Well the mixed up Greyhawk incident was because the people who verified it couldn't look at it and differentiate between "Adventures" and "World Of" so I don't know what to say to that other than it was just carelessness on the part of someone who does not play/care about RPG's.  The person who put it in the system should have noticed, the people who put it up should have noticed, the people who pulled the order should have noticed and the person who verified the order and shipped it also should have noticed.  

CCG's are our main focus to the point that I get made fun of for being in this position I am the kid that has to get free lunch and wears boxes for shoes. That doesn't mean I don't want to make the department better or anything.  In a perfect world I would make everything right and put up numbers on par with the Magic and Yu-Gi-Oh departments but unless some sort of miracle happens or a meteor hits both of those specialists in the face, It won't happen anytime soon  The best I can do is get it running as smoothly as I possibly can.  


The stock photo issue has a few issues and I hesitate to even bring them up because every time I am told "no that's not possible" I think to myself that "thats bullshit, it seems so easy!"  So take this with a grain of salt, when we get the new website I will be pitching fits about the higher end items getting their own special descriptions and photos.  

so..

I asked about it again today and got the same answer.  One: We have multiples of certain items so having the warehouse pull the right one would be hell. I know what you're thinking "they have pictures to look at!" but consider the situation that just happened concerning greyhawk.  Two: We currently have nowhere to put it. I suggested put it  under a popup link or something but since we are changing over to the new website soon, they really have no interest in fixing the old one :-\ I am hoping to be able to have individual descriptions and photos up with the next incarnation of the website which is going to be up sometime in the future.  I am still trying to figure things out though, so it might happen soon.

I repriced some things that were mentioned in this thread already and investigated the Dwarven Glory. Unless someone has some sweet maps for me, I don't think its going back up on the website. It may show up on live auction though.

We grade them, shrinkwrap them and then put stickers on the back That say Re-Wrap and whatever the condition is.

Blackmoor wrote:I think it is pretty funny that T&T gets a bad rap all the time while another online retailer (Namely Noble Knight) seems to always get praise.  

I have dealt with both and I tell you they have the same issues (I.E. over pricing, over grading, over charging for shipping, etc) , at least T&T takes on there issues head to head while Noble Knight just gets defensive and insulting.

Just thought I would troll that out there

Absolutely; I've ordered from NKG about twice as much as T&T, but have had more than twice as many problems with NKG (egregious grading mistakes, missing parts, etc.). The difference for me is that whenever I've brought these to Aaron's attention he has always responded personally. I guess I just feel more comfortable with the personal touch than with what I perceive as the mentality at T&T--namely that of a big warehouse with a bunch of people who aren't necessarily all that interested in getting it right. I've never experienced defensiveness from or been insulted by Aaron, so I guess he has a side to his personality I haven't triggered.

MetamorphosisSigma wrote:I've never experienced defensiveness from or been insulted by Aaron, so I guess he has a side to his personality I haven't triggered.

Or maybe it's a Blackmoor thing.  

serleran wrote:Honestly, I find it perplexing that time can be found to grade, sort, and re-shrink an item, but not for the three seconds it takes to snap a picture. I'd think that is a mandatory thing... at least, for anything of value.

Pictures are taken by another department and handles all product picture taking. The process for our stuff to go in starts with grading, then put on a PO form and given over to a verifier, after that it is received by our warehouse and then put away. If a product is missing a picture it is brought up on a report, so one copy is brought to them from the warehouse to have it's picture taken. Or if a picture is poor quality it is pulled also, and they are going through all products now and taking new pictures of them.

serleran wrote:Honestly, I find it perplexing that time can be found to grade, sort, and re-shrink an item, but not for the three seconds it takes to snap a picture. I'd think that is a mandatory thing... at least, for anything of value.

Honestly, I find it perplexing that the company know exactly how to tell the truth and honestly and clearlt present their products and yet we still get the same old bullsh!t about how they can't be ar$ed, don't have staff who are interested in doing their jobs, don't know about the products they are selling, and still can't find anything other than the same appologists years down the line from when everyone started posting about their horific experiences with T&T.

When will we get a member of T&T who will get off their a$$ and do something to change the company, stop making excuses, or atleast have the timerity and conviction to say, "You knwo what, we don't give a F what you guys think. We make enough money out of everyone else anyways."

The same old rhetoric and excuses are just BS.

mbassoc2003 wrote:
Yes you can. It's your goddam job to be honest and truthful and represent your product accurately and to the best of your ability. If it's not your job, it sure as hell is your bosses job. Someone in the company is responsible for sales. And honesty and clarity are the foundation of sales. Either way, one of you is deliberately being negligent and not doing their job propoerly. Saying, "I'm not gonna do that because it was a f"ckup that happened before I got here" is no way to pass the buck and explain why you won't do a decent job of presenting your products honestly and accurately.

Saying, as your colleague did, "The guy who writes the descriptions have no experience or knowledge about RPG's" is clearly an negligence on the part of the operative, his department manager, and the sales force as a whole. What happened to all this action and cleaning up of your act, and honesty and accuracy you promised when you first posted here? Was that just hot air you were piping?

If you haven't noticed, things have been changing. Things posted about in this thread have already changed. There are 3 of us in the RPG department and we all have jobs to do, I am the only one dedicated to OOP RPG's as well, the other 2 are split between Distribution and Board games. I don't know what kind of job you do, but I bet its not taking up the responsibilities of someone else.  Despite not being my departments responsibility, I am changing things. I cannot go do the shipping departments job, I cannot go pull the order, I cannot go verify the order it simply doesn't work like that.  Are you that retarded that you do not understand how a large company works? I challenge you to go to a major electronics retailer and ask the cashier getting paid minimum wage to fix your laptop. It doesn't happen for a reason, she is there to make sure a certain part of the process gets done. Thats what our departments are for, to get certain parts of the process done.  

You keep giving me shit because I am not doing this personally. I physically cannot perform  6 jobs at once. Despite this, I am putting myself into different areas of the company to get these things done.  The RPG department is literally 2% of the company so it is very hard to get the ball rolling on things that concern us. If Magic has something it needs to get done, it will get done because its pulling in many times more money than we are. Its almost impossible to get product development to do anything for us but we are trying.

If you want to continue acting like this then please, by all means, provide some constructed criticism. Otherwise you are just coming off as an arrogant jackass who is just finding reasons to give both of us crap for trying to help.

I may have missed it, but who is responsible for descriptions of items on ebay?

If you're truly interested in improving the company, and not just paying the people on this forum lip service because they called you out on your company's bullshit, then listen up.

1. Your first step in improving the company's image is ensure that people are hired who not only want to work there, but also know what they are doing. To be blunt, a person who cannot tell the difference between a book and a box set, even at the size of the 21st Century reprints, doesn't give a damn about the job. At worst he should be shuffled to another department where his "talents" can be put to better use. At best, let go. Because you do not need people working in your company who are only there for the paycheck.

2. Your second step is to promptly answer concerns from your customers and take appropriate measures to correct them, WITHOUT getting defensive or offending your customer. As a case in point I'll use an experience I had on the QuickLink Interactive edition of the Chronicles of the Imperium forums. I offered a fan supplement for free download from there that could not be used WITHOUT having at least Basic Traveller and the owner of the company deleted the link and threatened me with banning. He did this in public, which is the absolute WORST thing he could have done. In public I replied that his behavior was unacceptable and if he wanted to keep his customers he should take his concerns to private messaging. In private I handed him his hat, so to speak, and made damn sure he knew that he lost a customer and that I would let everyone I came across know that the man had no idea how to deal with customers.

The man didn't know how to properly address his customers, and thus ensured that I would never buy or download any product of his as long as he was in business, unless I knew he could not profit from it (used book or less legitimate means). For the most part, I limited myself to making sure people knew how much of an ass he was and that if they chose to deal with him, they did so knowing what could happen.

3. Your third step is accurately listing what you have in your warehouse. You've already taken steps toward correcting the listing issues, however you seem resistant to the idea of photographing every single item in your warehouse. Realistically, how difficult could it possibly be to link the image to the product number? Simple example: if you have catalog number 09-26480, and three copies of it, you take a picture of the first item and name it 09-26480-01.jpg. Name the second and third 09-26480-02.jpg and 09-26480-03.jpg. That way you keep the picture with the item and that way there is NO confusion as to what it goes to.

However, it would be incumbent upon the person maintaining the pages to have a little honor and integrity and not take shortcuts as has been done in the past with the usage of stock shots. That goes back to number 1, and hiring people who give a damn about the business.

P. S. Before you ask, I've been on both sides of the fence. I have been managed by others, and have managed others. Count your blessings that you don't always have to deal with your customers in person, like I did, 25-50 hours a week, for 23 years.