Buy From simulator Central, i wish i had not

Hi everybody.
I had not bought Trainz 12 before today as over the last few years I have not had enough time to justify the purchase. However, with retirement coming up in two weeks time I received an email from simulator central advising that as I was a “valued customer” a nine dollar offer for trainz 12 was open to me. As that is only £6 in British currency I thought I would give that a go, only to be very much regretted.

I logged in and entered the extra details they required and then paid by PayPal and confirmation was received from them almost immediately that simulator central had been paid The download took about one and a half hours on my broadband system but following that when I looked at the confirmation of purchase email from simulator central it stated “serial number issued when payment received”.

I immediately advised N3V (simulator central) through the reply section of their email that they had been paid prior to their “confirmation of purchase” email only to receive a return email advising that “this email account is not monitored “and went on to advise me to me to send a ticket to trainzportal.com if I felt I needed support. I then did the foregoing only to receive another automated email advising that “one of our agents will get back to you as soon as possible”

All the above took place over six hours ago and there is still no response. I believed that buying a digital download would mean that you would have instant access to your purchase as it does in all other companies. However, not it would seem with N3V. They are prepared to sell their digital products on a weekend but not provide any support for those products when those sales encounter problems for their customers. Instead it would seem they would all prefer to have the weekend off despite being in the retail industry and when most sales are undoubtedly made.

6 pounds is not a large amount of money to spend or even lose. However, as someone who has bought almost all trainz upgrades since it was originally launched it leaves me feeling that I will not be buying anything else from them and they have already lost the price of my first class ticket for downloads. Instead I will be buying an alternative train simulator when their latest upgrade comes out at the end of this month

Simulator central (Trainz) support, Absolute rubbish
Bill

Paying with PayPal was your first mistake ... Paying with a major credit card goes through instantaniously !

Second mistake is buying a digital download, that requires a steady solid High Speed ISP connection for many many hours, and possibly overnight, and most of the next day ... When you could have bought a boxed disc, and waited @ 10 days for delivery.

There have been a few cases lately where Paypal have held the funds, which causes issues for those affected. I'd advise checking your Paypal account and make sure it has actually completed the transaction. Bear in mind that N3V are not in the office until Monday though.

Shane

Hi cascade and everybody
all products I purchase online; I always pay by PayPal. It's more secure as you do not have to give out details of your debit or credit cards to every Tom,Dick or Harry. I never get no problems with other sites I use regularly so why should there be a problem with N3V.

Let's face it, there on the skids.
Bill

It may not be specific to N3V. Read some of the other recent posts on here regarding Paypal, and you will see what I mean. It's always quicker to not use Paypal for the transaction.

Shane

Keep in mind N3V/Auran is a small company... Also, the Helpdesk is a pathetic waste of time, unless all of your tickets are high priority...

Hi Shane

shaneturner12 said:

There have been a few cases lately where Paypal have held the funds, which causes issues for those affected. I'd advise checking your Paypal account and make sure it has actually completed the transaction. Bear in mind that N3V are not in the office until Monday though.

Shane

Click to expand...

Have checked PayPal account and funds were transferred to N3V prior to my download this morning (14 September 2013) as stated I use PayPal extensively and have never found any delay in transferring money which is always immediately.

The problem is definitely in their system and as stated they have no staff to deal with it on a weekend

Bill

Hi there

AMTRAKwannabe said:

Keep in mind N3V/Auran is a small company... Also, the Helpdesk is a pathetic waste of time, unless all of your tickets are high priority...

Click to expand...

If they are a small company then surely customer service and support should be top priority to them. The foregoing is all the more reason for having staff motivated and prepared to service those customers at weekends which must be their peak time for sales.

Bill

I used Paypal a few weeks ago to renew my FCT and the transaction was seamless, though of course that may work differently to purchasing a core product.

Although I use Paypal quite frequently it is pertinent to note they are not in fact a registered bank nor am I sure what degree of protection or recourse you have in UK law if something goes wrong. One reason I believe why UKTS doesn't use them.

It's interesting you mention that Vern - something I found out via my Computeractive magazine is that Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act does not apply if the purchase is done through a third party like Paypal.

Shane

AMTRAKwannabe said:

Keep in mind N3V/Auran is a small company... Also, the Helpdesk is a pathetic waste of time, unless all of your tickets are high priority...

Click to expand...

N3V must be absolutely swamped with 10,000 help desk tickets per week, from every maroon in the community, most of them trivial nonsense help desk tickets.

Hi Shane and Vern.
As the cost was only six quid I do not think I will be looking to recover the money in any way. It's just that I find it so annoying that companies can "dish out" very poor service in the light that I have received this morning and expect to get away with it with no response from the customer.

That's why I posted their ineptitude on this forum as throughout my working life I have never been allowed to provide poor service to the many thousands of customers I have encountered. So posting their lack of service to customers as wide as possible is possibly the best punishment you can give them.

Let's face it, they are in retail sales and the peak of that custom must be on a weekend. So surely, it must occur to them that they need someone to respond to customers who have just bought their products paid their money that day and are having problems.

It could be a problem with PayPal but I do not know as there is no one in their "support" to inform me if that is the case or not.

That is the core of the argument
Bill

If you're lucky, Zec may be online during the weekend but will not have access to that information. As others have said, N3V is not a large company, and it probably costs quite a bit to employ staff to work on a weekend.

Shane

Hi Shane and everybody.

shaneturner12 said:

If you're lucky, Zec may be online during the weekend but will not have access to that information. As others have said, N3V is not a large company, and it probably costs quite a bit to employ staff to work on a weekend.

Shane

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As you may be aware of Shane, I run a company involved in industrial safety mainly in the road haulage industry. We have 14 staff who have it written in their employment contracts and salaries that they will on a rotary basis be expected to be available to answer phone calls or emails from customers existing and new when there are accidents or incidents on any weekend.

It is no great hardship if you have staff motivated towards the success of the company and the satisfaction of customers looking often for advice and help in difficult circumstances. That is how successful small companies survive and expand. In the above it should not cost anything extra to provide service to customers at weekends or any other time

It shouldn't do, but in certain industries it probably does. Add onto that the cost of utilities etc, and it adds up.

Shane

Hi Shane and everybody

shaneturner12 said:

It shouldn't do, but in certain industries it probably does. Add onto that the cost of utilities etc, and it adds up.

Shane

Click to expand...

Shane, I appreciate your point but the industry we are talking about here is retail sales. Undoubtedly most of those sales will be made at weekends, With the foregoing in mind surely companies involved in the online retail industry must be prepared to support customers of their products in the same way as those who work in retail shops have to work, serve and deal with customers problems at weekends in the same way as they would any other day a week.

With regard to N3V (simulator central) I am not talking about help tickets from trainz users who are finding that there consists are passing red signals and cannot figure out why as undoubtedly those could be left to be dealt with on weekdays. What we are talking about here, are customers who have ordered and paid for products that day and find that they cannot use that product for whatever reason.

In the above cases N3V have received the customers payments into their bank account and then immediately refuse to provide any assistance whatsoever throughout their peak sales period of weekends. Surely the above customers deserve priority service and flexibility within the staff should be providing that priority service at least.

Bill

I see where you are coming from, but it may be something to do with Australia trading/labor laws.

Shane

Have you logged into www.simulatorcentral.com my account, My Serial Numbers, and seen if the serial number is there? I've paid with paypal a number of times with N3V and generally the serial number and downloads are available at the time of purchase.

Cheerio John

I also bought that TS12 digital d/load from SC via PayPal and within the same minute I received an email from SC with the confirmation of the purchase and the serial numbers for each part of the d/load links (also enclosed in that email). So it seems different people are treated in different ways but I guess normally as soon SC receives an automated confirmation from PayPal, then the also automated email with confirmation, serial numbers and d/load links from SC is send and passed on to a customer.

My only beef is the time it took to d/load the whole shebang, on my excellent ADSL+ connection, where torrent and other d/loads reach often 11 MBits/sec it took some 12 hours plus to d/load these 6.6 GB of data. I guess a lot of people took advantage of this offer to buy TS12 for under $10, hence a lot of d/loads from the server.

Also, we here in Australia start our weekend some 18 hours before the US of A, hence this might seem a long time without any official persons being here in the forum to exolain why things are not the way they should be. However, having said that, it is still no excuse NOT to have at least someone monitoring events from home or wherever, just to see if all is AOK. Events happening in the past on the Forum, the DLS, with web pages being wrong with Simulator Central seem to confirm, when the last person from N3V Games/SC leaves the office building for any weekend on a Friday afternoon, it will be locked up, bolted and sealed after the lights are turned off until the Monday morning after any weekend here in Australia.

Can you blame N3V Games/SC staff here in Australia, after all they live in a country (Queensland), where one day is beautiful and the next day is perfect. Who would want to stay over a weekend in an office when there is so much to be done with fishing, boating, exploring the outback, barbeques with quaffing beer, attending sport etc. :hehe:.

Makes one wonder.

Cheers

VinnyBarb

Just buy a boxed copy in a shop , no troubles at all. Pay the man in cash , leave the shop , go home and have fun.