Customer Service Isn't For Everyone
I get that. For this very reason, not everyone should work in a customer service position. I don't think anyone would argue against this. However, what happens when you are a company with bad customer service policies? Your customers start to get screwed over.
Frogwares
As you possibly already know, I have several YouTube channels. One of those channels is a GAMING CHANNEL. Very early on in the life of this channel, I began playing a game called Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments developed by a studio called Frogwares. This was my most exciting series yet and garnered lots of audience interaction. As soon as that game wrapped, I began immediately on the sequel - Sherlock Holmes: The Devil's Daughter. Again, great game - fantastic series.
It of course delighted me then when I caught wind of the fact that an open world origin story game was coming for the character simply titled "Sherlock Holmes: Chapter 1". In a fit of joy I reached out to Frogwares. I told them a bit about myself, the content I make, and dropped some links to the Sherlock series I had already done. I told them that I wasn't expecting much, but if there was any way that we could partner on a series for the upcoming game, that would be awesome.
Now, I didn't expect them to sponsor me. My subscriber count was low and my view count was even lower. I knew I had a solid product with good production quality, but the numbers that would need to be present for me to offer any real monetary value to the studio... simply weren't. I knew it would be any day before I got the "thanks, but no thanks" email. Nothing. Days turned to weeks, weeks to months, nothing. So I followed up to another email address I found on their website. Then again to them on Facebook, Instagram (DMs, tagging them in stories, commenting on their posts), & Twitter (DMs and tweeting at them). I simply could not get a single person from Frogwares to even blow smoke up my ass and say "Sorry, we missed your message". Needless to say, what a crappy way to approach customer service.
Release Day
I was ticked, yeah, but I was still jacked for this game and knew that it would do well on my channel, so I preordered my copy. When release day came, I was so ready to jump back into the world of the great detective and start solving more mysteries. Then, the horror struck.
What had been very poorly communicated by Frogwares was that although the game was coming out for both current and last gen consoles (Xbox Series S/X & PlayStation 5 and Xbox One & PlayStation 4), on launch day, it would only be available on the newer consoles; the consoles that have been back-ordered for over a year and a half. The official statement (once you dug deep enough) was that Frogwares needed more time to perfect the game on the older technology. Now, I don't know much about game design, but that seemed weird and vague to me.
Furious and disappointed, I began a convoluted refund process. Yes, I know that the game is "still coming" to a console I own, but I didn't like the idea of already having paid for a product that I was going to have to wait even longer for now. Oh well, right? The game will be out soon enough and I will be able to start uploading content, right? Well, you tell me. This all went down in early November. It's now late February and in true Frogwares fashion... NOT - A - WORD.
Where Does This Leave Me?
It pains me that I am still so excited for this game. At times, I wish I was the boycott type. Does this company deserve my business? Probably not. See, when it boils down to it, you can have the best product in the world and if you treat your customers like crap, then you'll have a hard time selling anything.
If you're curious about these games though, I would encourage you to check out the 2 series I have already done and subscribe just in case some day, some how, the new one ever actually reaches me.