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While you have valid points, you are a regular enough customer to know better than to be surprised and horrified that it might take (gasp!) almost 48 hours for a personal request to be handled, personally.

I know, I'm a crazy optimist. I figure things get better with time, and you'd be the last person to put yourself in a position of handling something as mundane as ordering.

And, if we clock the time of the first request to your response, we are past 48 hours, and closing in pretty close to 72. It was 5AM my time on Sunday. Two full business days, and a full weekend day. But, if you are going to throw a sarcastic gasp my way, I'm going to point it out. Fair's fair.

Calling the purchase of additional character a "personal request" is a bit disingenuous, seeing as there is no other documented process to do it. I'd have used another mechanism to do it if one was available or known to me. Remember also this "request" involves me putting money in your hands. I'd call it a "purchase."

Yes, it should be automated. It's not, and with the number of orders we get, it's hard to get excited about it.

Even if the process is not automated, it should not fail if a single person is unavailable. That'd just a bad business process. You're not a new company. Clan Lord is not a new project.

You are the first person in over three years to cancel a personal request like that -- generating lots of extra paperwork for me, and taking even more time away from my many other projects.

Well, perhaps if you had taken yourself out of the character creation business a year ago, we'd both be in a happier place. I'd have gotten my characters in a timely way, and you'd be doing other things. So, this is my fault?

I am especially saddened that I have given personal attention to your characters over the years. Apparently I inadvertently raised your expectations. As it turns out, despite that attention, my mission is not to promptly cater to your every whim.

Joe, get off the high horse. I busted my ass generating a lot of content that provided a lot of players a good deal of fun, and I handed you a shitload of money. If I ever got "special attention" it was because of the work I did. In anything involving storycraft or in-game content, I never "demanded" a thing, and I was always patient and reasonable.

Do not confuse player/gamemaster transactions with customer service transactions. That's just guilt-trip bullshit, and blame-the-player nonsense. You're not doing me a personal favor, I'm a customer. I am paying you.

I expect every company I do business with to attempt to be professional. Even professionals can screw up, but when they do, they take their lumps, try to learn from them, apologize, and move on. They do NOT take it out on the customer. It is not my fault you don't have an easy way to get a new character. It is not my fault you took almost 3 full days to reply to me. It is not my fault your web site has no information about ordering characters. It is not my fault your GMs can't help with questions about ordering characters.

Yes, it would probably be a lot less work if customers didn't order things. Sometimes it seems like Delta Tao is working hard to make this happen.

If you're disappointed in Clan Lord, please feel free to cancel your accounts. We'll miss you, but I don't want you to feel obligated to play if you're not having fun.

Thanks! (Sorry. Couldn't resist.)

[Your order is ] canceled. I'm not sure exactly what your complaint is -- that it took 48 hours? That it was hard to figure out (even though you've done it a dozen times before)?

My complaint is: that in all this time, no significant progress has been made in the arena of customer service. You have made yourself so essential to a process as basic as ordering a character, that you are hurting the game. There should be a button in the character manager that say "Purchase" that does it all. It would put money in your pocket, and make players happy. If you cannot engineer that solution, it should be a goal to get as close to it as possible.

I sent two emails in two days and got silence. Now I know you are a busy guy, so I thought that maybe there was another way to do this that wouldn't bother you.

The more I looked and the more I asked around, the more I realized that character ordering was a complete, neglected mess. And it made me think "What am I doing? Delta Tao doesn't care about Clan Lord. The company is making no investment in promoting and selling the product. I'm wasting $20."

The current system works fine -- except when somebody decides to cancel an order after I complete it.

I know of other people who have had to wait several days to get a character. Sometimes a week. Exceptions to the rule, I'm sure, but it happens. Sure, this doesn't impact you, you get your money, right? Who cares if people are waiting to have fun?

Too bad our emails just happened to pass in the night. I'm sorry if it was a hassle for you Joe.

An excellent suggestion [about the web site not promoting sales effectively] -- the web site lacks in many ways. Some might suggest it more constructively.

What, in my comment, do you think isn't constructive? I'm telling you how I feel Joe. It's not because I'm mad at you, but because I know you're not stupid, your product doesn't suck, and the game is fun. I care about the community and the product. And at times, like this, I feel like I care more than you do. I know that's NOT true, but from the evidence I see, it's hard to feel otherwise.

Purchases aren't a bother. Refunds and whiney complaints are.

I'm sorry Joe, but I pay you a decent chunk of money, and have always been a reasonable, supportive, contributing member of this community. I tell you that my broken heart and disappointment in the amount of care you show for your own product is causing me to lose faith, and you call me a whiner.

You know what, Joe. Next month, you can bill me an extra $20, and just keep it. You can even add on $5 to cover your chargeback fee, if you get hit with one. It's not about the money. It's the principle. It's about doing the right thing for the game, and doing the right thing by your customers.

1. I've identified that your support staff don't know what the process to order characters are.
2. I've pointed out the web site doesn't tell people how to buy more characters.
3. I've called attention to a process bottleneck of a single key person handling orders.

None of those things are my fault. None of these things are new. Most are over a year old.

This reminds of me a novice webmaster who made a site that only works in special conditions. Of course, on the webmaster's machine, it worked great. One day he gets an email from a user, saying that he can't get the site to work.

"It must just be you," says the webmaster. "No one else has a problem."

Meanwhile hundreds of people just click the back button and can't be bothered with writing an email. Traffic withers away, and no more complaints come.

You yourself said that you aren't exactly getting overwhelmed with character orders. Hmm! Maybe that's because people can't figure out how? Or you haven't made it easy enough? Smells like a process and usability problem to me. The good news is that if you address it, it means more money for you.

My suspicion is that something else is bothering you, and my unforgivable delay in adding your characters simply triggered you off. I'll try not to take it personally.

Thanks for the free analysis, Doc, but really, it is just about Clan Lord. It's not about you, but about Clan Lord and Delta Tao as a entity dealing with customers. It's not about me having fun, it's about business.

I told you from the start this isn't personal. It's more than the delay, Joe. The delay just led to me looking around and assessing the state of the Clan Lord product, and Delta Tao's efforts in sustaining it. What I see doesn't encourage me personally. It's like you are just marking time, and getting by with as little effort as possible.

As a player, that doesn't motivate me. As a customer, it makes me very hesitant to commit more of my money.

I'm not trying to threaten you, Joe. I know in the scheme of things, you don't give a crap about my money. I'm not trying to insult you. I'm not trying to make demands.

I'm telling you that I'm sad that you are letting Clan Lord die with this benign neglect that's apparent in all these things I listed, and I can't invest more of myself in it, financially or emotionally.

If I had gotten a response of "Gee, we really should fix this stuff! Sorry about that!" I'd think "Oh, well, wait, there seems to be a sincere interest in making an effort to sell and support the game." But instead, I got a "Well, thanks for making me work extra. If you don't like it, leave. Complainer. What the hell is your problem?"

Not the stuff of warm fuzzies.