Ordering Issues from APE Games

[Castamir]

The Voice of Mod: This thread is for discussion and resolution of issues relating to ordering books from APE Games. Post your comments/problems here, and Kevin from APE will hopefully be able to address them. This message is being edited in so it appears at the top of the thread.

We now return you to your regularly-scheduled posting...

Two issues with the order form:

1. A cosmetic one: the character "?" renders as ń -- the page is restricted to Windows1252 characters and fails to deal with anything else. Sure, I can write "n" and have it delivered ok, but imagine a poor schmuck from Russia who tries to write his address...

2. The form requires a State/Province for non-US addresses. I'm not sure how that address verification thingy will work if I put some made-up trash in that field. I didn't check it yet as my card good for international use is at home, but I somehow don't see that going fine.

[Freelance Henchman]

Oh please, please, please think about electronic distribution! :-(

[stoffe]

2. The form requires a State/Province for non-US addresses. I'm not sure how that address verification thingy will work if I put some made-up trash in that field. I didn't check it yet as my card good for international use is at home, but I somehow don't see that going fine.

Unless you have PayPal (which I don't trust anymore) you can only place orders if you are the US, Canada or UK anyway, since they use AVS to verify credit card payments which only seems to work if you live in those countries.

A real shame, I was looking forward to getting this book. Sounds very interesting.

[The Giant]

Darn If I may ask, is it the copying problem that stops you or something else?

It's the fact that I have a few thousand print copies on order that are less likely to sell if an electronic version is available, especially given the ease with which an electronic version can be copied. But it's more because every electronic copy sold means a paper copy sits in my warehouse costing me money to store, and the number of people who will only buy electronic is too small to take that financial risk.

Unless you have PayPal (which I don't trust anymore) you can only place orders if you are the US, Canada or UK anyway, since they use AVS to verify credit card payments which only seems to work if you live in those countries.

A real shame, I was looking forward to getting this book. Sounds very interesting.

The book will still show up on bookstore shelves around the globe, assuming you have a local gaming/comic/specialty shop you buy from. In a few days, try going to your local store and asking them to order it.

[Morty]

I think I'll cry. Yet another OOTS book I'll have no chance of buying

[Freelance Henchman]

It's the fact that I have a few thousand print copies on order that are less likely to sell if an electronic version is available, especially given the ease with which an electronic version can be copied. But it's more because every electronic copy sold means a paper copy sits in my warehouse costing me money to store, and the number of people who will only buy electronic is too small to take that financial risk.

Oh, I see. Just out of curiousity, would you or have you considered any other type of electronic distribution for the books rather than sending out PDFs? Something like a "Members Section" of the website maybe?

[Mr Teufel]

Unless you have PayPal (which I don't trust anymore) you can only place orders if you are the US, Canada or UK anyway, since they use AVS to verify credit card payments which only seems to work if you live in those countries.

A real shame, I was looking forward to getting this book. Sounds very interesting.

AVS works for Australians.

[Paladine]

Unless you have PayPal (which I don't trust anymore) you can only place orders if you are the US, Canada or UK anyway, since they use AVS to verify credit card payments which only seems to work if you live in those countries.

A real shame, I was looking forward to getting this book. Sounds very interesting.

AVS works for Germany too
even with the umlauts in München

[Justin_Bacon]

Unless you have PayPal (which I don't trust anymore) you can only place orders if you are the US, Canada or UK anyway, since they use AVS to verify credit card payments which only seems to work if you live in those countries.

A real shame, I was looking forward to getting this book. Sounds very interesting.

Their AVS system is apparently busted in any case. I just tried ordering the book using my Discover card and got an AVS mis-match on my address. So I immediately went to Discover's webpage and confirmed that, in fact, my address was a match.

So then I went back to APE's store and tried again, this time matching not only the address but the capitalization shown on Discover's webpage, just in case this was some wacky new AVS system that didn't just rely on the zipcode. Still didn't work.

The exorbitant shipping charges had already made me wince once before placing the order. (No option except Priority Mail? Really? So I have to pay half the cost of the book to ship it to me?)

If the book ever gets to Amazon, I'll order it there. If not... Oh, well. Guess they'll just have to chalk it up as a sale lost due to their own incompetence.

Justin Alexander
http://www.thealexandrian.net

[SPoD]

I think I'll cry. Yet another OOTS book I'll have no chance of buying

Can't you buy it from whatever store you get your D&D stuff from? Or from another online store? There are like a billion online places selling the other OOTS books, you're just paying middlemen instead of Rich directly.

I like ordering from Ape because then I know all my money goes to Rich, not half to a random website owner, but if you can't order from Ape then you might as well get it any way you can.

EDIT: My Discover card worked fine at the Ape store, so it's not busted for everyone.

[Morty]

Can't you buy it from whatever store you get your D&D stuff from? Or from another online store? There are like a billion online places selling the other OOTS books, you're just paying middlemen instead of Rich directly.

I like ordering from Ape because then I know all my money goes to Rich, not half to a random website owner, but if you can't order from Ape then you might as well get it any way you can.

EDIT: My Discover card worked fine at the Ape store, so it's not busted for everyone.

Pfft. I doubt I can find any OOTS book in any gaming shop where I come from, not to mention I'll have to go to some bigger town to find any gaming shop. And shipping costs from USA will be huge.

[SteveMB]

Pfft. I doubt I can find any OOTS book in any gaming shop where I come from, not to mention I'll have to go to some bigger town to find any gaming shop. And shipping costs from USA will be huge.

Yeesh, that bites. Any chance of getting together with friends for a joint order to bring the shipping costs down to the merely large?

[Morty]

If I knew anyone who read OOTS beside me, that might work. Sadly, I don't.

[The Giant]

This thread is for discussion and resolution of issues relating to ordering books from APE Games. Post your comments/problems here, and Kevin from APE will hopefully be able to address them.

(Due to a glitch with the "Move Post" function, the boards order moved posts chronologically, meaning that my "introduction post" is now here in the middle of the thread. Oh well.)

[apegamer]

Hey all, this is a good thread. Let me mention a few things:

• We've gotten orders from lots of different countries in the last 12 hours since the SoD pre-order went up, so there are not any country-specific problems that I'm aware of.
• I've just now changed a couple of AVS settings on the site, so if you got AVS errors before, please try again.
• If you persist in getting AVS errors, let me know via private email, and we'll work through it with you.
• Note that PayPal is an alternative form of payment - just select it from the payment type drop-down.

We absolutely need AVS verification on the site, as we get people trying bogus CC numbers ALL the time. Right now it looks like the failure rate is less than 1% for valid customers, but we'd really like to reduce that without allowing in bogus orders.

[JT]

Mr APE man... ;)

Longer term, it would be nice to have other options for getting the book shipped. I decided to order a second copy for a friend (boy will *he* be surprised) to get the per-book cost of shipping down to merely outrageous. (Of course, that said, I'd probably insist on having it shipped as quickly as possible, and to heck with the high cost, so....)

Also, it would be really great (I don't know if it's feasible) to get an estimated shipping cost prior to putting in all the information. I started ordering one book, put in my information, found out how much it would cost to ship, and decided to go back and change my order to two books. Then, I had to re-enter my information, and re-check what the shipping cost would be. This wasn't a show-stopper by any means, but an easier method would have been nicer.

Other than that, just... please please please get the books on time. I'm already getting impatient. ;)

[xanin]

Not so much an issue as a comfort thing - I can't seem to find a way to view any sort of order status page or anything, and the lack of email message confirming my pre-order make me a little queasy that I just handed you my CC number...
Not to be mean, but if you weren't the Giant's chosen distributor, I would never buy anything from an online store setup the way yours seems to be - its purely a matter of comfort. As a consumer, I want to see that I didn't just provide my information to a black hole, I want to be able to go back in a week and see my order still happily sitting there waiting for the big big day...

[xanin]

oooo, disregard on part of the last one. I DID get an email, gmail just happily filed it as junk-mail. First time it has done that to me...

[CardinalFang]

Is there any chance of an option to ship books via Media Mail instead of the more expensive standard shipping? If you're shipping from Texas (which is your location on the boards), it's less than $2 to ship a 1 lb. book to pretty much anywhere in the continental US, from what I can figure out by the USPS site.

Edit: I take it back. It appears that a 1 lb. book can be shipped ANYWHERE in the US (Alaska and Hawaii included) for a rate of $1.59.

[Pantler]

If someone from Poland that will be visiting the US after the book is released is reading this, please contact me. Paying double the cost of the books on shipping is unfeasible for me.
I hope that what I had written isn't against the rules.

[The Giant]

Is there any chance of an option to ship books via Media Mail instead of the more expensive standard shipping? If you're shipping from Texas (which is your location on the boards), it's less than $2 to ship a 1 lb. book to pretty much anywhere in the continental US, from what I can figure out by the USPS site.

Edit: I take it back. It appears that a 1 lb. book can be shipped ANYWHERE in the US (Alaska and Hawaii included) for a rate of $1.59.

Media Mail is only an option if you don't care what condition the books arrive in, which, we find, is not a sentiment most customers share. We tried Media Mail for the first Dungeon Crawlin' Fools release back in 2005 (before APE was involved) and had hundreds of books returned to us, with hundreds more reported damaged in the mail (and who knows how many not reported). Media Mail is for catalogs, phone books, etc., not books printed on high-quality paper that are meant to sit on your shelf forever.

While I don't have any personal control over APE's shipping choices, I would have strongly urged them not to even consider Media Mail as a viable option should they have included it.

[CardinalFang]

Media Mail is only an option if you don't care what condition the books arrive in, which, we find, is not a sentiment most customers share. We tried Media Mail for the first Dungeon Crawlin' Fools release back in 2005 (before APE was involved) and had hundreds of books returned to us, with hundreds more reported damaged in the mail (and who knows how many not reported). Media Mail is for catalogs, phone books, etc., not books printed on high-quality paper that are meant to sit on your shelf forever.

While I don't have any personal control over APE's shipping choices, I would have strongly urged them not to even consider Media Mail as a viable option should they have included it.

Huh. I've never had a problem shipping books around with Media Mail, but I have the feeling you've shipped a LOT more books than I have, so I'd definitely rather pay more and have the pages still attached to the spine when I get the book. :D

[Castamir]

Hah! It worked now. Cool!
So whatever was changed, the address verification now works for Poland as well (Visa card issued by Millenium).

For the other Polacks: while I live in Starogard Gdański, the savings by ordering two books together are just $3 per book, probably not worth the hassle.

[stoffe]

• I've just now changed a couple of AVS settings on the site, so if you got AVS errors before, please try again.

That seems to have done the trick, this time the order was accepted. Thanks. Sometimes it's good to be wrong.

[apegamer]

If someone from Poland that will be visiting the US after the book is released is reading this, please contact me. Paying double the cost of the books on shipping is unfeasible for me.

As a hint, Airmail Letter postage is available for our international customers if your order is under 4 lbs. This is usually MUCH cheaper than Global Priority, though is also much slower to arrive.

[Pantler]

Actually, the only options I can see are Airmal Letter and Airmail Parcel. Oh well, I guess I'll have to settle with that. I gave up smoking recently, so I should be able to raise the needed sum somehow

[Jink]

I noticed when I pre-ordered mine yesterday that it mentioned not billing until the item was shipped, but my paypal account was billed anyways. I also ordered The Origin of PC's as well, could that have affected my pre-order billing status?

[apegamer]

Oops, it says that you will be charged when the order is placed, not when it ships.

I should add that this is not because we're greedy, money-hungry, capitalistic pigs, but rather that this is how our store works.

[Jink]

Oops, it says that you will be charged when the order is placed, not when it ships.

I should add that this is not because we're greedy, money-hungry, capitalistic pigs, but rather that this is how our store works.

Huh, well, it is possible that I may have misread it in my excitement to get ahold of a copy.

I offer my most sincere apologies

[Straylight]

I'm a little confused. This shop doesn't seem to work for me. I can put products in this basket-thingy. I can click on that basket button to see all products I want to order. But I can't order anything at all (only thing I can do is to remove things from the basket and change the quantity of things in the basket ...). Furthermore there is no overview of shipping costs anywhere on the APE-website.