Something Wicked This Way Comes Part 3: "CardLauncher"!

[machonekevin]

you will receive:.. no reward. hmmmmm......you will receive no payment.

[Cbkimble]

Now I can't modify my pledges.

[Widdee]

Not working for me. .. on my droid... =(

Have tried it on HP PC and Apple Ipad- same error results.

[Cbkimble]

Good deck has been removed from my account but still have venexiana.

[Marcus]

Have any of y'all checked your CC for holds? Would want to know if you have one (or 2 or 3).

Since it's just pre-authorization you won't see it on your credit card.

Considering that many got through in the beginning and pledged but never received the pledge confirmation (but did get the other confirmation, it'll be interesting to see how they decide to handle this.

[sinjin7]

I told Mike not to launch again after the first screw up because he can't afford another debacle just 12 hours later. The site is not working, just shut it down and take your time to get it right so you don't do this to us ever again. You need to quit stringing us along here. WHERE THE #%$& ARE YOU, MIKE RATLEDGE!!! We know you're around because you keep popping in other threads putting in your 2 cents there. This is all so unprofessional. Man up, get your a$$ over here, and talk to us!

[Cbkimble]

I told Mike not to launch again after the first screw up because he can't afford another debacle just 12 hours later. The site is not working, just shut it down and take your time to get it right so you don't do this to us ever again. You need to quit stringing us along here. WHERE THE #%$& ARE YOU, MIKE RATLEDGE!!! We know you're around because you keep popping in other threads putting in your 2 cents there. This is all so unprofessional. Man up, get your a$$ over here, and talk to us!

I can pretty much assure you that if it were not for 1 main project, the site would be a bust and it still may bust. He was warned by several to wait but he refused and now he's beta testing with our love of cards. Faith in Mike is faltering by the minute.

[dogbone72]

I managed to pledge for the venexiana 4 deck early bird but it's $40 instead of $28. Is the shipping $12 for domestic??

[billysac]

Did the other two decks just launch at totally random times or what?
I hopped on here a little before 9 and the level I wanted to pledge for is gone, wtf.

Suddenly kickstarter is looking way better than I've ever considered it before.

[snsdmonkey]

Did the other two decks just launch at totally random times or what?
I hopped on here a little before 9 and the level I wanted to pledge for is gone, wtf.

Suddenly kickstarter is looking way better than I've ever considered it before.

So do D$D

[Strag]

Did the other two decks just launch at totally random times or what?
I hopped on here a little before 9 and the level I wanted to pledge for is gone, wtf.

Suddenly kickstarter is looking way better than I've ever considered it before.

So do D$D

Ummm no, they are still bad, just in a different way.

[lriefer]

Lotrek, I want your cards! And I'm stymied at every turn to try and get them. The fact that some people can pledge and others can't is maddening. Maddening too that this hasn't been shut down, fixed and relaunched at a later date. Some communication would be appreciated. Continuing to avoid the situation is not building confidence in your customer base. We're not the enemy...we all want this to be successful!

[YoYoSpin]

This CardLauncer drama reminds me of past threads on this very sub-forum, announcing new deck designs, only to have been promptly and unmercifully panned by moderators and managers of this site. I think that's called Karma

[volantangel]

Haha i go off to sleep for a couple of hours and this whole mess happens. What id like to say is that the launch has indeed been hasty, but all we wanted was to have the site up and running as soon as possible. But the only solace we can take from this is that if the site is taken down once again, no payments will be processed so you dont have to worry about your card being charged.

[snsdmonkey]

Did the other two decks just launch at totally random times or what?
I hopped on here a little before 9 and the level I wanted to pledge for is gone, wtf.

Suddenly kickstarter is looking way better than I've ever considered it before.

So do D$D

Ummm no, they are still bad, just in a different way.

Yet still not as bad as this. They are a cash-grab but with the lack of care on bugs (and even the user base), CL also looks like a cash grab right now.

Whoever is behind CL needs to make the call of taking this down and coming back in 3 months.

[SpecialK]

If there is no CardLauncher exclusive, I'd really like Lotrek to consider launching simultaneously on Kickstarter or some other platform. I really would like the Venexiana Dark...but CardLauncher doesn't seem like it's going to happen. That, and I don't really trust it at this point.

Edit: Yup - still an error. Le Sigh.

[framegod]

It started out were you could choose between Wepay and Paypal now you only have Wepay. You take away my choice you say goodbye to my business. Flows in the system I can understand but shut it down and get them fixed and worked out before you reboot that system. KS I may lose my money pledging for something but everything works and I know were its going and its all by choice. Here I being lead blind, sorry but turn on the lights and give me my choices back and i'll come back until then I'll pass on these decks.

If they were smart they would put them on KS until this got worked out.

[UtterFool]

BTW

To those not reading other threads

Mike is answering questions in the Venexian thread he isn't answering here.

If anyone is interested

[DragonSoul]

I'm sorry this has gone so badly. But, as a retired programmer all I have to say is that I would have been fired in a heartbeat if I had let a system I designed go public with as many bugs as this one had. I'm not putting in any credit card information for now. I'm willing to sacrifice early birds for security. Still, it's a frustrating situation all around.

[rousselle]

Framegod:

There was an official CardLauncher e-mail that went out earlier today that said Paypal is experiencing some technical difficulties, and the option will be disabled while those issues are resolved. The e-mail did not offer a timeframe for the return of the Paypal option, but I'm certain it's being worked. (I am not speaking officially on behalf of CardLauncher, and I have no insider information on this particular topic; I'm just repeating what was in the e-mail and offering my interpretation.)

My personal e-mail client is having some difficulties of its own at the moment, otherwise I'd copy and paste the contents of the message here. Once my mailbox is back up and running, I can post it here if there's any interest. I'm sure others here have received the message I'm talking about. Anyone?

[SuicideKing]

Congratulations to those who have been successful with Venexiana Dark. I tried again, again and again... Now going to bed. I will try again tomorrow...

[TGunitedcardists]

Unfortunately, the last 24 hours have been the worst case scenario. The hype was there, but the foundation wasn't set up.

Suggestions for the future relaunch (and that is inevitable at this point)

1. Start with 1 project at a time. Going with 4 simultaneous projects at once is crazy town. For as much negative sentiment geared towards Jackson and Kings Wild earlier with his KingsFunded launch, it's easy to see that he did it right. One deck, simple tiers and shipping was transparent. It also worked smoothly.

2. Whatever test procedure was done for the launch of CardLauncher, it should be completely scrapped. Complete fail. You need to involve people not involved with CardLauncher on the backend. Have an open beta. Once that's working with a handful of people, open it up a bit more and repeat.

3. Open everything up ahead of time, especially for the deck sellers. They should have as much time as needed to prepare to launch their decks.

4. Be more clear about the shipping. If different companies provide different prices for fulfillment, please provide the companies information in a comparison table, so it is transparent and they have to compete against each other for the designer's business.

5. Error messages that customers see shouldn't be cryptic. They should be simple. End users should never see "liquid error: can't modify frozen hash Liquid error: can't modify frozen hash." Your programmer has done a poor job.

6. "Your pledge couldn't be processed, please retry or email us at noreply@cardlauncher.com." This email should never be used for anyone to contact someone at CardLauncher.

7. Launch at a time where you can reply on the forums, and actually reply on the forums. UnitedCardists has been tied to CardLanucher from the very beginning, even though the goal is to separate, but right now this is the customer service forum, in addition to people who signed up to the mail list.

8. Offer a special deal/pricing once everything is fixed. When the whole Jackson signed/unsigned deck debacle happened, people here, including Mike, called on Jackson to make it right. Now that mistakes have been made, I'd like to hear/see how Mike/CardLauncher deal with the situation.

9. Please be more clear about dates, and express them fully. For example, instead of 12pm eastern, make things clear like: Saturday, August 23, 2014 @ 12:00pm EST or CST or PDT. This is helpful and clear for all international customers.

10. Spell check everything. This doesn't take long, especially if you have lots of eyeballs looking at the site. It was mentioned previously that it isn't a high priority right now with all the troubles CardLauncher is experiencing at the moment, but that's not a great excuse. It means things were rushed. Use people willing to help.


I hope CardLauncher becomes a platform to buy cards in the future, but right now it's not ready for the masses. I hope it gets fixed, but there's lots of work ahead. I really feel sorry for everyone involved. Nobody likes being part of a worst case scenario coming to light.

[framegod]

Rousselle:

I got that e-mail, thank you. But since the option had been removed when it was there in the beginning and also promised the site should have been closed until all things could have been fixed not just pasted over to make it look pretty, so they can collect what funds they can and work out the kinks later. I'm sorry but thats just bad business in my opion.

Mike should be here answering questions not avoiding this subject like the Plague that it has become.

[chach]

BTW

To those not reading other threads

Mike is answering questions in the Venexian thread he isn't answering here.

If anyone is interested

I don't know if I'd call it answering questions really...

[CBJ]

Seriously...just take the site offline for now. It's past the point of embarrassment.

Test the hell out of it and make sure all the bugs are worked out before you relaunch.

Admitting temporary failure is way better than what you are doing now. People are pissed

[DragonSoul]

Just got a new email and I have to say I'm pretty pissed that they're going ahead with the prize decks considering that there were many, many people who tried to pledge and couldn't.

[SpecialK]

Just got a new email and I have to say I'm pretty pissed that they're going ahead with the prize decks considering that there were many, many people who tried to pledge and couldn't.

100% agreed. Quite a slap in the face. And also taking no blame? Come on, a chunk of the blame is on CardLauncher folks for trying to rush it when it completely flopped the first time. Whatever. They're going to push ahead regardless of what we think.

Like everyone says, vote with your wallet. Major ill will.

[Cbkimble]

Not going to pop into the other thread are you Mike?

I've been working with tech support from CrowdEngine (our software vendor) and WePay for the past three or four hours. Some of the problems we are seeing right now just don't show up during beta testing, no matter how thorough you are, because - just an example - we're not going any D$D stuff like marking pledges "anonymous". That feature is obviously not available when you're testing, because during that time you wouldn't even think about letting pledges be anonymous, just makes no sense.

That's bogus, IMO. You've had months and months, delayed an extra 2 weeks, and used beta testers. There is no reason you should've went live especially after saying you knew ther were issues the BGP since 3 yesterday. As soon as that began you should've sent an email stating another delay. There would've been far less pushed off people had you delayed than the fiasco you have created. You say you've been eating mud, I think you only had a taste of what's to come.

[Oswin]

No shipping costs ? Nothing is wrote...

[Gemini]

I REALLY want to give you my money but physically cannot do it with your site.

Your last e-mail indicates that cardlauncher.com with a bit of perseverance is working, it is not for me.

I have tried backing dark venexiana and have two payment authorisation confirmation emails from wepay but still show as not backing anything. Clicking on the project it switches between; 'manage your pledge' and; 'Your pledge couldn't be processed, please retry or email us at support@cardlauncher.com.'

Mike Ratledge, all the best with it! I am only one backer and in the greater success I am sure cardlauncher.com will be my small contribution wont make much difference but for me the adventure ends here in frustration and disappointment.