and guess what?

I emailed support. Then, within 4 hours (bearing in mind I am in Aus and there is a slight time difference with EU), I find a lovely email from a person called JuriJ apologising for the inconvenience, informing me that the money will be refunded, and seconds later an email from paypal saying the money has been refunded.

I though customer service at this joint was supposed to be not so good...

I thought customer support was one of their core values :)

GOG support at work:

http://www.meh.ro/thumbnail/2010_01/meh.ro3249.jpg

I think the main problem with customer support here is that it is unstable. When it's good, it's REALLY good. When it's bad, it just isn't there.

In the beginning, customer support here was absolutely fantastic, but then the customer base was tiny compared to what it is now. Sometimes it seems that GOG really hasn't scaled up the support department along with the size of the games catalog and the customer base.

However, there's no denying that they have the very best of intentions, even though some support requests appear to fall through the cracks. I have never done business with any company that seems to truly care about their customers as much as GOG does.

Read the OP again. They already did ;-)

I understand. I think I have 3 issues that I have needed support for in the couple of years I have been here and the response has always been super fast (by my standards) and super polite and helpful.

I guess maybe some people have higher expectations than I do - maybe some people would think getting a refund within 4 hours is too slow...

Well, there have certainly been people who have complained loudly on the forum about not getting a reply from support within an hour, for a support ticket they posted at a time when it was both weekend and the middle of the night in Poland (where the GOG offices are located). I think those are a small minority though.

Still, there have also been numerous cases where people have not had a reply from support for weeks or even months after they posted their tickets.

However, when the problem is related to payments, GOG is usually very quick about getting it fixed.

I had a hooker charge me twice once. When I contacted GOG support they told me to piss off. Good customer service? I think not.

LOL good one +1 ;d

Are you sure she didn't charge you once twice?

That was completely legit hazard pay!

It has happened to me a couple of times too (during big sales when I tried to buy loads of games and the transaction failed the first time => I was charged but did not receive the games), and for me it is the single most irritating thing about GOG.

In my case also support fixed it quite fast, but the point is that I fixing it was apparently based on my vigilance. If I had just missed being charged for a failed transaction and ordered it again (like I did the first two times), I presume it would have never been fixed.

The point is that there is a serious bug in somewhere in the whole process (GOG's end, someone elses, I don't know) in that charging apparently took place before the games were delivered (and if the game delivery bugged out, the charging was not cancelled automatically). It should happen vice versa.

So for now, whenever I buy games from GOG, I do the following:

1. Order the game.

2. If the process seemed to go fine and I see the games in my GOG game list and a purchase receipt in my email, fine. Thank you.

3. If the payment transaction seems to hang forever, or eventually bugs out, STOP!!! Whatever you do, DO NOT TRY TO ORDER THEM AGAIN at this point!

4. Check if the games appeared to your GOG account.

5. If not, go to your online bank and check if there has been money reserved from your (credit card) account. Wait a couple of hours if needed, just to be sure. If you see money reserved, contact GOG support and tell them that you were charged but not delivered. If you ordered lots of games, hopefully you wrote them down to a list, or remember them by heart.

At least in one case where I had waited several days after the failed purchase, the reserved money was eventually charged from my credit card account. With the other cases, I reacted already when the money was still merely reserved.

I still love you GOG, but this seriously needs to be fixed. It is even worse than the old "uninstallation wipes out all compatibility settings from all games/apps" bug.

Okay, I guess I was lazy. Obviously I didn't read his whole post.