Digital River Strikes Again! $%#&^@*!

[Draego-Man]

So I've been overseas for the last 5 months and have had my subscriptions sent to a friend. I'm returning home soon and last month I changed my address back so that my August subs would come to my house again. Anyway, although I did this all a month ago and well in advance, DR has totally ****ed it up and I'm now faced with the prospect of missing figures.

I noticed by subs were not sent at the time they should have been, and on August 19th I wrote and said that I hadn't received my shipping notice. They wrote me back and said my subs were still active and would be renewed and sent on August 23rd. Well the 23rd came and went so I wrote again only to be told that my subs had been CANCELLED!!! Are you ****ing kidding me?!?!

I wrote them back again and said thanks for the renew bout of complete incompetence, but I didn't cancel my damn subs, I only changed my address and I bloody well better get all my figures. In the meantime BS Hordak has sold out, and I don't know if you can even get the Heads of Eternia pack any other way than through the subs. If not, I just blew a bunch of money on extra figures on eBay with no use to me. I wanted to have doubles for both display options, which doesn't really work without the frigging extra heads.

So now I'm caught in limbo as they've left me hanging for 2 days now with no reply and no notice of shipment. They are complete and total fools!! It really is unreal how totally and utterly incompetent this company is. A simple change of address can result in a cancelled sub and missed figures. What a joke!

[Andy]

Apparently they can also cancel your subscription just by changing credit cards. Happened to me right before oo-lar shipped out.

I feel for ya' draego!

This is why Mattel needs to either change digital river or drop Matty altogether and go back to retail.

[Battle Ram Man]

Digital River's incompetence knows no bounds. If Mattel cared about their reputation they'd drop them like a hot potato

[Draego-Man]

Now, although I specifically specified "International Post" they have shipped my order via "International Express", which means I won't receive it as I have a PO Box that does not accept Express shipments. WTF?!?!!!

[Mechanizor]

Some vitamin D in your diet and R (without the other R) is good for your blood pressure, Eh, after all that's what the "Dr" ordered! :twobad:

[GREP-A-TOR]

This is how they treat long time, suffering subscribers. New management, same Digital River.

Just know that Matty/Mattel will NEVER change them as their online retailer, the contract is just too good for Mattel. So, anytime you ask Mattel about Digital River, you are wasting your time. They know, and they might even feel empathy for you, but they also know that all they can do is apologize and give you a canned response.

Mattel EVEN has their own in house E-Tailer system established with trained customer service professionals.

They-----------Just--------------------Don't--------------------------Care---------------About---------------------Their---------------Customers.

Your only weapons are public social media shaming, the BBB and your credit card company.

[Mechanizor]

They-----------Just--------------------Don't--------------------------Care---------------About---------------------Their---------------Customers.

Your only weapons are public social media shaming, the BBB and your credit card company.

I believe that their collector's lines only make a very tiny percentage of their main targeted market/audience, which only means they'd careless about if those lines make it through or not!... If they can make money off of you without sacrificing much on their end, they would keep doing it as long as it takes, otherwise they'd probably shut them down and relocate their resources toward something else! ... At the end of the day, Mattel sin't Sideshow or Hot-Toys.

Sadly; and logically, nothing significant will happen if you we keep subscribing and keep giving them money.

[teemu81]

Exactly! as long as people keep handing Mattel their money every month,they have no reason to change anything.

[_RZ_]

Just use BBTS- never had a problem with them yet changing my address or cc, never had issues having things set to EU or friends addresses, anything damaged replaced painlessly and fast.

[Battle_Brak]

I've never really had any major issues with DR before now, but I've always sympathized with those who have. The few hiccups that happened were quickly resolved so I felt like I'd been very lucky regarding their customer service. That all changed in the past two weeks.

Before this months deliveries I had to update my credit card info. I had just received an updated bank card and my current one was expiring this month. So I called customer service and made sure that everything was set up properly for my Club Eternia and 200X subscriptions. I was told that I would receive cancellation notices via email, but that was a normal part of the process and to just ignore them. The rep let me know that if I called in and tried to reinstate my sub while it was still being processed I could end up with extra subs or screw things up worse. I've had to update my card info before so I was aware of this and when the many cancellation notices came in I waited.

My Club Eternia renewed just fine and I got a shipping notice a couple of days later, but received no notice for club 200x. I waited a couple more days thinking they might be behind or a figure might have been delayed, but still no notice and no record of the sub on their website. So finally I called Monday morning and was informed that my sub had not been reinstated. They apologized and said they would take care of that as soon as possible. The rep let me know that I would receive an order confirmation within two business days.

Two business days had passed and I called at the end of the day on Wednesday. The rep I spoke to that time was a little rude with me. She said that in fact two business days were not up (that that was two complete business days on top of the day the call was made) and to give it another day. So I did.

Yesterday I didn't even bother to call. I figured I better give them a little extra time.

Today I called to check for an update. This rep was very pleasant but seemed utterly incapable of helping me. She said that no one was responding to the ticket they submitted, and that she would resubmit it as top priority. She told me that hopefully someone would get back to her in a day or so, and she said it in a way that was like "there's an 80% they will just never respond to this ticket."

And suddenly I felt sad for her, because I realized this woman's entire professional existence is taking phone calls and hearing complaints that she is in no position to address. She then has to forward these complaints to a department that just pretends they do not exist, and can't even respond with an "oh we screwed that up, sorry the order had to be cancelled" because they probably never even read the tickets they are submitted. And she has to listen to angry customers day in and day out that are probably unfairly taking their aggressions out on her when she is just the messenger.

So I'm ticked off pretty bad right now. Being a quarterly shipment of two subs it's going to be a couple hundred dollars, and I don't like the idea that that kind of money is just tied up in limbo because they can't give me a straight answer on when and if my subs will actually go through. Also if they were cancelled why did I not receive a refund for the 50+ I paid to order them in the first place. They honestly can't say those payments are non refundable even if they cancel the sub through no fault of mine.

[Andy]

You sound like what I went through. Having changed a credit card should not be this hard to deal with. I totally understand your duress when it comes to the money being in limbo situation.

They (DR) must've tried too many types of multiple transactions (cancel/renew) without success and my bank raised all kinds of red flags. I just can't believe that digital blunder's incompetence to make one simple transaction correctly resulted in such a disarray for me.

Eventually my bank offered me a cancelled transaction and just refunded my money, I never looked back at dealing with mattycollector.

Anyways, good luck brother and may patience and progress be with you.

[PhantomZodak]

And suddenly I felt sad for her, because I realized this woman's entire professional existence is taking phone calls and hearing complaints that she is in no position to address. She then has to forward these complaints to a department that just pretends they do not exist, and can't even respond with an "oh we screwed that up, sorry the order had to be cancelled" because they probably never even read the tickets they are submitted. And she has to listen to angry customers day in and day out that are probably unfairly taking their aggressions out on her when she is just the messenger.

i apologized to one of them when i called because it's not her fault that DR is a well-known incompetent company. they decided for no reason at all to charge an old card that i had edited to be the new card. yup, i didn't delete it, i tried to overwrite it with the new info & those idiots saved the old card. there is no reason to save expired card info. but DR does it anyway. i offered the CSR 20$ cash to delete it but she couldn't.

[Battle_Brak]

After weeks of calls and with seemingly no resolution to my problem, and dealing with often frustrating CS reps I was about to give up. But in a shocking turn of events I actually received my shipping notice yesterday.

[RoboSteveo]

That is good to hear!

[Draego-Man]

I never received a shipping notice at all this month, but when I inquired they said my stuff had shipped. We'll see.