As the owner of a popular Linkin Park fan site, and an active member of many Linkin Park online communities, including the official Linkin Park and Linkin Park Underground message boards, lately I have noticed and experienced a growing unhappiness in the service and customer support that Linkin Park fans have (not) been receiving from the two companies that Linkin Park contracts to provide us with merchandise, BandMerch, and the online pay-to-join fan club, LPUnderground, run by Sparkart, as well as Linkin Park’s record label, Warner Brothers. For those of you who are not familiar, BandMerch was started by Don Delson, the father of Brad Delson, the lead guitarist for the band. Originally created just for Linkin Park, it now serves dozens of different band’s merchandising needs. The Linkin Park Underground was created as the official fan club for Linkin Park, and is managed by the flash wizards at Sparkart.

This year, the trouble first started for many when we found out there would be a $100 version of Minutes to Midnight, called the “Super Fan Edition”. It sent out the message that, in order to be a “super fan” of Linkin Park, you needed to buy this package, which many fans were not able to afford. It also showed how Warner was using Linkin Park as their cash cow, exploiting the most dedicated fans, who they know will buy almost anything that Linkin Park releases. It was digusting to see how commercialized Linkin Park’s music had become: Next, we found out that we would have to purchase full length versions of LPTV, which in the past were always available for free. Add to that, fans outside the United States were constantly unable to participate in contests, or purchase the LPTVs from iTunes. Even though Warner has branches in many countries, including Germany, Australia, and Brazil, they would not allow fans from any country outside the United States to be eligible for contests such as the “Become a Host of LPTV”.

The next big problem was a from BandMerch. They were in charge of taking the preorders for the two special editions of Minutes to Midnight.First, there was a long delay in the shipment of the $100 versions, due to a manufacturing error. Then, the over ordered the CD/DVD Special Edition (fans were refunded, and offered a signed poster to make up for the error). This begs the question: How can Warner understock their biggest selling act? It does not make any sense, as they should have anticipated a huge number of orders, especially since most people are not going to shell out $100 for an art book, especially when the book does not even feature art from Mike Shinoda or Joe Hahn, the resident artists in the band.

And last, but certainly not least, is the lack of service from Sparkart, especially in the LPUnderground. Membership this year cost between $12-$40, depending on which package you ordered. For that amount of money, one would expect to have professional service from a professional company such as Sparkart, right? Wrong. First, it took over six months for them to get the email service up and running, which angered many members who used the email service as their primary email address. The second biggest problem, which especially comes from members outside the United States, is how slowly LPU Packages (which contain an LPU CD with “exclusive” songs, stickers, membership card, t-shirt, wristband, and a letter from the band) have been sent out. I’ve heard of members having to wait months for their packages to be received, and often times are never received at all. One of the more bizarre stores I’ve heard was how when shipping a package to a Canadian member, marked the value of the package at $5, so the guy ended up having to pay $9 tax on the package. He said after shipping fees, customs tax and currency conversion, it ended up costing him about $40 Canadian. Next, is the lack of service when it came to support tickets. On most sites, when you submit a support ticket, especially for something minor, you get a response within a couple business days. So you would expect, if someone had a minor issue, such as an error with the shipping address entered signing up, it would be fixed within the week, right? Nope. Weeks after the support ticket was filled, simply to correct the house number of the member’s address, he still had received no response from any member of the LPU staff. He went on to post,

”This has to be the worst case of bad service I have EVER experienced - it seems that the LPU support thinks that as long as they ignore their customers they will just shut up and forget about it - HELL NO!I have paid 42 $ for the LPU 5+6 Pass and I expect to get what I pay for - all you need to do is to go into your computer system and add my housenumber, 38, to my address. It won’t take a friggin minute to do so, and yet you have completely ignored me since March 20.I am getting so pissed. I have paid for the LPU and if I don’t recieve what I pay for I expect to get my money back - I want to be a part of the LPU but you are testing my limits atm.”

He is one of many that are extremely angered at the lack of service from the LPU staff. A good friend of mine, and well-liked member of the online community, has said he will most likely not renew his membership as they took 6 months to answer his support ticket, which simply asked to have the number 1 removed off the end of his username. Seriously, is it that difficult to change someone’s username? Not only that, but when they finally responded, first they only edited his main site username, but not his forum username (which should have been the easier one to edit, since it takes 30 seconds tops to edit a username in vbulletin). Then, instead of fixing his forum username, they created a whole new one! So now he has two accounts! Brilliant! And I have had my own problems. When they implemented the new LPNetwork, which allowed you to use your Clique ID to log into the LPU and Linkin Park main site, suddenly my password did not work, or I had forgotten it. Either way, I went through the process of resetting my password, which in the past had worked, every time. But this time, no email containing a new password was sent, leaving my unable to login to the LPUnderground. So I sent in a support ticket. Two weeks later, nothing. So I sent in another one. Still nothing. This left me unable to access the services which I had paid good money for, especially preorder tickets for the Projekt Revolution show, which I ended missing out on because I could not login (preorder tickets is one of the biggest reasons why people join the LPU). And now, even though I was able to order tickets via Ticketmaster, I am afraid that if this is not fixed by July 24th (the day before the Projekt Revolution show which I am going to), I will not be able to get Meet and Greet passes. It seems Sparkart just likes to ignore support tickets. And if they are just flooded with tickets, here’s a genius idea: HIRE MORE PEOPLE! I know that may seem like a stretch, but if the problem is so bad that simple address changes need months to fix, then the current number of staff in the LPU is not enough. Or maybe changing a simple database entry is too difficult for them. We may never know.

Filed under LPP, Music, The Internet

This entry was posted on Friday, June 29th, 2007 at 9:31 pm and is filed under LPP, Music, The Internet. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.