Direct2Drive, Rich Metcalfe ripoff, ignore, ignorance, theft, incompitent, incapable Internet

I have used D2D before, both UK and the US sites without any problems, until now.

I recently had cause to ask for a refund for a particular game that I had trouble downloading - the Download Manager software that D2D provide kept losing the connection and refusing to continue the download, instead starting from scratch each time. With a 7GB file.

For you 'Merkins reading this, in the UK we generally get about an 8Meg connection unless your lucky enough to live in the middle of London - so you can imagine my anger and annoyance after 4 tries.

Initially, customer support took almost 4 days to get back to me, in which time I had my ISP test my line, aswell as BT and ruled out any problems with my connection.

By the time they finally got back to me, I had added to my original complaint and requested a refund, and then immediately ordered a hard copy from Amazon, which managed to deliver it before D2D even replied.

After some to-and-fro-ing, they offered me $40 store credit for the US store as an apology for any inconvenience, but stated that they would not give me a refund.

The rep I dealt with (Rich Metcalfe) was extremely shady, and dodged all of my questions by just not answering them, and attempted to fob me off every time I replied to the ticket. He made me very angry :@

The credit that they offered me was initially very fair, I thought - so I had a look on the US site. However, since my last visit there, they have imposed some country restrictions on every product listed - turns out I can't buy anything that is even new / current / that I don't already own.

I thought that they would just transfer the credit to the UK store if I asked, so I did:

Hi Rich,

I don't particlularly like it, but I understand that you can't offer a refund.

And thanks for the apology and credit, I appreciate the gesture but unfortunately it doesn't seem like it will be any use to me. I had a look on the US site a few days ago, and am hard pressed to find more than a handful of titles that I can actually purchase, and once I subtract from that the ones I already own, there arent any that I actually want, if any atall.

I don't understand why the credit had to be on the US site, why not on the UK site? That would suit me alot better, and be a lot easier to filter out the ones that I can't purchase due to country restrictions.

I can see two ways around this problem, one is to give me the credit on the UK site, and the other is to just refund my account with the credit instead of applying it to the store.

If you can think of another way round it, I will be happy to consider it.

Thanks
Alan

Their response:
Hi Alan,

We've offered you a compromise in light of your download issues, we can only apologise for any inconvenience caused and offer you the store credit for our sister store.

Regards,

Rich Metcalfe
Customer Support Specialist


This quickly became the norm for our communications, ie I am the one doing all the communicating and Rich is copying and pasting his responses.

None of my questions (namely the 2 posed in my post above) have been answered until I made it clear to Rich that I thought he was unable / unwilling to deal with the problem competently and asked to have my ticket escalated to a supervisor or superior. I was civil but not exactly polite in this request, I was extremely p*ssed off with him by that point.

This new guy, Harry, has finally explained the answers to my questions, and also stated (again) that I'm not eligible for a refund. Rich has, in earlier posts, said I should feel free to contest the charge with my credit card company, but the terms and conditions state that they can suspend my access for no reason, and cancel my account if they see fit, so I can't contest the charge if they will do that as it will make me lose the other 4 games I have on the site.

Bottom line is, if you are going to use these guys, make sure you cover yourself by using a credit card with which you can recover the charge immediately, and keep a backup of the license key and installer files of anything you buy from them so you can still use it if they decide to be a bunch of wankers and cut you off.

These guys just won't budge, and have p*ss poor customer service when it comes to writing proper responses to a customer's questions. At the end of the day a hard copy is best, at least that way you can get a refund for it up until you physically open it, and there are no problems with actually delivering the game.

I have paid my money, but not gotten the game. In my view this should be enough for a refund. But according to them, beginning the download counts as unsealing the software.

That is total bollocks. Don't get shafted the same way I have, go to Amazon or Game and get a hard copy. Probably cheaper that way too, mine was.

Thanks for listening :)

Alan
None
United Kingdom