A couple of weeks after that, my patience was growing thin, and I attempted to contact Stone again (since he's the only one to have contacted me at all), this time explaining both my irritation and his need to rectify the situation in short order. He never responded; I never received the product.

It seems PayPal has a 30 day limit on appeals, so the money is lost. As neither Citizen Games nor Rob Stone, who have had ample opportunity to make good on my order, have displayed any interest in actually providing a product for the money they steal, I thought other gamers might want a heads-up. Be aware that Sakzilla is not an isolated case. How many others have been taken, I wonder?

 

[Angcuru]

Technically that is THEFT! So if you want you COULD report them to the coppers. ...but only if you have a record of the transaction.

 

[hrafnagud]

I have proof PayPal took my money, proof I attempted to contact them on several occasions, and I have proof Rob Stone responded, showing he knew the situation. Of course, Citizen Games need only look at their records to determine that they have yet to send me my product. It could be they simply have rotten internal communication (i.e. the order dept. never contacted the shipping dept., or some such thing). I prefer to think they are not intentionally liars and thieves, but until I see a refund, my money has been stolen.

 

[Sakzilla]

Sorry to post and run this morning, but the job took the GM away from the messageboards. I most certainly would not act out frustration or otherwise slam a vendor if I did not have both a just case and the email/reciepts to back up my position.

The history thus far:

Feb 5, 2003 - I order a copy of Masterscreen from the Citizen games website, paying with paypal. The link that I ordered from is still active, and I do have my paypal reciept. NO PRODUCT ARRIVED.

Feb 17, 2003 - I sent a polite, professional inquiry to Rob Stone(stoney@citizengames.com) looking for my order - I forwarded a copy of my reciept at that time.

Feb 19, 2003 - I received a very polite, professional response from Mr. Stone that said:

I'll check on this first thing in the morning and verift that it has shipped
and/or ship it if it hasn't.

Regards,

Rob Stone
President/Creative Director
Citizen Games LLC
(209)463-0852


My thought at this point is there was a snafu in the process, and this guy would get things squared away. NO PRODUCT ARRIVED.

Mar 23, 2003 - after a month of silence and no product, I again emailed Mr. Stone, looking for my product. No reply.

Mar 24, 2003 - In case Mr. Stone was out of pocket, I sent the same message to a different address (faq@citizengames.com) entitled "complaint"

I suppose the "contact us" portion of their website does not really mean "contact us" - it more likely means, from their track record, "don't contact us. since we won't reply." The phone number listed in Mr. Stone's signature takes you to a fax machine-type screeching sound, but one that apparently does not recieve faxes (tried on Mar 24, 2003).

Apr 10, 2003 - I sent an email to the address listed on the paypal account (wiseguys@mobstershop.com) that the citizen games site links to, and got no reply. NO PRODUCT ARRIVED.

Where does this leave me?

No product
No $25
No faith in the internet business called Citizen Games

Their website has been recently updated (Apr 10, 2003) and they continue to offer merchandise - this is not a defunct operation where I got caught as the lights are going out. This is a company that has chosen to take money from me on an inter-state banking transaction and not deliver what was promised.

I just hope too many other gamers do not get caught in this scheme that they have going. I would certainly appreciate any sort of contact from anyone at that company - I can't believe the gaming business will tolerate fraud like this.

 

[citizengames]

MasterScreen status

Sorry for any inconvenience folks may have had. We transitioned our online sales to Warehouse 23 (www.warehouse23.com) about a month ago.

As far as MasterScreen goes. The Quad-fold screen is shipping to retailers soon (arrives in the warehouse next week) and we had planned on sending those instead of the tri-folds. So folks who ordered a tri-fold for $19.95 will actually be receiving a Quad-fold (value $24.95) for being patient.

If you would rather have the tri-fold, please contact me immediately and I'll send one out instead.

Regards,

Rob Stone
President
Citizen Games LLC
stoney@citizengames.com

 

[JohnNephew]

I know the original MasterScreen sold out, and rumor has it there's a new 4-panel version shipping from the manufacturer to Citizen on Monday. I'll bet you'll be taken care of soon.

Meanwhile, I think you've had the misfortune of trying to communicate with a company dealing with a state of flux (things I'm aware of having an impact on them include the implosion of Wizard's Attic, a cross-country move, the GAMA Trade Show, and a lot more).

I think a lot of publishers try and offer mail order as a service to their customers, knowing that local game stores can't or won't always stock the products. This trips them up sometimes, though, because they're not really built around being retailers, and don't have the staff to devote to customer service, following up on lost shipments, etc. Doing all those things directly detracts from their core mission.

In fact, we at Atlas Games got out of mail order completely for this very reason. We now outsource all our mail order to Warehouse 23 -- our website points people to their shopping cart when they need to buy stuff online (because, we presume, they can't find it locally; W23 doesn't discount and does charge shipping, so there's no price advantage to buying online). We want to have a back-up channel to get the games to people, but frankly I think doing our own mail order represented a net loss for us, when you add up the cost of the staff time it ate up (doing it, dealing with the problems that arose, answering the customer service queries, figuring out shipping estimates to the far corners of the globe--only to see people say, "Oh, air mail to Myanmar costs that much? never mind!" etc.), and the opportunity cost of what better things we might do with our time, even though we got full retail from the items we sold. Sure, I might have made $20 on a sale, but making that sale and giving the customer prompt service might have delayed a book from going to press on time, or might have been time that could have been better spent persuading a book chain buyer to pick up hundreds of copies of the same book.

And NOT giving prompt service because you're trying to focus on the big picture of the company's priorities...generates customer service complaints on the web.