And storekeeper respected his customer rights by directing him to the FFG customer service.

I had a problem with components, I contacted a man I bought the game from. He directed me to the FFG customer service. People here on forums directed me to this service too. So I cantacted it, received an answer. In a month or so(I live far away from America) I received my replacements. And I'm OK with that. Blaming shopkeeper for being unable to solve your problem here and now is pointless. I know your frustration, but I won't gonna help.

And yet, if we were talking about nearly any other kind of merchandise here in the states, the store would have dealt with it. The idea that they wouldn't is unfathomable to me, except for cases where I'm explicitely told otherwise prior to purchase, such as with Apple products. If the shop did make an exchange, they could get a replacement or their money back from FFG themselves, AND have a happy customer.

If the shop doesn't value your business, forget them, and shop Amazon. You'll get a better deal anyway.

Good business owners should be protected by giving them repeated business. Bad ones should be ignored and allowed to fade away.

You do understand that with the current FFG Mansions of Madness involved situation shop would receive the same wait time? And if you add the time customoer spends to contact the shop and the time shop contacts back, it will be longer than customer contacting them himself? And there is no dam diffirence in the end, but time?

Not sure what country you are in (I guess the US). Here in the UK, there is no debate. Your contract is with the seller and that is the store you bought it from. There's no grey area here. The seller has to honour their contract (i.e. goods that are not flawed or faulty) or provide a full refund. That's the law. I can only guess if there's something similar in the US.

seahorse10 said:

And that's civilization, pal. A retailer earns money on the products they sell, hence they have to offer a service, and not only make cash. Here, I've seen all shops taking back defective products, but games shops. And this is the reason of my disappointment. They are not a privileged caste and thus they are allowed to treat customers in a different ways. Blah.

As for my Mansions of Madness issue... Christian's official communique was published before the game store I'm referring to received the product, and I told them of this communique. So they received an entire expedition from the US knwoing it was filled with defective products. The wisest thing would have been holding the defective products into their warehouse, wait for FFG to send them over a complete set of replacements, and THEN sending them to the customers. In this way, FFG would also have spared money (instead of sending 20 different set of replacements to 20 different people here in Italy, they'd have sent only 1 big order to this shop and that's it) and the service would have been quicker, safer, and with a lot of stress less for everyone. At the moment, I'm still waiting to play Forbidden Alchemy

notanumber said:

I'm sorry to hear about this experience, I'm sure it must be very frustrating.

Historically speaking, FFG's customer's service has been unparalleled in this industry. I understand the lady who used to be at the top of the department (actually, I think she was the WHOLE department) recently left the company - her reasons for doing so are unknown to me. But I sincerely hope that these recent rumblings of slower response time is only because they're busily searching for a replacement who can take over the job position, and I'm glad to hear that the people who do "eventually" get a response are generally getting the response they wanted.

I'm sure all of this is little comfort to you. The store being unwilling to replace the item is troubling too. I mean, if they said themselves that FFG's customer service was "so awesome" then I don't see why they wouldn't be willing to exchange your defective product and take the faulty one back to FFG themselves. Makes them look good, and if they really believed what they said about FFG, they'd have nothing to lose on their end. Heck, they could just keep opening copies until they found one that was intact and then send back ALL the faulty ones they found at once! (Assuming the worst case scenario where more than one copy turned out to be faulty.) They'd effectively be helping you AND taking preventative measures against further such complaints.

I have had to ask FFG for replacement parts for AH (lost a couple of sliders), got them in less than a week with a hand written note. I have to think that your problem is an abberation and not to give up. Normally, they are a fantastic customer service company, just need better editors and proof checkers sometimes (Elder sign, I'm looking at you!).

Thanks for the replies, everyone. I received an email yesterday from FFG asking to confirm my shipping address. I assume that means that replacement parts will arrive shortly. In the meantime, I've been playing with little bits of cardboard to stand in for the missing clue and money tokens (big thanks to the poster that attached a picture of the sheet with the missing tokens). So far, the game is a lot of fun. Now, just need to convince my wife to play with me now that I think I've got the rules down, more or less.

I think at the end of the day you will still receive the same customer service FFG is known for as always...The combination of the Mansions of Madness fiasco and "restructuring" of the customer service department is adding on one to two weeks of wait time, so at this particular time some patience is required. Sounds like you are already seeing that. I had the same problem as this with Mansions of Madness a few weeks ago and the replacement parts arrived a couple of days ago (free of charge with no proof of purchase required), the process simply took a little longer than usual. One last thing....Arkham Horror actually plays perfectly well solo, if your wife won't play. It might not be a bad idea to play a game yourself first anyway so you understand the rules better when she does finally play.

notanumber said:

You bet. I grabbed the pic off Board Game Geek. We must all stand together against the Abominable Forces of...er...Inconvenience...and...Bad Coffee...

Ah, now why didn't I think of that?

I was wondering how you could resist the temptation to punch out those token if it was your own game. That's one of the best parts of buying a new game!

notanumber said:

Well, you just have to be a good sales man. Once you talked up the game to her, have her sit down with you and get her to play. Everything else will fall into place. Hook, line and sinker. That's all I had to do. lol