Q: How many times can team Ouya drop the ball on one competition?

Pug

Hi all,

I am the lucky person who was the first one to guess correctly the amount of Ouyas on the crate in the #ouyacrate competition.

But fear not! That's where my luck ended.

First the Ouya team hastily congratulated to a wrong person (who maybe got the prize too, idk) and when a third party questioned this in a tweet, I finally got acknowledged.

I was asked to DM them but I couldn't so I replied quickly and sent them an email.

Then I waited.

After 4 days I got tired of waiting and sent them another email.

And then I waited some more.

After 11 more days I got tired of waiting - again - and tweeted about it.

Guess what? I ultimately never heard back from them this time either. They did tweet me back that they were waiting for my DM and I explained that it could not be done and then the silence begun again.

Today, a whole month after the competition I got tired of waiting - yet again - and tweeted but no avail.

I'm beginning to feel pretty certain that I'll never see the dev console I was promised as a prize (because I understand that there are no more dev units to send) and now I'm close to the point where I regret ever backing the whole project with $190 for a regular (well ok, KS edition) console to begin with.

To the Ouya team: You have my contact information, if you are planning to ever honor my win and shipping me anything - contact me by email first and do not send me anything without my acknowledgement!!! I'm leaving for a vacation soon and there will be nobody to receive the package if you send it now. At this point it seems that I'm anyway forced to wait until March.

I'm open to reasonable suggestions, I have to admit that first I was really excited about getting the dev unit because what it symbolizes to the project (even though I have no real use for it), but since then the appeal to me has long gone and I'd probably abide to even get the regular unit with extra controllers.

All in all I have to say that I'm truly disappointed how this has not worked out. And I was the only one in our group of console playing friends in our 30's that wanted to believe to this project and people behind it.

- A disgruntled Finn

Piers

Hi Pug, I'm private messaging you about this, hang tight.

nobleRobot

I understand the irritation, with things not working out exactly as planned, but you won a contest without so much as buying a $1 raffle ticket.

Some people wait months for delivery on stuff they actually pay for. Cool your jets.

Pug

Well guess what...

Team OUYA dropped the ball again. After I went public with this in here I got asked for the delivery address (like they didn't already have it, I told them my username and backer info earlier) on Jan 28th and after they got the address on Jan 29th, nothing happened.

Absolutely nothing - no shipment, no communication, nothing.

Now I've lost all hope in this project and the core people behind it. The idea is great but as so many times before, it's the little things that matter and there have been numerous possibilities to make this right.

Piers

It looks like the shipment didn't go out, please PM me your shipping address and phone number and I'll get this shipped out today or Monday.

Per my PM to you back on Jan. 28th I asked you to use [email protected] for any future issues, which you did not do, and contact me directly via PM on the forums if you did not get shipping confirmation within a few days of Jan. 28th, which you also did not do.   If we don't know there's still a problem we can't resolve it.  Thank you, I look forward to your PM with shipping address and phone number and will personally respond with your shipping details.  Please note that there may be VAT or other import fees you'll be responsible for, like everyone else who's received an OUYA to date.

Pug

As I said, I got an email on Jan 28th from someone else like you promised, after my question about the shipping method I finally replied to it with my address next day and then went on with my vacation preparations.

There is no way I'm contacting my workplace during my vacation to make sure that you have delivered your promises - especially since I really thought that after the contacts ignited by this thread would have motivated you to follow it through.

Actually if you ship via DHL, the unit should have arrived even before I left for my vacation but I gave you guys benefit of the doubt for any delays (for cheapest service possible etc) while in transit and didn't bother to ruin my holiday mood just before departure to ask if you forgot again (like I apparently should have).

And what comes to the emailing, in the early stages of this process my emails were ignored completely (just like most of my tweets to @playouya) and I got things rolling only by publicizing the matter here so I'm continuing to use the only communications channel that has proven to have any effect - I'm really sorry if that bothers you and forces you to actually do something about a matter that you guys should have completed months ago.

Piers

I did my part to get it shipped, but there's little purpose (nor do I have time) to dissect dropped balls.  I am now offering to ship a unit myself by hand, so PM with your name, address and phone number and let me know when you'd like it shipped. 

Please do yourself and us a favor and use the two methods of communication I recommended to you on Jan. 28th.  We happened to see the tweet, but we easily might not have.  Thanks, I look forward to a PM from you with the info requested at the top of this post.  Cheers.

nobleRobot

Q: How many times can one contest winner be an ungrateful, uncooperative, entitled malcontent?

Pug

Piers: I'm not saying you're the one to blame, you have been pretty much the only one at least trying to make things right. I'm talking about the Team Ouya in general which you happen to be a part of.

As a entrepreneur myself, I wouldn't accept situation like this to go wrong time and time again. It's normal that things don't always go as planned with the first try but unless you have hired Mr. Murphy to work with you (I don't dare to think about the shipping of the KS units if this is the case) somebody should have taken responsibility about the matter and follow through after the first problem was spotted to make sure that no further errors were made.

nobleRobot: I was very happy, grateful and cooperative over two months ago when I became entitled to get the prize by the rules - I still would be the biggest pro-Ouya person in my circle of friends and acquaintances if things were handled correctly.

When promises are broken and communication attemps ignored repeatedly, thoughts are bound to change course. Also I'm dissapointed as a KS backer if this is example of the level of customer service (either for normal users or devs) from Team Ouya in the future.

Piers

Shipped today, check your PM for tracking info.

bluecollarart

Well, I'm glad that got resolved! I've been hoping Pug would get that sorted for a while. Don't know what else happened, but Piers, you get things done.

kiwicoco

Ouya has tried to do the right thing the whole time, I think this person has made a huge, public deal about something that should have been a private, minor setback in communication.

Expecting good customer service is totally fine, but as customers we need to handle issues through the right channels, be respectful and simply show some class, which is not the way things went down here.

Ouya needs to be overly nice here, but we dont, so I'm calling you out. I'd say: "How many times can an angry customer drop the ball in properly and respectfully communicating an issue?".

Hopefully you'll get your Ouya and we can finally put this topic to rest.

Pug

kiwicoco said:

Ouya has tried to do the right thing the whole time, I think this person has made a huge, public deal about something that should have been a private, minor setback in communication.

We'll just have to agree to disagree about what counts as "doing the right thing the whole time".

I definitely can't see a whole month of me trying to contact them and them ignoring my emails to their support address or my tweets to their official account as "Ouya trying to do the right thing".

I was very patient and tried to contact them several times during a decent time period before bringing this thing public and finally getting Team Ouya to act - after them ignoring my two emails and at least three tweets (some of which were actually noted but ultimately not acted upon).

I wouldn't call that a "minor setback in communication" - but of course YMMV, we seem to have very different standards about the expected level of customer service and communication.

Piers

Show's over, closing.