It’s called customer SERVICE people! Not DIS-SERVICE!
Earlier this year I purchased a game from Direct2Drive, which is a service that allows you to purchase a game, download it from the site, and play it instantly (or as instantly as your download speed allows you to get the full file downloaded) and I’ve had great fun playing the game. My children kept asking me if they could have the game on their computers as well, but I told them they would have to wait until I was finished with it so I could remove it from my computer and place it on theirs as I wasn’t going to spend the money for a 2nd copy and I prefer to teach them to NOT resort to piracy.
Fast forward to earlier this week when Direct2Drive was running on special on this game, and all of it’s associated versions (there have been about a half dozen variants of this particular game and they were all included in the sale). You could purchase each game separately at a HUGE savings over what I paid just a few months ago, or you could purchase “packs” of the game that grouped them together so you would get maybe 3 versions of the game for an even greater savings. So I purchased both of the “packs” which game me all the other iterations of the game, and one pack included the same version I had purchase months ago. My thinking was that I would receive a 2nd license key, and could then comfortably install the game on my kids computer without worrying about having to resort to piracy. (Yes I don’t have much time to play games so I still haven’t finished the game I started over half a year ago!)
I then hopped into my account to retrieve my 2nd license key and found that no matter which of the 2 versions I purchased they both listed the SAME license key. I tried everything I could to see if maybe I was attempting to retrieve the key improperly, but everything came back with the exact same key (which was the key I received when I first purchased the game). So I then contacted customer support to find out how I could obtain my 2nd key.
Today I received an email that told me their system is not setup to allow multiple copies of the same game on a single account and I experienced an issue where the 2nd copy of the game was purchased because of the different item number due to purchasing it in the bundle. It went on further to explain to me that they are not setup to allow a game to be transferred to another account after purchase… and that was it! No suggestion for a resolution, or an offer of credit on my account, NOTHING. Now keep in mind that I could have purchased the other games in this bundle separately and not spent as much money as I did buying the bundle. So it wasn’t like it was a wash, the bundle pricing wasn’t significantly lower to where it would be like the game was thrown in free.
I’m sorry, but if a customer of mine pointed out something like this to me, my first thought would be HOW do I make them happy? Can I supply a 2nd license key manually? Can I refund the difference of purchasing the bundle versus if they had just purchased the other games in the bundle that hadn’t been previously purchased? Can I credit their account for a future purchase? (I wouldn’t have liked the last option as much as it keeps them holding their money and more than likely either guaranteeing I’ll spend more money with them in the future (fairly likely anyway, at least before this issue) or I wouldn’t make a purchase and they keep their “free” money.
When a customer comes to you with a complaint, they don’t want to hear your reasons as to why something happened. They want to hear what you are going to do to make it better. Some there won’t be any appeasing, but it should still be standard policy that you MAKE the offers.
Wake up businesses!
Gerg