Buzz Out Loud Lounge: International online shoppers, beware BigFishGames !!

International online shoppers, beware BigFishGames !!

Hi, wanted to tell my story about www.bigfishgames.com This story is especially useful for non-US online shoppers.

It all started just fine. Too fine to be true.

I like computer games. And for last two years, I am especially interested in casual/shareware/arcade games. A half year ago, I’ve found www.bigfishgames.com, a nice online store selling these games. I’ve enjoyed their great choice of games, nice site design and comfortable shopping system.

After my first purchase, they’ve offered me a coupon code that allows me discount for my next purchase. After my next purchase, they’ve offered another one… And finally thay’ve emailed me letter telling that now I am a member of ‘Customer Loyalty Program’ that allows me to buy do any of my further purchase 5$ cheaper than usual. Since they have great choice of games, I’ve stopped shopping at other online games stores, relying only on BigFishGames. Everything seemed nice… Until last Friday.

I’ve had a stressful week at work, and I knew that next one will be even more stressfull, I’ll even need to work extra time at weekend. So I’ve decided to reward myself with some great games to relive all this stress and headache. So when I’ve came home from work, I’ve opened BigFishGames site and joined their ‘club’. When you join BigFishGames club, you get some game credits that you can use to purchase games. Each credit costs less than usual game, but you must buy a number of game credits per month to renew your Club membership.

I’ve registered with BFG Club with no problem, BUT! When I’ve tried to use any of my game credits, I was greatly surprised that I can’t use them. To use BFG Club credits, you need to go to game order page and enter a coupon code… But I’m no more able to go to that order page. When I try to go to either game order or download page, I get a message that BigFishGames doesn’t sell their games in my region anymore. Yes, I live in Estonia. This was very surprising and frustrating, because my last successful purchase from BigFishGames occurred just a week ago! I’ve called my online friends for help and discovered that BFG has blocked Estonia and Russia, but Germany, USA, Canada, England and Italy are unaffected. When I joined BFG Club, there wasn’t any sort of warning that I’m not eligible to use BFG anymore, so I’ve just purchased stuff that I can’t use.

When someone charges my a card, the money aren’t debited immediately, they stand as ‘reserved’ for about a week or two, and are usually debited in the end of month. So I’ve wrote BFG support immediately, asking them to cancel my payment, as I can’t use stuff I’ve just purchased. In response, they did just the opposite: they didn’t answer me in any way, but the money disappeared just immediately. So now I have 3 game credits that I can’t use, and my pocket misses 30$ that I could use for many useful and interesting things.

I’m not sure that it is direct cheating on me, it could be just bad luck or unfortunate state of events, but I want to warn other customers: BEWARE BIGFISHGAMES.COM! Today they blocked Estonia, tomorrow they may block Finland, or Sweden, or any other country...