Still no downloads

[Aleph]

If you have missing files, please go to https://help.sjgames.com or email help@sjgames.com to let the warehouse staff know there is an issue that needs to be addressed.

[adm]

I have been purchasing items from Warehouse 23 since it opened, I have all of 4E, a lot of 3E, and purchases from other publishers. I have never kept an inventory of what I have bought, e23 did that for me, and, until now, I always thought you folks were trustworthy enough that I did not need to.

Clearly I was mistaken.

I did over vent here, due to the lack of malice on SJGames part, for that I do apologize.

More below.

[ravenfish]

Originally Posted by adm

I have been purchasing items from Warehouse 23 since it opened, I have all of 4E, a lot of 3E, and purchases from other publishers. I have never kept an inventory of what I have bought, e23 did that for me, and, until now, I always thought you folks were trustworthy enough that I did not need to.

Without bringing issues of trustworthiness into it (which strikes me as needlessly aggressive- I am sure the disorganization of this changeover is not due to any lack of moral rectitude), that's more or less where I am. I have bought substantial numbers of PDFs from SJGames over the years, but have kept no master-list of what I have purchased, so it would be difficult to identify which if any files are missing.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Without bringing issues of trustworthiness into it (which strikes me as needlessly aggressive- I am sure the disorganization of this changeover is not due to any lack of moral rectitude), that's more or less where I am. I have bought substantial numbers of PDFs from SJGames over the years, but have kept no master-list of what I have purchased, so it would be difficult to identify which if any files are missing.

Yeah. Complications happen in such a transfer, anyone who has ever worked in IT knows this. SJG has repeatedly pointed out how to ask for help if needed and its a pretty damm standard method. You contact the helpdesk rather than expecting anyone to read a post on a forum.
If you do that and get no satisfaction then you can try complaining in public about it. But to insult and frankly defame a company before that is nonproductive, rude, and possibly libelous. You expressed an opinion as fact.

[Celjabba]

Originally Posted by Refplace

Yeah. Complications happen in such a transfer, anyone who has ever worked in IT knows this. SJG has repeatedly pointed out how to ask for help if needed and its a pretty damm standard method. You contact the helpdesk rather than expecting anyone to read a post on a forum.
If you do that and get no satisfaction then you can try complaining in public about it. But to insult and frankly defame a company before that is nonproductive, rude, and possibly libelous. You expressed an opinion as fact.

While I agree in principe with Refplace, SJG not fixing the bugs - after several months - and closing the discussion thread instead doesn't exactly inspire trust.

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Without bringing issues of trustworthiness into it (which strikes me as needlessly aggressive- I am sure the disorganization of this changeover is not due to any lack of moral rectitude), that's more or less where I am. I have bought substantial numbers of PDFs from SJGames over the years, but have kept no master-list of what I have purchased, so it would be difficult to identify which if any files are missing.

The archive do show the missing file entries, with the note "File is missing" where the download link should be.
So, you can build a master list of the old store (excluding any purchase made on the new store obviously) by making a blank search (just hit enter in the search field), scroll to the bottom until you see "Showing 426 to 451 of 451 entries" (or whatever your numbers are), then select everything starting from the bottom* and copy-paste to excel.

* : The download list is a bit ... wonky ... with a long list so it is best to select a block of lines, copy-paste, then select some more and repeat until you have everything rather than trying to select everything in one go.

The new store show 232 files, so I am missing about half my library on it :(
The old store show 6 "file is missing", only one of them is on the new store, so there are 5 books "lost" . Fortunately, I kept a local copy.

There are also a few Kickstarter only PDF completely absent on the old store from the PDF challenges KS, but I don't know if they ever were there or only on backerkit.
They actually are on the new store, hidden under the name "GURPS PDF Challenge 2021 Bundle" and "GURPS PDF Challenge 2020 Bundle" instead of individual entries ! Just noticed this.

To be fair, the new store work great, assuming you can find what you want to buy and don't need to access past purchases.

For new customers wanting to buy some dices or Munchkin physical products, it is good.

For former customers wanting to download a PDF bought long ago or looking for the latest GURPS release, however, the experience is not so good.

[Aleph]

Many of the issues that were brought up over the course of the testing and roll out have been addressed. Others continue to be worked on.

The thread that was established for the initial testing of the store was closed for multiple reasons. Largely because the store was no longer in the initial testing period, and the staff needed to consolidate help requests and problem reports to the main system we use for tracking those things, where tickets are generated and can be tracked, rather than an ever evolving forum thread with a myriad of different issues in it and no reasonable tracking on them.

Just because we are directing support requests into our primary support system instead of here does not mean we have ceased to work on it.

If you think that you are missing something on the new store, you can still access your account on the old store at this time at http://archive.warehouse23.com (using your old login information) and check your libraries there for previous purchases. If you find something that did not transfer over, please reach out to help@sjgames.com or https://help.sjgames.com and let the warehouse staff know.

[adm]

I have supported SJGames since the original Car Wars pocket box. I have found the company to be hard working, innovative and with great customer service. When the first GURPS 4E hardback was defective they got in front of the issue and made everyone aware of what was going and made everyone whole.

I have found the switch over to Shopify to be very opaque and we will fix it when we can, trust us.

This was announced as starting on 7/6/2022, SJGames has decades of experience running their own store front. Presumably some work was done ahead of the announcement, however; if not, that is still 10 months ago. If a company with decades of experience is having this much trouble with a platform that advertises itself as great for beginners and enterprise businesses, why is SJGames still trying to use it, and why haven't they failed in the market place? Are all of the other options worse than this one?

Ten months(+) seems to be stupefyingly long time to get even basic functionality, the new releases page still does not show Phil Master's new Transhuman Space release. If new products take days to appear on the new releases page, how long is it going to take for all of SJGames catalog, plus all of the third party vendors to be moved over?

The lack of transparency on what is not working here just adds to the irritation.

[Farmer]

Originally Posted by Aleph

Many of the issues that were brought up over the course of the testing and roll out have been addressed. Others continue to be worked on.

What most people, myself included, seem to be asking for is transparency and updates about this. It's all very well to use the help desk to log issues, but if we can't see regular updates on fixes, enhancements, and changes then we don't know that things have improved and you're leaving it to your customers to randomly check back to see if it works again. That's not good CX - in fact, it's downright poor.

The other issue with only taking feedback through the help desk is that no one can see if anyone else has experienced the same issue, they can't get feedback from others on work arounds, and they can't see if there's a fix that's been rolled out or coming soon.

At the very least, though, if you insist on only taking the feedback through the help desk, please provide a weekly update (in a locked thread if you like) showing what's outstanding, what's been fixed, and what has an ETA to be fixed (and what the ETA is).

It's surprising, with someone like Meredith Placko coming onboard, that transparent and effective communications with customers isn't a leading process at SJG (and, really, Phil Reed was also very communicative so that legacy also makes this current approach surprising and disappointing).

[Paulon]

Simply put, the only thing in this situation that's worse than the performance of the new site when the old one went down is the communication from SJGames about the new site's issues.

It's giving the impression that someone's trying to hide the problems with the new store rather than actually do anything about them.

[Kallatari]

Originally Posted by Aleph

If you think that you are missing something on the new store, you can still access your account on the old store at this time at http://archive.warehouse23.com (using your old login information) and check your libraries there for previous purchases. If you find something that did not transfer over, please reach out to help@sjgames.com or https://help.sjgames.com and let the warehouse staff know.

Does this mean the transfer is supposed to be completed by now? Or is it still ongoing? I'm just asking because I seem to be missing a few dozen products but based on the message still on display at the store site, I thought I still had to wait a bit longer. But your sentence seems to indicate I should be reaching out.

I'm in no rush, as I don't need to download anything at this point in time. I'm just wondering if I should be doing a detailed analysis of what I'm still missing in the new store at this point in time or not.