Random thing you loathe right now.

Why will nobody hire me?

The old Ni no Kuni thread is closed and I don't want to ruin the shiny new thread with an immediate whine post, so the random thing I loathe is Digital River support, that I am on the phone with now.

EDIT: 45 minutes later with nothing resolved, they stop responding to my questions. Hung up, which was probably what they were trying to get me to do in the first place. I am never ordering from them again and I might contact every video game news site I know to warn as many people as possible.

I'm in a gaming rut.

I have a "pile" of blockbusters from the last three years that I just don't seem to start.

I have a friend who wants to play LOTRO on weeknights, and I just don't seem to go on after work.

I'm in love with meat space games right now, and nobody to play with, no time to do it.

Work and family are taking every waking effort, and minute.

How do you bust a rut?

Ghostship wrote:

I'm in a gaming rut.

I have a "pile" of blockbusters from the last three years that I just don't seem to start.

I have a friend who wants to play LOTRO on weeknights, and I just don't seem to go on after work.

I'm in love with meat space games right now, and nobody to play with, no time to do it.

Work and family are taking every waking effort, and minute.

How do you bust a rut?

I don't think you do. At least for me, a rut busts itself when the time is right.

I'm in much the same boat as you right now. So busy over the last few months that I've barely touched any of the games I was so looking forward to. The stack sits there right next to my TV, gathering dust. Even when I did find a few hours to myself two weekends ago, I just didn't feel the urge to play them. I suppose I could have forced myself, but that just didn't seem like it would have been any fun. I figure sooner or later I'll end up with both a bit of free time and the desire to play, and whamo, rut busted.

Listen, you little podcast shock jock. I understand you think you have power, and that you can say and do whatever you please to fans on Facebook because you have a one-hour podcast and used to be semi-relevant in the Maryland FM radio world, but if you call me out and try to push your fake power and control on me because I correct a post you made to thousands of people I will start a fact war. And I will win.

I'm not trying to bust your balls. I'm trying to correct you so you don't continue to give misinformation. We are both fans of the team, so don't say "if you do it again you're gone". I'm gone from what? You going to block me on a social network? Oh boy! I'm scared. Unless you mean you are going to go out of your way to stop me from downloading your show... and if that's your business model I'm glad you can't get back on AM or FM waves.

Go ahead and continue to alienate fans and ridicule them on air if they aren't Yes Men like your co-hosts. Intelligent, thinking people have opinions of their owns. Just like you do. And like you, we will voice them.

Ass hat.

Ok, thanks for listening Goodjers.

Vrikk wrote:

Ok, thanks for listening Goodjers.

No problem Vrikk, it's ok. This one time.

But if you do it again, you're gone.

Listen Windows Media Player. I know you think that you don't know the length of the song and so won't burn it to a CD, but you have just played it 3 times in a row from start to end. Also, I am sure that you have, in your software, the ability to determine the length of a song without playing it. You do it for stuff that is in your library.

Teneman wrote:
Vrikk wrote:

Ok, thanks for listening Goodjers.

No problem Vrikk, it's ok. This one time.

But if you do it again, you're gone.

:mrgreen:

Next caller.

As an addendum to my post, I can't find the original post he responded to me on either. Therefore, one of three things are in effect: a.) after he busted my chops he realized I was correct and deleted the entire thread, or b.) he has already blocked me since Facebook can't somehow find him on my phone app, or c.) Facebook mobile app is indeed just that crappy.

I know in the grand scheme of things this is a futile thing to rant about, but this thread is a venting place right?

Can't speak to A) or B), but C) is certainly true.

Minarchist wrote:

Why will nobody hire me? :(

You are too pretty, and are threatened by your beauty.

KingGorilla wrote:
Minarchist wrote:

Why will nobody hire me? :(

You are too pretty, and are threatened by your beauty.

And your intoxicating musk would be distracting to your coworkers.

trichy wrote:
KingGorilla wrote:
Minarchist wrote:

Why will nobody hire me? :(

You are too pretty, and are threatened by your beauty.

And your intoxicating musk would be distracting to your coworkers.

haha. I read that as intoxicating MASK.

Which is potentially also true given the comment that came before it.

Jonman wrote:

haha. I read that as intoxicating MASK.

Intoxicating Mobile Armored Strike Kommand?

iaintgotnopants wrote:
Jonman wrote:

haha. I read that as intoxicating MASK.

Intoxicating Mobile Armored Strike Kommand?

Demyx wrote:

The old Ni no Kuni thread is closed and I don't want to ruin the shiny new thread with an immediate whine post, so the random thing I loathe is Digital River support, that I am on the phone with now.

EDIT: 45 minutes later with nothing resolved, they stop responding to my questions. Hung up, which was probably what they were trying to get me to do in the first place. I am never ordering from them again and I might contact every video game news site I know to warn as many people as possible.

Yep, I've had it with Digital River as well. I placed an order before Christmas on Square Enix's online store for two DS games they had on crazy sale. One of them was out of stock at the time and the order was put on hold. Over a month later with no update. You go to the Digital River status page and I'm given an option to cancel but no way to request a status update. I e-mail Square Enix support who writes back and says to contact Digital River. Even though the Digital River status page provides Square Enix contact information. So my options now seem to be to either keep waiting indefinitely or cancel the order, losing these two DS titles which were not only super cheap but are very hard to find elsewhere now. I can't even tell them to cancel the one that's been stuck out of stock and ship the other one. I still don't understand how companies get so big providing such sh*t service.

It took me six months for the EA Store (run by Digital River) to refund me $120 for a special edition of a game that never ended up existing, so I learned my lesson a long time ago.

Weren't they the ones that handled the Darksiders 2 thing for THQ last year? The one were some lucky people got it like a week early and the unlucky ones got it two plus weeks late?

Parallax Abstraction wrote:
Demyx wrote:

The old Ni no Kuni thread is closed and I don't want to ruin the shiny new thread with an immediate whine post, so the random thing I loathe is Digital River support, that I am on the phone with now.

EDIT: 45 minutes later with nothing resolved, they stop responding to my questions. Hung up, which was probably what they were trying to get me to do in the first place. I am never ordering from them again and I might contact every video game news site I know to warn as many people as possible.

Yep, I've had it with Digital River as well. I placed an order before Christmas on Square Enix's online store for two DS games they had on crazy sale. One of them was out of stock at the time and the order was put on hold. Over a month later with no update. You go to the Digital River status page and I'm given an option to cancel but no way to request a status update. I e-mail Square Enix support who writes back and says to contact Digital River. Even though the Digital River status page provides Square Enix contact information. So my options now seem to be to either keep waiting indefinitely or cancel the order, losing these two DS titles which were not only super cheap but are very hard to find elsewhere now. I can't even tell them to cancel the one that's been stuck out of stock and ship the other one. I still don't understand how companies get so big providing such sh*t service.

Her: It says here your order is processing, not cancelled.

Me: Well I got an email saying it was cancelled, and we've already established that you don't have my correct billing address. Why would I get an email saying it's cancelled if it's not?

Her: I don't know. You'll just have to wait!

Me: How can you not know, and wait for what?

Her: You'll have to wait to see if it gets cancelled or not.

Me: And how will I find this out, considering I've already got an email saying it's cancelled?

Her: I guess you'll have to call.

Me: ...are you serious.

OK, so we have a list of online retailers not to order physical products: Namco Bandai, Square Enix, EA, and THQ (I suppose that isn't much of a problem anymore). Are there any others I should know about?

I also recommend not ordering anything digital or physical from bands that use Topspin Media. It's a similar situation. They're just incompetent.

A friend of mine told me about a coupon at Best Buy for $50 off any purchase over $100 if you pay with a Mastercard, and he sent me a link to the coupon on Best Buy's website. It said it was good the 21st through the 27th.

I wasn't super interested, as they don't have $100 worth of stuff I want that bad, but I knew my dad would be interested, so I called him and asked him if he'd want one. Said sure. So last night I print one from the link on the website and drop it off. He thanks me.

He calls me today. Best Buy won't honor the coupon. They only honored it on the 21st. But I printed the damn thing from their website on the night of the 22nd. They just looked my dad in the eye and said "nope". He left the pile of things he'd spent an hour and a half browsing around the store to accumulate sitting on the counter at the register and walked out. He's never been the confrontational type.

Now this is not normally something that would get to me all that much but my dad, even at 63, is basically going full tilt 24 hours a day for about 6 days a week. He has never known how to relax, at least not really. He always feels like he needs to be doing something. I recognize that this is probably a good thing at least in general. It keeps him active. That said, occasionally it's good for everybody to chill out and relax a bit. The one thing that will on occasion actually get him to sit down for an hour or two and chill out maybe once a week is a good movie. So I thought, you know, for basically %50 off he'd buy enough movies to give him some time to relax regularly for at least a little while. So I give him this coupon because I'm pretty sure it will actually get him in a store to buy a few movies, at the very least.

And they can't be bothered to make even a halfassed attempt at something resembling customer service. When I was in retail I would have gotten fired for their response. But here we are.

I'm still trying to decide how far I want to go. Tempted to go whole hog and dig up district/regional manager phone numbers just to skip the inevitable BS with the store supervisors/managers.

Thin_J wrote:

< Best Buy debacle >

Eh. Sit tight for a year or two, and they'll be out of business. An outcome which they're seemingly not doing a whole lot avert, it seems.

Just desserts.

Jonman wrote:
Thin_J wrote:

< Best Buy debacle >

Eh. Sit tight for a year or two, and they'll be out of business. An outcome which they're seemingly not doing a whole lot avert, it seems.

Just desserts.

Yeah, I made a similar observation almost immediately following him telling me what happened.

If it had been me, I likely wouldn't have been anything more than annoyed. It bothers me a lot more that I told my dad about something and ended up leading him to completely waste part of an afternoon browsing around a damn Best Buy.

7 or 8 years ago or so, they built a brand new Best Buy near the (MUCH older) mall in my old home town. I was in there for the first time in years while I was at my parents' over Christmas. They had literally blockaded more than half the store off behind a new false wall, and there was SO much less merchandise on the floor, it was ridiculous. I got serious Circuit City vibes in there.

From what I've seen in the local Best Buy, when they check their computers to see if something is in stock they just go to the website to look. I wonder if they'd let me use their computers to buy stuff at amazon after checking it out at the store?

fleabagmatt wrote:

From what I've seen in the local Best Buy, when they check their computers to see if something is in stock they just go to the website to look. I wonder if they'd let me use their computers to buy stuff at amazon after checking it out at the store? :lol:

I actually did that once. We went to a Best Buy to buy my wife a netbook. They had it on the show floor but didn't have it in stock. We asked a clerk when it would be re-stocked, and he said he didn't know. We asked him if any other Best Buy locations might have it in stock. He rolled his eyes, pretended to think about it, and then said no. We asked if he could look it up, and he said he didn't need to.

So we pulled up Amazon on one of their demo computers, priced it out there, and placed an order as soon as we got home. It was ridiculous.

Bought a bunch of comics on ebay, they just arrived and I discovered that I apparently didn't read the description well enough. It was titled "#1-34, 46 issues." Thinking this meant there was one of each issue from 1-34 plus some duplicates, I bought the lot, only to discover that the description details exactly how many of each there are, and there are huge holes in the run.

UV layouts. I need to go kill digital things now.

NSMike wrote:

7 or 8 years ago or so, they built a brand new Best Buy near the (MUCH older) mall in my old home town. I was in there for the first time in years while I was at my parents' over Christmas. They had literally blockaded more than half the store off behind a new false wall, and there was SO much less merchandise on the floor, it was ridiculous. I got serious Circuit City vibes in there.

Around here one of the nearest Best Buys moved into a store that Circuit City built about 6-8 months before they went under. It is actually a pretty nice store but I forget it is there and usually go to the third closest one because the closest one is tiny and terrible. But yea what I wouldn't give for a Fry's in this area.