Digi support has it's hands tied.

If you buy something that winds up smelling like ass, tech support will contact the developer and ask if they can refund you, if the game developer declines, tech support will run and hide from you.

In the instance of DRM free games, everyone runs and hides because they can't take your activation keys away from you or lock you out of the game once they refund it.

Playing the digi game smart is the best way to go.

Often times digi sites will host ludicrously cheap deals on expensive games and that is the time to get in there buy what you want.

As example I've just learned that I can played Square's The Last Remnant on my PC. Steam is the only site that carries it and they are asking $50 for it.

I personally don't have $50 worth of trust for any digi site that is likely to run away and hide.

So, I either wait until The Last Remnant turns up in the Midweek sale for $3, which is very likely to happen, or I purchase hard copy from a game shop with a good return policy for around $70, thus the extra $20 being insurance in case the game pulls a shitter once I have it installed.

GOG support is only "Mostly Dead"

Yeah, no shit. I'm talking about changing the default install location. As in the one that the game installs to if you don't change it. Not forcing people to install to one particular location.

there are still many problems with support, mainly because of extremely slow response times

Take a look at this recent thread made by another member in the HOMM forums

http://www.gog.com/en/forum/heroes_of_might_and_magic/heroes_iv_poor_performance/post16

I'm sorry but you REALLY need to address this issue, this is really upsetting a lot of customers and most people are just getting the impression that you are either ignoring them or do not care, I know that this of course isn't true and that you do care about your customers but that's the impression that a lot of people are getting

If you aren't able to handle the volume of Tickets/emails for support then please just hire more people, it's as easy as that, it's especially important because TW2 is coming out soon and you can be sure that the number of Support enquiries will probably increase tenfold. Please take customer support more seriously

Of course, I say all of this with good intentions and I'm just making my comments and feedback to improve the website and service

Yes! Good news. There were starting to be a lot of new customers getting very irate with GOG's tech support, which is a shame. As I wrote in another thread, I recognize fully that your support team has an unenviable job. They are trying to do tech support for 300 games that were never meant to work on modern systems and which they didn't develop in-house. So I don't blame them for pushing most of the small stuff to the forums where knowledgeable and friendly users try to help giving "tweaks".

But frankly it's become increasingly clear that GOG support is simply overwhelmed even once someone clears the forums and the people in the forum can't help them. The one time they got back to me (and they haven't always gotten back), the guy was sending me e-mails at like 4am Polish time. So clearly dedication of your support staff is not at issue!

Glad to hear you're hiring more support staff. :)

If you are hiring, how about advertising in the forums? At least they'd be enthusiastic, and I dare bet theres plenty would be willing to move / need the money / want to work for GoG!!

If the payrole is right, I could lead a german support team, based in Hamburg/Germany of course ;)

I the pays right id learn polish and jump ship on the UK again, got itchy feet again anyway so id be doing it for a reason. Then again id also be forced to understand programing dosbox ect.

If you need a forum person, admin accounts, general skivvie/ liason person. Let me know. And for the record i dont drink at work so we would be safe from my indescretions

I think that by "are" he was referring to "able to handle the volume of Tickets/emails for support".

In which case, I guess the community simply disagrees.

If you'd have any chance to do this, I'd hope that you'd include some serious web design as well :p
The sheer amount of time it takes to design something like a private message system, publicly accessible wish-lists, directly gift-able games and the likes is kind of shocking. It's not like that would be as complex as a decent RESTful API (as nice as it would be to have one) and even a simple 'speed test' (that seems to be a recurring issue and thus highly recycle-able material) is done through the forum instead of automatised by a neat, professional looking web appearance.

I think it'd be fun to work as GOG support.

I thought the T meant it in the other way - i.e. that they're hiring ... his first post in the thread talks about how they are working to fix how heavily taxed the support team is, so that's why I went with the hiring interpretation. However, your way is another way to interpret that statement. But that's just silly talk. :)

Dear GOG Support ,

Will you be so kind , and change my username as you promised ? I'm still waiting for it since your last email : 2010.11.11. . Thank you .