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It looks like the latest build of Chromium (powering Chrome, Edge, Opera, and other browsers) has changed how it renders pages by default. As various browsers update to include the latest Chromium build, they place the menu links underneath other elements, making them inaccessable. We'll need to push some changes to our site CSS to resolve this for people who have the latest browsers. Thanks for the heads up and information, everyone!
Our apologies regarding the Heavy is the Crown PDF - the files are now correctly available. If you've already generated an empty archive of ~200 bytes, clicking the "Problems downloading this file?" link for each will force them to be rebuilt correctly.Hello Brian, the two downloads for the new Starfinder Flip-Mat seem to suffer from the same problem. Could you get this checked, please? Thank you! Hello, Zaister. The new flip-mats from this month should also be working now.
Our apologies regarding the Heavy is the Crown PDF - the files are now correctly available. If you've already generated an empty archive of ~200 bytes, clicking the "Problems downloading this file?" link for each will force them to be rebuilt correctly.
Hi, Meshakhad! We store watermarked files for about a week so they can be downloaded quickly multiple times. If you want to force the file to be recreated with updated information, click the "having trouble downloading this file?" link for the download in question.
I don't have any specific updates on this issue, but I don't believe the two are intrinsically related. From what I understand, our current PDF release practices are a business/policy decision. To my knowledge there are no legal or accounting stipulations forbidding partial charges and fulfillment of orders as products become available.
I’m more than happy for payment to be taken right away to streamline the entire process, rather than only being charged when books are dispatched. Every few years we revisit this issue with our payment processing networks, as it would simplify a lot of our order fulfillment workflow. Unfortunately, settling an authorization prior to shipping the purchased goods remains in violation of our merchant agreements.
This issue should be resolved. Thank you for bearing with us! If anyone is seeing absurdly oversized faction icons, reloading the page with Ctrl-refresh (win/linux) or Cmd-refresh (mac), or deleting your temporary files should ensure you're seeing up-to-date, correctly sized icons.
Where is this Con??? I saddly probably will not make it due to financial issues this year. but still..Where might be helpful if you want people to be there in person. PaizoCon is entirely online this year. wain't wasn't this application earlier or was that application for different event? If you're referring to two blog posts from mid-January, those were seeking volunteers to GM and provide HQ support for Paizo's Organized Play program at PaizoCon and GenCon. This application is for PaizoCon attendees who wish to run their own games and events.
Im trying to redownload the Age of Ashes players guide from my downloads and I get the following error when I click on it. I have previously downloaded it successfully before. If you click the "having problems downloading this file?" link for the affected download, it should force it to be regenerated and should resolve this issue.
Hello, Mr. Fred, I definitely empathize with your position. We certainly don't want our customers to have to jump through more hoops simply because they made a larger purchase. Unfortunately, we don't currently have any other viable means of complying with the law. If the three weeks a package is stuck in customs can be reduced by our filing more or better documentation when we ship orders to Europe, we definitely want to look into that further. If, however, that time period is simply how long it takes the receiving customs office to go through incoming packages and identify and contact the recipients to pay the VAT and duties, then Paizo likely can't do much to shorten your wait. In short, we'd like to do as much as we can to make the process as pain-free as possible, but ultimately a significant part of it is out of our control. Regarding reimbursements: Paizo is reimbursing our customers for additional local VAT and duties charges for packages for which Paizo has already collected and remitted VAT. This is to prevent our customers from having to pay the same VAT twice. If we *didn't* charge you VAT, because the order cost more than 150€, then no double-charging for VAT has occurred, and there's nothing that needs to be reimbursed.
After looking through a lot of orders of folks in this thread, I have some additional findings that may be of interest. The changes in VAT collection regulations over the past year and a half require us to handle orders with a value greater than 150 Euro differently than orders with a lesser value. For orders under 150 Euros, we are able to assess, collect and remit the VAT directly, and such orders should clear customs quickly and arrive with no additional effort on your part. This scenario wasn't working properly prior to August, as one of our carriers wasn't forwarding the proper documentation to international customs offices, which caused packages to be held and customers to have to pay double VAT. We believe this issue is resolved. Orders that cost more than 150 euros cannot be handled in this way. The standard behavior for these shipments is for us to *not* assess, charge, or remit any VAT on such orders. Instead, the customer is considered the importer of record, and must pay any relevant VAT and duty charges themselves. There is not a workable option at this time for Paizo to handle the VAT on such orders ourselves. From looking over a multitude of orders from various people on this thread, I suspect this is the predominant source of variance between purchases/subscriptions and between the experiences of customers who are still encountering issues and customers who are not. People with multiple subscriptions are more likely to have larger subscription orders that exceed the 150 Euro threshold, don't get charged tax, and get held by their local customs for import and payment of VAT and other duties. People who are making discrete purchases are more likely falling below the threshold and having us charge and handle their VAT. Hopefully, folks will find that their order histories make more sense and seem more consistent in light of the expected behaviors I outlined above. If not, please let me know, either in thread, PMed, or emailed as you are comfortable, so we can look into your issue further.
Hello, all - I very much appreciate the level of detail folks who are still having issues have gone into recently describing what you're experiencing. With a much smaller pool of affected individuals, finding the common link is much trickier. My apologies if anyone has felt ignored; we definitely still have this on our radar, but are still gathering information and trying to collate it into a viable theory for what's still going wrong.
Hi, Demiurge! When you synchronize your Paizo account with your account on a partner's website, they're supposed to automatically send our website a request to link the accounts. Since you're seeing discounted prices on their website, it appears that this process completed successfully. In the same way that their website asks ours which products you own so they can offer discounts on their versions of those products, their website is also supposed to report to ours any products you purchased from them so that we can unlock the corresponding PDFs on our side. It appears this second process has not completed successfully. If you visit the Fantasy Grounds Paizo Account Sync page, you should see a button to "Send Purchase Info to Paizo.com". Try clicking that and see if your downloads unlock. If they do not, please post back here with the date and time you clicked the button, so we can look into where things went wrong.
Hello, all, My apologies for my late return to this thread. Eledriel, I believe what you are experiencing is a bug on the customer order display page. From looking at your order information directly, our records state that we did charge you tax on that order, and said tax will be remitted as appropriate. We currently have a bug fix working its way through the system, which I expect will be released either this week or next. I have forwarded your additional request up the chain. Is anyone besides Zaister still being charged by their local customs office? The number of positive posts following the filing changes in early August, as well as the significant drop-off in subsequent posting, suggests that those changes resolved the vast majority of issues across multiple countries. Zaister, I will of course continue looking for whatever might be causing your continued troubles, but it may be more difficult to determine without others experiencing the same issue.
I can confirm that the books within the slipcase are not listed separately. The orders generated last night are only for physical products - PDFs are being handled separately. Additionally, we have partners in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and the EU who will be handling distribution for those countries separately. The orders generated last night are only for products Paizo is shipping directly.
Hey, Steve. I'm looking through your orders, and it looks like our checks with USPS for current shipping costs to you indicate that USPS delivery isn't currently available to your address. I know USPS has been suspending different services to different countries over the last several years, and I would expect that is what's occurring here. Being able to select and keep USPS Priority International as your preferred shipping method ensures that we will resume using that shipping method for you as soon as USPS indicates that it's available again.
If we didn't get a notice should we be worried? It depends on what items you're expecting and where you live. We processed only orders for physical products that we're handling shipping for directly. We have partners handling distribution for the following countries: Spiral Galaxy Games: UK
If you are expecting physical products and live in a country other than the ones listed above, you should have received a notification. If you did not, please email Customer Service. If you're expecting only virtual products, or live in one of the countries listed above, there is no cause for concern at this time.
Sure Brian, thanks a lot! My issue is ultimately unfixable - while you've managed to whisk VAT away, the post office will still have me pay for the trouble it took them to establish that VAT was handled on your side. That sounds absurd to me - isn't the entire point of having companies collect the VAT upfront so that the post office doesn't have to waste a bunch of time and effort nickel-and-diming everyone receiving shipments? Just to clarify, you're saying there's nothing that Paizo could be doing more correctly with your shipment to prevent the post office from charging you at all?
Hello, everyone! I'm so glad that everyone who has responded so far since the update is reporting no issues with their latest orders! The response is strong enough that we can be reasonably sure that the underlying issue lay with our predominant carrier for Euro-bound packages not including all the data they should have in the e-filings they transmit on our behalf. From a technical perspective, Paizo will consider this issue tentatively closed until we have reason to believe there are additional problems with VAT reporting for overseas shipping. I'll continue monitoring this thread and responding when needed, but I won't be keeping to a strict update schedule going forward. I also intend to reduce the priority of the other VAT-related issues I outlined above, as they appear to be either non-issues or issues of vastly lower customer impact. Our increased certainty of the root cause of this issue is enough that we can comfortably contact every customer in a VAT-paying country who received a shipment via the aforementioned carrier during the 2022 calendar year. We will be sending out an email to all such customers who may have been affected by this issue, explaining what happened and offering them the same reimbursement opportunity offered to folks in this thread. I understand that several of you did not keep receipts or would prefer alternate forms of reimbursement, but regrettably I have been unable to secure additional reimbursement opportunities for you at this time. Please feel free to continue to post status updates in this thread indicating whether your parcels are arriving to your residence stress-free (or not) until you feel personally confident that the issue is fully resolved. If I see an uptick in problems, we'll track down and resolve those issues as well. Once again, please accept my sincere apology on behalf of Paizo for this inconvenience. You may live halfway around the world from us, but you all matter, and your continued support means a lot to me, personally. Y'all are lovely, and I hope we can interact again soon, under more pleasant circumstances!
Thanks for the report. We had an indexing payload large enough to completely jam our indexer, pausing search results from February onward. We resolved the issue and our indexer is now playing catch up. It's currently in late March, and I'd expect it to be completely caught up overnight.
I appreciate everyone's patience through last week without additional updates. I spent some of it in transit from GenCon, some of it recovering from GenCon, and some of it catching up on the nearly two weeks I was out. The improvement announced on Friday, July 29th should start having an effect - please let us know if your customs issues have been resolved for orders shipped after that date. We also intend to shortly release an update removing the misleading "VAT rate at destination" line currently visible on your order history pages and shipping labels. In the meantime, we're working on the following:
While these additional items are important, most of them are of one of two natures - either "quadruple-check that we did, in fact, build this right the first time", or "improve further something already working". They will likely be given a de-escalated priority if the UPS e-filing improvements resolve the issues reported in this thread. As always, the most difficult part of this process is gathering the information about which efforts bear fruit, so please keep us updated if your shipments start being processed by customs differently (or if they are treated the same). And once again - thank you all for your patience and continued patronage.
Friday update: Starting tomorrow, July 30th, orders that we ship to Europe via UPS (including Mail Innovations) will have improved e-filing that may resolve this issue. We will continue to work on additional improvements to our overseas shipping procedures, but we wanted to let you all know to be on the lookout for future shipments, and to let us know if you experience any changes on your end.
From my perspective, this seems to be working now for shipments to Germany. Last month, and again just now this month, I didn't have to pay any additional import tax to get my shipment. Hey, Zaister. Interesting - I don't see a clear distinguishing factor with your recent orders. That's good to know, however. Brian, could you perhaps check if the tax rates are set correctly for Germany? My invoice states, "VAT rate at destination: 19.00%". This is correct; however, Germany has a reduced tax rates for books at only 7%. I hope your system can handle that. You're almost certainly seeing the display bug I explain here. I took a brief look through your orders, and nothing jumped out at me as erroneous in the amount of tax we've actually charged you. If you see something that looks amiss with how much we charged you, please contact customer service.
I appreciate the clarification, xNelly. I'm trying to distinguish between technical problems with the ticketing system and the non-technical problem of tickets not being responded to in a reasonable timeframe. I can personally help with the former, but have very little control over the latter.
Good to see you, Steve. If you get an email confirmation, that's pretty reliably an indication that your ticket was created successfully. We've had no known cases of tickets disappearing, and a lack of response is due to non-technical reasons that would likely be equally applicable to the CS Forums if they were brought back. I do recognize that at least seeing your ticket on a page along with other tickets that are being acted upon can be reassuring that your time will come. The CS forums also fostered a spirit of mutual assistance and comradery that ticketing lacks. Thanks, Paul. I strongly suspect that your email system is flagging our response emails and sending them to spam or similar. Not only do we have the two tickets you mentioned, but in addition to the automatic confirmation you should have received the emails we sent upon completion of each ticket. I've just sent you a fresh email from our ticketing system with the subject line "A test email from Paizo's ticketing system". Please look through your inbox, spam folder, etc, and let me know if you received it.
Today's update: Nothing new to report. GenCon looms, so progress on this issue will be slowed.
Hello again, Franz Thanks for the correction on your ticket ID. I'll email you. I also very much appreciate your candid reply, and I completely understand your legitimate frustration and disappointment in Paizo's recent performance with your orders. Unfortunately, I am not in a position where I can make unilateral policy decisions regarding customer reimbursement or customer correspondence. As such, I will continue to do what I can - advocate on behalf of those affected by this issue and reporting back here regularly until either the issue is resolved or I am told to stop.
3) The Ticket system only works half the time. When it works, it works and I get a response like...a day later. When it doesn't work, it's radio silence and you have nowhere to go with your ticket. Just for clarity, are you saying that half the time when you send a fresh email (not a response to an existing email chain) to customer.service@paizo.com, you do not get back an automatic email response with a ticket number?
Hi Brian, can you reset my account as well? I’ve had this issue for a couple weeks now, and I’d love to buy some stuff! I appreciate you reaching out, Aventhar - I've fixed your cart. Additionally, we deployed a fix for this issue earlier this week, so people who aren't experiencing this issue already shouldn't find themselves experiencing it going forward. Come Monday, we'll also deploy a bulk update to fix any already-broken carts. Again, thank you all for your patience!
The short answer is no. The long answer is the rest of this post: We already have the designs, mock-ups, and proof-of-concepts completed for a fantastic new downloads page, and have for quite some time. Unfortunately, page and usability overhauls that you all ask for (and that we love to deliver) are frequently trapped in a prioritization limbo. Tech handles not only the Paizo website, but also our backend services (such as warehousing, order processing, etc.), as well as internal infrastructure for our employees (corporate network, administrative services, VPN connectivity for work-from-home, tech support for employee workstations, etc.). Across all these responsibilities, you can roughly break down our prioritization queue like so: 1. Legal requirements - we have to follow the law and remain in compliance with regulations, both in the USA and abroad. This includes following privacy laws, tax compliance, data security obligations, etc. Preventing and remedying these issues as they come up takes priority over everything else we do. 2. Ethical requirements - we have to ensure that we're doing business ethically, which from a technical perspective means fixing bugs or data mistakes that might mislead the public, especially if such bugs might affect how people make purchases. 3. Essential business functions - we have to be able to advertise, sell, and ship/distribute our products effectively. This also includes proactive maintenance of our infrastructure. Without these, we have no business and no jobs, and our customers have no new products or content. 4. User experience - we want our users to have a wonderful experience navigating and using the site. Issues in this category are often inconveniences, but either have workarounds or affect non-essential site features. Things like overhauling the downloads page fall into this category. 5. Sizzle - These are all the delightful, but entirely unessential improvements that are great to get to when we can. As new tasks are created, they may jump the queue depending on their priority. Unfortunately, this means that lower priority tasks are frequently bumped back as newer high-priority tasks come in. This is supremely frustrating for both us and you, since we love releasing visible improvements to the website that make users happy, and users love seeing their experiences improved and their problems resolved in a timely manner.
Update: We're currently working on several different issues the build off the model changes I discussed yesterday.
Hi, Franz, It appears that we resolved that ticket three days after you filed it, but no response was sent informing you that we'd done so. I'm so sorry about that. Hopefully you've found that the changes you requested were completed to your satisfaction. If not, please let me know and I'll light any necessary fires. I agree that this forum thread should not be the extent of our outreach on this issue. We're still determining the exact criteria that cause someone to run afoul of this issue - while it affects only customers who pay VAT, it does not affect all customers who pay VAT. I'll relay your request up the chain. |
