NOW LIVE! Today's the day you meet your new best friend. You don’t have to leave Wolfy behind... In 'Pets & Sidekicks' your companions level up with you!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seankreynolds" data-source="post: 4747507" data-attributes="member: 3029">It's December 1997. TSR's just had another round of layoffs right before Christmas. The company owes the printing company some money, due to an earlier arrangement TSR's president made to get some books out the door. Printer says, "cough up some money." TSR says, "we don't have any cash right now, but the distributor just made another order of the Player's Handbook... if you print that, we can ship it to them, and they'll pay us for it, and we can pay you." Printer said, "no, we want to be paid before we print anything else for you."So we waited.And waited.And people started to wonder why their subscription issues of Dragon and Dungeon hadn't appeared in their mail yet. The reason is that they hadn't been printed yet.Then people started to wonder where all the January products were. The reason is that they hadn't been printed yet.And here I am, TSR Online Coordinator, the online face of the company. Nobody gave me anything official to say about the situation, so I said nothing. And the emails kept rolling in. And the newsgroup posts asking the same questions. And still I was given nothing official to say.And people were getting angry.So I took the truth that I knew, and made a statement that was true, though it didn't give anything close to the whole story, because I wasn't authorized to say anything specific. What I said was, "Due to a problem with the printers, we have been unable to release any new products or magazines since December."Which is true: the problem was that the printer wouldn't print anything for us until we paid them.I wouldn't be surprised if the WotC customer service people were given a very limited amount of information (if that), told that they could only say X, Y, and Z, and yet are left holding the bag when people come asking for more information. It's a sucky position to be in, and they have my sympathies.Edit: Note I am NOT comparing TSR's financial situation at that time to Wizards's situation now, I'm just talking about the tough position customer service-type people get put in when things are happening at the company that a part of the fan base is negatively vocal about.</blockquote>

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