The Mayday Games Blog

Customer Interaction Blog Post

I backed the mahogany board at the original campaign. After a lot of thought about the previous two updates I am seriously considering seeking a refund for my pledge. After all the talk about bringing affordable quality boards to players you decide to offer and "elite" board which offers better quality and better playing experience after the campaign. I read that it will have a better finish out of the box, and please don't give me the wax line. 

Crokinole players want standard, not different board and chip sizes, not different play surfaces, not logos in the middle of the play area (like who thought that was a great idea). And two different factories, that's bush league friends. I also noticed one of you said you are not a regular player yet are trying to tell players what they will like. I know you have done a number of crokinole board campaigns but I have been sorely disappointed by this one. Please stay in your lane and stop selling sub-par boards only to offer more expensive ones later. (btw, everyone is right, the red gutter is ugly).

I was about to purchase from Crokinole Canada when I saw your campaign. I regret that decision. I am about to go back to them. At least with them I know I will get a standardized, quality, handmade product at a price that is not much more than your factory made, so called "elite" board. They are local to where the game originates and, what's more, they actually know the game.

Thank you,
Peter Mammoliti
Backer #4592

Another backer then posted:

I've always understood these campaigns to be about getting the best board that $99 can buy. I don't think Seth has been disingenuous about this at all! This means that, yes, the boards will be made in China, yes, there will be limited color options, yes, there will be some imperfections and variances. But that's what $99 gets you! If Seth then wants to offer us a "best board $150 can buy" option, what's wrong with that!?

I read the "I regret that decision" and "I am about to go back to them" as not wanting to back our campaign any more and refunded Peter in full for his pledge including the 8% for Kickstarter and 5% for BackerKit so he got a full refund. I also posted publicly the following:

Thanks for your candid feedback Peter. We are so sorry you feel this way, but we are cancelling your pledge now and refunding you 100% so you can get a board through Crokinole Canada. We didn't intend to mislead anyone and we aren't launching the ELITE boards until 2025, it is only through this campaign you could upgrade to those if you choose.

We fully expect most backers will stick to the $99 board, but since we have the ELITE ready to go we just wanted to provide the option. I do feel like you are trying to read into our updates and candor the very worst possible motives.

We for sure aren't perfect and are just trying to do the best we can to make this campaign a great experience, but with 5700+ backers we recognize that we aren't going to be able to please everyone.

We are hopeful that this campaign exposed you to the game and encouraged you to pull the trigger on a crokinole board. We hope you love the game as much as we do. I've been playing for more than 12 years and while I'm no pro, I do love the game. If you're at GenCon or run into us anywhere else I'd love to play a game with you. No hard feelings.

I also dropped him a quick message on the KS message system and he and I went back and forth for a while.  In the end he asked me to post this entire interaction for all to see, hence this blog post.  Here is what was said back and forth:

Peter is in Blue and my replies are in Orange:

Thank you for cancelling my pledge. I love how quickly you did that without asking my consent. Convenient how that my comment is also removed so quickly.

Also, after my message the fact that you "hope you exposed m to the game is quite insulting. I have been playing for over 30 and grew up an hour from Tavistock. I will be reporting you to Kickstarter.

What are you talking about? You specifically said in your comment that you wanted to cancel your pledge so we did it for you.

I had no idea that your comment would be removed when we cancelled it for you. If you have a copy of your comment and want me to paste it in there for you I will be happy to do so.

My comment about this project hopefully exposing you to the game wasn't intended as an insult, we have sold over 10,000 crokinole boards over the past 10 years and we have had hundreds of customers tell us that they later decided to get a nicer board.

I am sorry if our comments and speedy customer service seemed passive-agreessive or even agressive-agressive to you.

If you feel we have acted poorly then do report us to Kickstarter, we aren't trying to hide anything and you are the only backer to date that has requested a cancellation. We end up losing 8% of your pledge since Kickstarter doesn't refund their fees when we refund you, so we for sure will only cancel pledges when people explicitly ask us to.

Again, we only wish you the best and no hard feelings, really.

Respectfully,

Seth

Hi Seth, please read the email again. I said I was seriously considering cancelling. If you can't even read an email properly I have lost all faith in you and your organization.

Please post my comment again, others deserve to know you don't know what you are doing. And yes, all of your responses have been passive-agressive. I can highlight the instances in the conversation if you like.

Why does it matter that I am the only one who cancelled. I am not everyone else.

Finally I am glad you lose 8% of my pledge. You deserve it

Peter

Wow, thanks Peter I guess?

Honestly your interactions have been pretty aggressive, but I don't have copies of your comments on the main page to repost as they deleted for me too.

If you have them and want to send them over I'll be happy to post them for you though.

I don't have your comment handy but I thought you wrote that you were cancelling it to buy a Crokinole Canada board. If that isn't what you said I'm sorry for mis-reading it.

I'm really sorry you have taken things so hard, it was an honest mistake if that isn't what you wrote. Send over what you wrote and I will gladly admit my mistake.

I don't know why you are so angry with us but honestly it is probably better we just part ways and don't do business with one another. It doesn't sound like we are a good fit either way.

Best of luck and hope you have a better day than it sounds like you have been having.

Seth

Seth, you continue to be passive-agressive and insulting. If you cannot accept dissatisfied customers than you are in the wrong business. I sent the same message concurrently to customer service (support@maydaygames.com) so you should be able to locate it. Please repost it You are being incredibly rude assuming you know anything about me or my "day". I feel you should participate in some serious introspection.

There are consequences for actions

Peter

And then:

Actually Seth, if you could post this entire conversation thread that would
be best. If you stand behind your words then you should have no problem
exposing your rudeness to other customers

Peter

And then:

Here is the original message. You can confirm it has not changed with my
previous email to customer service. I expect this will be posted
momentarily

So there you have the whole story with both of our replies.  I don't know if Peter will read this or not but I am very sorry for any insult caused, that really was not my intention.  I know we can't please everyone but we certainly don't want to come across abrasive or hurtful.  I will do better.  Let me also say as I posted in the comments section of the Kickstarter that if you do want to re-join as a backer we are more than happy to manually add you to the post-campaign survey so you can check out and get your rewards.  

I think this entire incident highlights how easy it is to be misunderstood online, both from Peter's point of view and from my own.  No hard feelings Peter and I hope no matter where you get your board that you enjoy the heck out of it!

Seth