Over a month ago, I decided to order a reproduction copy of Super Star Fox Weekend on the Super Nintendo from the reproduction producing web site TimeWalk Games.(http://www.timewalkgames.com) After hearing so many great things about the company, I had no issue dropping the 100 bones to get a great looking repro copy of the now very expensive SSFW Competition cart. Unfortunately, by the time I got my order completely finished; TimeWalk Games left me with a very bad taste in my mouth.

TimeWalk builds its games fresh upon order, so there is a 4 to 6 week waiting period after you place the order so they can build your game as well as print your manual and box if the game comes with such things. Super Star Fox Weekend happens to be one of those carts and they currently don’t offer a version that doesn’t come with a box. Not a huge deal for me as I’ve been wanting to get as many CIB games as possible lately and the fact that I could get one for SSFW was a bonus. 4 and half weeks later after I placed my order, I received an automatic tracking notification that my game was on the way. 2 days later, the package was in my mail box and I quickly opened it to see for myself the high quality product that TimeWalk makes. The problem was that upon opening the box, I had only had the game cart; there was no box, no manual and certainly no double sided poster.

Nice products. Poor service.

Now this was most likely an honest mistake and I want to make it clear right now: I’m not knocking TimeWalk Games for the fact that didn’t ship my game complete the first time around, its the fact of how poorly the situation was handled for me to finally get the rest of my package.

I quickly contacted the company via its online message submission form, letting them know that I was missing a portion of my order and what could be done to get rest of it. After 3 to 4 days of not getting a reply, I found their direct e-mail address and sent them a follow up message. I then received a reply that night, following up with my original e-mail from the online submission form that it would taken care of the Monday of the following week. That Monday passed and I waited 3 days for the items to arrive and had received nothing, so I decided to write a follow up email on the item; asking if it did go out and was met with no reply. The weekend came and went with no items arriving. I sent two more e-mails with the later of the two messages taking them to task about their customer service and finally got a reply. I was told that the company was pretty sure the rest of my order went out and that they would follow up first thing in the morning with a tracking number on the package the items were sent in. Can you guess what happened in the morning? You guessed it! I didn’t get that e-mail.

At this point, I had decided that I was going to write the company one more e-mail and if the reply didn’t have my tracking info at this point, I was going to dispute the issue with Paypal, I was sick and tired of having to essentially babysit this whole transaction and I either wanted a chunk of money back or the rest of my order! I almost felt like I was dealing with a deadbeat eBay Dealer for a moment. I shot another email over, taking them to task AGAIN on customer service and finally got a reply: My stuff was on the way, tracking number and all.

I quickly popped in the tracking number and started matching the dates up, the items were shipped the day the owner was suppose to be e-mailing me my tracking number on the items that were allegedly already sent out. He obviously had to take time out to get a label made for the items and to get a tracking number for me generated, so why couldn’t he take the extra time to apologize, tell me he made a mistake and that he just shipped them out. A "Oh and here’s your tracking number too and we are sorry for the repeated mistakes!", would of it least indicated to me that the company appreciated my business and patience.

As someone who worked in customer service for years, I tend to know the signs that show you’ve seriously damaged your image to a customer. To fix that, you start with the most human thing to do and you apologize and do your very best not to piss that customer off again by getting them what they should have received the first time. If the situation continues to get worse, you offer the customer a discount or a coupon and you do this to show that you want them coming back to you so you can do them right the next time they order, 100 percent right. TimeWalk Games showed me none of these very basic customer service skills and that’s a shame because for what its worth, the overall package of their games is excellent; but that won’t fix the poor service I received. I’ll be taking my orders for any other reproductions elsewhere.

Customer service folks, it makes people come back and buy from you again!

~Michael Mertes