No off-line mode

[Deyn]

He initiates a chargeback through the creditcard/bank... he will get back his money, quickly. Only Frontier will have to pay the chargeback fee plus another marker on the "bad company with lots of chargebacks" list.
The good Mr. FDev is saying "..., but if you can remain patient we will get round to helping you out" - a polite way to say "if you wouldn't be impatient we could have sorted that out" Yet he waited triple the time he is supposed to... and most people didn't even got a reply other than the boiler plate mail.

As I said, the "intelligent" way to deal with this situation would be to staff the support team and prioritize the refund tickets, at least not lying so obviously ("allow us 48h to answer your ticket").

I really like the game, but the company behind it is so incapable of addressing basic customer relations it hurts!!!

Let's all hope it isn't their undoing in the long term! I would really like to play Elite Dangerous longer than a year...

[MarrV]

He initiates a chargeback through the creditcard/bank... he will get back his money, quickly. Only Frontier will have to pay the chargeback fee plus another marker on the "bad company with lots of chargebacks" list.

Charge-backs have to be done within a certain time frame, outside of it the banks get very unhappy to do so.

The good Mr. FDev is saying "..., but if you can remain patient we will get round to helping you out" - a polite way to say "if you wouldn't be impatient we could have sorted that out" Yet he waited triple the time he is supposed to... and most people didn't even got a reply other than the boiler plate mail.

I am sorry but you seem to be indignant on reading everything in a bad light. If you take that line you can see negativity in everything. I do not see what your saying in their statement, I just see them saying "please remain patient and we will get this fixed". Where did you get the "triple the time he is supposed to from"? Where is the original time scale?

Most people wont get a reply as they are working on trying to get the refunds out to people. Do you want them to reply to emails or give refunds first? Kind of arguing in circles here.

As I said, the "intelligent" way to deal with this situation would be to staff the support team and prioritize the refund tickets, at least not lying so obviously ("allow us 48h to answer your ticket").

Depends on numerous factors, firstly you cannot prioritise one set of customers over another, the is a word for that....

Secondly it depends on what needs to be done; I imagine they will need to do the following checks;

Did this person actually buy the game (you will be surprised)
How much did they spend and when, also which site did they use (kick-starter or elite's own)? (These two in accounting really)
How much time did they play on the game? Does this length of time show that they were just waiting for a off-line feature or were actively enjoying / participating in the development of the game.
If the later then they are investors and share a burden of risk, so an independent assessment needs to be made on if they qualify for a refund. If they did not spend time in game then continue to process.
Send refund request from the department above (most likely more legal based, and the one before more database looking up/customer service) back to accounting
Accounting can issue refund.

Now I do not know how much you know about legal workings, but they tend to not work fast as departments anyway. Accountants are fastidious, not fast.

So I do not see that being a fast process, nor can they train one person to do it all quickly.

I really like the game, but the company behind it is so incapable of addressing basic customer relations it hurts!!!

Let's all hope it isn't their undoing in the long term! I would really like to play Elite Dangerous longer than a year...

It wont do so imo, the number of people complaining about this is far less than those supporting, playing & buying the game. If EA can survive having a rep of the worst games publisher (possibly rivalled by Ubisoft now) for a decade I don't think this will be more than a "could of handled that better" issue.

As for addressing it as a "Basic issue"; it is not a basic issue, it is a rather complicated one. The little flow process I put above is assuming they have similar laws to the UK, if not then the legal side gets vastly bigger & longer. That is why it takes time.

*edit for typo & to clarify wording*

[Deyn]

Well, we have different point of views here, so it is useless to argue. I accept yours and that of "the majority".
My problem is, FDev is handling the whole affair for the minority very badly.
In the light that PayPal have now a dedicated "Elite Dangerous refunds team" and UK trade authorities work on that issues also, I dare say the "minority" may not as small as predicted. Even if they are just a minority the impact on Frontier could(!) be bad. I remember a UK bank guy talking about "the numbers of complaints/recharges" necessary these days to block payments to a company is quite lower than one thinks (whatever that actually is).
What I don't understand from FDev is, why they not simply go through with all the refunds as quick as possible, put additional support staff in and get over with it...
It is not got publicity and I'm not so sure they have similar financial assets as EA or Ubisoft.

The banks are not happy to process the recharges as well as PayPal is, but it seems they accept the customers claims and evidence of fraud. Most credit cards these days have an insurance integrated to cover these things... have a look at http://www.elitedangerousrefunds.org from pibbles. He coordinates some of the actions and advises people on how to get through it. He also has a great collection of original statements from FDev! And not only from the Kickstarter!

As I said, I fear FDev is walking a thin line here and could get more trouble than they bargained for.
If just 10% of some 500 tickets they are sifting through, open a case (and FDev said they will handle EACH individual case separately) they have 50 court trials at hand... likely to lose them? Ouch!

So however does the risk assessment at FDev either knows something we don't or willingly takes quite a risk.
Hey, they are all professionals, right? They know what they are doing...

[Deyn]

Oh, and about "refunds first" / "arguing in circles"... one email to inquiry the facts (actually they should have all facts on the purchase already) and then refund. What cost a lot of time and efforts is the stalling, multiple boiler plate emails, sending people in circles from support.orerve to support.zaonce and now to a new refund ticket system, every time closing the ticket and forcing customers to open a new one, that needs processing again. Only to send them an "offer" to limit their losses ("ok, you get 35 quid and we keep the remaining 100, as you were foolish enough to help us testing in beta. You then have no claims anymore, ok?")
Of course people reject that and now again after stalling and delaying they receive a full refund which again takes weeks to process... just read a bit of the "refund experiences" over at frontier forums.
If they put the same effort into sorting it out, they put into delaying tactics, everybody would be happy, I guess.

[GlobusDiablo]

Well, we have different point of views here, so it is useless to argue. I accept yours and that of "the majority"......

Hey Deyn my friend. Can I suggest taking a deep breath or two and counting to ten? I know how you feel buddy. You know I do. But don't let it ruin your holidays!

As you say, a lot of people are as disappointed as you. Promises broken by the one we love...

Try taking a step back, and letting some time pass. It is after all "just" a game....

Fly safe.

Glob

[Deyn]

You are probably right...
The funny part is, I actually enjoy the game!
I miss a simple external cam for beauty shots, yes, but I like the game.

Then I see how FDev handles its customers and I think to myself: "why the hell can't they just get through with this and move on to developing the next add-on?"
I'm not mad at MarrV or others, more disappointed...
It is two different things for me, Elite Dangerous as a good game with lots of potential, and Frontier as a company, acting like the worst of Ubisoft and EA together. Really sad... :,(

[GlobusDiablo]

You are probably right...
The funny part is, I actually enjoy the game!
I miss a simple external cam for beauty shots, yes, but I like the game.

Then I see how FDev handles its customers and I think to myself: "why the hell can't they just get through with this and move on to developing the next add-on?"
I'm not mad at MarrV or others, more disappointed...
It is two different things for me, Elite Dangerous as a good game with lots of potential, and Frontier as a company, acting like the worst of Ubisoft and EA together. Really sad... :,(

I completely agree. The potential in E: D is in my opinion enormous, but FD are fucking it up. Pardon my french...

Releasing too soon (not feature complete), and back stabbing with the no offline mode really has me on the fence. But she is a looker, and I've been crazy about her for 30 odd years, so I'm not letting go without a fight!

Stay cool. Stay cheeseburger...

[Belgarath]

To me it seems obvious that FD's programers/developers are not in charge with the financial/legal part - more likely legal and accountant department(s) have a quite different staff - so the developers have still time to, well, develop and/or fix bugs.

Since afaik FD is still more of a game developer than a publisher, I guess that their legal and accountant departments are rather new to the job and rather small - which is understandable, because publishing is not their main business anyway (which is quite different with EA and Ubisoft) ...

Perhaps they even hired another company for doing that kind of work and have now to establish the necessary lines of communication and evaluation for the numerous refund claims.

Yep, it's a lot of guesswork - but no more than you and others are putting into that matter. I definitely agree there's a lot to improve by FD concerning communication in that whole issue.

Btw., the one thing that really upsets me about the whole affair - to me, no matter what a backer did prior to the news about cancellation of the off-line mode, as long as he stated there and than he wanted a refund (and stopped playing E: D Beta, of course), he should be eligible for a full refund. No matter if he invested 0 seconds or 1000s of hours into Alpha and Beta ... so the only check (imo) would be, if the guys asking for refund have done so prior to release and if they stopped playing E: D at the time they asked for refund (timestamp of email). That would be a clean solution to deal with it, even if there still will be some trying to profit by it (backed with big bucks, opt out and just buy a regular copy after the holidays).

[GlobusDiablo]

To me it seems obvious that FD's programers/developers are not in charge with the financial/legal part - more likely legal and accountant department(s) have a quite different staff - so the developers have still time to, well, develop and/or fix bugs.

Since afaik FD is still more of a game developer than a publisher, I guess that their legal and accountant departments are rather new to the job and rather small - which is understandable, because publishing is not their main business anyway (which is quite different with EA and Ubisoft) ...

Perhaps they even hired another company for doing that kind of work and have now to establish the necessary lines of communication and evaluation for the numerous refund claims.

Yep, it's a lot of guesswork - but no more than you and others are putting into that matter. I definitely agree there's a lot to improve by FD concerning communication in that whole issue.

Btw., the one thing that really upsets me about the whole affair - to me, no matter what a backer did prior to the news about cancellation of the off-line mode, as long as he stated there and than he wanted a refund (and stopped playing E: D Beta, of course), he should be eligible for a full refund. No matter if he invested 0 seconds or 1000s of hours into Alpha and Beta ... so the only check (imo) would be, if the guys asking for refund have done so prior to release and if they stopped playing E: D at the time they asked for refund (timestamp of email). That would be a clean solution to deal with it, even if there still will be some trying to profit by it (backed with big bucks, opt out and just buy a regular copy after the holidays).

Good points all Commander.

[MarrV]

Just a heads up, caught a bug, running a fever & my eyes are struggling to read, so will get back to you. But just trying to clarify the possibilities of what is happening. I have no association with FD but understand the nature of businesses "quite well"