Grade for this test: D

I did get my shipping notification e-mail, which is the only reason I did not give this test a complete F, but that grade is subject to the condition and quality of the physical product, when it actually arrives.  The shipping label was created 3 days after product release, which means the attempt wasn't even made to fulfill pre-orders until three days after product release.  Pre-ordering a product assumes it will at least be shipped on, if not received by, the release date of the product. There was no notification of any delay given to customers who bought the product months in advance expecting to have it, or at the very least have it shipped, on the release date.  In fact, there has been complete silence from the D&D Beyond team on this failure to meet customer expectations to this point.  To further compound the issue, their customer service team has chosen this 'test' bundle release as a good time to be on holiday.  Either don't do the test bundle release during a holiday season, or hire seasonal employees.  Having no way to answer customer concerns or shipping quandaries during an important new expansion to your business is, at best, short sighted.  At worst, it's willfully negligent. In either case, it's a bad experience for the customer, undercutting future pre-order sales, as word of mouth from dissatisfied customers spreads far quicker than praise from satisfied ones, and there's a lot of dissatisfaction out there right now from those who trusted you enough to pre-order the product you offered.

In conclusion, the fact that this was handled in such a poor fashion precludes me from attempting any other physical/digital bundle pre-orders through D&D Beyond, at this point.  There would need to be a marked improvement in customer service interactivity, improvement in the method by which that customer service communication occurs with the customer, and guaranteed consequences to D&D Beyond(refunded shipping costs, significant discount to a future purchase, rebate of a subscription fee, etc.) for failure to meet shipping by or on the release date for a pre-ordered physical product in order for me to even consider attempting it again.

D is a generous grade for this experience.  Improvements are needed. 

You know D&D Beyond has jack shit to do with physical books, right?

You'll be wanting the place (probs WotC) you actually ordered from. 

This is like ordering a physical box videogame off Amazon then complaining to Microsoft if delivery is late. 

Not exactly.  Microsoft is not the parent company of Amazon.  WotC is the parent company of D&D Beyond, and they are both owned by Hasbro.  However, D&D Beyond is the site that facilitated this combination physical/digital bundle order through WotC, and as both are part of the same company, both share in the responsibilities for the bundle offers they make between them to their customers. 

In other words, voicing concerns to D&D Beyond for offers that were mis-handled which they made in conjunction with WotC is voicing that concern to both, as D&D Beyond is, as of 5/18/22, a branch of WotC, under Hasbro.  In fact, if you go to the Support Home link in D&D Beyond's Help Portal, it brings you straight to WotC's support page.  But unfortunately, or perhaps conveniently for them, there is no forum there to discuss issues when their customer service reps are out on holiday, at least none that I could find on a cursory look.

D&D Beyond's role in the bundle is the digital unlock code. That's it. The people  you need to reach at WotC do not read these forums. The WotC has its own store for the physical products which it manages. D&D Beyond has absolutely, completely, nothing to do with anything physical or the delays thereof and there is nothing at all they can do. 

If you need to contact WotC about a WotC Store product you need to do so through the WotC website. For your convenience the link is: https://dnd-support.wizards.com/hc/en-us/requests/new/

That was one of their roles, yes.  Another role the D&D Beyond branch of WotC took was to offer the combination digital/physical bundle as a pre-order in their marketplace.  They continue to offer the product, the combined bundle of physical/digital, as an additional purchasing option which links back to their parent company WotC.

The bundle was a joint venture.  WotC involved D&D Beyond in the physical aspect of the product when it decided the two forms should be combined as a bundle.  If the digital and physical forms of the product were only sold separately, as has been the norm up until this point, then you would be correct, this would be an inappropriate place to voice concerns regarding a physical shipment.  But, as WotC says, this was a test of how a physical/digital bundle might work, and what improvements might be considered. 

As this was a joint venture, the responsibility for it's outcomes are shared as well.  The original post here was informing the D&D Beyond team of how this effort performed regarding their pre-order offer.  And that joint venture of a digital/physical bundle performed very poorly regarding pre-orders and in providing customer service as a whole, as I think you'll find if you inquire from those who took part in it.  My grade for that test was a D, for the reasons listed earlier.  As D&D Beyond is a branch of WotC, and this poor performance by WotC will effect the D&D Beyond team in future pre-order digital/physical bundle outcomes and pre-orders in general, this seems an appropriate place to voice that assessment.    It is my hope that at least the people at the D&D Beyond team read these forums, so that they might address these issues with their parent company to possibly effect change in any future attempts at a pre-order digital/physical bundle offer.

As D&D Beyond's relationship with physical products becomes increasingly integrated, and DDB having I feel the most accessible way of providing feedback compared to other means of providing feedback to WotC, I don't know how long the "DDB is a separate entity from WotC" will continue.  WotC wants DDB to ultimately become a sort of nexus for whatever One D&D will wrought.  As such, it seems the smart thing for WotC to do would be to integrate customer service for all D&D sooner than later.

Bottom line, DDB advertised the Dragonlance bundle through the same banner ad system and hype article system it uses to sell its own product.  This clearly obscures, so to speak, the oft cited distinction between DDB and WotC.  As such I feel folks telling complainants they're out of line airing their complaints on the forum are losing their argument's legitimacy.

All that said, this is probably more suitable for "feedback" than true bugs and support, at least till WotC figures out how to integrate or place DDB in its customer service structure (probably at the head).

Dude the fact that all D&D Beyond had was a "link to the WotC" basically confirms you did not order through D&D Beyond. You ordered through the WotC website, so they are who you need to contact. 

D&D Beyond have their own stuff to deal with and are behind on. They are not messengers for you just because you're too [insert reason here] to just use the correct link to send your issue to the correct support team that is actually trained and able to deal with your query. Even if D&D Beyond were willing to be the messenger for you, it would still be easier and more effective for you to just do it yourself. All D&D Beyond can do, is send an email - just like you can do. Unlike them, you can give the order details and more specific info.

It's the WotC support team, not D&D Beyond, who will be able to take your query, raise a case/ticket, check the tracking status of your order, investigate the delay, respond to you with the outcome and escalate any feedback through internal processes. They will also be the most readily informed of any known issues and what to do. 

Again "for now."  I think you'll likely see DDB ultimately using more energy to in fact become a customer service hub rather than play catch up on 5e other than a legacy toggle, but I'll leave you to expressing frustration over people putting their frustration in the wrong message in a bottle system.

Quote from Cyb3rM1nd >>

Dude the fact that all D&D Beyond had was a "link to the WotC" basically confirms you did not order through D&D Beyond. You ordered through the WotC website, so they are who you need to contact. 

D&D Beyond have their own stuff to deal with and are behind on. They are not messengers for you just because you're too [insert reason here] to just use the correct link to send your issue to the correct support team that is actually trained and able to deal with your query. Even if D&D Beyond were willing to be the messenger for you, it would still be easier and more effective for you to just do it yourself. All D&D Beyond can do, is send an email - just like you can do. Unlike them, you can give the order details and more specific info.

It's the WotC support team, not D&D Beyond, who will be able to take your query, raise a case/ticket, check the tracking status of your order, investigate the delay, respond to you with the outcome and escalate any feedback through internal processes. They will also be the most readily informed of any known issues and what to do. 

There seems to be some misunderstanding here, and I'm not sure how much clearer I can be, but I'll try again.

This isn't about my specific grievance.  That is what it is, and I doubt either WotC or their D&D Beyond team could offer a favorable explanation for it.  What the original post was about was the outcome of D&D Beyond's and WotC's 'test' release of a bundled product, and the issues that became apparent on a wide scale, from distribution to customer support, in that test.  This is a bugs and support forum, so this is where such issues should be brought for resolution, by my understanding.

If WotC is going to now use the D&D Beyond team to bundle digital product with physical merchandise, and if that physical merchandise has issues, then the D&D Beyond team has issues.  They are both of the same company, and in bundling the digital and physical products, what effects the sales of one now effects the sales of both, whether it's a digital or physical issue, because both products were bundled together into a single product.

This pre-order bundle deal was a test, outside the norm of how WotC and the D&D Beyond team of WotC typically operate.  So what does that mean?  It means that WotC's behavior now effects the D&D Beyond team's specific objectives regarding the customers who took part in that test and the future prospects of offering pre-order bundles of digital and physical products on D&D Beyond's marketplace.  And yes, D&D Beyond's Marketplace does offer an additional purchasing option for their combined product, and is facilitating the sale of their bundled product through their marketplace.  Again, they are facilitating the sale of that bundled product through their marketplace.  The fact that it links to the D&D store is the result of this novel approach to selling their product bundled with the physical merchandise provided by WotC, who owns D&D Beyond.  If that's confusing, think of them as one in the same, because that's what they are.

Now, its clearly stated in this forum's rules and guidelines that WotC operates this forum.  If the D&D Beyond team has any influence, then they should be made aware of issues effecting their future sales, which was the entire point of the original post.  Again, this wasn't an outline of my specific grievance, it was a customer's perspective of D&D Beyond's, and through extension WotC's, business practices in relation to this bundled product they both offered.  It might be hoped that the D&D Beyond team then takes the information provided and supports changes to better the whole company's relationship with it's customers and increase the bottom line.  And if the D&D Beyond team doesn't have any influence in regards to WotC as a whole, well then I'm already talking to WotC on this forum, in any case.  After all, they own and operate the place.