Long live GoGameGuru

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http://tchan001.wordpress.com
A blog on Asian go books, go sightings, and interesting tidbits
Go is such a beautiful game.

The site is back up but it is not active, not even responding to any message, private or public. I'm worried that something serious has happened in their private lives, or they're involved in legal issues with either others or ... heaven forbid, each other.

Nothing else could explain why there is no sign of life, by none of David, Jing, Younggil or Josh.

Indeed, it is rather worrying. I've just about finished reading Relentless and am starting a glowing review for the British Go Journal, but it's not much good recommending a book if the only vendor (it's not available anywhere else is it?) is kaput/unresponsive/in trouble. Has anyone bought anything from them since the website went down?

I purchased my copy of Relentless on August 18th. This is right after the site came back up. I had no problems with shipment proceedings or delivery. They might not be responding to all inquiries at this time, but the business side of things seems to be running smoothly.

Has anyone had a different experience?

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Ko is the best solution.
With Ko, I can keep eating and drinking until I am full.

Visit >>>Koosh's Study Journal<<<

I ordered Relentless when the study group started last week and it was shipped extremely quickly; my copy arrived after four days despite choosing media mail shipping. Standard orders seem to be going off without a hitch.

I'd be more interested in hearing if anyone has had problems which were then sorted in a timely fashion. If the setup of GGG is to delegate delivery to warehouses (which it seems to be) then the business could chug along fine without its head and only give bad service to people who get the wrong order. I want to get an agathis go board from them but I currently dont have confidence in their ability to sort out problems if they arise.

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I am John. John-I-Am.

We could say this about any online business though, couldn't we? It's the price we've paid in response to the rock bottom price culture of online retailers, and that's where credit cards and disputes step in. If you can't get ahold of an online retailer to settle a dispute, you can dispute via your CC, get your money back, and keep the board in the process (albeit kept in the packaging in case the CC contacts you with instructions to return the item).

If you want that board, I say go for it. The worst that could happen is that you get the product, it doesn't meet your expectations, and you email GGG about it. You wait 3 weeks, send your CC company a copy of the returns policy listed on their site and evidence that you contacted them to arrange a return and that they didn't respond.

In online retailing and customer service, I would say that it's 5% of the problems that take 95% of our time to solve. I would say that it is in GGG's best interest to ignore most who message them until a serious problem arises that requires handling, or keep a list and address all questions in a single post. Maybe they set a price ceiling on where/when to handle.

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Ko is the best solution.
With Ko, I can keep eating and drinking until I am full.

Visit >>>Koosh's Study Journal<<<

well I hope they come online again in the near future, say "sorry guys, we're back on track again" ... but I don't think you can say all online businesses have gone from a state of putting out a fantastic amount of content with good online presence and responding to comments to absolute 'radio silence'. They don't owe me anything but they're doing a good impression of something having gone wrong at the moment. I wouldn't want the hassle of going through a credit card dispute so I won't take the risk - just a personal choice and everyone is free to make up their own mind. Online purchases with credit cards are pretty safe though like you say.

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I am John. John-I-Am.

It's a common problem, not just for customer service. Early on in my first job as a developer, I got a big task that I honestly wasn't quite ready for. I sat in my cube and stressed, and eventually blew through the estimate. My team lead didn't check in with me, and I just kept trying to finish as fast as I could. Eventually the CTO emailed to say "what the hell is going on?" He wasn't angry with going over the estimate, but he was pissed about the lack of an update. I didn't want to bring attention to how I was struggling, but it was exactly the wrong approach.

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Occupy Babel!

FWIW their site seems to be back up now.

The site has been back up for awhile now. It's the fact that we're now 3 months removed from the last post, and not seeing much (any?) postings on other sites by the authors, that has gotten people concerned.

When someone posted the pdf of Relentless on reddit David from GoGameGuru made a post about how they were overwhelmed with the customer service, how troublesome customers/email trolls were using up lots of time, apologies for not releasing the pdf earlier but they wanted to put on the finishing touches but gave an early version to placate some troublesome user (probably the reddit posting guy), apologies for not replying to emails about order problems for weeks etc etc, plus some cryptic reply in response to a comment along the lines of 'If you can't do customer service don't sell stuff' with 'your wish will be granted soon enough'.

This makes me fear they got so exasperated with annoying customers/trolls they will close the shop or stop GoGameGuru altogether (maybe after clearing the current backlog of orders). Hence why an update on status would be welcome.

Generally i think this would be quite a loss for the "western" go world. I feel that the website, the reviews... the shop... all together motivated and inspired many newcomers or beginners to continue and to dive deeper in to GO.

-Personally- the only thing i really really would miss is "baduk tv" english

--- and from time to time the news posts.

I hope by a miracle they can somehow make it and restart the business in a profitable way.

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“Play where you want and don’t be afraid. If you’re chasing the dream you must take the risk.” Yasumasa Hane 9p

Indeed... Perhaps it may be helpful to add one more recent personal experience data point in the meantime. At the end of August 2016 I ordered the Rosewood Go Bowls with Carved Orchids for a set of glass stones. The bowls were shipped very fast, the next working day. The bowls arrived safely a week or so later after an international travel. Everything was OK, unlike the mixed-up bowls experience mentioned in another thread. I had ordered a few items from GoGameGuru in the past, such as Relentless. Everything OK every time.

Is there any update on this? I've been out of touch for a while and just noticed they haven't had any news for several months now.

cmh

This is a fact. I never broke even running Shodan Imports. On the bright side, the software work I did on Shodan and Igolocal got me a software job, and now I make good money writing code.

Not sorry that I did it, because it turned out to be an influence move.

I just ordered and received the Newbie Go Set from GGG for my cousin's kids.

An update: https://gogameguru.com/roots/

That is really disappointing..

I can't believe they are just going to donate $100k in merchandise. That sounds insane. Figured they would at least want to make some of their money back off the remaining stock. So they could try to break even.