Yes, my account was charged as soon as I made teh transaction – I guess this is due to it being a download rather than a physical product.

I head up a commercial team … thus deal with contracts for acquisitions and sales every day of the week … what joy! But i’m no Lawyer or Barrister … so I still retain my soul!

I’m not saying that their offer isn’t fair or reasonable, just pointing out that what they are actually doing is cancelling a valid contract and giving you compensation – but they haven’t come clean and said this. You could if you wanted refuse their compensation and insist on the delivery of the agreed contract. Not saying you should though.

My only concern with their compensation is that you appear to only be able to spend multiples of 5 points … so the 3 points are worthless unless you spend a further £60 on the site? Can anyone confirm that you can use the £3 discount now or not please?

Do you follow the Fraud Administrator on Twitter in return? Is their feed any good. Do they enjoy your Twitterings?

In the interest of being completely unhelpful, I’ve received this twice (having ordered twice). No mention of Coolshop points.

Email/within your downloads section.
No, you bounder, if you don’t have it yet, it’s not gonna suprise you by coming in the mail 😀

Mac, what is your job? if you make a simple screw up at work, would you rather that people forgave you for it, or would you prefer that they were allowed to cause you to lose thousands of pounds simply because you made a small typo error? just how mean and lacking in empathy are you?

Good point. And some extra text so that my comment is long enough to be accepted.

So these guys come out of it quite, erm, cool. They don’t seem to be trying to claw back the money off the people who did get the product, although coolshop have lost money over the weekend on this. And they are giving away money to everybody else.

Had payment been made? I’ve had online retailers fail to dispatch insanely cheap goods because they’ve run out of stock and weren’t getting any more in. Normally, they only take payment upon dispatching the order, at which point the contract becomes binding.

If they actually charged your account, then maybe. If not, then there wasn’t a contract yet.

I honestly didn’t check if it had left my account, but I assumed it hadn’t, as I could/can still cancel the order.

I did already have Civilization 5 (first CIV that I have actually got round to finishing, had CIV IV during the steam sale) and I thought that if I got a CD-KEY from this then I’d have gifted it to someone. Given that people here appear to be more discerning games purchasers, It was a bit cheeky to expect anything in this case.

All in all I am enjoying CIV 5 and the robust patch support that the developers have shown to be committed to by balancing, adding gameplay elements and improving the AI.

I have to say that Civ 5 is a bit more streamlined than the previous iterations and, although there feels to be less ‘variety’ and there is a slight disconnect in the immersion in terms of progress regarding historical eras, given that the game features, graphics and music don’t change as much between ages (can easily be rectified in a mod), the interfacing has been altered to make the game much less of a chore to play than previous Civ games. The ‘Easier and Faster’ design makes it all the more engaging and has also influenced a focus in gameplay on pure strategic choice over statistics when interesting situations arise. I do, however, hope that in future Civ games the interesting situations might extend beyond simply warfare. More elements of play, beside war, could be improved with engaging features to provide a better emphasis of ‘Civilization’ over a war game. The choice to focus on war is certainly understandable, due to human history being predominantly a story of conflict, but I can’t help feeling that Civ 5 is lacking a sense of development and tangiable rewards in other areas of its design.

Purely as a game, Civilization 5 triumphs greatly and is an amazing achievement, being incredibly well balanced where personal choices of play don’t inherently hinder the player, instead actually complementing the playing experience, such as choosing the size and focus of your empire, however, as an immersive experience, Civ 5 isn’t quite as ‘Civilization’ as it could be.

This is likely a choice to make the game fit on a single DVD, something that I can understand.

As a side note, one of the new lead developers on Civ (replacing Sid Meier to some degree) has said that the war-game “Panzer General” inspired him in development. I think that answers a lot of questions 🙂

Not true, the contract is binding once paymnet has been made

Actually no, they have full control over the system and the choice of what system to deploy – if they do not put in failsafes to manage errors, then that is their issue and not the systems, therefore as far as I am aware, if they took paymnet they need to deliver the goods or service.

Otherwise, nobody would honour anything – blaming middleware in web sites, etc.

I believe the “contract” is not complete until the goods are handed over, so those who failed to receive the code have not completed the exchange of money for goods; it left them in the position of being able to go, “Oh, that’s a mistake, sorry about that.” Notice how those that did receive codes have not been told their orders are being cancelled and refunded, it’s because the purchase was completed for them, so Coolshop have to abide by what you’re referring to under the Sale of Goods Act.

I don’t doubt that the small print covers them. And really you’ve not lost out unless, say, you’ve incurred overdraft charges so a small claims court will be unsympathetic.

Coolshop screwed up, they’ve taken (more than) reasonable steps to cover the damages to their customers. And being reasonable is very important to UK law, so end of story.

Err to clarify… could a firm argue that because a fully automated system took the order and monies with no human oversight that the normal law could not apply. You would have to treat the computer as a legal entity or er…. crap I don’t know. I hope you can see the spirit of the point I’m trying to make.

If such an appeal failed on the part of the business concerned it could have ramifications for electronic trade.

None of this, as far as I am concerned, should apply here as it would be:

– Bloody petty.
– In very poor human spirit.

This is their list of downloadable games, so take your pick: http://www.coolshop.co.uk/catalog/advanced_search_result.php?keywords=download&submit.x=0&submit.y=0

That’s the confusing point and I suspect it would have to be tried in court. I only say this because as I read the law what you say is correct. However the system here was fully automated. I suspect such issues may be why online firms tend to honour such cock ups (personally thinking of incorrectly priced hotel rooms and the like).

Thanks, I’d just got given it by someone else too, and it’s in the post.