I have tried reaching you via phone, email already. This is my last attempt before giving up period.
Your store has decided not to allow me to buy anything, because for some stupid reason it won't accept that my mailing address hasn't changed.
Second, I would prefer you guys held my shipment until all of it can be sent at once, there are several August releases in it.
Third, why did I not get a discount in the items I have in my cart? I should be getting 30% off.
Fourth, I have updated my credit card information. To be frank, I would far rather be using paypal than give you financial information. Can this be changed?
Question 1-3, will have to wait for an official response from Customer Service. Right now they are swamped because of GenCon.
Question 4, PayPal is not a viable option. I'd post a direct link to Vic post but the URL tag seems to be screwed up, so I'll put the text behind this a spoiler,
Steve Geddes wrote:
Is it because of the way authorisations work or something?
Yes. There are several ways their authorization requirements don't work well for us.
PayPal only guarantees the availability of a customer's funds during a 3-day "Honor Period" after the authorization. If all of the items in the order are in stock in our warehouse, and it's not the week we're doing a subscription run, that's usually going to be fine... although even in this best case, if somebody were to place an order on Friday evening after we've closed up for the weekend, the Honor Period would actually end at midnight on Sunday, and there is zero chance that we'd have shipped the order. If we exceeded the Honor Period, and the funds were no longer available, we'd learn of the failure when we tried to ship the package. At that point, we'd notify the customers, and they're probably not going to be terribly happy. (This sort of thing does occasionally happen now, most commonly when somebody goes over their credit limit between the time they order and the time we ship, but it would become more common with PayPal.)
Also, unlike credit cards, where unsettled authorizations close automatically after a few days, PayPal leaves the authorization open for 29 days. And even though they won't guarantee that those funds are available to *us* between day 4 and day 29, they are apparently unavailable to the *customer* during that time. So we'd get a lot of complaints from customers that we're holding their money too long, even though we wouldn't actually have that money! All items that we have to order from our distributor, as well as some preorders, backorders, and subscription and sidecart orders would fall in this window. Also, orders placed as we're gearing up a sub run—or, as explained before, just on a Friday evening—will likely also fall into in this category.
Other preorders, backorders, and subscription and sidecart orders would fall beyond the 29-day window, which would mean that the authorization would automatically close (in some situations, we could close it early ourselves), and we'd have to get a new one. However, they really don't want this to happen: if they determine that you're creating too many authorizations that are closed without being used, they will cancel your merchant account. (I seem to remember they will also cancel your account if they decide that you're not settling enough auths inside the Honor Period, but I'm not 100% certain of that.)
The bottom line is that they really want you to ship within 3 days, and have ensured that it's painful if you don't, yet we have a lot of situations where we just can't do that.
If true, it should be noted on the FAQ for others to find out about. Either way, I still need an answer.
It is noted in the FAQ:
Again, I need customer service to fix these problems.
Again, I need customer service to fix these problems.
Again, most of the staff are at GenCon. They are swamped there, and have posted here
You'll need to be a bit patient.
Hello Piccolo,
I'm unsure what exactly you are referring to concerning your mailing address. I do not see any AVS failures on the card if you mean the billing address. Whether it is your shipping or billing address, I will respond to your email where you can specify the address that should be used and I can help you make this adjustment.
I have moved all items in the order, except for the subscription, to go into your sidecart. This will set up all of the items to generate with your August subscription order. Once we have resolved the address issue, and you are able to submit the order that is starting the subscription, that order should also go into your sidecart, and the entirety of the your order will wait for August subscription items to ship together.
I do not know of any applicable promotion which would provide 30% off of this order. If you are referring to Paizo Advantage, this discount will become active once your first volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path ships.
The answer for Paypal has been given correctly. Thank you for providing that reference.
Hello Piccolo,
I'm unsure what exactly you are referring to concerning your mailing address. I do not see any AVS failures on the card if you mean the billing address. Whether it is your shipping or billing address, I will respond to your email where you can specify the address that should be used and I can help you make this adjustment.
I have moved all items in the order, except for the subscription, to go into your sidecart. This will set up all of the items to generate with your August subscription order. Once we have resolved the address issue, and you are able to submit the order that is starting the subscription, that order should also go into your sidecart, and the entirety of the your order will wait for August subscription items to ship together.
I do not know of any applicable promotion which would provide 30% off of this order. If you are referring to Paizo Advantage, this discount will become active once your first volume of the Pathfinder Adventure Path ships.
The answer for Paypal has been given correctly. Thank you for providing that reference.
First off, no matter how I try, I keep getting TWO items in my cart, not one, even when I only have a subscription to the upcoming sequel to Runelords. Please do me a favor and call me. I will be waiting. I will try to call you.
Piccolo, any time I add a subscription to my cart, it always adds two items to the cart; one is the subscription and one is the starting item.
That is seriously peculiar. I didn't know that was supposed to happen, because it sure seems confusing.
I made the order, but to be frank it would be nice to have a chat with customer service still. I want to know how much the total bill is going to be with the discount.
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Hello Piccolo,
I just took a look at your account and it appears that everything is now set up correctly to generate mid-august with your new subscription item!
As to your inquiry about the price. Unfortunately, our system is not set up to calculate the discount until the order has been generated. This is because the first volume of the subscription is in the order in question.
It is not displaying to me a final price, with the discount, to show you yet. This will happen when we generate subscription order for August. At this time you will receive a confirmation email with the prices displayed. If you have any concerns or changes you would like to make to the order once your receive that confirmation email, you can contact us and we will have plenty of time to make any adjustments to the order you would like before you are charged and the order ships.
Sure. I was debating the Shamhazian Demon mini anyway.
Hey Customer Service! I was wondering, when are you guys going to have my order ready? The month is halfway over as it is. It would be nice to at least have a total price including discount.
Okay, don't answer. And I note you haven't answered my email yet either. Wonderful customer service you have.
The website crashed last week. They haven’t been able to do pretty much anything customer facing since last Friday.
I've been waiting since at least the beginning of the month. This is nothing new; they have chosen to take their time in sending my items and even in answering.
Yeah, I read Sam’s response. The subscription run she mentioned also got snarled up in the website crash. It sucks, but I figured you’d like to at least know that (it’s the reason nothing had happened between your August 16th post and your follow up yesterday).
I suspect something has gone screwy with your specific order, however since it’s the weekend and after a week of delay the CS team is probably snowed under with queries it may take a few days for them to find their feet - I didn’t mean to imply there’s not an issue.
They aren't starting to ship subscriptions until Monday.
It will probably take them a couple of weeks.
As to why they haven't answered, the crash affected their internal systems to so as far as I know they weren't able to
Stuff happens, but at least no one was hurt, and hey, it's a full moon tonight, so good times!
Hello Piccolo,
Due to issues with our internal system, we were able to finish generating subscription orders on August 17th. At this time, Piccolo, you should have received the order confirmation giving you an entire breakdown of the order, including all the prices with all of your discounts applied. This should have given you the information you were looking for for your order.
I have just sent you another confirmation email in case you did not receive the first one. Our subscription shipping has been delayed this month due to the technical issues which you may have noticed affecting the site. We have been unable to access the boards or make any dramatic changes to orders for these same reasons, slowing down our ability to answer emails. There is not problem with your specific order. It will ship out in the coming week with all of the subscription orders we will be shipping.
Thank you for your patience. If you have any alterations to the order you would like to make, please let me know. Thank you!
Hello Piccolo,
Due to issues with our internal system, we were able to finish generating subscription orders on August 17th. At this time, Piccolo, you should have received the order confirmation giving you an entire breakdown of the order, including all the prices with all of your discounts applied. This should have given you the information you were looking for for your order.
I have just sent you another confirmation email in case you did not receive the first one. Our subscription shipping has been delayed this month due to the technical issues which you may have noticed affecting the site. We have been unable to access the boards or make any dramatic changes to orders for these same reasons, slowing down our ability to answer emails. There is not problem with your specific order. It will ship out in the coming week with all of the subscription orders we will be shipping.
Thank you for your patience. If you have any alterations to the order you would like to make, please let me know. Thank you!
I noted you took the money from my account, but there's been nothing involving actually mailing the shipment. No tracking number, no nothing. My order still says Pending.
Uhm, that doesn't help. I already noted that the money was taken from my bank account, and that I hadn't gotten any sort of tracking information or even an indication it'd been shipped yet.
Hello Piccolo,
As the others have mentioned, you have not been charged. What you are seeing is an authorization. When the order is generated your bank is pinged to make sure the card is valid. When this happens most banks will put a temporary hold on the funds, which can look like a pending transaction on your end. When we ship the order is when we charge you. In most cases that authorization will just finalize into a charge.
The warehouse just began shipping the subscription orders yesterday, so yours could be shipping out any time now.
Hello Piccolo,
As the others have mentioned, you have not been charged. What you are seeing is an authorization. When the order is generated your bank is pinged to make sure the card is valid. When this happens most banks will put a temporary hold on the funds, which can look like a pending transaction on your end. When we ship the order is when we charge you. In most cases that authorization will just finalize into a charge.
The warehouse just began shipping the subscription orders yesterday, so yours could be shipping out any time now.
I just found out through an email that you are planning on shipping by sept 7. I would prefer you ship before that, as I have been waiting for a while now. Sigh.
Hello Piccolo,
It takes time to ship out all of the subscription orders. Our estimate for when we expect to have them all shipped out to everyone who has been waiting is September 7.
Yes. It kinda sucks that I didn't get the 10% discount. I felt I had been relatively patient, although I did get ticked when the wait got long. I still haven't gotten my items, nor even a notification email stating they'd been shipped, nor a tracking number.
Don't worry. A lot of other people are in the same position of still waiting, since the estimated shipping completion date is the 7th and it's still only the 1st in the US. I'm one of the ones stuck in the queue too.
I set my subs to priority mail, so they already arrived yesterday.
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They did an authorization, I still don't have my product.
This has always been the process. When orders begin to ship, they run the authorization to ensure you can actually pay for it. Then when it actually ships, the bank releases the money to them. If it doesn't ship in time, the bank releases the authorization and your account can use those funds again.
Update: I got my items yesterday, but I never did get that 10% off.
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And if, when the money is released back to me, I accidentally spend it to where my account doesn't have enough? Suddenly it looks bad on me because of issues they caused.They did an authorization, I still don't have my product.This has always been the process. When orders begin to ship, they run the authorization to ensure you can actually pay for it. Then when it actually ships, the bank releases the money to them. If it doesn't ship in time, the bank releases the authorization and your account can use those funds again.
I suspect Paizo would love to charge us when we place an order (or when the subscription is first spawned). There are certainly lots of queries/complaints/confused posts which arise due to the authorisation-then-finalise later process.
Unfortunately, their agreements with credit card companies prohibits them from doing this. They have to wait until your order's shipment is imminent. (Many retailers breach this rule, but Paizo won't).
FWIW, if regular charges is preferable over intermittent holds and then finalisations, I find a useful thing is to buy myself a gift certificate, redeem it to my account and then set my subscription shipment to utilise store credit. That way the charge comes out exactly when I expect it (it settles as soon as the gift certificate is purchased) any further interaction is only for the shortfall.
That may not suit you, of course, but it is one possible approach if you don't like having authorisations placed, then released, then charged again.