Second Class Customers
Timmoth
Posts: 108
Daz makes great 3D models, and is very innovative with their creation, eg. Genesis and the Supersuit, but their management, communication skills and customer interaction betrays absolute incompetence.
I don’t mean this to target any Daz employee specifically, I see them in the forums and they’re all nice people - and I’m not saying I could do a better job, but I’m not the one running a business that so many customers have come to depend on.
Did Daz even know they were going to be changing their website? Or the Forum (maybe they should have been relaunched seperately, ie. at different times), because it seems like the whole thing has caught them totally by surprise, which is totally ridiculous to me.
It’s as if there’s been some unexpected catastrophe that’s tragically wiped them out, so now they have to scramble to restore functionality, basically from scratch.
Yet of course this isn’t the case. Of course they knew, we all did.
We were told, ‘Stay tuned for deals all week long’. Great, it begins, woohoo!
A couple of dollar deals came along, then it all went pear shaped.
I saw a lot of comments on Facebook, Renderosity forums, and now the Daz forums, giving support and encouragement to Daz staff who must be working like trojans in the background to get things restored, ‘poor people, we know how it must be...’
Even during their ‘withdrawals’, and panic at account details being spread around, customers were trying to be patient and understanding. Very admirable, but I don’t think they do understand.
No, it seems to me that in the middle of that chaos Daz had the weekend off – because we didn’t even get an update on the carnage until someone strolled into the office at 9am Monday morning, just to thank us for our patience?
I’m not patient, I’m powerless
– thanks to gross incompetence and mismanagement.
I have no technical or marketing exprience to make informed criticism, but I still can’t see why the website wasn’t set up, to say 99% efficiency, before being made public, so that all store and database issues are worked out, then all that has to be done is open the site to traffic – or something along those lines.
ie. preparation beforehand, rather than just launching off into the unknown.
Maybe that is totally not how it went down, but that’s the impression a customer like me is left with.
Aside from the system errors, the new store options seem atrocious.
No date on when sales are over, no links to an item’s accessories (one of my most used features), and the product description has been divided into 3 tabs, so now we have to click on each one to get all the info for the one product, when we used to have the option to just scroll through (the same reverse-minded ‘improvement’ made to tabs in the Daz Studio interface).
Hopefully these things can be fixed, although I’m feeling doubtful anyone will bother whether it’s doable or not.
What about the Fantastic Five deal that never happened? Platinum Club members voted on our favourite GIS/sci-fi products to be released in a bundle with the GIS Skyway expansion, then the website disappeared and the deal hasn’t been seen since. The Skyway expansion is out, but the Fantastic Five never showed.
We're offered special deals to make it up to us later? I don’t want to be pacified and placated. I just want my stuff!
I know I sound like a spoiled brat right now, but I was led to believe I’d get some preference in treatment when I made a deal with Daz at the March Madness sale.
For ‘Buying It All’, every M.M. item, we were promised the M5 Pro or the Supersuit Pro bundle as a bonus.
My enthusiasm for the Supersuit (Superheroes are the main part of my hobby) was high enough that I thought I’d go with the ‘madness’ and do it, then be happy when the Supersuit came in on release day – even though a lot of those things I might not have bought otherwise.
I thought it’d probly be automated, straight into my downloads, as long as I’d fulfilled the deal.
No, all I did was sign up for second class treatment.
My money has already been taken, I’m not as important now.
If we had avatars mine would probably be a big red lollipop with SUCKER written on it.
So much for Loyalty. So much for special deals – because now the Supersuit has finally been released, everybody’s been playing with it for almost the last week now, and, after another weekend off for Daz, still nothing in my downloads, no email update, nothing.
The one good thing though, it’s become obvious the supersuit doesn’t have the material zones to do what I wanted (no leotard panty line mat zones!? Sorry bike-shorts aren’t very sexy, or heroic, to me). It’s cut my enthusiasm literally in half, but at least it’s given me some kind of forewarning - something Daz never does voluntarily.
I am a Dazaholic, I was loyal, even took the special deals (all part of the fun), but as with all addicts, if we’re kept in withdrawals long enough the addiction dies.
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Comments
First of all, they couldn't release them separately. It's been said that the main site and the forums are very closely corresponded with each other.
But yeah, I don't understand it either. The DAZ web team assured us that they were thoroughly testing everything back when this thing was supposedly under development. I have to ask, was any of this stuff happening back when all this testing was going on? Did everything look like it was alright and all of this suddenly happened as soon as the sight launched?
If I was DAZ, I'd pull back the site and temporarily restore the old one until everything got sorted out completely.
Unfortunately I can tell you from experience, its not easy to put back an old site after a new has been live. Especially when it's been up this long. Order history, new items etc are all out of sync. It's a lot of work.
But I agree they really didn't launch the site right, everyone agrees to that.
Unfortunately I have to agree with the OP, they should have been more prepared for the change over and threads like this are reasonable. It needs to be said so this may be planned better in the future. I hope the Marketing Dept. is listening.
They are monitoring the Official threads that Daz_Ann posted, it really is better to have all issues posted in one thread.
Where is that? ...I can't seem to find anything in here... :red:
It's one of the posts one the Front page of the Commons, and it is sticky, so towrds the top, underneath the announcements.
If the posting of images in the forum were working reliably I'd suggest that someone come up with an image of an unfinished boat with gaping holes in the bottom, being slid down the launch rails and with DAZengineers still hammering planks onto it and a caption reading "Yes we know it's going to be a bumpy launch but it will work out in the end.". :-s
I have no idea whether this comment will move this thread to the first page.... but I am feeling much like this customer.... I've commented twice already and sent a message to support about the March Madness bonus thing.... I had a small spark of hope in the "where is the super suit" thread when a Daz employee said that we'd only have to wait a few days, even commented not weeks and then... nothing.... I'm very disheartened.
My spending here has diminished to nothing.... I picked up the few dollar items and freebies when I could find them, but I just really feel unimportant... It's like when I had a friend who always said we'd do stuff....and then didn't show up... I gradually moved from anticipation to disappointment to not hanging out with her at all anymore because I couldn't count on her... I didn't stop caring about her, but enough was enough... its that same feeling... even though its a company, not a person.
I'm not to apathy quite yet.... still at the "Come on Charlie Brown, I'll hold the football and you kick it" believing stage, thinking Lucy might just not pull it away this time.
I really wish we would get some real updates from Daz managers. Specific updates about problems, fixes. projected time-lines with measurable outcomes.
Something on a REGULAR basis. I think lots of people could empathize more if they felt they were "in the know".
They are doing numerous updates. They would spend everyday all day listing out everything. Some you can see and some you can't, but they are making very good progress.
That was what I was trying to say... give us regular reports about specifics. Not, "we're working on it". That is an acceptable coping strategy for a few days... however, I think we are beyond that!
I buy a $100 GC every couple of weeks, and I was due to get one a week and a half ago... I have been postponing it because of all the store problems. I finally settled settled on a prepaid Visa. That is much more flexible. I just am having a hard time trusting the site at this moment >:(.