So, this is one part support question and one part experience feedback, relating to pre-ordering the full digital/physical bundle set for the new books.
I've just finished attempting to pre-order the digital+physical three book bundle, and it did not go well. Initially, I followed the bundle deal promotion on the DDB front page - this took me to the marketplace where I could add all six items as a bundle with the deal in a single click - great - but the checkout only listed the US in a drop-down selection menu of one option - why even had a drop menu if there's only one option? Anyhow, that's no big deal; I jumped back to the offer page to check details and noticed in *tiny* print down the very bottom a note that said "shipping outside of the US, on our partner site". Sure; I'd much rather that was more clearly displayed - perhaps alongside the big notice that mentions free shipping, for example, where it would make sense to denote that shipping outside of the US has to be handled elsewhere, but I can work with that...
The link led to the actual WotC site, and not to the bundle deal in question but just more generally to their store front. Why didn't a link specifically from this bundle offer page not direct to the equivalent bundle on the other site that it requires me to go to? Well, turns out it's because the wizards site doesn't *Have* that bundle as a single purchase item. It doesn't tell you this, or indicate that the bundle deal exists in any way.
If you take it upon yourself to manually add each of the products separately, then they DO, in fact, show up in your cart with the relevant deal in effect... but it wasn't exactly comforting to just be dumped onto the store page an have to put the same bundle together myself. A small niggle, and it wasn't like I couldn't double check to make sure I had everything added correctly and that it was displaying correctly... but I was starting to get frustrated at being treated like a second class customer, or so it vaguely felt by this point.
I moved along to check out - because the main reason I was here was to check if the shipping was indeed free in my country: so far all I'd been able to find out was that shipping was free in 'select countries', but nowhere had I picked out a list of countries that would actually confirm for me whether mine was in the selected list or not. If it was presented and visible before this point, I did not find or see it, despite looking. On the product summary, however, I was finally able to see, once I'd selected Australia, that shipping was, indeed, 0.00 for me. Excellent.
Now the real problem set in: I went to fill out my details, and found that typing my address was constrained to about 20 characters, and indeed that it would not accept the field with anything I typed - It would only accept the field if I clicked a suggested address from its in-built google address selector. This is *usually* okay - I found my address and clicked it, then went on. Next, it complained that my postcode was invalid, and continued to do so as I selected my other address details. The box would not go white, even once I'd checked and gotten green marks for Australia and Tasmania in the other fields. After some experimenting and other frustration I determined that I had to fully delete my post code, and then re-enter it again, exactly as it was, after selecting my country and state - fields which were visually after this point. I was getting agitated.
Eventually it seemed like all the fields had stopped complaining and it would let me proceed, but when I was checking my details over on the payment page, I noticed that it was displaying my address incorrectly: it was displaying only my street name, suburb and state - NOT my actual street address. I went back to edit my address to check this, and re-typed it; of course I couldn't actually type my address correctly, since there weren't enough characters, but giving it the flat number, street number, road name and the first two letters of my suburb was enough for the address selector to pop up my correct address, flat and street number included. I selected it, and the field reverted back to just the street name and nothing else.
I tried several different ways to get it to acknowledge my actual correct address, and could not find any way to do so - either it would refuse to progress because it claimed the field was invalid, or it would re-write the address I selected back to just a street name and no street address or flat number.
At this point I decided that I was not going to do this. I'm sorry, but I am not going to gamble on the assumption that this form has my correct address when I can't be sure it does, and when what it displays is an address lacking a street and flat number which, if presented as displayed to a postal service, will not reach me. That's simply not a risk I'm interested in taking.
So, did I do something wrong? I certainly might have, and I'll acknowledge that, but if so it wasn't obvious, and I could not find the 'correct' way to do this, despite trying... so please take that as feedback. By the end of this attempt, I felt treated like a second class customer, unworthy of proper care or important enough to have the system work properly for me and my non-US credentials, and at this stage they've lost an otherwise willing purchase to this poor design.
I'll be honest with you, the separate store experience for everyone outside the US is bad. I'm from the UK and didn't even think to check adding the individual items to the cart, I assumed the bundle was US only, and gave up there, it's frustrating to learn that the bundle does exist, but it expects you to guess and manually add the items yourself.
I've also found that marketed voucher codes for bundles (Book of Many Things in my example) simply don't work in the wizards store. It sucked to be marketed to, encouraged to use a coupon, but then find that it was actually impossible and I'm resigned to pay full price because I don't live in the US. This is why I assumed the same was true for this bundle, and didn't try any further. The experience is just not good, and I empathize greatly.
I do hope, as indicated by some of the pinned threads on here, that wizards start consolidating everything onto DND beyond to make the experience of everyone on here easier.
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So, this is one part support question and one part experience feedback, relating to pre-ordering the full digital/physical bundle set for the new books.
I've just finished attempting to pre-order the digital+physical three book bundle, and it did not go well. Initially, I followed the bundle deal promotion on the DDB front page - this took me to the marketplace where I could add all six items as a bundle with the deal in a single click - great - but the checkout only listed the US in a drop-down selection menu of one option - why even had a drop menu if there's only one option? Anyhow, that's no big deal; I jumped back to the offer page to check details and noticed in *tiny* print down the very bottom a note that said "shipping outside of the US, on our partner site". Sure; I'd much rather that was more clearly displayed - perhaps alongside the big notice that mentions free shipping, for example, where it would make sense to denote that shipping outside of the US has to be handled elsewhere, but I can work with that...
The link led to the actual WotC site, and not to the bundle deal in question but just more generally to their store front. Why didn't a link specifically from this bundle offer page not direct to the equivalent bundle on the other site that it requires me to go to? Well, turns out it's because the wizards site doesn't *Have* that bundle as a single purchase item. It doesn't tell you this, or indicate that the bundle deal exists in any way.
If you take it upon yourself to manually add each of the products separately, then they DO, in fact, show up in your cart with the relevant deal in effect... but it wasn't exactly comforting to just be dumped onto the store page an have to put the same bundle together myself. A small niggle, and it wasn't like I couldn't double check to make sure I had everything added correctly and that it was displaying correctly... but I was starting to get frustrated at being treated like a second class customer, or so it vaguely felt by this point.
I moved along to check out - because the main reason I was here was to check if the shipping was indeed free in my country: so far all I'd been able to find out was that shipping was free in 'select countries', but nowhere had I picked out a list of countries that would actually confirm for me whether mine was in the selected list or not. If it was presented and visible before this point, I did not find or see it, despite looking. On the product summary, however, I was finally able to see, once I'd selected Australia, that shipping was, indeed, 0.00 for me. Excellent.
Now the real problem set in: I went to fill out my details, and found that typing my address was constrained to about 20 characters, and indeed that it would not accept the field with anything I typed - It would only accept the field if I clicked a suggested address from its in-built google address selector. This is *usually* okay - I found my address and clicked it, then went on. Next, it complained that my postcode was invalid, and continued to do so as I selected my other address details. The box would not go white, even once I'd checked and gotten green marks for Australia and Tasmania in the other fields. After some experimenting and other frustration I determined that I had to fully delete my post code, and then re-enter it again, exactly as it was, after selecting my country and state - fields which were visually after this point. I was getting agitated.
Eventually it seemed like all the fields had stopped complaining and it would let me proceed, but when I was checking my details over on the payment page, I noticed that it was displaying my address incorrectly: it was displaying only my street name, suburb and state - NOT my actual street address. I went back to edit my address to check this, and re-typed it; of course I couldn't actually type my address correctly, since there weren't enough characters, but giving it the flat number, street number, road name and the first two letters of my suburb was enough for the address selector to pop up my correct address, flat and street number included. I selected it, and the field reverted back to just the street name and nothing else.
I tried several different ways to get it to acknowledge my actual correct address, and could not find any way to do so - either it would refuse to progress because it claimed the field was invalid, or it would re-write the address I selected back to just a street name and no street address or flat number.
At this point I decided that I was not going to do this. I'm sorry, but I am not going to gamble on the assumption that this form has my correct address when I can't be sure it does, and when what it displays is an address lacking a street and flat number which, if presented as displayed to a postal service, will not reach me. That's simply not a risk I'm interested in taking.
So, did I do something wrong? I certainly might have, and I'll acknowledge that, but if so it wasn't obvious, and I could not find the 'correct' way to do this, despite trying... so please take that as feedback. By the end of this attempt, I felt treated like a second class customer, unworthy of proper care or important enough to have the system work properly for me and my non-US credentials, and at this stage they've lost an otherwise willing purchase to this poor design.
I'll be honest with you, the separate store experience for everyone outside the US is bad. I'm from the UK and didn't even think to check adding the individual items to the cart, I assumed the bundle was US only, and gave up there, it's frustrating to learn that the bundle does exist, but it expects you to guess and manually add the items yourself.
I've also found that marketed voucher codes for bundles (Book of Many Things in my example) simply don't work in the wizards store. It sucked to be marketed to, encouraged to use a coupon, but then find that it was actually impossible and I'm resigned to pay full price because I don't live in the US. This is why I assumed the same was true for this bundle, and didn't try any further. The experience is just not good, and I empathize greatly.
I do hope, as indicated by some of the pinned threads on here, that wizards start consolidating everything onto DND beyond to make the experience of everyone on here easier.