A tale of Customer Support (or the absence thereof).

First of all, let me congratulate all that already got Poser 6. Count yourself lucky! Well, where to begin? On Feb 17th, I eagerly preordered my Poser 6 upgrade and settled down to wait for March 21th. Shortly thereafter I got an email from Curious Labs announcing a price cut for people ordering between Feb 16th and 22th. Filing it away I forgot about it. Shortly before the Easter weekend, after browsing this forum with all the impatient people posting about Poser 6 and emails they got, I became suspicious since I haven't received any. So I took myself to the findmyorders page to query the status of my order.
I was quite surprised to see that my order was cancelled! I won't go into details about my reaction to that, since they are without doubt breaking the TOS of this place, but let me tell you I was slightly annoyed.
So, what to do? Contact CL and DR. The only way to contact these worthy companies was a web form to fill in. Needless to say that the options in these forms fit my problem like a glove, but anyway, I just went ahead and hoped for the best (which is terribly naive, I know).
Finally, I got a reply from CL yesterday, from one Tori Porter, Product Development Specialist AND Web Goddess, no less! Want to know what sage advice she had?

[Quote:
Please go to http://store.curiouslabs.com and click the "Customer Service" button the left navigation to contact Digital River. Here you will be able to quickly look up and track your purchase using your order number, find valuable FAQ's regarding purchasing and downloading, and return or cancel your order. You will also find a contact form at the bottom of the FAQ section if you need further assistance.]

Which prompted me to thank her for this wonderfully prefabricated standard response. I also dared to ask if she read my mail at all (I know, questioning a goddess is heresy, but my blood pressure then was quite high). I was surprised when some minutes later she mailed back that she did indeed read my mail, and as stated in her previous reply, I should contact DR. To that I replied that I would have expected from customer service to do this job and to then present me with information on how to proceed, and I told her that I already contacted DR some days ago.
Since then, no more helpful emails (as a matter of fact no emails at all!).
The silence from Digital River is well nigh deafening, I suspect they themselves never did read their web form, where it says: time for responses up to 48hrs.
Well, thats where things stand now, I have no idea why my order was cancelled, who did it, nor do I know how to remedy the situation. Preorder boxes are fast selling out, at least according to a CL mail that I did get (it seems I only get the really important ones), so I guess they don't want me to get Poser 6.
For all those still awake, thanks for reading through my rant, I'm definitely better now, even though I know that this little masterpiece of writing (humor me, I'm pretty disappointed as it is) is only for calming my nerves.

martin

I'd hate you to feel lonely mkrueger :) I originally sent a msg to Katherine re problems with Preorder Special to which I received no reply, then to Curious Labs with the same result. Meanwhile the entry field of 'promo code' where one can enter email address where P5 was sent as an early adapter is no longer there though e-mail states April 30th as a deadline. I sent yet another mail today and will remain optimistic that Support of Curious Labs will yet get around to it. Perhaps the frantically busy and problematic ordering period has now passed sufficiently to get around to some individual attention. Here's hoping. :) ps. I also can not change my old-email address to the newer one without the 'challenge code' and since I've had a comp crash I have no record of it. What to do? - perhaps Curious Lab knows if they'd only get back to me. :)

masha, You don't need a challenge code... that was taken care of in the second SR for Poser 5. Go to the CuriousLabs website and download the updates to get SR4.1. Read the readme to fix a small thing with background color in one of the rooms. You might also need the figures updater which came with SR3. (I don't know if SR4.1 includes it.) Anyway, get the patches in hand. Having downloaded the stuff... reinstall P5 (you may want to copy over your Runtime to a safe place, and remember that you can link them). Do NOT open it!!! Install the updates. Restart the computer. Some of us restart between each item just to be sure that Windows catches it. You should now be able to just type in your serial number and be good to go without the challenge code. Carolly

mkrueger, There are several ways to contact CuriousLabs: mail, fax, phone, email, IM, and everything else short of telepathy. Tori's job indeed switched more towards web design and maintenance (look at the Poser 6 display there). Katherine has been handling most of the correspondence. IM her here at "Curious_Labs" and explain the ordering problem. If we can't get through to Digital River, she can. These are both nice ladies who have been very helpful in straightening out a lot of glitches and snags. If your order was cancelled there should be some record that you had tried to place it within that window, but got stuck, and Katherine should be able to unstick it. Carolly

Here is DRs Phone Number, it is Toll Free for US. I am not sure where you are. 1-800-656-5426 There were some issues those first few days, and they have been very good about making them right, when they are fully aware of the issue. With the canceled order, most likely they have no reference or order number anymore. You did not mention, but did you ever receive a confirmation letter with an order number? If not, yours was in limbo from day one.

Hi, all. Thanks for trying to help me. ratscloset: I'm in Vienna, so no toll free for me. Frankly, I won't call them by phone, paying additional money for clearing up this mess. Carolly: Thanks for the IM-Tip, I didn't know they can be reached by IM, I just thought Katherine browsed through this place once in a while. While I don't know these two ladies personally, I take your word for it that they are indeed nice, maybe even helpful. But I can recognise a prefabricated email-reply when I see one. And after our two-mails-each correspondence, I never heard from Tori again. Well, I can't say I'm surprised by now. (btw adding "Webgoddess" to your email sig is just begging for a comment, so if she read my post I hope she didn't take it personally.) To complete the picture, a short update: I tried yesterday to reorder two times, and in both cases my order wasn't accepted. Today I finally got an answer from DR after mailing them directly after my attempts. Well, another automatic reply-mail for my collection. Since the text says: The information you have entered can not be verified. Please try again using your current billing information, phone number, and email address. If you continue to have difficulties in placing this order please contact Order Support at OrderInquiries@DigitalRiver.com The last bit I find particular hilarious. I did exactly that yesterday. Since they mention telephone number, I have an ugly suspicion. I gave 0-0 as telephone number because I don't like giving away telephone numbers, only the bare data necessary for the transaction. Can it be that DR uses the telephone number for some sort of verification? If yes, they are the first company I encounter that do so, for reasons that are beyond me. So that may be a critical information, one I would have expected to be told by customer support. Stupid me, I guess, for expecting so much. Ah, well, maybe I try to IM some CL here, but I won't hold my breath. martin

Thanks Carolly for the eyeopener.:) Here's the funny thing. Before the crash I had an image of the drive Poser5 was on which I restored to the new hard drive - knowing that the programs will have to be reinstalled anyway. Went through a bit of a nightmare installing and re-installing xp and SR2 till all worked and hadn't begun to restore any programs till I got it sorted. Meanwhile started Poser5 once on its separate partition ..and...it worked. Hehe..all without being in the new registry and all. So I never thought that the SR4.1 might not be functional too... But wait a minute... how would the Curious website know what version I do or don't have on my machine just by wanting to change the e-mail addy on their website? Ah, such mysteries. Curious Labs is still non-communicado though they've acknowleged receiving this latest e-mail too. I think maybe it's too much of a mess for them to sort through for one wittle person. All things considered, tea-leaves and chicken guts included - maybe I'm just not meant to have Poser 6. Thanks :) Masha

Masha, Katherine was getting over 300 IMs a day at the peak... which is beyond typing speed to answer, especially since many needed information to be looked up or a new code/serial number given, or a back&forth flurry of messages. She also had a bout of flu in there. When I talked to her last week she was only about 100 IMs behind and should have caught up even further. She might not get back to you immediately but if you don't write to her, laying out the problem, how can she help? Carolly

mkrueger, If you deliberately gave incorrect information, then there might be a very good reason why the system didn't take the order. I can understand a desire for privacy, but many delivery/shipping companies will not take a package without a valid phone number, on both ends. They don't want to be stuck with undeliverable parcels and no quick contact info. Whether DR or CuriousLabs needs your phone number for whatever nefarious purposes (chanting in the moonlight to the gods of commerce?) is one issue, but UPS certainly does, so any company taking an order for product is going to have that field in the order form. It is your choice whether to fill out the order form correctly or to find another way of ordering it or to buy it locally. Carolly

Hi Carolly, This is by far not my first order via internet, but the first where a telephone number was mandatory. And yes, other orders also shipped by UPS and didn't require the telephone number. Anyway, I did start one last try, this time with phone number and lo and behold, DR deigned to let me order! Tori from CL also contacted me again, so I really have to say thank you to her, even if she couldn't help me much. martin

Congrats Martin :) Carolly, I certainly felt for Katherine during the Feb problems, especially if she had to handle it all on her own, that's why I waited till near the end of March before e-mailing aside from the IM I sent. My case was a bit of a mess because of the old e-mail address not being changed at the Curious site, plus proof of purchase I would have had to send to take advantage of their offer etc, etc. At any rate see how it unfolds, hopefully I can still be elligible for the pre-order special. Cheers, Masha

Thanks, Masha! But I think I'll wait with celebrating till I have the box in my hands. I hope you can also solve your problem, good luck! martin

We'll hope for the best for both of you!