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On the subject of DriveThru, anyone who *might* have had an issue was emailed about it weeks ago.

 Cyporiean wrote:
On the subject of DriveThru, anyone who *might* have had an issue was emailed about it weeks ago.

well the guy who posted in the uncensored group said he just got that mail, so i'm thinking either it happened again or its much bigger then they thought?

Whelp, when they said that they were going to restart the conversation, I don't think talking to the BBB and assorted AG's was what they had in mind.

But here we are.

A fine case of "careful what you wish for".
I think they were looking for less conversation with us.

They are too used to dictating things on their terms.
They take no ownership for their decisions.
It is time they are taken to task.

I really need to talk to my accounts receivable person and see what is needed to sick a collections agency on someone.
I would throw in extra money for a transcript of any conversations made when calling them up.
Just looking at how to proceed if the reply to the BBB from PB is less than optimal.

Are you a bad person if you reserve your more nasty actions on the deserving?

No, that is called justice as long as it is legal. In any case, thanks for posting the drivethrurpg hack info as I didn't know it happened. I did a quick check and it looks like I only ever used paypal there (no cc info on file... unless they mass deleted it after the hack).

Here is the email from the 10th from DriveThru:

Okay, the fine lesson of "How to get a kickstarter creator to listen to it's backers" is now exploring other options:

The Federal Trade Commission.

So I found this little bit on "emerging markets":
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/media-resources/consumer-finance/financial-technology

The meat of the information is here:
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/blogs/business-blog/2015/06/dont-let-crowdfunding-be-your-doom
I almost got a warm fuzzy feeling reading that bit.

So, filing a complaint happens here:
https://www.ftc.gov/faq/consumer-protection/submit-consumer-complaint-ftc

This one might be better, the "assistant":
https://www.ftccomplaintassistant.gov/#crnt&panel1-1

In summary, in the FTC's own words:
"According to Jessica Rich, director
of the FTC’s Bureau of
Consumer Protection, “Many consumers
enjoy the opportunity to
take part in the development of a
product or service through crowdfunding,
and they generally know
t h e re’s some uncertainty involved
in helping start something new …
But consumers should be able to
trust their money will actually be
spent on the project they funded.”

I could go further but will leave that there for now.

 Talizvar wrote:


"
But consumers should be able to
trust their money will actually be
spent on the project they funded.”

I wonder, if the FTC/AG investigate Palladium and find they've done nothing worth pursuing, will you be satiated?

 n815e wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:


"
But consumers should be able to
trust their money will actually be
spent on the project they funded.”

I wonder, if the FTC/AG investigate Palladium and find they've done nothing worth pursuing, will you be satiated?

I wonder if they do find something wrong will the defenders of PB be satisfied?

Probably not in either case. In your example, we'll likely have a weekly update telling us about a Robotech Legal Defense FundTM where we can send money again with no guarantees of getting anything in return (just like the KS according to the white knights!).

 n815e wrote:
I wonder, if the FTC/AG investigate Palladium and find they've done nothing worth pursuing, will you be satiated?

I wonder that myself, good question.

Desired outcomes I list here that does not have to match yours:
1) If they spent most of their KS on retail stock or Kevin's <insert expensive personal item here> and crippled the wave2 commitment, they should be penalized AND I want my money. Possible overly zealous need to punish greed?
2) If they were diligently spending and working on wave 2 "no harm no foul" why? Goodness why keep it secret? Twisted stuff but ok, keep calm carry on. Still some concern over completion date before the heat-death of the universe. BUT yay! more Robotech stuff!!!!!
3) They plain-old ran out of money, poor budgeting, costs spiraled out of control: a likely outcome, ran afoul of their poor planning, it would be perceived as kinda sad and I would not be seeking a "pound of flesh". Will still harbor some resentment by the cover-up but rather expected. At this point, I would not particularly care about the money. Plus some possible forlorn hope of more Robotech stuff coming out.

Is your curiosity satiated of the character or honesty of these efforts?

Update to research:
Canadian consumer law in regard to kickstarters suck large.
The Consumer Protection Act is OK, the "Internet Agreements" section give some guidance but the "definition" of a consumer gets muddled due to the KS backing of a business or project.
The discussion I had with that department rep says that the concept is too new and no precedence's are set.
So it means grabbing the ear of a higher up to get them thinking this is going to be a future problem and start addressing now.

I really am running into a social psychology 101 condition:
If you see or hear a reportable situation NEVER assume someone else called it in: they are thinking the same.

It is a bit dramatic but:
"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. - Edmund Burk"

What is making these efforts rather disproportionate is that I like puzzles and this one is a whopper.

as the situation stands, PB has but a few months to do either:

1: Show wave 2 being worked on (and were not talking pretty pictures of 3D CAD drawings either, but physical proof).

2: Hush the dissenters and those who have filed with either refunds, or some other agreeable deal for both parties.

3: or Make a call out to their fans that the government is gonna take their money and they need money to stay open and hire lawyers.

#3 is the most likely choice PB will do, curious if Kevin ever called those NG backers like he said he was ?

furthermore if PB has the AG's go after them, right now its only in the inquiry stage, but if it progresses, PB will no longer have the refund option, nor the show wave 2 proof since they will still be fined (see washington card game still fined even though product was shipping to backers).

Just as an aside,

I also filed with the BBB back on Aug 12th and received confirmation from the BBB that they passed the complaint on to PB on Aug 14th. As of now I still haven't received a response back despite others receiving one who I believe filed after me. My complaint was in the vein of no communication, no transparency and zero "showable" work for Wave 2. I'm curious if that was the same complaint others filed or was it more in the vein of "I didn't get my stuff?" Not sure why others got a response but not me :(

well I filed mine on the 5th of August and received a reply on the 13th of August.

Talizvar, thanks for the thoughtful response.

 n815e wrote:

 Talizvar wrote:


"
But consumers should be able to
trust their money will actually be
spent on the project they funded.”

I wonder, if the FTC/AG investigate Palladium and find they've done nothing worth pursuing, will you be satiated?

yup. I think most would.

I would be as well. While I'm very disappointed in how pb has handled this. I most likely wouldn't pursue it any further, depending on the ftc and AG recommendation. If they are cleared of any criminal wrong doing, I'd leave it at that.

wyatt wrote:
I would be as well. While I'm very disappointed in how pb has handled this. I most likely wouldn't pursue it any further, depending on the ftc and AG recommendation. If they are cleared of any criminal wrong doing, I'd leave it at that.

the FTC is vague and fickly, but with the AG's if all product hasn't been delivered after 2 years from initial payment then they will find PB in error.

What Wyatt said.

The thing I've been fighting for the whole time is just for PB to communicate and be transparent. I'm not interested in "justice" or getting my money back. Ultimately it would be nice to get the Wave 2 product - but even if the project failed, just step up and act like adults.

But no, they will not do so, which is just baffling. You have option A. Save your project and retain your user-base by taking 5-10 minutes every couple of weeks and post an update ... or B. Do nothing, lose your user-base and potentially incur legal action.

Can anyone offer a rational explanation of why they still refuse to update even in the face of possible legal action?
The parting line in the last two updates seem to imply they think it's funny to not keep us updated on progress. NMIs comments seem to imply an attitude of haha, we don't have to tell you anything.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I'm also reminded of the attitude of the guy who was helping PB pack orders towards backers when it was revealed retail before backers.
Will anyone be satisfied if it was legally yes, maybe, but morally? Anyone dare to defend the morals of PB at this point?

Rational? No.

I think everyone has been pretty vocal to PB to just keep us in the loop. I've backed 40+ KS projects and a couple are 4-5 years late and it doesn't bother me at all as the creators communicate and show work. Even the fact that PB can't copy & paste their "Soon" updates from the newsletters to the Kickstarter page is pretty baffling.

My gut feeling is that they're just embarrassed because there's no money and they can't make anything happen or more likely they're scrambling about trying to get anyone to make some physical prototypes so they can try and show some work (and based on their attitude lately, it would be of the "nya, nya you were wrong" variety). Ultimately, with that poor attitude and treatment of backers, even if they showed some work my guess would be that it's just in the attempt to stave off legal repercussions and not due to any real progress.

Joyboozer wrote:
NMIs comments seem to imply an attitude of haha, we don't have to tell you anything.

I am so happy I have not seen anything looking like that, it may be best not to point me in that direction either.
Right now I am looking at this as a "challenge".
I am very afraid if I take this on as a "crusade".
Yes, I do hope he is not appearing that petty because then I would have to prove him wrong.

Anyway, deep breaths and more digging: I had no idea all these government systems had all this stuff in them.

What I find incredibly funny is when I start quoting an "Act" or something on that department's website and the civil servant has no idea what I am talking about and have to walk them through it.

I think some laws are passed with the intention that no-one would actually use them other than the occasional lawyer.
So the highest form of being an anarchist is to strictly adhere to the law... madness!
But oddly fun!
Rules lawyering at it's epic level.

(BTW: I do not do this while gaming, I like my opponent to enjoy the game as well...)

Joyboozer wrote:
Can anyone offer a rational explanation of why they still refuse to update even in the face of possible legal action?

Same way fraud (the non-premeditated kind) always happens. Someone is falling just a bit behind. So they lie and say they aren't behind. By the time of the next update, they are now farther in the future, and while they made up some ground, they still aren't as far along as they should be for Week Two update, so they lie again, intending to make up the time. But it doesn't change the fact that they're behind 2*X time units.

Eventually, by week 75 or so, they're behind 75*X time units.

But they're always certain that they will make up their shortfall, if you give them just another week. Somehow, they're certain that THIS week will be different.

It doesn't matter if it's PB, an investment scheme that starts off legit but finds out that certain gains are expected, or a store manager who is expected to grow his store's revenue 10% a year. They're hoping to get lucky and have their deficits magically disappear due to a lucky break.

That's why "Golly, we're so generous we're extending Gen Con exclusives to our backers! Buy now!" turns into "We're so generous we're EXTENDING THE DEADLINE! BUY NOW! THIS ISN'T DESPERATION, EVEN THOUGH IT SEEMS LIKE IT IN ABSOLUTELY EVERY WAY!"

Merijeek wrote:

Joyboozer wrote:
Can anyone offer a rational explanation of why they still refuse to update even in the face of possible legal action?

Same way fraud (the non-premeditated kind) always happens. Someone is falling just a bit behind. So they lie and say they aren't behind. By the time of the next update, they are now farther in the future, and while they made up some ground, they still aren't as far along as they should be for Week Two update, so they lie again, intending to make up the time. But it doesn't change the fact that they're behind 2*X time units.

Eventually, by week 75 or so, they're behind 75*X time units.

But they're always certain that they will make up their shortfall, if you give them just another week. Somehow, they're certain that THIS week will be different.

It doesn't matter if it's PB, an investment scheme that starts off legit but finds out that certain gains are expected, or a store manager who is expected to grow his store's revenue 10% a year. They're hoping to get lucky and have their deficits magically disappear due to a lucky break.

That's why "Golly, we're so generous we're extending Gen Con exclusives to our backers! Buy now!" turns into "We're so generous we're EXTENDING THE DEADLINE! BUY NOW! THIS ISN'T DESPERATION, EVEN THOUGH IT SEEMS LIKE IT IN ABSOLUTELY EVERY WAY!"

don't forget the flash sales and the sale prices at GC and so forth too.

Merijeek wrote:
That's why "Golly, we're so generous we're extending Gen Con exclusives to our backers! Buy now!" turns into "We're so generous we're EXTENDING THE DEADLINE! BUY NOW! THIS ISN'T DESPERATION, EVEN THOUGH IT SEEMS LIKE IT IN ABSOLUTELY EVERY WAY!"

Well, part of that is "It'll take us a week or two to get the stats up" for the conventional forces, which has turned into what, 10 weeks and counting. Despite Mike stating the last draft was handed in July 10th? Sure, GenCon was going to be a factor, but it's been a full three weeks since that finished. It's their inability to work to a schedule that's one of the primary reasons they're failing (the others being their silence, and their quality, but that last one is subjective).

There's a guy on the KS Comments (SleeplessKnight), who purchased some, and is curious why they haven't shipped. That's because they're not finished yet. Even though the actual figures are a part of GHQ's standard line (to my knowledge). All PB has to do is do the stat cards, and it's done.

But it's like the Wayne Update mention. He started working on it before lunch yesterday. It's now almost 8pm the following day. That says a tonne about their ability to work to a schedule.

A wild update appears!

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/1335688

I would copy/paste it, except for two things;

A) it absolutely must be seen in its native environment, to fully capture the true power of everything it contains.

B) there is in fact a bunch of renders included and I simply cannot be bothered linking all 16 or however many of them there are.

Please keep in mind that Robotech® RPG Tactics™ is not Palladium’s only product line or obligation to our fans.

"Obligations" to fans versus obligations to customers who have already paid: only one of these is the result of a legally enforceable contract.

Okay, here's the play by play;

- They recognize that there has been "a lot of increasingly nasty chatter".

- They focus a large paragraph on how they haven't misappropriated funds, like, at length. Great.

- "Furthermore we have produced and shipped ... (Wave One) around the world". They also took like 9 months to do so for the poor ROW folks. Reminding people of Wave One will play well to US backers, but I wouldn't be surprised if a few international folks choke on that bit of back patting.

- He goes into detail regarding the infamous 98% comment. A shame it was because they were so confident you see, saying such things long before they were remotely near production! It's easy to be confident when you have thousands of nerds throwing big wads of money at you. Maybe a little restraint would've been a better idea!

- Maybe they... they care too much! *sniff*

- Oh they're keeping the convention exclusives available for the backers! We called it (I know I and others totally knew that extension would happen). But now it seems to be indefinite! Remember when they totally couldn't let us get Max or Miriya for reasons, well it seems now suddenly my money is good again! Feth that.

- Conventional forces talk. They go on at length about how they need to gauge interest. A) other than the Cats Eye and Commanchero, this gak already exists! Ordering a bunch from GHQ and slapping an RRT sticker on it (while adding to the price per unit) isn't doing us a giant favour, and at this point buying things sight unseen (in terms of stats) isn't at all sensible. They've been mere days from handing over the stats for months now. Just fething do it already. Oh no, 'the perfect' is truly the enemy of 'the good'!

- Mike Arnold remains a super-fan! Shout outs to super-fans!

- "Please have no doubt that we care about you, Robotech® RPG Tactics™ and fulfilling this Kickstarter. In fact, one of the things that may be tripping us up and slowing us down the past six months, is that we may care too much." Copied and properly formatted for full effect. lawl.

- "It seems like no matter what we say or do, there are going to be angry and upset people who hate it and savage our every word, deed or image." This is true! So why have you spent the last 6 fething months being silent if all you're doing is punishing the entire community because some people are jerks on the internet? Y'know what would've made being a jerk on the internet harder? Having more things to talk about than how it'd been X months since the last substantial update.

- I swear this thing took 6 weeks because they had to pour over every last formatting. "Do we have all the ®'s and ™'s in place? How about bolding? More bolding. Always more bolding."

- And now they're martyrs. It was them! Always them! "nobody believed the RRT Kickstarter would be as big as it was; except for me, Kevin Siembieda." Dude, when you're referring to yourself by your full name as though it carries weight, you haven't been paying nearly enough attention to your audience. The die hard fans will lap it up, but ye gods I rolled my eyes there.

- Begging for help/support/people to buy stuff, followed by "As stated, we’re shooting to release RRT Wave Two around the end of 2015 or sometime in the first quarter of 2016." You do know that's 4-7 months away, right?

- "We will be posting the following in the weeks ahead:

Actual cards for Wave Two game pieces.
Force Organization Charts.
Stats for Conventional Combat Vehicles (pre-Robotech).
Expanded rules, errata, and clarifications.
A free set of basic rules and paper miniatures will be made available online.
More photos of painted minis.
And we’ll try to do more updates."

Define "in the weeks ahead".

- "Ultimately, the fate of Robotech® RPG Tactics™ rests in your hands. It always has. We need you." Really laying it on thick for the base.

- EDIT AGAIN: Oh, and where the hell are the resin bits? Bases, SDF-1, Objective Markers?

*sigh*

Look, this so could have been avoided. Switch to a 2 updates a month schedule, something sustainable. TELL PEOPLE THAT. Trickle out something, anything, for each one. They had a good thing going last year, it wasn't much, but a previously unseen render goes a long way, and 6 months of silence does not. There is a middle ground. It doesn't need to be a weekly "nothing to report in" update, but a month and a half with nothing to say is terrible optics, no matter how they cut it.

I have absolutely complained about feeling like I needed to pull teeth to get info from them, and it shouldn't take a credible threat of legal action to get a bloody update with some info. That Miriya? That Khyron? They could've bought themselves a month or more with each of those alone! Infantry poses, great! Is it just me or does that Lancer look less 'stubby'? Maybe it's the angle, but from the other pics, the barrels don't seem nearly as tapered.

Edit: and yes, they are going to catch a lot of hell in the comments over this one. If instead of one 6 week wait for an update (and 6 months for info in general) it had been spaced out at about 1/4 of this per month, we wouldn't be here. People would still be angry, frustrated, hell some might even still be reaching out to the FTC/BBB/AG. But if they or their supporters want to embrace that venting as signs that the backer base can't be trusted or they get lashed at every time they speak up, they're ignoring the disease for the symptoms. If they want to put it right and rebuild what trust they had, they do need to turn the other cheek and deliver quality info (not necessarily GOOD info, but quality) month after month. They need to show they have listened, learned, and can apply that info to how they converse with their customers.

Seeing the initial anger (and it is already there) and saying "oh well I don't know what they want then" is to ignore *why* people are upset.

No prophet is accepted in his own hobby.

Was there anything new in the update? I feel like the renders were seen before as they have that very ND feel to them. Except NDs renders were supposedly handed to them last year.

edit: Also if they're progressing on the parts reduction, shouldn't some of the renders already look like this ?
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rrpgt/robotech-rpg-tacticstm/posts/1150566
Instead of the shiny ND ones.