1014 réponses à ce sujet

[OBakaSama]

If you've followed the thread then you should realize what you're trying to propose is confused.

Officially, insofar customers (not fans because it's just easier for people to fob you off) have gotten in contact with the retailers trying to find out what the situation is, the replies from those retailers have so far suggested that they are unaware of the promo. So how did they choose to opt out?

Chris Priestly suggested that Amazon.co.uk had chosen to opt out, but replies from Amazon.co.uk suggests they are unaware of the promo. One of these points has to be wrong. (Of course Chris can only tell us what he has been told, so I am not making the accusation that he is lying.)

Seeing that more and more UK based retailers seem to unaware of the promo we can only assume that it is in fact the marketers' fault for not doing their job properly.

It is not a retailers' job to be aware of promos, it is the company whose product is being sold that should be contacting retailers informing them of such promos; and then the retailer can choose to opt in or out. As it stands it looks like retailers were not made aware.

This seems to be a marketing fault.

We can blame Amazon.co.uk, and other retailers, if they actually chose to opt out. This does not seem to be the case.

[Childofbaahl]

Just received this reply...



Hello,



Thank you for contacting Amazon.co.uk to bring this to our attention.



Please accept our sincere apologise for this situation.



Further to your email, I have checked with the website and found that there is a promotional offer for the item "Dragon Age 2 - Signature Edition (PC DVD)" in Amazon.com and other websites.



I need to investigate this issue with the appropriate department further.



As soon as we receive a response from them we will let you know.



This generally takes short time and so we will contact you again with an update by February 16, 2011. Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience this delay may cause.



I understand the inconvenience caused for being asked to wait further without an immediate action.



However, please note that this additional period will give us the time to take right actions upon your order. Hope this matter is resolved to your fullest satisfaction.



Thank you for your patience and for bringing this matter to our attention.



Warmest regards,





Agniraj R.



This is the second time they have asked me to wait... it's only a month away from the release...

[Oppopji]

Well at least it looks like Amazon may be doing something to try to rectify the situation unlike Game, who are still insisting that the Signature Edition does not come with any pre-order bonus.

[Victia]

Well at least they are trying , just wonder if they are looking in to xbox 360 and ps3 as well as pc

[Druss99]

FitScotGaymer wrote...

Druss99 wrote...

It looks more like a screw up on the EA/Bioware side than amazon and game to be honest. I've no idea whats going on with play.com thats just ridiculous and proves my point about this all being too complicated.

I dont agree.

Well I think perhaps Bioware's marketing is partially to blame here because they are notoriously bad in the past and I reckon its safe to assume that they didnt communicate the required information in the right way at least as near as I can tell from the information we have.
But I think their share of the blame is the lesser here because its Amazon.co.uk's fault for not having a clue and for opting out of the promotions for no apparent reason; Bioware COULD issue codes to those who have bought and registered the game on ere via email or something but they dont have to and they certainly arent required to because get this it isnt there fault that Amazon opted out.

If they did so it would be purely a goodwill gesture because they love us; not one person here has a right to act like Bioware are totally to blame, and that they are ENTITLED to something that bioware created and is giving away for free. I am sorry you guys, but you dont have the right to be offended at Bioware for this and you dont have the right to demand bugger all from them.

I also dont agree that its too complicated; its fairly simplistic. You would have to be an idiot not to understand how DLC works in this day and age if you deal with computers and games on a regular basis.
DLC has been a staple of modern gaming for the last 10 years; if you dont know about DLC and how it works by now then you must be a retarded monkey. I am sorry but its true.
It isnt hard, its been around for a decade, and is set to become more widespread. If you are a gaming retailer (or work for one) then you have no excuse not to know how to deal with DLC.

It would have been helpful if you had read the thread before calling people retards and idiots.

First off if we are told that we are getting this DLC with all pre-orders including Amazon which was advertised on Biowares own website then we are ENTITLED  to it as we met the requirements to recieve it. We are paying the same as everyone else and were told we were getting the same as everyone else, anyone who ordered the SE is basically locked in now and getting a slightly worse deal.

Secondly we don't know yet why they opted out, all evidence so far points towards them not even knowing about it. So who's fault is that?

Finally we all know how DLC works but theres generally not a pre-order cut off point then seperate DLC being thrown in too. Having to pre-order the game before being made aware of said DLC and which retailers are participating believe it or not complicates things. Then having to deal with customer service for huge companies who are dealing with thousands of products and hundreds of complaints on a daily basis just after christmas and expecting them to know the finer details of a product they probably don't care about which has just attempted some new form of marketing and now has 3 or 4 different pieces of DLC, some everyone is getting, some only SE purchasers are getting and some which is retailer specific. Again that complicates things. This isn't how DLC generally works, it complicated it for the retailers and for us. Anyone who can't see that is clearly a retarded monkey. I'm sorry but its true.

[ScotGaymer]

Druss99 wrote...


It would have been helpful if you had read the thread before calling people retards and idiots.

First off if we are told that we are getting this DLC with all pre-orders including Amazon which was advertised on Biowares own website then we are ENTITLED  to it as we met the requirements to recieve it. We are paying the same as everyone else and were told we were getting the same as everyone else, anyone who ordered the SE is basically locked in now and getting a slightly worse deal.

Secondly we don't know yet why they opted out, all evidence so far points towards them not even knowing about it. So who's fault is that?

Finally we all know how DLC works but theres generally not a pre-order cut off point then seperate DLC being thrown in too. Having to pre-order the game before being made aware of said DLC and which retailers are participating believe it or not complicates things. Then having to deal with customer service for huge companies who are dealing with thousands of products and hundreds of complaints on a daily basis just after christmas and expecting them to know the finer details of a product they probably don't care about which has just attempted some new form of marketing and now has 3 or 4 different pieces of DLC, some everyone is getting, some only SE purchasers are getting and some which is retailer specific. Again that complicates things. This isn't how DLC generally works, it complicated it for the retailers and for us. Anyone who can't see that is clearly a retarded monkey. I'm sorry but its true.

Firstly you clearly havent read the thread yourself because I have posted in this thread many times; and been checking it regularily.
Secondly you clearly havent read what I said because you have resorted to being rude.
Thirdly I wasnt calling anyone in the thread an idiot or a retard; I was IMPLYING that Amazon were retarded if they STILL dont know how DLC works after 10 years.

I am sorry but if Bioware has supplied the information then its not their fault that retailers are too stupid or lazy to understand it; its not as if it is hard. The information presented, DLC, Signature Edition, etc - it is not confusing. It is all fairly straight forward so I do not at all agree that its "complicated".
What is hard or complicated about understanding that that Bioware wish to include some promo dlc for preorders?
What is so difficult about understanding that preorders prior to january 11th would be auto upgraded to the signature edtion as a bonus?

I really do not see where the confusion is and I do not see why Amazon and other retailers are finding the whole thing so hard.

Modifié par FitScotGaymer, 08 février 2011 - 05:27 .

[Tleining]

@ FitScotGaymer

the confusion is, that sword'n'shield were to be "included in the signature edition". A lot of people (including me) believed that we would receive these items from bioware. It looks as if amazon & co. went along with that as well, which would explain why those items are offered for the normal edition, but not for the sig-ed.

the clarification, that the items are to be included by the retailers, is relatively new.



so unless you work for one of those retailers and/or know what they were told, you can't really call them stupid, can you?

[ScotGaymer]

Autolycus I am afraid I still dont see where you are coming from sorry.



That still isnt Bioware's fault; Amazon SAY they didnt know. Bioware SAY they did. There is still no confusion for me here.



One of them is clearly lying; and I am inclined to believe Amazon UK is lying because other divisions of Amazon got the information just fine and understood it just fine and they are trying to save face/cop out because of what a colossal blunder they have made.



Not everything is the fault of the Evil Empire aka EA. I find your hatred and default blaming of them to be vaguely disturbing and irrational.



Tleining - I agree with you on that one. Any Promos I got with DAO and ME2 were in the box when I got the game in my hands. I had no reason to think that DA2 would be any different; nor did Bioware ever indicate anything different. That isnt a communication but may well be a clarity problem; but I am not sure as of yet if it is

The confusion seems to be entirely on Amazons part.



From reading the thread and what responses people have been getting from Amazon and what Bioware have said it really looks to me like Amazon have ballsed up and dont want to admit it so they are trying to suggest (or others are trying to suggest) that it is the fualt of the Evil Empire aka EA.



The vitriole directed at Bioware for this seems to be a bit of an overreaction to me; and not entirely accurate.

I read the same DLC information as everyone else and I understood it all just fine; I really dont see why Amazon are so confused by it all.



My comment about the demands to bioware; that was to point out that they have already fufilled their obligations. Unless they are lying to us they communicated the information to Amazon which Amazon then didnt understand or did and opted out of the promo; so they have done what they are supposed to do.

It is not up to them to then supply codes to everyone who is ordering the game from Amazon because Amazon didnt opt into the promo (for whatever reason). If they do it it will be a gesture of goodwill not because they have to because some people seem to misguidedly feel that they are entitled to get something they didnt pay for.



I understand why people are upset at the principle of it; and as I said the fault seems to me to lie more with Amazon than with Bioware/EA (though there is plenty of fault to go around I thnk) and I find it mind boggling that Bioware seems to be catching the lions share of the flack for it.

[BTCentral]

FitScotGaymer - It's not just Amazon that say they had no knowledge of the promotion, other UK retailers have been saying exactly the same thing.

If you take a look in the Game.co.uk thread you will notice BioWare saying that the SE will also get the pre-order bonuses, and every reply from Game have said they are only being offered with the regular edition - including replies as recently as yesterday. Yet BioWare stated Game were going to be providing them with the SE four days ago.

You'd think with the amount of queries both Amazon and Game had had about these things, someone would have checked if they were unsure.

Honestly, it sounds to me like the EA (or BioWare, if they have a separate one) European marketing department just are not getting the information to retailers clearly enough as practically none of the retailers in the UK seem to have a clue what is going on - even retailers that are explicitly listed as offering the pre-order bonuses.

Modifié par BTCentral, 08 février 2011 - 06:24 .

[ScotGaymer]

Possibly.

So it really does come down to who is lying?

EA/Bioware Marketing? Or Amazon?

Again to me there isnt confusion with it. Okay I am only going by the informaiton given to us; but to me that was straight forward and not confusing or complicated at all.
And based on that I dont see how the retailers dont understand how it is all going to work.

To me it still seems a lot like retailer idiocy more than a lack of clarity from marketing. That does not preclude the possibility that marketing werent being clear enough - they may well not have been.
Like I said it seems like there is plenty of blame to go around here.

But I still dont get the confusion about it. And I still dont agree entirely with the vitriol being directed at Bioware. Like I said not everything is always their fault.

My experience with Bioware is they usually own up to and sort out when they **** up. As they arent owning up in this case I am inclined to believe that this is going to be retailer error more than marketing.
I think this because of my own experiences with Game and Gamestation while attempting to preorder the SE edition; I tried from mid november to preoder the game from my local Game and Gamestation stores to begin with neither of them new what the heck I was on about. Then they denied that they were getting the SE edition at all. Then they said they were supposed to be getting it but hadnt got the preorder codes for it so they could take preorders.
Frustrated I called GAME and Gamestations head offices and inquired about it and both informed me that both retailers would be stocking the SE of DA2 and should be taking preorders; they confirmed for me what was included in the preorders as well.
So I went back to the stores and still got the blank bloody looks on their faces as they denied all knowledge of what their OWN head offices had told me.

I gave up and predered at the beginning of January online; my point by telling you all that is to say that you should NEVER underestimate the capacity for retailers to be contradictory and stupid even when they are supplied with all the information.

Modifié par FitScotGaymer, 08 février 2011 - 06:37 .

[Oppopji]

Regardless of who is to blame for the confusion, the way things are going atm it's looking like those of us who pre-ordered at Game will have to rely on BioWare/EA to sort this out anyway as it seems Game doesn't care at all. Hopefully those who ordered at Amazon will have better luck

[pumpkinman13]

"One of them is clearly lying; and I am inclined to believe Amazon UK is lying because other divisions of Amazon got the information just fine and understood it just fine and they are trying to save face/cop out because of what a colossal blunder they have made."



AmazonUK is a totally different operative entity from Amazon.com and Amazon.fr etc etc. Just because Amazon.com know about the promotions doesn't automatically mean AmazonUK knows about them as well.



BTCentral sums it up well, and this is one of the reasons I don't have the BIOWARE KEEP YOUR PROMISES banner in my poster, cus i don't believe the fault is with them, but EA, sepcifically the Europe Sales/Advertisement team.

[Druss99]

I think we are all getting sidetracked by the blame game, we should be trying to get clarification on exactly where we stand right now. As far as I can see we have heard nothing back from Youseff unless I'm mistaken, so we have to ask now what other options are open to us? Talking to customer service reps and moderators is only getting us so far. I think Pumpkin is still waiting on word back from EA but that will probably be a customer service middleman too. So again I ask can anyone think of any other options?

This whole signature edition thing means they are getting our money anyway, by cancelling we miss out on content or have to pay them extra for it. This really has got us by the balls.

[OBakaSama]

FitScotGaymer does make a couple of valid points, though I pretty much disagree with all the rest.

(1) It isn't necessarily BioWare's fault: This very much depends on who is responsible for marketing. Personally I'm inclined to believe that it is EA.

(2) That information at head office does not necessarily filter down to local branches quick enough.

It seems to me that FitScotGaymer has nailed his(?) mast onto the EA side given the information we have available; the majority of those on the thread are leaning towards believing the retailer. It's very strange that all UK retailers appear to have an issue regarding this; it's far too coincidental. That's not to say it can't happen, but just seems a bit unbelievable.

It would also assume that Amazon has opted out, making the assumption that they were aware of the promo. The emails several posters have shown here have shown that to be questionable, but by no means fact. If it is true the retailers were not made aware of the promo then it is marketing's fault; plain and simple. If marketing has made retailers aware, and they opted out, then customers are unlucky by choosing that retailer. If the retailer has opted in but their customer service department are unaware of the promo, then it's the retailer's fault.

For Play.com and Amazon.co.uk there really isn't that local branch as such for information to be sent to as in (2). That lack of communication from head office of the same organization is suddenly shot down to an extent.

EDIT: indeed. Though it could just be lack of awareness by the customer service reps. Maybe nothing's wrong. Hey, we can hope.

Modifié par OBakaSama, 08 février 2011 - 07:46 .

[ScotGaymer]

I am not on either side.



Sorry if it seemed like I was.



I was merely pointing out that there is plenty of blame to go around no matter which way you look at it; and that blaming Bioware is counter productive.

[vometia]

FitScotGaymer wrote...

But I think their share of the blame is the lesser here because its Amazon.co.uk's fault for not having a clue and for opting out of the promotions for no apparent reason; Bioware COULD issue codes to those who have bought and registered the game on ere via email or something but they dont have to and they certainly arent required to because get this it isnt there fault that Amazon opted out.

It's very, very bad PR, though.

This is something that, as a customer, I really hate when there's more than one company involved: when something goes wrong there's an awful lot of finger pointing and very little responsibility being taken.  I honestly don't give a monkey's whose fault it is, they should just bloody sort it out.

It's astonishing that Amazon and Bioware seem to be unable to talk to each other in order to fix what is almost certainly a fairly simple problem and instead allow all of this aggravation and bad feeling to flourish.  Bioware and Amazon are far from the only culprits in this regard but there's no reason to adopt "worst practice" just because so many other companies do it.

[Triscopic]

Druss99 wrote...
I think we are all getting sidetracked by the blame game, we should be trying to get clarification on exactly where we stand right now.

+1

We can argue about who said what to whome until the cows come home. It changes nothing and just upsets people who might otherwise be constructive.

I want to know what (if anything) Bioware are going to do - are they even looking into it? I'm not saying this is their fault - Bio, EA & Amazon are big enough companies that I find it quite believable that emails ended up at the wrong desk and comunications failed. Let's leave it at that and instead ask what could/should be done.

It doesn't seem good that no Bio employee has posted here for ages, but as this is a hot topic I'm sure they know about it and may even be reading this thread.

Come on Bio - every company makes mistakes. What makes a good company is how they *handle* those mistakes. Perhaps this isn't your mistake, but we are your loyal customers and fan base. Show us how good you are. Or at least let us know you care.

[pumpkinman13]

Still working on EA. Got a reply from them saying "we're the technical support team, we only deal with gameplay difficulties" etc (after all that trouble). Sent them back a message saying "Okay, so WHO/HOW do I contact and get in touch with the Sales/Advertisements teams?"

[Absarka]

Just got an updated reply from Amazon. Nothing helpful, however: they are still investigating and 'we endeavour to complete our research within February 14, 2011' (sic), with the disclaimer that it may take longer.

Between extended dates, this Yousef chappie, and queries with their tech dept, how hard is it for Amazon themselves to know if they were told of this promotion or if they'd decided not to run with it?

[pumpkinman13]

Absarka wrote...

Just got an updated reply from Amazon. Nothing helpful, however: they are still investigating and 'we endeavour to complete our research within February 14, 2011' (sic), with the disclaimer that it may take longer.

Between extended dates, this Yousef chappie, and queries with their tech dept, how hard is it for Amazon themselves to know if they were told of this promotion or if they'd decided not to run with it?

Also got a reply saying we're still working on it,.