DriveThru RPGs Customer Service

[jester47]

Is it any good? I had an interesting experience.

Point of advice: Don't order more than five things at a time. If your session times out, you are apparently screwed.

Anyways, I ordered 9 old Wilderlands PDFs and in the time that I was waiting for the downloads to complete, the page expired. So, now I can't download 3 of the things I wanted, and I think I am getting charged for them. I went over their FAQs and Troubleshooting stuff and none of it covers my issue. I sent them an email, but so far the reply has not been prompt.

Anyone have a similar experience?

Aaron.

 

[MrFilthyIke]

My comment went unanswered, so...maybe they aren't getting the emails?

 

[jester47]

You know it is just 6 bucks more to get the 3 things I wanted. I will give it three days. If no reply I will pay 6 extra bucks and then start an awareness campaign that you should be careful about buying several things at once there.

Aaron.

 

[BSF]

So you would really reward poor customer service by re-purchasing the products you didn't get and then provide free advertising with an awareness campaign?

Aaron, you are a good guy. But if you do that you are not encouraging them to improve customer service. Good luck and I hope they do give you a fairly prompt reply that assures you receive the products you paid for.

 

[Eremite]

I've found their service really good. I had two PCs meltdown recently so needed to get fresh download links. I had replies to my emails within a few hours so my experience is that their service is good.

NB: I would still prefer real PDFs instead of the DRM versions but I still think that they provide a good level of service.

 

[jester47]

Trust me if RPG now carried the PDFs I wanted I would be there now. Sorry, I meant an "Awareness Campaign" along the line of "These guys are crooks, don't deal with them."

I will wait and see. Actually I just realised that what I really need is only one of the items. And that is 2.00. So taking your point, I would buy and then complain. And never return. (Except for the PDF of VoLK maybe...). Perhaps Clark and bill can get this stuff on RPGNow. I mean all the necro stuff is basicly DRM disabled, so it really shouldn't matter... And thats all I want...

hrmm. I will give them 3 days. Sending a message each day. After that, its over... Then I crusade.

Aaron.

 

[johnsemlak]

So you would really reward poor customer service by re-purchasing the products you didn't get and then provide free advertising with an awareness campaign?

Aaron, you are a good guy. But if you do that you are not encouraging them to improve customer service. Good luck and I hope they do give you a fairly prompt reply that assures you receive the products you paid for.

If you really want the products, it may be worth paying an extra 6 bucks to get them. I've repurchased products from other PDF vendors when I got tired of waiting.

Of course the company should provide what was already paid for.

My advice to Aaron would be to try to wait a bit longer if possible, and definitley resend the emails.

 

[Gorilla726]

Sorry to be a bugger, but it's sort of related? What is the difference between a PDF and a DRM? (And what's a DRM?)

Gorilla

 

[BSF]

Strictly speaking, the proper terminology would be DRM-enabled PDF.

DRM=Digital Rights Management
The basic concept is to prevent piracy. It is a lofty goal, but the implementation of Adobe's DRM enabled PDFs grate on a number of people, including myself. There are several threads back and forth on what the values/drawbacks of DRM enabled PDFs are so I will avoid retreading that issue.

For many people, in many cases, you won't be able to tell the difference between a DRM-enabled PDF and a plain PDF. For some people, there will be issues, up to and including an inability to read a DRM-enabled PDF on your OS of choice.

If you are using a mainstream, current OS with the latest version of Acrobat reader, then you likely won't notice a difference. If you are using something like a linux OS and Adobe hasn't released a new version of Acrobat reader, then you won't even be able to use a DRM-enabled PDF.

Well, unless you crack the DRM functionality, which you cannot legally do in the United States. Even trying to crack it puts you in potential violation of the DCMA.

I'm trying to avoid snarky commentary so this might seem a bit scattered and possibly less helpful. The DRM debate raged hot and heavy when DTRPG opened back in June and I see no need to open that box fully.

DRM enabled PDFs include protections to try to give the publishers more rights on controlling how they are used. In theory, this will avoid piracy.

 

[Morrus]

Trust me if RPG now carried the PDFs I wanted I would be there now. Sorry, I meant an "Awareness Campaign" along the line of "These guys are crooks, don't deal with them."

Remember that no publicity is bad publicity. The stores that fail are the ones that nobody has heard of.