Director of Brand Strategy
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Seekers of Secrets has been delayed only a few weeks and is expected to ship this coming week. You asked Paizo to ship you a single package containing everything you ordered on a monthly basis. Since all three of the items you mention are going to be released in the month of October and will be shipped in a single package, how are Paizo not doing what you asked them to do? Had you set your shipping option to "Hold for Pathfinder AP," all three books would be waiting to ship until Pathfinder #27 comes out. The reason this is even on anyone's radar is that news of the delay to Seekers of Secrets came as or right after Paizo made a large number of preauthorizations for the book to thousands of subscribers as they created orders. I don't see how Paizo did anything wrong in this circumstance, as it is out of their control when their printers ship them their books.
I'm still waiting too and feel sorta the same way, but I can't see a better way for Paizo to handle the situation either.
Here's one thing I figure they could do. And also why I don't think they don't do things this way.
They could charge everyone for their subscriptions at the beginning of the month, and let them get their downloads.
Firstly, this means a big hit to their servers. Every month they're likely to fall over or at least be erratic for a few days while everyone pounds them for the downloads. This also can affect the store, cutting their income.
Secondly, what happens if something is delayed unexpectedly for more than a month? Can they be forced to give a refund for people who wanted the physical copy there and then, and still downloaded the PDF?
What about postage costs? I don't know how or when those are calculated, but since weight's a component, do they bill you with the subscription, then bill you again with a top up if they miscalculated or the estimates were too low, or do they eat the loss? If they find you were billed too much, how are refunds handed?
They also are basically double-handling each order to do something like this, which adds processing time to each and further overheads and chance of human error.
Yes, the situation as it stands can be less than satisfactory for someone who's not got unlimited funds for immediate shipping of items as soon as they arrive in the warehouse, especially for those of us with international shipping charges, but I suspect it's still the best system the people at Paizo can figure out.
You might want to check out some of the comments from Lisa Stevens:
http://paizo.com/paizo/messageboards/paizo/products/v5748btpy85k5&page= 16#776
There's a lot more info that thread as well, which covers most of the issues you've raised.
AJC
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Chief Technical Officer
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Well, first of all I didn't know it was delayed, because Paizo didn't actually bother to inform me it was delayed. I received the usual message saying that my stuff would be shipping soon and that was 10 days ago and it still hasn't shipped. So in my book they already screwed up from the customer service perspective twice.
The reason that we haven't communicated further with you is that we've done everything exactly as you asked—we're holding your stuff until every subscription product for this month arrives. Further, our last communication is still correct—note that that email did not give a specific date; it said that a particular list of products would be shipping in the next week or two, and as we expect Seekers of Secrets to arrive Monday or Tuesday, your shipment should still go out within the timeframe we indicated.
...they have to be willing to show some flexibility in the case of delays. For example, if they have a delayed product I should have the option of letting it ship next month and getting the rest of my stuff now.
If a product is delayed *into the next month*, then we do automatically hold it and ship everything else as the monthly shipment for the current month. In this case, the product's release date stayed within the parameters that you have currently specified for shipping—that is, in the same month. This is the way that the monthly shipment is designed to work. There's never a guarantee that all products for a particular month will arrive at the same time—that's exactly why we offer a monthly shipment.
It sounds like what you're asking for is the ability to determine precisely which point in the month things should ship, and that's not something we offer. That may seem inflexible to you, but I'd like to point out that you won't find many other online stores that even let you *hold* merchandise to save on shipping, much less set your own schedule for doing so.
Now, you can always contact customer service and tell them to ship whatever's in stock at the moment... but any products that haven't come in yet that month will still ship as your monthly shipment that month—they won't roll over into the next month.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I'm still waiting too and feel sorta the same way, but I can't see a better way for Paizo to handle the situation either.
Here's one thing I figure they could do. And also why I don't think they don't do things this way.
They could charge everyone for their subscriptions at the beginning of the month, and let them get their downloads.
Firstly, this means a big hit to their servers. Every month they're likely to fall over or at least be erratic for a few days while everyone pounds them for the downloads. This also can affect the store, cutting their income.
Secondly, what happens if something is delayed unexpectedly for more than a month? Can they be forced to give a refund for people who wanted the physical copy there and then, and still downloaded the PDF?
What about postage costs? I don't know how or when those are calculated, but since weight's a component, do they bill you with the subscription, then bill you again with a top up if they miscalculated or the estimates were too low, or do they eat the loss? If they find you were billed too much, how are refunds handed?They also are basically double-handling each order to do something like this, which adds processing time to each and further overheads and chance of human error.
These are indeed among the many reasons why we do not grant PDFs before we ship the corresponding print editions. Additionally, our subscription system is built around shipping print products, and rewriting it to do otherwise would be complicated and time-consuming, and most likely create more customer service issues than it would solve.
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I think that something alerting us to a major delay might be helpful. I only found out by looking through the forums. I then acted accordingly to get everything reconfigured. What might be good is a sidebox or some form of instant alert box that indicates when something gets held up in customs or is late. This way a person can change their shipping if need be. I know you have a products schedule maybe add something that indicates when a product is bumped. Thanks for listening.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I think that something alerting us to a major delay might be helpful. I only found out by looking through the forums. I then acted accordingly to get everything reconfigured. What might be good is a sidebox or some form of instant alert box that indicates when something gets held up in customs or is late. This way a person can change their shipping if need be. I know you have a products schedule maybe add something that indicates when a product is bumped. Thanks for listening.
Hmm. Well, we definitely don't want to email thousands of people because the delivery date of a map pack moved from Monday to Tuesday... but perhaps we could find a good way to at least note that the product schedule has been updated, ideally in a way that you could subscribe to with an RSS reader...
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Well, first of all I didn't know it was delayed, because Paizo didn't actually bother to inform me it was delayed. I received the usual message saying that my stuff would be shipping soon and that was 10 days ago and it still hasn't shipped. So in my book they already screwed up from the customer service perspective twice.The reason that we haven't communicated further with you is that we've done everything exactly as you asked—we're holding your stuff until every subscription product for this month arrives. Further, our last communication is still correct—note that that email did not give a specific date; it said that a particular list of products would be shipping in the next week or two, and as we expect Seekers of Secrets to arrive Monday or Tuesday, your shipment should still go out within the timeframe we indicated.
...they have to be willing to show some flexibility in the case of delays. For example, if they have a delayed product I should have the option of letting it ship next month and getting the rest of my stuff now.If a product is delayed *into the next month*, then we do automatically hold it and ship everything else as the monthly shipment for the current month. In this case, the product's release date stayed within the parameters that you have currently specified for shipping—that is, in the same month. This is the way that the monthly shipment is designed to work. There's never a guarantee that all products for a particular month will arrive at the same time—that's exactly why we offer a monthly shipment.
It sounds like what you're asking for is the ability to determine precisely which point in the month things should ship, and that's not something we offer. That may seem inflexible to you, but I'd like to point out that you won't find many other online stores that even let you *hold* merchandise to save on shipping, much less set your own schedule for doing so.
Now, you can always contact customer service and...
Actually Vic is say "Next week or so...."
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I think that something alerting us to a major delay might be helpful. I only found out by looking through the forums. I then acted accordingly to get everything reconfigured. What might be good is a sidebox or some form of instant alert box that indicates when something gets held up in customs or is late. This way a person can change their shipping if need be. I know you have a products schedule maybe add something that indicates when a product is bumped. Thanks for listening.Hmm. Well, we definitely don't want to email thousands of people because the delivery date of a map pack moved from Monday to Tuesday... but perhaps we could find a good way to at least note that the product schedule has been updated, ideally in a way that you could subscribe to with an RSS reader...
Out of curiosity why wouldn't you want to have a general email system when something is delayed?
It can not be any more emails going out that say a "newsletter".
It shouldn't be that hard to write a code going through the orders, and a person who has this item in their cart to get an email saying it is holding up the order process.
Sean
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I am compelled to take the side of Paizo on this issue. Over the past year plus that I have been ordering product direct, there has never been a major delay and their customer service has been excellent. It has been made perfectly clear that there are some recent minor delays in product release, which is reasonable considering GenCon, the release of the Core Rulebook, the relocation to the new office, and the release of Bestiary. If I have to wait a couple of extra weeks to receive a quality product, so be it. It's not like I paid for it last year and still waiting on delivery. Not to mention the fact that we get a free copy of the pdf which has production costs as well. Things could be much worse (think WotC).
I understand their policy in general, but they have to be willing to show some flexibility in the case of delays. For example, if they have a delayed product I should have the option of letting it ship next month and getting the rest of my stuff now.
They actually ARE very flexible this way. You know what I did to deal with this issue?
Well, I normally have my subs set to ship with my Adventure Path. I logged in to see if it had shipped yet this month because I hadn't got the email. There I saw it was going to ship with the next path in November. I thought "Wow, that's going to be one big charge! I wonder if I can get the stuff that's ready to go to just ship now?" So I went to my subs page and clicked the button that said "Ship items as they become available." Everything that was ready to go immediately went through as one order. Less than 2 minutes later I reclicked "Ship with Pathfinder Adventure Path."
The whole process took a matter of seconds and I have the stuff that is ready to go on its way. Very simple and not something I could have done at any other online merchant.
Hmm. Well, we definitely don't want to email thousands of people because the delivery date of a map pack moved from Monday to Tuesday... but perhaps we could find a good way to at least note that the product schedule has been updated, ideally in a way that you could subscribe to with an RSS reader...
How about a quick mention on the Blog? Not to point fingers, but Hero Games is pretty open on their writing, printing, shipping. Maybe not go to that detail, but a "Hey, it's here!" or "Looks like Customs is admiring our work."
You know, it's this kind of complaining that makes so many companies, RPG and otherwise, not even publish release dates any more. In fact, I'm not sure what other RPG companies get more specific than a month. And even fewer hit that. Sweating someone over a day within a month is a sense of entitlement that I find somewhat hard to understand.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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You know, it's this kind of complaining that makes so many companies, RPG and otherwise, not even publish release dates any more. In fact, I'm not sure what other RPG companies get more specific than a month. And even fewer hit that. Sweating someone over a day within a month is a sense of entitlement that I find somewhat hard to understand.
Paizo doesn't get more specific than a month either. Except on the message boards and when they send out emails notifying subscribers that orders will be shipping soon. Technically, Seekers hasn't been delayed, since it was never promised to us on a specific date. The product schedule said it would be out in October. It will be out in October. It's just been "delayed" from shipping last week to shipping this week.
I guess the alternative is that Paizo not give customers any information at all about when things are going to ship and we will all just get emails saying what's coming when it comes. It would be sad not to have the transparent discourse about product scheduling on the boards, and I doubt it would ultimately be good for Paizo's bottom line to not give as much information as possible, but it might serve to keep people from whining about not getting something on the 12th instead of the 19th.
After people were so vocal about the customers who got their physical copies of the Core Rulebook a week early and after so many are so upset about the customers who got access to the Bestiary pdf before them, I have decided that I'm not going to discuss when I receive shipments of pdfs on the boards. If I'm one of the first ones to get something, I can just wait to bring it up until it looks like most people have theirs. The community just isn't as enjoyable when it's full of this vitriol over what really amounts to nothing but logistical complications. If no one tells anyone else what they don't have, we can all live in blissful ignorance and actually be excited when our product gets delivered instead of being disappointed that it came after everyone else's.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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'You have currently selected to receive your products bundled into a single monthly shipment, One or more of your products has been delayed a week or more and will delay your other products. If you choose you can go to this link to select 'ship products seperately' for this month.'
What constitutes a delay in this case? For people who have subs for five lines of Pathfinder books, Planet Stories, maps, and cards (or any combination thereof), the number of different shipments that have to come into Paizo's warehouse in a month could be many. If I have a subscription to all of them, and three books come in the first week, the maps and another book in the second week, and the rest in the fourth week, should I get an email telling me something's been delayed? If I selected an option on this or any other site saying "send me only one box a month with everything from that month inside" and then got emails telling me "some of your stuff is in but not all of it and we can send this stuff now if you want," I'd nicely remind the company that I specifically said not to do that. I'd understand their generosity at offering it, but after several months of that, I'd get pretty annoyed at the spam in my inbox asking me to change my shipping option from the one I really want.
Again, the only reason anyone knows that Seekers was delayed was because of the timing of the delay. Had Paizo found out a day earlier, they would have known it wouldn't be in in time to ship along with PoD and Bestiary and only sent emails to those who had "ship everything immediately" and only included the two books. Anyone who had "once a month" selected would have received no preliminary email until all three books were in a week later. Then they would get all three books at once, which is what they asked for. So you are mad that Paizo said to you, "We are sending you all three books in your monthly shipment" and then waited to ship your books until they had all three to send at once? Nothing changed from the initial email they sent you. They said what was going to be in your shipment and that's what's going to be in it.
Wel... I don't have enough time to read it all right away anymore, so this side effect of "ship together" doesn't really bother me anymore.
But it used to piss me off something fierce. No fault of Paizo, though.
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'You have currently selected to receive your products bundled into a single monthly shipment, One or more of your products has been delayed a week or more and will delay your other products. If you choose you can go to this link to select 'ship products seperately' for this month.'What constitutes a delay in this case? For people who have subs for five lines of Pathfinder books, Planet Stories, maps, and cards (or any combination thereof), the number of different shipments that have to come into Paizo's warehouse in a month could be many.
What constitutes a delay is you get an email one day and it says it will ship THEN when it comes out that it will not happen the way they just sent out the email saying it was going to that is what constitutes a delay. THAT is when an email would be great.
I was not one of them but from the sound of it people took days off in anticipation of the PDF / Book arriving. A simple, woops it is going to take longer to the people they sent out order confirmations to. That type of stuff happens.
Sean
'You have currently selected to receive your products bundled into a single monthly shipment, One or more of your products has been delayed a week or more and will delay your other products. If you choose you can go to this link to select 'ship products seperately' for this month.'What constitutes a delay in this case? For people who have subs for five lines of Pathfinder books, Planet Stories, maps, and cards (or any combination thereof), the number of different shipments that have to come into Paizo's warehouse in a month could be many.What constitutes a delay is you get an email one day and it says it will ship THEN when it comes out that it will not happen the way they just sent out the email saying it was going to that is what constitutes a delay. THAT is when an email would be great.
I was not one of them but from the sound of it people took days off in anticipation of the PDF / Book arriving. A simple, woops it is going to take longer to the people they sent out order confirmations to. That type of stuff happens.
Sean
I don't know how anybody could have taken a specific day off, since Paizo's notification emails say 'getting ready to ship in the next week or so'. Unless I missed some vital piece of information here.
I don't know how anybody could have taken a specific day off, since Paizo's notification emails say 'getting ready to ship in the next week or so'. Unless I missed some vital piece of information here.
Some people (not me, but I have friends in this boat) live in {whatever-the-politically-correct-adjective-is-for-economically-challenged- neighborhoods-where-people-have-been-known-to-steal-packages-off-porches} areas where, when they are expecting a package, rearrange their personal schedule so there is someone home at mail time to receive it directly, rather than leave it on the porch to be "received" by someone else.
An email that alerts you to a certain time period suddenly becomes yanking your chain when there's a delay and there's not another email alerting you of the fact.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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An email that alerts you to a certain time period suddenly becomes yanking your chain when there's a delay and there's not another email alerting you of the fact.
While that may be true, rearranging your schedule when you get the pre-shipping email seems a bit premature. I can understand it once you get the shipment email, but not the order creation/credit card ping email. That's like setting your VCR to record a program that "will air in the next week or two."
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As someone currently on the waiting list (I specifically changed my shipping option to once/month for October because I wanted the bestiary and didn't want to wait for the next issue of AP), I can state with certainty that this is no more than the most minor of inconveniences that is the result of unfortunate timing.
That is all.
-Skeld the Patient
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All I can say is that I used to be "Ship with AP" before the Bestiary. I changed it to Monthly shipment when I found out the AP was delayed. Then I found out about Seeker of Secrets being delayed (accidentally in fact, as I was calling Customer Service about another issue) and then changed my shipping based on that. Either way my shipment would have ended up going out at most 2 weeks after the pre-authorization. The emails always mention "a week or so" as others have said. This to me means it will be between 0-2 weeks until it ships. The monthly shipment with Seeker would have been within that time limit either way.
Yes if seeker was delayed until October 31st I might've been a little angry, but despite that, I picked a monthly shipment... and that's what they're giving me, one shipment per month. Not necessarily at the same time each month, but one a month.
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I think my biggest issue is the PDF thing. I get that you are holding my orders to ship them once a month like I requested, this is good. But not giving me access to the PDF until it ships is the main problem here.
Is there a reason that you can't charge me for my order earlier, like a pre-order with almost anything else online? As soon as that month comes around, charge the card for the order. 1st of the month.
Then, as soon as an individual book is released (the Bestiary in this case), give me access to my free PDF as soon as others are getting access. I'm not sure why I need to wait to have access to the PDF just because Seekers of Secrets (in this example) isn't going to ship until next week.
It is a problem, and one that bothers me. I love Paizo, hence all my subscriptions, but this really irked me. Even if I split SoS from my order into its separate thing, nothing was fixed. I tried doing that early last week and my Bestiary order (which everything in it looks ready for) has still yet to be shipped, and now I'm paying extra shipping for nothing.
Again, I love Paizo, I just want my books. There's no reason that MORE subscriptions should equal me getting my product LESS quickly than someone who just has the Bestiary on pre-order. :(
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Chief Technical Officer
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I think my biggest issue is the PDF thing. I get that you are holding my orders to ship them once a month like I requested, this is good. But not giving me access to the PDF until it ships is the main problem here.
Is there a reason that you can't charge me for my order earlier, like a pre-order with almost anything else online? As soon as that month comes around, charge the card for the order. 1st of the month.
Then, as soon as an individual book is released (the Bestiary in this case), give me access to my free PDF as soon as others are getting access. I'm not sure why I need to wait to have access to the PDF just because Seekers of Secrets (in this example) isn't going to ship until next week.
It is a problem, and one that bothers me. I love Paizo, hence all my subscriptions, but this really irked me. Even if I split SoS from my order into its separate thing, nothing was fixed. I tried doing that early last week and my Bestiary order (which everything in it looks ready for) has still yet to be shipped, and now I'm paying extra shipping for nothing.
Again, I love Paizo, I just want my books. There's no reason that MORE subscriptions should equal me getting my product LESS quickly than someone who just has the Bestiary on pre-order. :(
See this post—including the quoted material—which covers several of the reasons that we don't process PDFs until the corresponding print copy ships.
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Is there a reason that you can't charge me for my order earlier, like a pre-order with almost anything else online? As soon as that month comes around, charge the card for the order. 1st of the month.
well... in this case especially, they won't know the final shipping charge until they get in seekers, if the combined weight is over 4 pounds, than many people's shipping will go up, so they can't charge yet.
Also, there is prolly something with the actual credit card company on how soon before shipping they can charge.
edit ninja'd by Vic
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See this post—including the quoted material—which covers several of the reasons that we don't process PDFs until the corresponding print copy ships.
I read that post, and I understand it would be very complicated to make changes and possibly create more issues. It just seems like a strange way of doing things. It seems like the ideal situation would be to:
1. Charge subscribers the cost of their subscriptions at the start of the month.
2. Release PDF X to those people as soon as you start shipping Book X.
Of course, there's a lot I don't know about how these things work. However, it seems like something is very wrong when those of us who subscribe to more are getting our individual PDFs much later than those who subscribe to less or just pre-order that specific book.
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Is there a reason that you can't charge me for my order earlier, like a pre-order with almost anything else online? As soon as that month comes around, charge the card for the order. 1st of the month.well... in this case especially, they won't know the final shipping charge until they get in seekers, if the combined weight is over 4 pounds, than many people's shipping will go up, so they can't charge yet.
Also, there is prolly something with the actual credit card company on how soon before shipping they can charge.
I have no idea, I know little about how credit card companies handle things. What I know is that, usually, when I pre-order something, I can pay for it. Usually as soon as I order it, months in advance. I understand Paizo does things differently for a reason, but the end result is, in some cases (namely this one), irksome. :(
In the end, Paizo is the company I love and appreciate almost every day out of the year. This is just one day I am more sad with them then glad.
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Chief Technical Officer
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What I know is that, usually, when I pre-order something, I can pay for it. Usually as soon as I order it, months in advance. I understand Paizo does things differently for a reason, but the end result is, in some cases (namely this one), irksome. :(
I, too, have seen some companies who charge for preorders at the time you place the order, but Visa's regulations state that merchants "should not bill the customer until merchandise has been shipped." The only allowable exception I can find is for made-to-order merchandise that requires a deposit. (MasterCard has similar requirements, but I'm just quoting Visa because I have their guide handy.)