From "Net Promoter" to "Net Detractor"

Well, I am at my wit's end.

You see, I enjoyed playing the beta of Tabula Rasa so much that I decided to pre-order the game. So I did. When I decided that I would preorder, I considered only one option because I received good experiences with them in the past. I chose EB Games.

In the past, I never had to contact them however.

You see, when it came time for the game to be shipped, a friend of mine, who (and let me underline this point) ordered the game standard shipping from EB Games at my recommendation they do so, received the game four days early.

So I contacted them via email.

The response I got was "Unfortunately, we cannot ship the game itself before the release date." That is a direct quote.

So OK fine - maybe that's a pretext to "you ordered overnight shipping and it's too early to overnight ship". Which of course makes me wonder why I would ever overnight ship on a preorder, but I let it go.

The day before it was to be released comes, no ship. Web site status says "Prerelease". Umm, no. If I am to have it on my doorstep it should already be shipped. But it wasn't.

So, the day of release, I write them again.

I got no response.

So I called them that evening. The person on the phone says "Oh I'm not sure why they didn't sent it already but I'll discount your shipping cost and send an email message to the shipping department so they can get this one shipped out ASAP."

OK that's something I guess but at this point, I'm fairly disappointed at them. The game has already locked me out saying "Your game time has expired."

Two days later, my shipping status changes from "Prerelease" (we are now three days post release mind you) to "Usually ships within 24 hours."

So today, after that status of 3 days, I call. At this point, I'm fairly pissed because if I had walked down to the store and bought my copy in person I'd have been playing.

The person on the phone has the audacity to tell me "We couldn't charge your card. That's why it wasn't shipped." But then he lies to me and tells me "We sent you an email message on the 27th of last month about it." When I tell him I am staring at my Inbox and can read the date and contents of every message they have sent me, including the "We will be shipping you game within 24 hours" message dated on the 29th, his response is "Whether you got that message or not is not important."

Excuse me?

I contacted your company FOUR times since that date. I placed FAITH in your ability to handle my PREORDER correctly.

So I had them fix the address on the card (the apparent problem) and lo and behold, it gets it right. But btw, we have no record of your previous contact with the other agent so you are still paying the shipping costs too.

Never again, EB Games.

You might, when operating correctly, be able to get me my games on time, but if there is the slightest hiccup, your sheer incompetence and lack of interest in the trust I placed in your company has signed on the dotted line. The dotted line says just above it "I will never use your company again, and if I hear of anyone else wanting to use it, I'll advise them not to."

Despair Inc has a message you might want to look up:
Apathy
Maybe if we don't take care of the customer they'll stop bugging us.