Here in this country, we have - at its root - a consequentialist society. The decisions and choices you and I make on a day-to-day basis have consequences to our lives, and the repercussions of those decisions upon others frequently have consequences for us as well.
I'd like to tell you a story of how a company made a decision that caused them to swerve screeching off a cliff only a few days ago.
There's an online gaming company called Mythic Entertainment. Now, like many other companies, while Mythic runs its own business, they rely on outside people to do a lot of their functions; account tracking, billing...
We'll come back to that.
Now, back in the day before MMOs (massively multiplayer online games) became the huge business they are today, Mythic Entertainment released a game called Dark Age of Camelot.
Being as I was a twitchy, spastic freak, I signed on to the beta-test team.
For those of you who don't know, beta-testers use a software product (for free) in advance of anyone else, in exchange for forwarding ridiculously detailed error reports anytime there's a problem, which happens often.
Now, my experience with this was that Mythic Customer Support was at best slow, and often glacial, in their responses. This was bad enough from a company publishing a game to the internet anyway; the slow response to the limited pool of beta-testers told me that their response to a vastly increased user base once the game went "live" would be proportionately worse, so regretfully, after a few months, I canceled my account with them, and went on to bigger and better things.
This is what we call ominous foreshadowing, folks.
Now, having had that experience with Mythic, when it was announced the Warhammer Online game would be developed by Mythic, I gritted my teeth and stopped myself from buying it.
To put that decision in perspective, guys, I own EVERY other PC Warhammer game, even the really cruddy ones; I have been a frothing-at-the-mouth, caffeine-fueled, spastic and twitchy-eyed Warhammer fanboy from the moment Games Workshop unleashed the majesty that is Warhammer 40,000 on the world so many years ago.
And they made an MMO.
And I chose not to buy or play it, because of my past experience with Mythic.
Recent events have proven yet again the quality of my judgment.
Mythic Entertainment subcontracts their billing to a third party, who takes people's money and then basically reports to Mythic that they are, in fact, paid on time.
A few days ago, that third party billing company started having some...
...minor technical glitches...
...Which resulted in some of Mythic's customers being billed as many as 33 times, some even repeatedly getting hit on multiple days, for up to 6 month subscriptions each time.
Now, everyone knows that it's a good idea to have a bit extra in your checking account at the end of the month, so that if bad things happen, you can handle it. Your personal ability to actually do so depends on your situation, but still, everyone gets the concept.
But what happens when your supposedly $15-per-month game abruptly charges you $2100 - that comes straight out of your bank account?
I'm betting for most people, overdraft fees or locked-out cards and accounts.
For some, near financial ruin.
Mythic's first response to people frantically trying to contact them to get the charges reversed?
"We're looking into it." Which same would be perfectly acceptable, except that the billing errors continued to happen even once Mythic had started their "investigation." It seems like it wouldn't be that much of a challenge to freeze ALL billing until they figure out what's wrong, but Mythic didn't bother.
After a few hours, Mythic decided to issue instructions to everyone who got erroneously billed; they said the customers should call their CS phone lines (which often have a wait time of over an hour; people were posting their wait times in the forums on the Mythic website) only AFTER having disputed the charges with their bank and gotten "evidence" of the erroneous charges.
Riiii-iiiiight.
To compound matters, some of the people who were charged were people who had either canceled, or suspended, their accounts months before, even as long as a year in some cases; Mythic apparently just kept everyone's credit and debit card numbers on file, and billed them even though they had canceled their accounts.
To say the players were unhappy would be a mild understatement.
Now, there were a few shining stars in this constellation of suck and horse manure; one gem that stood out for me was one poster's recounting of his conversation with USAA - my bank, as well, so this is nice to know - which included "Oh, is this about Mythic Entertainment?"
Apparently USAA fielded so many calls about Mythic in such short order that they simply decided to reverse all charges from them, and waive any overdraft fees generated by them.
Another bank - the poster didn't specify which - closed their customer's credit card down automatically because they noticed "strange activity" on the account and then were unable to get Mythic to answer their phones.
Not all banks were so friendly to their customers; Bank of America, always a winner, essentially told their customers (and Mythic, apparently) that if they didn't like the fees they could stick it somewhere the sun doesn't shine, sideways.
But Mythic's response to this, even at the "days have passed, what the fuck" mark, shows a dizzying lack of understanding for their business.
They told their customers they were going to "ask" the banks to waive the overdraft fees; when most of the banks involved said, predictably, "no," Mythic basically shrugged, shook its head, and said "well, that just sucks."
They also informed the customers that their problems would be addressed as fast as was possible during normal business hours, causing one subscriber to say "What is this "within normal business hours" nonsense? Our missing money isn't important enough to cancel your dinner plans? "
We live in a nation of consequentialism.
Mythic is now finding that out, as they get multiple Better Business Bureau complaints, thousands of canceled accounts, a firestorm of complaints, threats of legal action, and a CS backlog so high that customers are waiting an hour plus to get the chance to tell them how badly they fucked up.
One enterprising soul - I'm sure, a lawyer - pointed out that he didn't mind waiting on hold, because he was planning to bill Mythic for his wait time, at a rate of $90 per hour.
Another described how to punish Mythic's vendor directly by using the credit card chargeback system.
Chargebacks can cost vendors a fortune in fees, so this would be the way to actually ensure that this doesn't happen again, if anyone's interested.
One user's BANK said they might sue Mythic for the overdraft fees they were forced to eat on over 600 customers.
The gaming blogosphere - I assure you, there is such a thing - exploded, with furious posts from Broken Toys, Biobreak, NoPrisonersnoMercy, Grimnir's Grudge, MassivelyMultiplayer, WASDStomp, AtomicGamer, TechWatch UK, GameRant, Tom'sHardware, GameSpy, and even Slashdot.
What makes this all better is that this is not the first time this has happened, and many of the customers who are now leaving are ones who stuck with Mythic even after the first time this exact problem happened in December of 2008.
The decisions you make, you personally, and you on behalf of your employer, have consequences.
Don't be That Guy.
