General

Unless PayPal changed their terms, you are correct that once you close the dispute it is over and you can't reopen it even if NIS ghosts you again.

I would continue to put everything they send in the dispute, and let them know once it is resolved you will close the dispute.

While it's true that you won't be able to re-open a dispute when one is closed prematurely, also note that, if they feel mistreatment on their end, NIS could ban you from any future purchases and that would suck 'cause I really do like what they release as a US publisher.

The way they are treating him, I wouldn't be surprised if he chose not to order from their store ever again.

Their games are available elsewhere, just not necessarily the LE versions.

Yeah I don't care if I get banned. This is the first (and last) time I will be buying directly from them. I totally get slower than usual response times in today's world but it seems odd to me that after 3 weeks of emailing them, they conveniently reply within a day or two of a chargeback being filed. Also there was no indication they would even help me if I closed the chargeback, they literally won't discuss an exchange or refund until I close it (which forfeits my buyer protection).

Anyway, thanks for the replies. I am not going to reply to their side email, I am just going to put all my updates in the dispute and escalate to paypal next week if NIS still hasn't responded to the dispute.

sa330206 wrote:

Classic scam maneuver! Tell them to fix it or you will continue with the chargeback and they can eat the fees and your whole butt-hole.

sa330206 wrote:

Escalate today and include their message saying they won't work with you unless you forfeit your buyer protection

That really sucks... NIS has some good games in my experience.

Hope it gets cleared up and resolved for satisfaction on both parties.

Making good games and running an online store competently are two totally different skill sets.

Still no reply (aside from the side email to close my dispute) so I escalated through Paypal. Now I have to wait another 10 days.

After more research, it appears there may have been a bad batch of the game I bought. I found someone else make a post about having the same issue with this game.

The reason the drive was buzzing/stopping/starting is the big scratch on the disc. I only noticed it because i looked closely at the disc when it caused the PS4 to act up. Came like that right out of the package. Sadly Blu Ray discs are super sensitive to scratches so a deep one is going to cause problems most of the time. So this is totally on them, I'm very disappointed they don't stand behind their products.

Hope you get this resolved soon! Never dealt with them, but not sure I want to now, either.

I had an issue with Ubisoft. I had subbed to their Ubisoft+ service for the free month on PC, then cancelled it like a week before it was set to charge. They renewed the sub on the date so I was charged anyway, but I wasn't able to use the service since I successfully cancelled it. I sent in support tickets, called, etc, and could never get anyone to either let me use the service or give me a refund. I finally opened a paypal dispute case since it was through them that I was charged, and Ubisoft finally responded the same day and gave me my refund. Long story short, Ubisoft has atrocious customer support too.

Sailorneorune has been dealing with Bandai Namco store customer service over a defective Taiko drum controller she bought from them.

For the past month and a half, every single time she has emailed customer support, she has gotten a similar canned message letting her know they understand her frustration and have placed her support request on hold pending review. Even in response to the last email where she specifically said she did not want another email stating the request was on hold, but wanted the name and phone number of a manager over there.

Everyone on their customer service team apparently is also a stripper, because she gas had emails from Midnight, Galaxy, and Melon.

She filed the chargeback a few weeks ago, but those can take up to 60 days unfortunately.

So the moral of the story here is publishers should stick to making games and let other companies handle consumer sales and customer service, because the pubs clearly aren't equipped to do so.

Even gamestop is 100x better at customer service than this.

Sorry to hear that Dasgessabel and Sailorneorune also have faced issues with 2 totally separate companies! It seems customer service across the board has tanked since Covid. I understand staffing may be low but it's no excuse to straight up rip off customers.

Sadly I'm done with Gamestop now too. Ever since they started the $8.99 return fee for online orders I just can't gamble with them anymore. I totally understand not wanting to accept free returns because someone changed their mind, but it's not right to charge $8.99 when they inevitably send me the incorrect item or a broken disc. The nearest GS is about 25 min away so it's just not worth having to drive in when they make a mistake.

Anyway - glad you got a resolution Dasgessabel and I hope the same happens for Sailorneorune. I will keep you posted about my situation, I should know by mid November.

Rightstuf has just about the only consistently good CS I've ever encountered. The one time I had to deal with NIS went smoothly enough but I also did a lot of documentation via pictures before hand. They simply didn't ship my entire order and the box I got from wouldn't have been big enough to receive all the items in my order. This was somewhat recent. I used to order from them a ton w/o issue but eventually got out of collecting their LEs some years back. I have heard they got much worse lately from other collectors. I wonder if some things changed hands regarding their distribution/fulfillment.

This sucks and I hope you get it sorted. Was the disc loose in the case when you got it? Though I'd think that wouldn't be enough to scratch it and it was probably something at the factory.

benstylus wrote:

This is a NISA game, I'm glad the console didn't brick itself or worse. Their games have ATROCIOUS QA.

The broken disc was on the spindle so it definitely was like this from the factory

https://i.imgur.com/JOwGuS5.jpg

It may not look too bad in the picture but it's a fairly deep gouge. Given the guy in my earlier reddit post said his had the issue and didn't have a visible scratch, maybe it's just a bad pressing. I'm not sure.

sa330206 wrote:

For Bandai Namco it's not a staffing issue. We get a reply within 24 hours of any email. It's just that no on in customer service can apparently do the everyday routine customer service job of processing a return.

Maybe it comes from the no refunds policies from their days as strippers.

It’s been almost 2 months waiting on the clueless fembots at Bandai Namco to refund me for the defective Taiko Controller. My ticket is still “on hold” pending review. Review for WHAT?! They said it is on a case-by-case basis. Well, if you actually read the 11 emails I sent about this, you would have already asked for an RMA, received the controller, and confirmed that the right rim sensor is stuck.

My sincerest apologies for the double post.

(rant) I have worked in Customer Service for over 15 years, and what I have experienced from Bandai Namco has me seriously disgusted. I have handled all manner of problems from misspelled emails to handling return requests for crapty cell phones to helping get someone off the side of the road in Insignificant Blip, Louisiana, and managed to do all of these things with some degree of competence and actually giving a crap.

They have done absolutely jack to help me return this broken controller over the last 60 days, so benstylus used his 10th level wordsmithing to help me put together a complaint letter. Which tomorrow will be mailed to the CA Dept. of Consumer Affairs, and the CEO of Bandai Namco Entertainment America.

I AM SO FRICKIN' DONE.

@sa330206 Let me know how things go with NIS America.

Try messaging them / posting on Twitter or other social media

sailorneorune wrote:

Thought sone of you might enjoy the conclusion to this tale.

Earlier this month (about a week before the final deadline for Bandai Namco to respond to FiServ regarding the dispute), Bandai Namco sent sailorneorune an email saying they were ready to provide an RMA, they just needed her phone number or some other ridiculously insignificant piece of information. So they sat on the case for 4 months when they could have told her this the first week. She submitted the info and finally got her RMA, and sent the broken drum controller back.

A couple days after she sent, we got a letter from fiserv stating our dispute had been successful and the money was refunded. After confirming with the bank, we sent an email to Bandai to let them know we had sent the controller back, the chargeback was completed and we had the money back, and as far as we were concerned the matter was closed.

A few days after that we got a nice letter from the California Attorney General stating that they had reached out to Bandai Namco to notify them of the complaint, and while they don't usually take action over one incident, they said our complaint would added to their file. The timing of the letter matched too well with the timing of Bandai Namco finally getting us the RMA for it to be a coincidence.

I guess a regulator really can light a fire under someone's butt, even when a chargeback doesn't!

We can call it a happy ending even though there were a lot of wasted hours of back and forth emails to BN, letters and web forms to various regulatory bodies, and follow-ups with Fiserv on the chargeback. I was secretly hoping BN would apologize and provide us with a store coupon or something so we could laugh at them even more for thinking we would ever order from them again, but no. However....

BANDAI NAMCO SIDE STORY
In early November we went to California to visit my family. My Dad turned 80 last year, and my mom had been diagnosed with skin cancer and then lung cancer a few weeks prior.

We told my brother about the whole fiasco we had been dealing with Bandai Namco, and after he dropped us back off at the airport after our trip, he drove to Bandai Namco's building (just a few minutes from the airport as it turns out) and took a picture of himself giving them a thumbs down and texted it to me. Made both of us laugh.

I love happy endings.