Bad Dragon Waiting Syndrome :P

[Pseudonym]

What I don't understand is that no other company seems to be doing this whole "status" thing to begin with, yet that doesn't seem to bother customers ? Why is there that we can patiently wait for toys from other companies ( with toys equally expensive ) without asking them every week where our orders are but people have to check their BD order daily to know exactly where it is ?

I've only ever ordered from Bad Dragon, so I have no idea what the communities of other companies are like or what it's like to order from those companies.

What I can say with certainty is that I don't need to check my order daily. Bad Dragon specifically states that orders take approximately "2-3 weeks" to make and ship, so that's the expectation the company sets, and I'm happy to wait three weeks with little or no information about my order because it's still in the window of production I was given. When 4+ weeks have gone by, the order has officially passed that window (and then some), so I feel it's reasonable to begin asking every week where my order is at in the process.

In the end, it's about communication with the customer and setting expectations that are as accurate as possible. If I ordered from a different toy company and they told me the wait would be 4-6 weeks, I'd go about my business and let them work for the next six weeks. If after that time I was still waiting and had received no updates, I'd begin asking, same as with Bad Dragon.

That said, BD (and probably other companies, too) could save a lot of irritation for both themselves and their customers either by making order status information available on the website or keeping their customers better apprised of delays and expected waiting times. Preferably, both. If they did, there literally wouldn't be anything left to ticket about unless an order was delayed for a really long time--and if that's the case, the customer has the right to know about it and to ticket about why it's happening.

[Pseudonym]

What I don't understand is that no other company seems to be doing this whole "status" thing to begin with, yet that doesn't seem to bother customers ? Why is there that we can wait for toys from other companies ( with toys equally expensive ) without asking them every week where our orders are but we have to check our BD orders daily to know exactly where it is ?

If it really were how "customer service works", implying it's a necessity of the ordering process, shouldn't we demand of the other companies to do it as well ?

I've only ever ordered from Bad Dragon, so I have no idea what the communities of other companies are like or what it's like to order from those companies.

What I can say with certainty is that I don't need to check my order daily. Bad Dragon specifically states that orders take approximately "2-3 weeks" to make and ship, so that's the expectation the company sets, and I'm happy to wait three weeks with little or no information about my order because it's still in the window of production I was given. When 4+ weeks have gone by, the order has officially passed that window (and then some), so I feel it's reasonable to begin asking every week where my order is at in the process.

In the end, it's about communication with the customer and setting expectations that are as accurate as possible. If I ordered from a different toy company and they told me the wait would be 4-6 weeks, I'd go about my business and let them work for the next six weeks. If after that time I was still waiting and had received no updates, I'd begin asking, same as with Bad Dragon.

That said, BD (and probably other companies, too) could save a lot of irritation for both themselves and their customers either by making order status information available on the website or keeping their customers better apprised of delays and expected waiting times. Preferably, both. If they did, there literally wouldn't be anything left to ticket about unless an order was delayed for a really long time--and if that's the case, the customer has the right to know about it and to ticket about why it's happening.

Edited to update thesharkwhisperer's quote and add the following: Yes, we should demand communication and transparency from every company we do business with.

Damn, I went to edit but apparently made a new post.

[thesharkwhisperer]

What I don't understand is that no other company seems to be doing this whole "status" thing to begin with, yet that doesn't seem to bother customers ? Why is there that we can wait for toys from other companies ( with toys equally expensive ) without asking them every week where our orders are but we have to check our BD orders daily to know exactly where it is ?

If it really were how "customer service works", implying it's a necessity of the ordering process, shouldn't we demand of the other companies to do it as well ?

I've only ever ordered from Bad Dragon, so I have no idea what the communities of other companies are like or what it's like to order from those companies.

What I can say with certainty is that I don't need to check my order daily. Bad Dragon specifically states that orders take approximately "2-3 weeks" to make and ship, so that's the expectation the company sets, and I'm happy to wait three weeks with little or no information about my order because it's still in the window of production I was given. When 4+ weeks have gone by, the order has officially passed that window (and then some), so I feel it's reasonable to begin asking every week where my order is at in the process.

In the end, it's about communication with the customer and setting expectations that are as accurate as possible. If I ordered from a different toy company and they told me the wait would be 4-6 weeks, I'd go about my business and let them work for the next six weeks. If after that time I was still waiting and had received no updates, I'd begin asking, same as with Bad Dragon.

That said, BD (and probably other companies, too) could save a lot of irritation for both themselves and their customers either by making order status information available on the website or keeping their customers better apprised of delays and expected waiting times. Preferably, both. If they did, there literally wouldn't be anything left to ticket about unless an order was delayed for a really long time--and if that's the case, the customer has the right to know about it and to ticket about why it's happening.

Edited to update thesharkwhisperer's quote and add the following: Yes, we should demand communication and transparency from every company we do business with.

Damn, I went to edit but apparently made a new post.

Okay I understand your stance better. Personally I never cared about status updates as they weren't a thing elsewhere than here, so I never felt entitled to this system. The other company don't seem to have issues with transparency and communication either ( well except Frisky Beast lol ) so I assumed it was some sort of "not a right but a privilege" kind of deal ? The only instance I would ask weekly about something I bought online is for secondhand sales, since a scam is always possible. For companies I guess I never really had to bother much, or just ask every 3 weeks or so. I also don't know what kind of updates they can give through tickets if people ask them weekly, especially since we know many of their ticket answers seem to be quite vague and copy pasty.

[Lipton]

[Okay I understand your stance better. Personally I never cared about status updates as they weren't a thing elsewhere than here, so I never felt entitled to this system. The other company don't seem to have issues with transparency and communication either ( well except Frisky Beast lol ) so I assumed it was some sort of "not a right but a privilege" kind of deal ? The only instance I would ask weekly about something I bought online is for secondhand sales, since a scam is always possible. For companies I guess I never really had to bother much, or just ask every 3 weeks or so. I also don't know what kind of updates they can give through tickets if people ask them weekly, especially since we know many of their ticket answers seem to be quite vague and copy pasty.

Well, there were people using Scripts to check for updates all x seconds. I guess some people don't have something better to do with their life

[Villie]

Part of me doubts the refreshing or scripts was what made them remove the status numbers.

I think it's mostly that it created an increase of tickets to customer service. "Hey someone said their order is being manufactured, mine still says "processing order", what gives!!! *customer who doesn't know there's secret numbers*"
"Hey my order has been at status 4 for two days now. Doesn't this mean it's its turn in the queue? What gives" etc etc etc

BUt if there is no numbers, then people are less likely to question any hold ups at each various step. Then they just know "okay it's going to be atleast 3 weeks. *forgets about it and only goes to question BD about it once it's past 3 weeks*"

[DaedraQueen]

[Okay I understand your stance better. Personally I never cared about status updates as they weren't a thing elsewhere than here, so I never felt entitled to this system. The other company don't seem to have issues with transparency and communication either ( well except Frisky Beast lol ) so I assumed it was some sort of "not a right but a privilege" kind of deal ? The only instance I would ask weekly about something I bought online is for secondhand sales, since a scam is always possible. For companies I guess I never really had to bother much, or just ask every 3 weeks or so. I also don't know what kind of updates they can give through tickets if people ask them weekly, especially since we know many of their ticket answers seem to be quite vague and copy pasty.

Well, there were people using Scripts to check for updates all x seconds. I guess some people don't have something better to do with their life

You know there is litterly no reason to be snarky,

My order was at 90 for almost three weeks before i sent a message going 'hey they've all been done for said amount of time any reason it hasnt shipped?' Because sometimes you need to prod epecially if its been a while,

I have a life but if you think I wasnt excited to see the process my toys were being made then your wrong, perhaps if you havent got anything nice to say maybe keep it to yourself.

[TheOtherDude]

Don't worry, I'm almost sure that jab was targeted at me.
Inaugurating the ignore function is tempting right now.

[thesharkwhisperer]

Part of me doubts the refreshing or scripts was what made them remove the status numbers.

I think it's mostly that it created an increase of tickets to customer service. "Hey someone said their order is being manufactured, mine still says "processing order", what gives!!! *customer who doesn't know there's secret numbers*"
"Hey my order has been at status 4 for two days now. Doesn't this mean it's its turn in the queue? What gives" etc etc etc

BUt if there is no numbers, then people are less likely to question any hold ups at each various step. Then they just know "okay it's going to be atleast 3 weeks. *forgets about it and only goes to question BD about it once it's past 3 weeks*"

Ahhh that makes a lot of sense, thanks !

[Lipton]

You know there is litterly no reason to be snarky,

My order was at 90 for almost three weeks before i sent a message going 'hey they've all been done for said amount of time any reason it hasnt shipped?' Because sometimes you need to prod epecially if its been a while,

I have a life but if you think I wasnt excited to see the process my toys were being made then your wrong, perhaps if you havent got anything nice to say maybe keep it to yourself.

I can be snarky whenever I want and you better read my text again. If you feel attacked by that, then it's not really my problem.

Don't worry, I'm almost sure that jab was targeted at me.
Inaugurating the ignore function is tempting right now.

Grats you got it. You have been talking so much bullshit the past weeks, so go for it :D

[TheOtherDude]

Grats you got it. You have been talking so much bullshit the past weeks, so go for it :D

You shall have your wish granted.
Perhaps it'd be even wiser if you did the same.

(Edit: Actually would have been even smarter if you had put me on your ignore outright instead, as it was you who didn't want to read my stuff... but well. This kind of people...)

[CakeLurker]

Personally the bigger question for me is... Why axe it now as opposed to doing it during the Black Friday backlog or at the end/beginning of the year?

I'm actually fine with it being cut despite placing an order recently, but I'm just a bit curious as to why it wasn't done sooner though.

[TheOtherDude]

Because maybe before the total clusterfuck black friday did to manufacturing/shipping wait times, there was so little reason to pester CS with info drawn from the status codes that it didn't negatively affect them? And past that point, it likely took a while for people to get on with the methods to even get the status codes, plus back then our collective information about their meanings weren't as precise as now.

[thesharkwhisperer]

Personally the bigger question for me is... Why axe it now as opposed to doing it during the Black Friday backlog or at the end/beginning of the year?

I'm actually fine with it being cut despite placing an order recently, but I'm just a bit curious as to why it wasn't done sooner though.

I thought they totally cut it out when they stopped doing the detailed updates. The numbers just made it all the more confusing to a lot of people wondering what the numbers meant. The detailed updates were actually useful but as Villie said maybe customer service got too many tickets asking what the numbers mean ? It's all speculation though.

[Grimly Fiendish]

Personally the bigger question for me is... Why axe it now as opposed to doing it during the Black Friday backlog or at the end/beginning of the year?

I'm actually fine with it being cut despite placing an order recently, but I'm just a bit curious as to why it wasn't done sooner though.

Maybe it took BD a few weeks to figure out how everyone was getting the code numbers, or there was a recent surge of customer service tickets referring to code numbers.

Probably no company would react positively to customers spying on their internal processes. I wouldn't say those numbers were hacked, but BD did a bad job of concealing info that they weren't prepared to share with customers. So they remedied that.

Just because someone makes a purchase here, that doesn't entitle them to know all about BD's production process. Yes, anybody is always free to ask any business "is my order ready" or "why is it taking so long" but the people who do that repeatedly or obsessively are generally considered "problem customers" by any business. And there's a difference between a company voluntarily giving you a status update, and customers basically spying on internal process to get updates on their own. I don't think that's necessarily terrible, it was rather clever actually, but apparently it was over-used, to the point that it became a problem. A customer wrote a script to update their order status every 3 to 5 seconds. It doesn't matter if that placed a big strain on BD's server or not, it should be obvious that any company would consider that a nuisance.

[Grimly Fiendish]

I'm sorry if my posts are too salty, at the end of the day it's not about life & death, "it's just dildos" (as important as they are). Toys are fun, and nobody should take my posts too seriously. Enjoy your toys!

[TheOtherDude]

Personally the bigger question for me is... Why axe it now as opposed to doing it during the Black Friday backlog or at the end/beginning of the year?

I'm actually fine with it being cut despite placing an order recently, but I'm just a bit curious as to why it wasn't done sooner though.

Maybe it took BD a few weeks to figure out how everyone was getting the code numbers, or there was a recent surge of customer service tickets referring to code numbers.

Probably no company would react positively to customers spying on their internal processes. I wouldn't say those numbers were hacked, but BD did a bad job of concealing info that they weren't prepared to share with customers. So they remedied that.

Just because someone makes a purchase here, that doesn't entitle them to know all about BD's production process. Yes, anybody is always free to ask any business "is my order ready" or "why is it taking so long" but the people who do that repeatedly or obsessively are generally considered "problem customers" by any business. And there's a difference between a company voluntarily giving you a status update, and customers basically spying on internal process to get updates on their own. I don't think that's necessarily terrible, it was rather clever actually, but apparently it was over-used, to the point that it became a problem.

This had nothing, even in the slightest, to do with anything you could call "spying" on "internal" things.

By definition, anything you share with someone can't be regarded as internal anymore. They made it so the status codes were transmitted every time an user would load the order status website from BD - no matter if the data was displayed or not, it was transmitted to the user and readily available without any trickery. You can also not claim that this was unintended given the old website had their im_location field (even displayed to the user!) which also allowed for some rough estimation where the toy is in the production process (not started yet/waiting for QA/warehoused/on shipping clerk's desk)

A customer wrote a script to update their order status every 3 to 5 seconds. It doesn't matter if that placed a big strain on BD's server or not, it should be obvious that any company would consider that a nuisance.

It only becomes a nuisance when their servers really get overloaded by those requests. Which I very much doubt if the developers of their site are professionals.
(Or with a surge of customer service tickets of course, but that has nothing to do with writing scripts that regularly check the status)

[Grimly Fiendish]

By definition, anything you share with someone can't be regarded as internal anymore. They made it so the status codes were transmitted every time an user would load the order status website from BD - no matter if the data was displayed or not, it was transmitted to the user and readily available without any trickery. You can also not claim that this was unintended given the old website had their im_location field (even displayed to the user!) which also allowed for some rough estimation where the toy is in the production process (not started yet/waiting for QA/warehoused/on shipping clerk's desk)

Code numbers were obviously unintended to be seen, since that information was removed from plain view (I've never seen mine), and when hiding the numbers was not sufficient, they were removed completely.

If BD wanted you to see the code numbers, you'd see them.

[thesharkwhisperer]

Maybe it took BD a few weeks to figure out how everyone was getting the code numbers, or there was a recent surge of customer service tickets referring to code numbers.

I never paid attention to the numbers but do you mean they weren't in plain sight with your order info and that you actually had to play around with the website code to get them ? I thought they were just BD's way of replacing the previous update system.

[Ryddle]

I'm honestly puzzled by why people feel the need to attack each other over something like this. Or, I guess. Trying to assert their Alpha-Internet-Persona in such rude fashions. While I can mostly understand why they tossed the codes, it was agreeably nice to have some inkling when things were taking place. I remember being elated when I saw my order move up to 4.
But I guess with any system there are going to be people who maybe "abuse" it by pestering CS constantly. Which, I think, having the codes should have perhaps prevented in the first place.
I think there are extremes that are being depicted on both sides and I'm not necessarily sure if it's fair (or healthy) to ascend to aggressive levels over it.
All in all I think people need to recall their manners (some more than others it seems) and remember that we're all here because of our excitement and enjoyment of cramming fantasy dongs into our various orifices.



Anyways. I've not seen any of the monster humper colors on toys here, and I'm curious if people other than myself ordered some. I'm eager for my med/soft crackers in glavve to arrive.

[Niah]

I'm honestly puzzled by why people feel the need to attack each other over something like this. Or, I guess. Trying to assert their Alpha-Internet-Persona in such rude fashions. While I can mostly understand why they tossed the codes, it was agreeably nice to have some inkling when things were taking place. I remember being elated when I saw my order move up to 4.
But I guess with any system there are going to be people who maybe "abuse" it by pestering CS constantly. Which, I think, having the codes should have perhaps prevented in the first place.
I think there are extremes that are being depicted on both sides and I'm not necessarily sure if it's fair (or healthy) to ascend to aggressive levels over it.
All in all I think people need to recall their manners (some more than others it seems) and remember that we're all here because of our excitement and enjoyment of cramming fantasy dongs into our various orifices.



Anyways. I've not seen any of the monster humper colors on toys here, and I'm curious if people other than myself ordered some. I'm eager for my med/soft crackers in glavve to arrive.

I agree with you there. I have a Guardian (Gunner) in Shogaru on the way and it should arrive later this coming week. I'm excited to see what it looks like and I hope I can make the pictures small enough to post at least one.