"Sadly I am Ending My Dealings with Brigade Games" Topic

I have bought thousands of figures from Brigade Games for over fifteen years and have received good service until recently.

After placing an order as part of the recent sale, I received a strange email from Lon that really surprised me. I would appreciate TMPer's thoughts as to whether Lon's response was appropriate and whether or not I over reacted. Thanks in advance for your input.

The following is the email trail without the addresses:

Hi Rob

I am trying to figure out how you were able to get a higher discount than the promotion. Your order total was less than 125, so you should not have even qualified for the extra 5% (total 15%) and you received a 20% discount and the order was not $200. USD Did you happen to start checkout with a bigger cart and then reduce the total ordered?

LMK if you want to adjust the order to hit the appropriate advertised levels of discount.

Thanks

Lon
BG

Hello Lon,
First off it is Rod not Rob!
So, you are asking me to justify an apparent error that your cart system made!?
Your tone implies that I somehow manipulated your cart system re "Did you happen to start checkout with a bigger cart and then reduce the total ordered?"
I assure that I am not technically competent enough to manipulate your cart system.
Please cancel my order!
Rod

Ever hear of autocorrect?

Sorry you took my question that way. I guess you have had a tough day.

I meant if you start checkout and changed your mind on the amount you were spending and therefore the software did not recalculate the adjusted total.
I am trying to figure out what could have caused the issue, as is the software supplier.
Since this is a new store I don't have a lot of experience with it yet and how the parts inter operate. And I know orders above 200 did calculate correctly as did my testing at each level. And I was incorrect in my email, your order was 151 before it would get the discount so their 2 of the discount.

I will cancel the order.

Lon

Your arrogant reply is quite astonishing; I did not have a tough day.
Thank you for cancelling my order.
Rod

Hi Rod,

Please don't order anymore.
I don't need the snarky reply.

Have a great life,

Lon

To this neutral reader Rob/Rod comes across as the jerk.

I don't mean to insult or be mean, but I feel I should be honest.

Agreed, Rod is the one in the wrong here.

Yup. Bit of an over-reaction. He might have had a tough day.

BGs first email was awful but Rod's reaction was over the top and he should not have cancelled the order. Always have a period of reflection after drafting, then edit as necessary then press send.

Neither party handled this exchange well or with grace. Lon started it but Rod amped it up considerably with no build-up. If required to apportion blame, I'd say Lon 40% and Rod 60%

Rod definitely went over the top on this.

Agreed, why is Rod so hostile right off the bat? Lon has always been a gentleman to deal with (15+ years for me, too) and frankly, I don't see his email as hostile…more like confused. Anyway, overreaction on Rod's part IMHO.

BG is completely at fault here. They should have never questioned the customer as they apparently did. BG could have gotten the information about the cart software without being accusatory in their first message, which they most certainly were.

They made a business decision to accuse the customer of something nefarious and lost a customer in doing so. I have never done business with them, but I certainly will not do so based upon what I read here.

OP, you overreacted.

I have always found Lon to be a gentleman and helpful, e.g. when I made a mistake in the kickstarter.

Agree with many of the above – Yes Rod you are in the wrong here.

Lon's email could have been worded a little better, but I didn't get the impression that he was accusing anyone of anything. He is using a very new shopping cart system which appears to have given a discount that it shouldn't have.

I think you took his technical question personally.

As a retailer myself I have seen web site billing anomalies from time to time. They can be quite difficult to locate the illogic which drove them.

I have always contacted the customer with a full explanation of what I was seeing and why it was wrong. The idea was to give the current customer the correct billing and to avoid future like issues.

Maybe it's a gamer thing but I have always found the customer response sympathetic and understanding.

Not sure if Rod was having a bad day or what. IMHO Rod's response was way too confrontational as opposed to what should have been cooperative.

Either way it is a lot of bad publicity for Brigade – moral of the story is expect your business emails to customers to be shared publicly and then phrase them accordingly. And if the OP was actually technically skilled enough to manipulate an online web store and crooked enough to deliberately do so, he would have done it for a lot more than 125 odd bucks. So the retailer seems to have misread the whole thing.

All over a few bucks. It will not effect my dealing with brigade games.

We don't know if it was an isolated incident, but it sounds like a problem with the ordering system.

I would have started by shipping the order at the price listed and then asked for help determining what went wrong.

OK, I just posted a long response, which was pretty much what BAMeyer said much more succinctly, so I'm deleting it.

Grelber

Agree with most of what has been said. Complete over reaction in Rod's part. You should have given Lon the benefit of the doubt and not taken his email as an attack, ESPECIALLY if you have had a good relationship to date.

I have never had an issue with BG. Probably need to rethink your instant reaction.

You might want to write to Lon, apologize for your reaction and explain why you reacted like that.. ie: you interpreted his email as "X"…when, it seems, it wasn't "X"…and restart the relationship.

Having great service from Lon for 15 years says something of Lon. You can tell from his email that he was confused by what happened and trying to figure it out. As it was a new store (software) there are usually glitches at the beginning.My company put a new system in almost 2 years ago and we still have problems with it. You need to chill my friend.
Mark

Wow that was interesting. I made a post.
It posted.
I came back and my original post was gone and replaced with something else I didn't say.

Hmmm…

Okay let's try this again…

Allow me to toss in my dos centavos here.

Rod, you might not like what is going to be said, but you asked for what we thought. Here it is.

You were essentially wrong and overreacted badly.

You didn't send the email addresses (which is good), but it would've been nice had you included the dates of the emails so we could get an idea of the message turnaround.

Let's look at BG's email you posted:

1: He misspelled your name. Is that a horrible thing? My name has been misspelled by people for years. Practically no one here can even say my wife's name correctly. Neither of these two occurrences require the use of an exclamation point to get "their point" across. By starting off like this you already set the initial tone and point for your response to be angry, negative, challenging, and hostile.

2: In case you don't realize, a lot of times "autocorrect", doesn't work on Emails, and also, "Rob" is a correct word, so it would not have been marked as wrong. It was probably a simple error on Lon's part that you took great offense to obviously. It sounds like a simple honest mistake.

3: I see nothing in the original email that says he is "Attempting to make you justify your order", or "accuse you of manipulating the system". His very first sentence was "I am trying to figure out how you were able to get a higher discount than the promotion." This alone says that he has noticed there is a problem with the cart, and despite his efforts to figure it out, he hasn't been able to do so, thus he is asking you if you have any idea of what may have happened, or if you perhaps changed the cart order in the process? As someone who has worked retail, I can tell you that shopping cart/POS/Online sale systems can be notoriously tricky and problematic with orders. It gets even worse with multiple discounts and holiday sales combined.
At no point is there any evidence that BG games accused you of attempting to "manipulate" their cart or accusing you of anything. You took offense at something that simply wasn't there.
The question to this way "Why?"

4: At the end of his email, he even asked you what you would like to do about the order, and asked to let him know so he could adjust. Have you ever considered that you might not be the only person that he had this cart issue with? Or perhaps, like me, you could've been that one in a million whose order jacked up the system someway or somehow, (it happens).
Anyway, he offered to work with you to correct any discrepancies. You gave him no courtesy, or thanks for that.

His response was to apologize because he felt you took the question out of the order it was sent. Secondly, he explained to you that there seemed to have been an issue with the software NOT doing what it was supposed to, and he was still trying to figure it out.
He also said that "it was a new store", (software obviously) that he was not completely familiar with. He also corrected his previous error on his previous email about your count. He notified you that he was canceling the order as it seemed to be a problem. This gave you the chance to either tell him "A: Yes cancel it; B: No, don't cancel it!, or C: Yes, please cancel the order, and let me know and I will re-order to clear up any confusion"
You took no good choices and went for the low road dear sir.

Your response to his reply being "arrogant" was once again wrong, improper, and uncalled for. He simply had a problem with your order, was trying to figure it out, and you came out immediately combative and hostile also. You should also understand that emails, and text messages have no actual tone, other than what we as the read puts in them. The use or certain words and phrases, as well as punctuation DOES however, give inflection towards certain emotions and attitudes within the words themselves.

Simply put, You sir were hostile, rude, combative, and just unprofessional. You seemingly took immediate offense to an email without thinking it through and wondering how this could be resolved amicably. You basically showed yourself to be the type of customer that many retailers do not want, or wish to deal with anymore.

BG has always done me right, and I have never had an issue with them. Perhaps some of Lon's wording wasn't correct to your liking, but there was nothing attacking, insulting, accusatory, reactive, or conflicting in it. I can't say the same for yours sir.

The fact that you put this on TMP, I believe, shows that it's been a few hours at least, since your last volley of shots about him and now that the smoke of your emotions has cleared, that you are now thinking a bit more clearly now, and am starting to question yourself as to "If you were in the wrong?"…

The answer is yes.

Learn from this painful lesson. I am sorry you lost such a wonderful retailer.

Have a good holiday season.

Murphy

Got to agree. Lon did nothing wrong. He asked you a reasonable question about your order. You greatly overreacted.

You say you have ordered thousands of figures from him. So obviously liked the company and the service. He sends you one email that you took wrong, and you will never order from him again? Honestly, I would email Lon and apology.

As a bystander here, never ordering from this company
I can see first off it is a mistake and see how first thought was some kind of scam.
How to breach that to a customer I have no idea

Sadly is the key word.

A bad day at the office, kids not listening, wife's honey due list, ended with a lose lose deal for you and Lon.

An adult would let Lon know you had a bad day and took it wrong. It was a simple mistake! War game suppliers are to few to black list.

From the email exchange, it sounds like Lon was trying to sort things out and Rod's response escalated things in a negative way. To me it appears Lon acted appropriately and Ron turned things personal.

BG might have phrased that first e-mail better, but it did feel as though Rod was looking for an excuse to quarrel. Is there an earlier history we're missing?

A long time ago, I had a problem with an order regarding a mismarked package of miniatures. I pointed out the problem to Lon, and he told me (politely) to return the items for a refund. I (politely) told him I was keeping the mismarked package as I could use the figures sent me and I would still pay for them. I still needed the other figures that were not sent and pointed out to Lon (politely) the name of the figures I REALLY needed that had the wrong catalog number and that I would order and pay for those. Less than a week later, the proper figures I ordered came to me. The point is, there was a problem, I was not pissed off nor thin-skinned about it, and that if you explain your situation without being offensive, then the matter will be resolved. Lon was polite, professional, and eager to work WITH me because that is the type of guy he is and the business he runs. In the situation laid out by here, I rule in favor of Lon at Brigade Games!

I think you took a wrong turn on Lon's questions. He wasn't accusing you of anything and was trying to figure out what went wrong.

I think you than spiraled the whole thing til it was out of control.

You were wrong.

I think at this point we need the OP to respond. Maybe Lon as well, but then he's got plenty to do I'm sure.
I've done business with Lon a few times over the years. Always quick service and no issues. I did learn though to be sure of what you want before you order.

+1 Murphy.

Rod, my advice to you:

Re-order.

Apologize.

Enjoy your figures because the Army Men are the important thing here. It seems you need more fun in your life.

I have never purchased from Brigade Games.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

BG first email should have been more detailed about what the situation was. The second email could have been more polite and reiterated what the situation was and asked for Rod's help sorting it out.

I understand Rod's reaction but he could have asked for clarification.

Had this been a phone conversation I find it hard to believe it would have gone this way. Lon's frustration with his new software would have been more apparent and Rod would have been able to help out.

I've done business with BG several times and met Lon at a convention once. Service has always been excellent.

If you stop using BG Lon will loose some revenue and you will get miniatures elsewhere. If you go back to supporting BG Lon will get his software fixed and you will get miniatures that make you happy.

IronDuke596 you get respect points for taking this public. What you do with them will decide how many more you gain.

My name is Nathan. People call me Nate. A new neighbor called me Nick, which due to my bad heating I didn't catch. By the time I realized he was calling me Nick(several interactions later) I was too embarrassed to correct him. I was Nick for three years…

I am grateful for the kind words here.

Recently, I started a second webstore on a different software platform, while still keeping the first one operating (no plans for that to change either.)

In my email to Rod, I was wondering if something happened or was changed while in the cart. As someone who has 28+ years of programming and IT systems experience I know all too well that things happen. My inquiry was to determine if item quantities were changed in the cart as my thoughts were that a change in the order total after entering checkout could cause the total/discount to be calculated incorrectly. I had an inquiry to the discount module developer but they were still investigating and I submitted this trouble ticket first hoping for an answer before contacting Rod. It turns out (I got the answer from the software vendor and fix this afternoon) that since Rod is in Canada, it was the change in currency that caused the issue with CA $ being read as US $ which is the currency required to hit the volume discount levels. In Rod's transaction, the software used the CA $ instead of US $. USD This has been fixed.

As far as my email exchanges with Rod.
In response to my first email, he was overly aggressive. I have dealt with customers for 23 years via Brigade. I am very aware of how I should handle myself and realize sometimes people have stuff going on we all know nothing about and sometimes that can come out in written conversation. I will almost always have that roll off of me and not respond in kind.

Yes, if I type someone's name I typically don't go back to check if autocorrect has modified it. God knows it happens to my customers typing my name when contacting me. I don't correct them or get angry about it.

At the end of the first email it was requested that I cancel the order. The tone of the first email from Rod was angry. While I was trying to get information if anything occurred on checkout, it is also not fair to the rest of my customers or me, that a customer got a better discount but did not qualify for that discount. Understand that in the past if the store miscalculated a coupon not in Rod's favor, he would let me know and I would adjust the order. I did not think this was something I couldn't bring up and surely didn't think he would react as he did.

I replied to try to clarify my position on why I was asking and wondered if they were having a bad day. I got further abuse. And this is from a repeat customer of over 10 years who has been friendly in the past (hence me wondering if something was going on.)

Calling me arrogant when I was being anything but was astonishing to me.
At this point from my point of view, the repeated behavior required me to fire the customer. I have only done that once before in 23 years.

Also understand that canceling orders costs businesses money as we no longer get those credit card fees back. One of those fees that were increased a few years ago by the credit card cartel.

I don't think anything I did was unreasonable. I,as well as every vendor, expects to be treated with respect, just like our customers expect to be treated. I have had my small share of customers who exhibit behavior that I barely tolerate. Generally, it's a quick one off thing that I let roll off. At conventions I get to see a few that are just miserable to deal with. I smile and get them on their way. I have generally enjoyed the interactions with my customers, especially face to face at conventions.

TBH I expected Rod to change his mind with my clarification email and was stunned with the response. The last response to me made it clear to me it wasn't a mistake.

As people says these days, "it is what it is."

Lon
BG

A competitor here of BG so will not comment other than:
I am glad I am not your wife!
15 tears of good service, one tiff, misunderstanding, and disagreement and you go public, nasty, and permanently throw the towel in??
Who needs it.

Russ Dunaway

Lon, I think you should have gone ahead and honored the discount from the original order if indeed the software was the issue. That's not being unfair to other customers. That's just doing the right thing.

Had you honored the original discount and subsequently discussed how this issue could have occurred with your software vendor, you would still have a long-term customer and this unfortunate thread wouldn't exist.

I'm certainly not defending Rod. His original response back to you was out of line, but the entire issue could have been avoided.

Lon's first email comes across as angry and accusatory, as if he's implying Rod was trying to get away with something. That certainly may not have been his intent but that's the way I would have taken it. I didn't see any apologies or conciliatory language in that email, just a what are you trying to pull vibe. I own my own business and wouldn't dream of sending an email like that to a customer. Rod may have dialed it up to 11 a bit too quickly, but I believe it's incumbent upon the business owner to approach a customer in a more circumspect manner in a situation like this. Personally I would eat a small loss like this and never even bother a long time patron over it.

BG should never have sent the email in the first place. If their cart software is defective then it is on them to resolve with the provider.

I agree with BrockLanders and David Manley.
Also when BG received the reply from Rod, the comment about having a "bad day" was totally uncalled for. If a retailer is asking me to troubleshoot an issue with their system then I am doing them a favor, not them me.

But just my opinion as a customer. (And I have a degree in IT).

BG should not have confronted the customer in this way at all. BG has always been good to work with in my experience, but this was a very poor way to discuss the issue. It would have been much better to just cancel the order and contact the customer explaining that a software glitch computed an incorrect payment total and ask the customer to reorder. It would have been nice to extend some type discount, bonus, or free item for the customers inconvenience. This was a BG tech issue to start with and it is on them to deal with correcting it. See no need to question a customer, especially one who seems to have been a long time purchaser. None of what has transpired here should have ever taken place. The small price glitch is not worth trouble caused. I will not comment on Rod's right or wrong response to the situation, but it is apparent that he was offended by BG's inquiry and that should never have happened.

"But just my opinion as a customer. (And I have a degree in IT)."

Then having a degree in IT, means that you should understand that one of the most initial basic steps in troubleshooting IT systems with End Users, is to ask "what the user was doing when the problem occurred, or it happened." That way the Tech can attempt to recreate the problem to see what is going on. (Nine times out of ten it's a user issue).
It seems based on what Lon has said, that is what he was trying to do and Rod took offense at it.

This helpful friendly suggestion and tip comes from a guy that doesn't have a degree in IT but has a degree in History, and has worked in IT for the last 25+ years….

So let us digest the whole story.
-- long time satisfied customer
--- retailer with stellar reputation
-- retailer suddenly turns nasty on stellar customer with no apparent motive or reason
-- customers email has numerous !!!! and retailer has 00
-- customer goes public with desire to harm stellar retailer.
Do we need Sherlock Holmes brought in?

Something is rotten in Denmark.
Been in this business 36 years and have had this dance several times.

Russ Dunaway

Dear Murphy, first, I would have fully tested the system before implementing it, THAT would be the INITIAL basic step. If I needed assistance from customers, using different browsers, operating systems, etc, I would have reached out to a "sample" pool of customers, again in ADVANCE of releasing any new software.
And based on my experience, nine times out of ten is it NOT a user issue. These are what are known as "bugs".

Of course, your mileage may differ.

I have a degree in IT and worked for a firm for 38 years before retiring. We would have the user community test a new system and ask them to think outside the box to try and break it. Even with extensive testing things did not always happen to catch every bug so going back to the user who was able to get around the system actually makes sense. Now WarWizard asking a sample pool of customers to try it would be good as long as you have a test system which they could try as opposed to the main system. If not that wouldn't work.
To me Lon wasn't implying that it was a user issue but rather he was trying to understand what the user did so that he can replicate it and have it fixed.

I'm curious if UK law requires an online retailer to honor prices calculated by their shopping software.

While I understand BG's concern, I feel that they should have either honored the price OR stated clearly that their software made some sort of error, so they were unable to honor the price. (Assuming that BG is not legally obligated to honor the price.)

After getting a response from the customer, then ask for help fixing the bug. A big part of the problem here was the "order of operations." I suspect that even a first email that started "Regretfully, we are not able to process your order with the given discount because … We apologize for the inconvenience." would have worked a lot better.

But yes, the OP's response was a bit strong and clearly escalated the situation more than it called for. That said, I've been guilty of the same. Tone is hard to communicate in email!

A competitor here of BG so will not comment

Actually not uncommon for merchants in this industry to make excuses for each other which makes it somewhat unique.

…other than:
I am glad I am not your wife!
15 tears of good service, one tiff, misunderstanding, and disagreement and you go public, nasty, and permanently throw the towel in??
Who needs it.

Goes the other way as well. Why didnt Lon at BG say something like, you've been an amazing customer for 15 years, thus I'll let the discount stand but if you could please relate some of the steps you made to fill your basket.

I've been a longtime customer of BG too and I've never had any issues but a merchant needs to know not to confront customers partly bc they just shouldn't and partly bc you might get someone who will make a spectacle over 15 bucks.

Rob/Rod was the one going off and kept going I didn't see anything in BG's first email to be "awful". I've infrequently had those kind of emails in the past ant they are no big deal, he's asking how a discount was calculated when it shouldn't have. Rob/Rod apparently has a short fuse and probably should limit online interactions if this was enough to set one off.

+1 Muprhy. Also in IT and I work customer tickets, 90% are "user error" where we have to find out exactly what they did because what they think it should be isn't what it is.

Standard response from you ---
I know absolutely nothing about this situation or the customer and even less about other manufacturers.
My opinions--- if that bothers you then you can hit the road also….
I will leave it at this …. I have told more then one customer to hit the road and will continue to do so and after more then 35 years and my business is just fine.
There is more in life then money. Go ahead and,sell your own soul.

Russ Dunaway

Hi War Wizard;

Thanks for the response.
Please allow me to respond to some of what you wrote.

" I would have fully tested the system before implementing it, THAT would be the INITIAL basic step."

YOU may have done that, but many times, this process is NOT done. I've seen Oracle versions pushed across the network for full automatic install before the programmers realized that it didn't work due to not having the correct, (in this case a retro) version of Java installed.

My wife's company was told that they were getting Vista, (this was announced on a Friday afternoon), and would have it on Monday morning. Monday morning came and no one knew how to use the OS and it was discovered within a week, that 90% of the medical applications they used were not able to run on Vista. Hence it was uninstalled and Win 7 reinstalled.

I've had Sysads bring down entire CS lines on a Monday morning at 9 am without notifying anyone so they could do "server upgrades".

What you do, and what others do, especially software developers and those selling the software, are often two different animals of a different stripe sir.

" If I needed assistance from customers, using different browsers, operating systems, etc, I would have reached out to a "sample" pool of customers, again in ADVANCE of releasing any new software."

Once again, what you do, and what "others do" are two different things. The release of any new software was not on the part of BG, but on the developer. As I said, perhaps this was a fluke, (that one in a million shot). MS itself is notorious for releasing software without running the sample pool of customers, (true they do it now with their "free releases"), but even after that and "ALL the bugs being fixed", guess what? The day after a new OS comes out, they start with the patches and fixes, and service pack updates. Remember WIN XP? SP1, 2, and finally 3? How about Win 7 and the notorious "Fall designers update?"…
Many companies are on a schedule to push out a product. Fine tuning it comes later.