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

To keep me as a customer, a product has to fill a certain niche that a) interests me, b) is affordable and c) is a fresh outlook on an older system. For example, Monte Cook's Arcana Unearthed is WONDERFUL because it takes what is good from the old PHB 3.5, weeds out what isn't, and creates a whole new playing experience. Same for Blue Rose. I tend to notice authors as well as publishing companies.

To lose me, all a product needs to do is become outdated or to the point where it is irritating to me. Examples: WotC's 'update' to 3.5 really angered me, so I decided not to upgrade and keep my 3.0 books. Thanks to www.d20srd.org, I don't need to buy the new books. Also, I was really into the concept of d20 Modern when it first came out, and I really went crazy getting as many books as I could... until I actually PLAYED it. Now I find it grossly irritating to create PC's or NPC's and the classes too unbalanced and quirky. (Example: every PC in my game took 1 level of Fast so they could get the +4 Defense bonus and free Evasion talent. Really makes direct magical attacks and grenades quite ineffective, and the extra defense makes direct physical attacks harder to do damage. Sure, I could have used mental magic/psionics on 'em, but that would have gotten old really fast).

Too bad, too, because I would have liked to check out d20 Apocalypse.
 

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The wonderful thing about the internet is that companies never lose me. Because I'm able to get enough information about their products to be an informed customer in advance and never buy from companies that don't interest me. In essence, most never gain me as a customer unless they've got a good product.

It's extremely hard for me to "get personal" about a book or product that didn't live up to my expectations. One caveat: There are one or two small companies whose proprietors post a lot on ENWorld (generally in a snarly, negative fashion) who I refuse to buy from. It's probably unfair to them, but I hate giving money to someone who behaves like a donkey. ;)
 

About the only thing an RPG company could do to lose me as a customer is act in such a way that I start thinking about them personally instead of commercially. If a company's rep acts like a jerk here, for example, or does something so that it becomes difficult for me to seperate the person from the corporate entity. Once I start thinking that it's my hard-earned cash going to someone I don't like instead of it just being another purchase, it's over. Off the top of my head, I can only think of two companies that are on the 'do not buy' list.

Fortunately, the industry folks that hang out here are paragons of gentility -- friendly, helpful, and generous to the community.

Quality-wise, most companies have a mixed track record. I rarely buy blindly anymore, so I usually have some idea what I'm getting into. Unless a company put out an absolute piece of crap and then refused to acknowledge it or take steps to correct the problem, I can't see abandoning them completely. I'd scrutinize future efforts more closely, though.

I must say, I don't understand all the hate for 3.5 though.
 

Gads, the knee-jerk WotC bashing here is almost as tiresome as knee-jerk Microsoft bashing or knee-jerk Wal-Mart bashing.

These are big(*), successful companies. Get over it and just accept the fact that they dominate their respective industires.

(*) Big in a relative sense in WotC's case -- obviously not big on the same scale as Wal-Mart!

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To answer the original questions:

To lose me, a company has to consistently produce sucky products with no indication that they are learning from their mistakes and trying to change for the better. The prime example being Mongoose. (I've heard bad things about Fast Forward but never seen or bought one of their products.)

To win me back, the company would have to own up to its mistakes and suckitude, and then produce several good, solid products over a span of months in order to show that their change for the better wasn't a fluke or a bait-and-switch. Although frankly, once a company loses my business, I cannot imagine any circumstance under which I would be able to view their products with an un-cynical eye.
 

Joshua Randall said:
Gads, the knee-jerk WotC bashing here is almost as tiresome as knee-jerk Microsoft bashing or knee-jerk Wal-Mart bashing.

These are big(*), successful companies. Get over it and just accept the fact that they dominate their respective industires.

(*) Big in a relative sense in WotC's case -- obviously not big on the same scale as Wal-Mart!

= = = = =
....

What has a company's size or success have to do with anything? IME it is certainly possible to resent a company -- large or small, successful or unsuccessful -- for its policies and/or products.

As for the 'knee-jerk WotC-bashing' -- maybe it is not knee-jerk. A lot of people were not impressed by the 3.5 'upgrade' for perfectly 'non-knee-jerk' reasons.

I don't see why being irritated with an expensive new edition of a recently released game, a new edition that does not even maintain 'reverse compatibility' with the earlier edition, is necessarily 'knee jerk'.

The great thing about capitalism is that consumers can express their frustration with a company by not buying that company's products (even if it is, gosh, big and successful).
 
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A company can lose me with consistantly poor products (EX: Mongoose's early Quintessentials) or a single unabashedly poor product (EX: the first Creature Collection from Swords & Sorcery studios).

However, an extremely good product (EX: Mongoose's Connan) or a line of good products (EX: the Scarred Lands material from Swords & Sorcery Studios). Nowadays I tend to be more careful with what I buy, usually reading reviews before considering a product (unless it's something I've really been waiting for). This leads to most of my purchases being ones I'm pretty pleased with.
 

I'm not sure whether there's any company that really "lost me" as a customer in the sense of the question. The only one that comes to mind might be Mongoose. After several products of mediocre quality with really bad editing I looked very closely at reviews, and I didn't like what I saw. I didn't buy anything from them during quite a long time. The first new buy was 'Conan - the Atlantean Edition', which I found quite okay. I also bought their Paranoia XP game.

Many other companies never got me as customers, either because of horrendous reviews (FFE), because their topics didn't interest me (Avalanche Press; the covers didn't really play such a big role), or some funny detail like place names in bad German ;) (TLG).

Although I like Green Ronin stuff in general, I haven't bought anything for quite a while, because there was nothing on the production list that enticed me. I'm not into pseudo-historical settings, and I have to admit that I never heard of the 'Black Company'. Their problems with their distributor contributed, too. Frex, I still haven't bought Blue Rose, although I had ordered it three times, and each time the order was cancelled by the vendor.

The thing with WotC is a bit different. I wasn't amused about the early release of 3.5e, but first I thought it would be just a cleanup with a few corrections, and I bought the new core books because I liked to have a print with included errata. How wrong I was! Anyway, this ended my huge WotC spending spree. But this is not to be seen in the sense that they lost me as customer and, therefore, doesn't fit the thread title. I'm just much more picky with what I buy nowadays, and I've only bought a handful of 3.5 products from WotC so far. I don't see this as some kind of silly 'punishment' :D of the company, but as a much more healthy buying practice on my part. Perhaps, I should be thankful for this ;).
 

There really is only one company I do not purchase from for lack of.. hmm.. quality (Mongoose). Their Drow City book was the last straw for me, before that I do own most of the initial Q series, Encyclopaedia series, The Planes series and the City book series.. That I recall off hand. These days I refer to them as a shining example of what a decent idea can look like, with poor execution. I really do wonder if some of these books were actually playtested.

Getting me back.. hmm.. interesting question. I think thats their problem not mine. Would fixing the product and making it available be unreasonable? Now I know that costs money to do but perhaps they should have thought of that before publishing certain books. It comes down to if Mongoose wants me back as a customer then they have to show me that their goal is to sell me a good product, not just sell me anything to get my money. Seems more like a con game then publishing, however that is my opinion.
 

Business practices, ethics, etc, usually get to me. When I hear of a company that used plagiarized work (and no, I'm actually not even speaking of Mongoose here), or a company that doesn't pay its writers or artists, or relies too much on its crusading fans to write reviews and withholds review copies from those they think will give a bad review, or has a spokesperson who is just consistently a dink on our forums ... stuff like that.

It doesn't happen a lot.

Other things that irk me or can turn me off ... announcing a product and then not following through (smacks of staking a claim to scare off other companies, but if you don't follow through then you just kept someone else from filling that niche); a company or product line with a lot of bad reviews; a company or product line that has been out for a while and has garnered NO reviews; a company that behaves as though the customers owe them something; a company that openly bickers with customers or with other companies.
 

Product quality will rarely be sufficient to make me swear off a company, though in many cases it is quite clear to me that the company's design philosophy is such that they are selling what I am not buying.

But (a bit of an echo of Eric here), behavior of the company's representatives goes a long more ways in determining if I will purchase anything from them.
 

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