What does a company have to do to lose you as a customer? To win you back?

[Akrasia]

At lot of people have said that the nature of the comments posted by representatives of various companies on this board (and other ones) has turned them off.

I find this a bit surprising, since I'm not really aware of many company representatives posting here, and those that I am aware of generally seem pretty reasonable (Chris Pramas, Scott Greene, Ed Cha, Rasyr, et al.).

Perhaps the 'bad behaviour' mainly existed back before I started visiting a year ago?

 

[Kanegrundar]

Some of the behavior is quite recent. There have been comments about consumers being stupid for ever buying a bad product. Complaints are meaningless. Listening to the fans and giving them what they want is poor business. And so on.. These are comments I want to hear from guys I support.

Kane

 

[Arnwyn]

I find this a bit surprising, since I'm not really aware of many company representatives posting here, and those that I am aware of generally seem pretty reasonable (Chris Pramas, Scott Greene, Ed Cha, Rasyr, et al.).

Perhaps the 'bad behaviour' mainly existed back before I started visiting a year ago?

No, it's probably that you're not aware of the company representatives posting here. As Kanegrundar said, there are recent examples.

 

[Storm Raven]

WotC never had me and never will until they start putting out stuff for OD&D(1974)

i do buy their stuff. but i don't respect any of it.

Of course, they don't care about your respect. So long as you are giving them your money, they are happy.

 

[Crothian]

At lot of people have said that the nature of the comments posted by representatives of various companies on this board (and other ones) has turned them off.

I find this a bit surprising, since I'm not really aware of many company representatives posting here, and those that I am aware of generally seem pretty reasonable (Chris Pramas, Scott Greene, Ed Cha, Rasyr, et al.).

Perhaps the 'bad behaviour' mainly existed back before I started visiting a year ago?

People also don't just read En World. The comments could happen on other general sites or the publishers own sites.

 

[Turjan]

I find this a bit surprising, since I'm not really aware of many company representatives posting here, and those that I am aware of generally seem pretty reasonable (Chris Pramas, Scott Greene, Ed Cha, Rasyr, et al.).

Perhaps the 'bad behaviour' mainly existed back before I started visiting a year ago?

Those that you mentioned are certainly not the kind the posters above were talking about. Nevertheless, I know of two such recent incidents on EN World, and in one I was personally involved.

 

[Setanta]

People also don't just read En World. The comments could happen on other general sites or the publishers own sites.

I can think of one publisher in particular who was a complete jerk on his own forums. I can't say I was surprised when they went out of business.

 

[bbarrington]

Paizo just lost me as a customer this week. I pre-ordered the Shackled City hardback from them in the hope that I might actually receive it the day of release. Now, I've been burned many times in the past when pre-ordering stuff from a publisher and it ending up in stores prior to getting to me. It's why I almost didn't pre-order from Paizo for this but they seemed to understand that they needed to be sure the pre-orders arrived at the same time as the store copies so I went ahead and put in the order.

Then in the past week the excuses started showing up on the Paizo boards. The shipments from Canada hadn't arrived, they had gone to the distributors first and not Paizo, etc. The release date comes this week and stores across the country have it but only a few dozen pre-order customers do. This the last thing I'm buying from Paizo's store and once my new subscriptions run out I'm not renewing. They knew how important this release was and to not ensure their pre-order customers came first is just wrong. Paizo's response is "Well, we learned a lesson here. It won't happen again". Well, so did I.

 

[Umbran]

So, what would a company have to do to lose you? And then possible more importantly, what do that have to do to get you back?

Generally speaking, I don't shop by company. I usually don't even look at who published the book. I shop by product and content.

I have a small enough budget for gaming materials that I don't impulse buy. I generally do some research first, so I'm rarely surprised by a poor quality product. Without the worry of being bitten by such a surprise, there's no need to exclude an entire company for quality reasons.

Unless I hear about some sort of horrible business practice, or that the production staff regulary kicks puppies or something, I have no reason to avoid an entire company.

 

[danzig138]

Perhaps the 'bad behaviour' mainly existed back before I started visiting a year ago?

Just to clarify, my experiences with an unpleasant company person were on the company's boards, not these.