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General discussionState of <b>Customer Experience </b>(353 posts) (353 posts) 
(353 posts) 
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This is my favourite topic
Posted March 25, 2015
In which we talk about our relationship with you.

Refunds, terms of use, customer support - it's the hot button issue right now and it's been on our minds as well. We thought this might be a pretty good time to say a word or two about how we do things, recent changes, and our approach to your customer experience.









Refunds.

We've got 'em, and here are the basics you might need to know:
You have 30 days, worldwide. Hitting "Buy" doesn't waive your rights.
European Union law states that you should have 14 days to withdraw from a purchase. That's not a bad deal, but it's not always enough. We think that 30 days is more like it, and that worldwide is just nicer - within that period, we only consider your purchase final if you've already started to actually download your game. We want all of our customers to feel that our refund policy is there to give you a comfortable experience - not that we were forced into having one.


You can still get a refund for technical issues after downloading your game.
Downloading a game doesn't mean you're on your own, you still have our guarantee that it works!
If you have your game, but it doesn't work for one of the million reasons that just happen - we're here to help. We want you to be able to play your game, and if you can't, there's no reason why you should be stuck with it. We call this the Money Back Guarantee. If your game doesn't work due to technical issues, and our support team is unable to help you fix it, we'll offer you a refund - and two ways to do it. You'll have the choice of a refund in store credit, (this is almost immediate), or back to your card/PayPal account (if you're okay with waiting a few days to be cleared by your card or account issuer). You have 30 days to contact us after making your purchase, but there's no rush - your refund-timer stops ticking once you get in touch.










Customer support
We think that good customer support is one of the pillars of an awesome GOG.com experience. A hard time getting through to a living, breathing, human being can be one of the most frustrating things ever. But that's just not us.

Our support team is a cool, friendly bunch of people. Emphasis on people. They're really good at what they do, and they're here to provide you with a friendly, personal way to get in touch. We offer in-house tech support for all your problems, crashes, and other (totally not PEBKAC) issues, and we'll provide full support with no time restrictions. If that game you bought two years ago isn't working anymore, we might just be able to help. We'll take the time to walk you through any suggestions, and do our best to accommodate your non-technical needs - but that doesn't mean we can't work fast. Beginning January of this year, the waiting time for your average support ticket response was under 24 hours, and we got your problems completely resolved in under 36 hours.

Still, there's no reason why we couldn't do even better: we recently started offering support on Saturdays and Sundays, and the team just got a bit bigger. You can now write to us in English, French and German, and we plan to include more languages as we continue to expand. We're planning a significant update to our website support section, so finding information and getting in touch should be much easier. Soon, we'll also offer a much finer way to track your purchases and gifts, while all orders eligible for our Money Back Guarantee will be clearly labeled.









That's our two cents. We hope that this gives all of you a better (and much needed) inside look at customer experience and support from our perspective. If you have any questions, feel free to drop us a line in the comments section. We're here to talk!
Post edited March 26, 2015 by Konrad
Posted March 29, 2015
Hi GOG, I believe you are way too nice to your customers.

One should think before he acts and not do things and buy things one doesn't want.

When there was a game on sale and I bought it, not realizing I already have it on Steam, it was only my problem and my lost money. The way I see it, the money belongs to you and the owners of the rights to the products (hopefully the creators) and that's how it should be.

To be able to get the money back should be only possible when the product doesn't work and can't be repaired/replaced by the same thing, provided the user has the means of using the product in the first place (if I know that I can't run, say, Dragon Age Inquisition on my device, I won't buy it, try to install it and then demand money back because it doesn't run. The same way I can't demand money back if I buy Blu-Ray disc and don't have the Blu-Ray player in the first place, hoping it will run on DVD or VCR recorder...

These laws (money back guarantee, Widerrufsrecht etc.) are here just to protect people who are unable to control themselves in their spending habits or aren't responsible for themselves in general (and by proxy to protect people who depend on them - if a father spends his whole salary on games booze or drugs, his family shouldn't be the one suffering consequences). Such people, in my opinion, shouldn't be allowed to enter into contracts in the first place.
Posted March 29, 2015
Did he just relate drug addiction to game addiction?

Ummm okay. :P

As am addict I can say with a fair amount of certainty that (while comparisons can inevitably be drawn between anything anywhere if you try hard enough) you are full of it. :P
Posted March 29, 2015
high rated
I sometimes find (but not always) that GOG communications can be a little lacking. Additionally, known issues appear to be forgotten due to a lack of communication, but then suddenly show up with a fix. Here are a couple of examples:

When Star Wars: Starfighter was released there was a pretty major bug with the controls due to some missing registry entries. I actually did the investigation, identified the problem and the fix, and sent that information over to GOG. All I got from GOG support was a thank you for the information and that it would be passed on to the relevant staff members. Nothing was then heard for a whole month, and then a new installer version was released with the fix (and a shout out to myself for the information - which was very nice of you). But during this month it appeared that nothing was being done.

Similarly, we've had an issue raised against F.E.A.R Platinum whereby starting the multiplayer game actually installs some inert SecuROM files and registry entries. These are not removable by normal means (due to how SecuROM files and registry entries try to prevent deletion) and can possibly affect any SecuROM games that the user already has installed. This was raised over a month ago now, and it was stated at the time that you had a workaround in the works. But we've heard nothing since and there has been no updated installer so the issue isn't resolved.

If GOG can provide better and more communications then that will improve customer experience and trust.

Other than that, though, I've found you to be pretty great. :)
Posted March 29, 2015
Keep being awesome!
Posted March 30, 2015
Thanks GOG. Never had any problems with the games I've gotten from here, but glad to know it doesn't sound like it'll be a problem if i ever do.
Posted March 30, 2015
I don't think a money back guarantee has anything to do with gaming addiction. There are games that sometimes won't work on people's computers.

I can't get Driver Parallel lines to work on my PC, but on the other hand, its not the end of the world. I wouldn't have asked for a refund even if I could at the time.

I have purchased games I have on Steam as insurance in case Steam were ever to shut down or if they ever locked my account. While that is unlikely, I see having a backup of games I like as a good investment. I don't do that with every game I have on Steam, just the games I like and want to keep.

I've had games on Steam not work for me, but thankfully most were from cheap bundles and I'd not make a big deal out of it. Still, if I sank a decent amount of money into a defective game, I'd like a refund.

Also there are games on GOG that are for preorder and they don't list the hardware requirements, some people may find out after preordering the games that their hardware can't run the games. Its nice to be able to cancel an order before getting stuck with a game that you can't play.
Posted March 30, 2015
All I can say is this is one huge reason why I am enjoying GoG more and more as the time goes.
Posted March 30, 2015
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etb:
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ShadowWulfe: What?

I'm talking about download throttling in China.
What "What"? Did you try browsing using a good VPN like EarthVPN?
Posted March 31, 2015
I have gone back and forth in my reaction to GOG. Primarily this has been in response to GOG going back and forth in policy. I was an enthusiastic supporter and loved gifting and doing giveaways and making the occasional helpful forum post for the sake of doing something nice for strangers and supporting GOG, then a few things happened, some changes gave me pause. I felt betrayed when regional pricing was adopted, when for as long as I had been coming here, "One World, Fair Price" was proudly displayed on the frontpage. Before we reopen the debate on how regional pricing isn't "that bad" as Licurg put it, let me clarify that regional pricing itself was never really what I took issue with, though I tend to agree with GOG's original stance against it. What I took issue with was that GOG had let publishers negotiate away one of its three pillars. I briefly went from feeling betrayed to being elated at the "Back to Our Roots" anouncement and the restoration of "One World, Fair Price" to the frontpage. This was short-lived however, as the reversal of the decision was promptly reversed. The only way to build trust is through continuity.

At this point, I had resolved to stop with the gifting and giveaways, and stop with the "buying to try" of games I wasn't sure I wanted. I was nonetheless further dissappointed and bewildered by policy changes that would restrict gift purchases, presumably to curb abuses, but to me it seems like punishment of some of the most loyal and enthusiastic customers. I am still unclear on these limits. Is it five per day? Five per day of a particular title? Moot point anyhow with my gifting days over.

I was equally repelled by the addition of movies to the site, as I consider such things to be little more than brainwashing/advertising and I would never pay for such a thing. I'd be more inclined to send filmmakers an invoice for providing the service of watching their propaganda. I do recognize that, ulike the other points, this is largely just a matter of personal taste. Movies, to me, just don't belong on a gaming site.

Unbundling was a disappointment as well. I really loved having one easy installer for bundles. I have purchased games here that I already had on disc because having one easy installer to run was well worth the price. This seems it will be somewhat less the case in the future due to unbundling. With mod installation time factored in (mods are a must for me, if they exist for a game) the fewer game installers I have to run, the better.

To give credit where credit is due, ALL of my experiences with support on the site have been excellent in the extreme. I would like to extend a special thanks to Natalia, JuriJ, and Judas Iscariot.

There are clearly some very good people at GOG. It would appear though that there is also the typical impulse toward "growth" and all the compromise of principles, pandering to publishers, and corruption that entails.
Post edited March 31, 2015 by rawmilk905
Posted March 31, 2015
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rawmilk905: I was nonetheless further dissappointed and bewildered by policy changes that would restrict gift purchases, presumably to curb abuses, but to me it seems like punishment of some of the most loyal and enthusiastic customers. I am still unclear on these limits. Is it five per day? Five per day of a particular title? Moot point anyhow with my gifting days over.
It is five gift copies of the same game per day. So you could go and buy five gift copies of every game in the catalogue every day.
Posted March 31, 2015
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rawmilk905: I was equally repelled by the addition of movies to the site, as I consider such things to be little more than brainwashing/advertising and I would never pay for such a thing. I'd be more inclined to send filmmakers an invoice for providing the service of watching their propaganda.
I fail to see how a movie like "The gamers" can be brainwashing/advertising...
Posted March 31, 2015
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rawmilk905: I was equally repelled by the addition of movies to the site, as I consider such things to be little more than brainwashing/advertising and I would never pay for such a thing. I'd be more inclined to send filmmakers an invoice for providing the service of watching their propaganda.
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etb: I fail to see how a movie like "The gamers" can be brainwashing/advertising...
Dark Dungeons (with the same guys) is a 1-to-1 movie adaptation of a propaganda paper by a fanatic religious nut-job against RPGs and I think it's hilarious. :D
Posted March 31, 2015
I for one love the addition of gaming documentaries. As long as it doesn't seriously detract from bringing more games to the service, I'm all for it.
Posted March 31, 2015
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rawmilk905: I was equally repelled by the addition of movies to the site, as I consider such things to be little more than brainwashing/advertising and I would never pay for such a thing. I'd be more inclined to send filmmakers an invoice for providing the service of watching their propaganda.
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etb: I fail to see how a movie like "The gamers" can be brainwashing/advertising...
Nothing against gaming documentaries particularly, though I don't see much point in them. My aversion is to movies in general. As I wrote, this one is a matter of personal taste, not a legitimate gripe. For those who like it it's fine. It's just not the content I want to see when I log in to look at games. I appreciate being able to hide it with the barefoot essentials for GOG Grease Monkey scripts.
Posted March 31, 2015
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rawmilk905: I was nonetheless further dissappointed and bewildered by policy changes that would restrict gift purchases, presumably to curb abuses, but to me it seems like punishment of some of the most loyal and enthusiastic customers. I am still unclear on these limits. Is it five per day? Five per day of a particular title? Moot point anyhow with my gifting days over.
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moonshineshadow: It is five gift copies of the same game per day. So you could go and buy five gift copies of every game in the catalogue every day.
Thanks for the clarification, I don't know if I ever would have exceded those limits prior to the policy change. But I did buy many many gifts of the Neverwinter Nights Series.
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This is my favourite topic
Community
General discussionState of <b>Customer Experience </b>(353 posts) (353 posts) 
(353 posts)