Wizards of the Coast are dropping the ball again!

I hate to complain. I’m trying to maintain an optimistic attitude and focus on the positive. Also, I hate that my first post on the blog about the 2024 version of Dungeons & Dragons has to be about this, but Wizards of the Coast, henceforth WotC, has dropped the ball with their service. I’ve tried to solve the issue through standard means, but the poor service and the frustration have reached a boiling point, and thus, this post. If you don’t want to read an angry rant, there are a lot of other posts here on the blog.

Still here? Let’s go!

I immediately became interested when the 2024 Digital & Physical Core Rulebook Bundle from WotC came up for sale. I wanted to see their changes to the rules; I use D&D Beyond, but I also like the physical books. This bundle and the savings it offered seemed like a good deal. I have ordered the D&D Beyond book and digital bundles before, specifically for Dragonlance and the Deck of Many Things, and I got the books promptly with no hassle. This bundle seemed like a great deal.

It’s my birthday in June, and my wife ordered the bundle for me as my birthday gift. She was thrilled, and I was elated. The transaction was done; all we had to do was wait.

September comes around. I get my redemption code and my book on D&D Beyond. I also happened to be traveling when the book came out and got a copy of the special cover, and I was sure I’d have the regular cover to read and use when I got back home.

The book has been out for a month now, and so far, the 2024 Player’s Handbook has not arrived in the mail. So, what happened? On September 24, I saw no book or shipping notifications from WotC, so I wrote to them and checked the order status.

The first hurdle was getting to reach customer support. WotC does not make it easy to find the “Contact Us” button; instead, it takes you to an FAQ and makes it purposefully difficult to get help via their support link. When you finally open a help ticket, you will wait over 24 hours for a response. The response that I got left a lot to be desired.

To quote a piece of it (the complete response is the image below), “A review of your order shows that items with different release dates have been purchased in this order. This means that your product will ship when all items on the order are available to ship. Full details can be found on our FAQ under “When will I get my physical product?”.” The FAQ does say: “If you place multiple orders with different release dates, then your order will deliver when the last item is available.”

But, and this is important, the bundle page clearly states that: “As they are released, each physical book will be shipped to you and each digital book will be available in your D&D BEYOND account.” See the image below!

This answer is a switcheroo by WotC, advertising one thing and then claiming another. False advertisement! I let the support contact know my displeasure with the situation, and a day later, I got a non-answer stating the same thing and saying sorry, not sorry. I reiterated my displeasure with the situation, opened another ticket requesting a solution to my problem, and provided feedback, clarifying my displeasure with the situation. If you follow me on social media, you may have seen my post about all this.

And since three days ago, nothing, not Rodolfo, the service rep, nor anybody else from Wizards of the Coast or D&D Beyond, has contacted me or replied to my messages.

After posting about it on social media, I have found other people who have similar problems, and some have reached out to me asking if I’ve been able to get any response or solution from WotC because, like me, they are at their wit’s end.

It would be an easy solution to reach out to the credit card company and log a complaint trying to get a refund. But this was a gift from my wife; she’d have to do it with her credit card company, and most importantly, she was so thrilled that she got me this as a birthday gift. I would hate to “return” her gift and sour the whole experience. The gift has sentimental value beyond the mere transaction.

So, I’ve come here to air out the situation and get some more eyes on it. I hope those affected can get a resolution from WotC by creating awareness. I’ve been a D&D Beyond client from the start, with my subscription, getting almost all the WotC books on the platform, but I will not buy another digital product from then until this is solved to my satisfaction.

It is a poor starting point for a version of the game I was excited to play. After the OSR debacle, WotC has tried to gain back the goodwill they lost with the fan base but continually seem to drop the ball, like with the latest information regarding the use of AI, and this is just another example of the messing up what should have been winning situation for them. My enthusiasm for the game has been dampened, and I hope we can sort this out to get our book. Balls on your court, WotC; what’s your play?

PS – I usually include many links to the pages and locations I’m referencing, but I don’t want to share the link for the bundle after getting all this grief with shipping. You can find the page pretty easily with a quick Google search if you want to check it out.