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

[Dark Psion]

Any of these reason mentioned will probably make me reconsider my next purchase from a company and here is a good example of how to annoy me into leaving.

Today, Best Buy is releasing an exclusive Battlestar Galactica UK edition on DVD and I had preordered it. But then I discovered that the American release is comming in Sept. The UK verson has the 13 episodes and a few deleted scenes. The USA version has that and the mini series, additional deleted scenes, all the podcasts and new podcasts for the early episodes with additional commentary as well as various behind the scenes bits.

Oh and it will be cheeper as well

When I went back to Best Buy's website to cancel, I discovered you can't cancel on their website, you have to call them. I call them and then have to deal with a "press 1 for this, press 2 for that" for 15 minutes only to be told I would have to wait for an opperator.

By this point, I had decided this was the first and last purchase I would make at Best Buy online.

 

[Akrasia]

.... I don't see this as some kind of silly 'punishment' of the company ...

Pity. You're missing out on that 'warm, smug, morally-superior' feeling.

 

[Aeson]

Any of these reason mentioned will probably make me reconsider my next purchase from a company and here is a good example of how to annoy me into leaving.

Today, Best Buy is releasing an exclusive Battlestar Galactica UK edition on DVD and I had preordered it. But then I discovered that the American release is comming in Sept. The UK verson has the 13 episodes and a few deleted scenes. The USA version has that and the mini series, additional deleted scenes, all the podcasts and new podcasts for the early episodes with additional commentary as well as various behind the scenes bits.

Oh and it will be cheeper as well

When I went back to Best Buy's website to cancel, I discovered you can't cancel on their website, you have to call them. I call them and then have to deal with a "press 1 for this, press 2 for that" for 15 minutes only to be told I would have to wait for an opperator.

By this point, I had decided this was the first and last purchase I would make at Best Buy online.

I bought a TV from them online. We picked it up in store. It was ok I was in and out quick. It would have been quicker but I had to wait for the guy that had my TV to get off of it and wheel it out to the truck. The guy was sitting on it when I walked up to the door and he sat there for several minutes.

I had thought about getting the UK version. Thanks for the heads up. I'm sorry you had to learn about it the hard way.

 

[rogueattorney]

In 1995 I said, out loud to myself that, "TSR will never get another dime of my money!" (And they never did, by the way.)

Here's the sequence of events...

1. 1983 and later, starting with Ravenloft, peaking with Dragonlance, and continuing throught the rest of their existance as a company, TSR completely changed their philosophy on adventure design from site-based and plotless to event-based attempts at novels.

2. 1984-1988, They weighed down what had been a relatively compact rule-set (1e) with a number of ill-conceived, poorly play-tested rules expansions, while at the same time doing the exact same thing to their rules lite, introductory version of the game (BECM D&D).

3. 1989, The admittedly needed new edition of AD&D changed what didn't need to be changed, didn't change what did need to be changed, and otherwise sucked out all the charm from 1e, leaving us with something too generic and yet with too many world assumptions, too rules-heavy yet not customizable enough. The DMG was useless and the Monstrous Compendiums were a joke. The adventures and other supporting products were of such uneven quality, that buying any of it was a gamble. After only two years of its existance as a published setting, they decided to blow-up the Forgotten Realms to fit the rules changes.

4. 1991-1994, After putting out a great series of high quality supplements for D&D, and the awesome Rules Cyclopedia (seriously, the run of D&D product from c. 1987 to c. 1991 from Bruce Heard, Aaron Allston, etc. made the AD&D stuff of the time period look 3rd rate), TSR inexplicably hamstrings the whole game line by splitting it into two seperate lines, Beginner and Challenger, with two seperate campaign settings. Predictably, D&D was no longer supported as of 1994, which was like MacDonalds no longer selling quarter-pounders.

5. 1994-1995, With my interest in any TSR products waning to an all-time low, they release the exorable 2e Mystara line, reprinting in big shiny boxes, the exact information that I'd already obtained seven years ago, except in a rules format I didn't care for, not advancing plot lines in any significant way, or really giving me any reason to ever open the box again after giving it a first read over.

Two years later TSR was on the verge of bankruptcy and sold to WotC. I think I'm a pretty typical representative of the "I gave up on TSR during 2e and didn't come back to D&D until they were no longer involved" crowd. While others' itemized list of grievances will be different than mine, the general feeling of being jerked around should be the same. They were simply trying to stuff too much bad product down the throats of too few customers.

R.A.

 

[HellHound]

The best thing that any company can do to lose me as a customer is lie to me.

It happens, that I buy a product which is advertised as something and turns out to be not what I expected, or has a little trick hidden into the advertisement... Such things make me seriously furious, and it's nearly impossible for them to make up for such a mistake :\

The only company I don't buy from is for exactly that reason, and because they refused to agree that there was any kind of problem or lies involved. Sure, they were willing to refund the purchase price, but stated that I would still have to pay for the shipping and handling from them to me, and have to pay to return the books...

Meh. Was not impressed.

Still don't buy RPGs from said company.

 

[trancejeremy]

There are several companies I would never buy new books from, as their general quality is typically just really poor. Both in terms of editing and writing and general quality.

FFG (most notably their Legends & Lairs line), Fast Forward, Avalanche, AEG's non Spycraft/SG-1 stuff, Mongoose.


I never minded the silly Avalanche Covers, it was the contents of the books that let me down - too shallow to cover their subject properly, and for some reason, one of their authors was obssessed with pushing the fact that in real life, women tend to be physically weaker than men, and NPCs that suffer from incontinence and have to wear diapers. OTOH, for the price their stuff sells for now, like $5 a book, they aren't bad.

Fast Forward was a strange case. They seemed to think that since it was run by long time professionals, they didn't actually have to read the d20 rules to know them. The one product I really liked, the Encyclopedia of Demons & Devils, which did suffer from stat products, actually turns out to have largely been borrowed from another non-gaming product on Demons. Not enough to constitute plagiarism, but clearly they simply took the entries from that product, and rewrote them. (IIRC, "A Field Guide to Demons, Fairies, Fallen Angels, and Other Subversive Spirits By Carol K Mack" was the book they were "inspired" by. Even the artwork was simply just a redo)

AEG, FFG and Mongoose all seem to have a similar business model. They have some lines which they spend some effort on (AEG would be Spycraft, FFG would be Midnight, I guess, Mongoose would be Conan/Slaine/B5), but the other lines would be awfully slapdash. Legends & Lairs from FFG, the one word books from AEG, most of Mongoose's stuff. Just of jumbled quality, sloppy editing, big margins, just an overall cheap feel to them.

I would never buy any of those again, though I would buy some of their products from the lines they spend time and effort on, like the new Spycraft. And in Mongoose's case I'm pretty much finished with them, unless the book is by Adrian Bott.

 

[danzig138]

There is only one company that has products I simply won't buy. I was already tending towards not buying their material anymore because of problems with the material, but what finalized it was the online presence of one of the head honchos of the company. I dislike that person so much, I just decided that I couldn't stand the thought of providing them with money, and being part of the process that enabled them to put food on their table. I don't know that that person is much of a factor these days, but the only way they could get me back would be to completely revamp the gameline, and if it was good, I'd think about it.
I don't think a company could put me off completely just with their product alone. I might stop buying their material, but I'd still keep an eye uot for anything that looked cool and seemed to have good opinions generated about it.

 

[TGryph]

Win and Lose

To Lose Me...

Rerelease Brand New, more expensive Core Rulebooks of a perfectly good system only a couple of years after it has been released...


To Win Me Back...

Don't know yet!

TGryph

 

[Turjan]

There are several companies I would never buy new books from, as their general quality is typically just really poor. Both in terms of editing and writing and general quality.

FFG (most notably their Legends & Lairs line), ...

Hehe. Given that probably half of the books were written by Mike Mearls, this shows that praise and blame often lie closely together .

 

[Turjan]

Pity. You're missing out on that 'warm, smug, morally-superior' feeling.

Perhaps, my comment sounded more positive than I feel about it . The move was catastrophic for many d20 companies and immediately "invalidated" most of their products, and in a certain sense also most of mine. Don't get me wrong, I still use the 3.0 products mostly like they are (I couldn't be bothered less if that ranger over there didn't fit 3.5 standards), but you just have to read on this very board how many people are eager that a book is produced for D&D 3.5 and wouldn't touch a 3.0 book with a ten foot pole.

For me, this simply meant the logical conclusion to keep the investment in core D&D products slim. This is especially true for "crunch" products; those are soon to be outdated investments for me.