fyi; verbatim quote from email follows. Reported to eBay as a scam. Item number:  
** expired/removed eBay auction **
Date: 6/7/2007 2:43:44 AM CDT From: [email protected] To: [email protected] Please excuse me for this unexpected messege.I am the seller of the eBay Item number:  
** expired/removed eBay auction **
(THE UNSPEAKABLE OATH 1-6 CTHULHU DIGESTS).I've just been contacted by the eBay staff who informed me that the winner of the item I sold,withdrew his bidding and was rejected due to security reasons(either failed to follow through on the purchase commitment or outright refused to do so).The eBay policy automatically proclaims you to be the winner by default. Nevertheless,I need your agreement on this so I may contact eBay to confirm you the winning position, otherwise,I'll relist the item.I am sorry for the inconvenience,but I need an answer asap. The price will be $140.00 ( including the shipping ). Give me an urgent reply if you want to go ahead or not. Thank you!!!

With sheriffs, frogs, trolls, and toads, there is nothing that they're selling that can't be found much, much, much cheaper elsewhere. For rarer items, a little patience might be required, but the savings, to me, are well worth it.

I am an ex-customer at both of those stores; I just don't have enough money to be setting fire to some of it.

I don't understand how the US postal service have forced Titan to stop combining shipping for overseas buyers! (Oh - I see now - its not the post people it's Titan being greedy and trying to shift the blame.(Sometimes I am perhaps a little too cynical   ))

Edit - though presumably they would send multiple wins in multiple parcels?  (oooh cynicism tempered with sarcasm!)

That's just galactically insulting and stupid.

I wonder if any Titan reps still stalk these forums? If so, I'd ask them to log on and attempt to defend that nonsense.

eBay-wise, Tonya and the gang are dangerously close to the rule against circumvention of fees, too. I wouldn't be surprised if a few people report them.

What about it Tonya? Tonya's dad? Anyone else? Explain how the post office seems to have a set of rules just for you, please.

Xaxaxe wrote:That's just galactically insulting and stupid.

I wonder if any Titan reps still stalk these forums? If so, I'd ask them to log on and attempt to defend that nonsense.

eBay-wise, Tonya and the gang are dangerously close to the rule against circumvention of fees, too. I wouldn't be surprised if a few people report them.

What about it Tonya? Tonya's dad? Anyone else? Explain how the post office seems to have a set of rules just for you, please.

you know what X, just for the sake of it, when i get back from work tonight, thats just what i am going to do. i am going to contact the US postal service outright and ask them, and then when i get an answer, i am going to bombard ebay with a list of complaints just for the hell of it. this has really got me pissed and its bang out of order.

Al

Well this crap comes as really no surprise to me.  Titan has officially made a business practice of lying and I will show you why here in a minute.  I hadn't mentioned this before partly because I partially blamed myself for dealing with the devil, despite promising myself to never do so again, but when I see stuff like this I am compelled to finally share it anyway.

I made the mistake of actually trying to buy from Titan through their non-Ebay website store a few months ago(back in early April) because I was bored one day, I thought that I had found a few good deals and by finding these good deals I figured that I was taking money out of Titan's hands by buying stuff from them cheaper than it normally would sell for.  Boy was I ever wrong.  At the time I put in an order for a total of 10 items.  Here is the list of the items, their "listed" conditions and the prices I paid for them (this is a direct cut and paste from my confirmation email from Titan typos and all of which I can post the full contents of if anyone is really interested):

• A Paladin in Hell New In Shrinkwrap $15 USD
•  1 C3 - The Lost Island of Castanamir NearMint $10 USD
•  1 Country Sites New in shrinkwrap $10 USD
•  1 Crypt of Lyzabdred the Mad New In shrinkwrap $10 USD
•  1 GWA2: the Overlord of Bonparr NearMint $8 USD
•  1 The Doomgrinder New In shrinkwrap $10 USD
•  1 X10: Red Arrow, Black Shield NearMint $40 USD
•  1 Polyhedron 28 NearMint $5 USD
•  1 Best of Dragon Magazine Volume V NearMint $5 USD
•  1 Best of Dragon Magazine Volume V NearMint $5 USD

Now start off with the simplest mistake first, assuming it was even a mistake in the first place and not an attempt to get me to buy something I did not order, they included an extra item in with my stuff that I didn't order an item called Gateways No. 3 for $5.  

Now this is where the real fun begins.  For the priveledge of having Titan ship these 11 items(1 of which I didn't order) in a USPS Priority Mail Flat Rate box, which at the time was still shipping for $8.10 with $0.50 shipping confirmation for a total of $8.60, I paid the sum of $16.65. Thats right, I paid almost twice what it cost them to sent the stuff to to me. Before anyone thinks this extra $8.05 might have gone towards great packing with tons of bubble wrap, tape packaging popcorn or what not, let me tell straight up it did not.  My stuff was tossed in the box loose with a couple of pieces of crumpled up newspaper.  Now as ridiculous as it was that I paid twice what it cost them to ship it to me, it wouldn't have bothered me that much if the items that I ordered where actually in the condition that they claimed they were on-line, which to say that a some of them weren't in the condition that they stated would perhaps be the understatement of the year.  Rather than re-type everything again, here is the full text of the email that I sent them when I recieved my items in the mail(as a note Colleen is/was Titan's on-line sales manager at the time of my purchase):

bclarkie wrote:Hi Colleen,

I am writing you to let you know that I received my
items today and to say that I am extremely
disappointed would be an understatement.  Of the 11 items
that I received I have the following issues:

 1) I received a  C3 - The Lost Island of Castanamir
(item #146547) for $10 that was listed in "Near Mint"
condition that not only has substantial cover wear,
but it also has a sticker on the front cover and large brown
stains on almost every single page through out it.

 2) I received a X10: Red Arrow, Black Shield (item
#135974) for $40 listed in "Near Mint" condition that
not only has substantial cover wear, but it is also
missing the large fold out map and half of the
cardstock counters that it is supposed to come with.

3) I received a Polyhedron 28 (item #1468420) listed
in "Near Mint" condition that is not only beat to hell
and back, but it also has a large brown stain on the
back cover and it is missing 22 of its 32 pages(Yes 22
PAGES!!!)

In addition I also received an item that I never even
ordered (I missed it in your confirmation email) which
is:

146840 1 Gateways No. 3 NearMint $5 USD

Of the other items I received I would say that they
were Okay, but calling some of these items "New" is
stretching it to say the least.  On top of that, I
also paid $16.65 for the priviledge to have these "Near
Mint" items shipped to me and it cost you guys $8.10
to actually ship it me, which is making me even more
angry.  In over 8 years of on-line buying, I am not
sure if I have ever felt as "ripped-off" as I am
feeling right now.  I would like to work out a return
on several of these items for a full refund at the
very least.  Please let me know how you would like to
proceed.

Thanks,
Brian

Now to note the other items being *okay* but not "new" in my email I was alluding to were the 3 shrinkwrap items.  All 3 of those items were still in shrinkwrap, although they had several shrinkwrap tears on them and reflected some cornerwear and edgewear because of it.  So in total 6 of the 10 items that I order were wrongly described, 3 of which were grossly mis described.  

Anyway, moving on you would have thought that with the litany of errors that they had already compiled in my email, that she would have taken on a conciliatory tone with me in her response email right? WRONG!! Quite the opposite and as a matter of fact she took it as an opportunity to flat out lie to me in her response about their S&H fees.  Here is full unaltered text (except for the highlighted portion about the shipping fees that I want to draw attention to) of the return email that I received from her:

Tight Ass Games Lying Sales Manager wrote:Mr. Clark,
I'm very sorry that the items you received did not meet your expectations.  TitanGames.com does have a full money back guarantee, so please send us back the items that you do not want to keep and we will credit your Visa card the full amount.  
Again, our apologies for the discrepancy.
As for the item you stated you did not order, I took that directly from the online form that you filled out.  I'm forwarding it to you so you can see what I got the information from.  If you do not wish to keep this item, we will take a return on that as well, as long as it is sent back in the same condition.
Lastly, the shipping cost.  Our shipping and handling cost includes not just the cost of postage but also the handling of the package.  We pay a puller .50 to gather each item you order, a packer .50 per item packed and the postal clerk $2.00 for each package.  When you figure that on an order of 11 items, we actually charge less for the postage than what the USPS charges us.*****  I'm sorry that you feel you were charged an excess amount for shipping, but we have to try to at least cover our costs.  There is quite a bit of labor associated with getting your order to you in a timely manor.
Please do accept our apologies for not meeting your expectations.  If there is anything else we can do, please let me know.

Regards,

Colleen Botkin
Online Sales Manager

***** That's right she actually had the F**KING BALLS to tell me in her return email that they charge me less than the USPS charges them.        My God, how stupid of me, they gave me a discount and I was just too stupid to realize it!!!!!!    

This of course all after I received a bunch of items that several of which I received were flat out garbage.  Now needless to say, I turned from a very unhappy customer to furious one.  Again rather than re-type everything again, here is my scathing return email to her word for word in which I point out the fact that she is lying to me:

bclarkie wrote:Hi Colleen,
  I will be returning the aforementioned listed items
via USPS Media First thing Monday morning.  I will
tell you though that even using your convoluted and
untrue method of justifying your outrageous handling
costs is not going to fly with me,  I have been doing
this far to long.

First off and foremost, whatever you pay your
employees to do their job has absolutely nothing to do
with what the USPS charges you to ship.  I am not
aware of any extra fees that the USPS may charge a
large shipping venue such as yourselves over actual
postage, but I plan on looking into it when I head to
the PO on Monday.  Being that I find it extremely hard
to believe that they charge large outfits a larger
amount then they do individuals(thats how business in
the real world works usually, large orders typically
net a discounted rate, NOT a more expensive one), I
will be very surprised to find out differently.  I
will be even more surprised if they charge at a rate
that is almost 33% more than individuals pay to ship
things.

In addition to that, even if taking what you say at
face value that the USPS is charging a $2.00
additional charge, that means the post office charges
YOU $10.10, not $16.65. One package at $8.10 + one
extra amount $2.00= $10.10 the last time I checked.
So please do not compound an already extremely tenuous
situation with more lies, stating that the USPS
actually charges more than I actually pay, as that is
patently ridiculous and I am not that stupid.  I am
not sure if this normally works on you unhappy
customers but it will not work on me.

Since I will be mailing this package with tracking, I
expect to be reimbursed within a few days of you
receiving the package back and also with my own
"handling" fees of $10.

Your anticipated cooperation in this matter is
appreciated.

Brian

Now I should also point out that later on after I sent this email, I confirmed with the USPS website that what she told me about the $2.00 fee was also a blatant lie.  The USPS does charge businesses a pick-up fee(assuming that Titan is even using this service at all, which based on the BS I have already been told is seriously in doubt.   ) of $10 per day not $2.00 per package.  It doesn't matter how many packages that a business ships out on that day, its a flat $10.  That means that if Titan ships out as few as 20 packages a day, which based on the fact that they opperate both their Ebay store(s) and website stores together is a gross under estimate, they are paying at most an extra $0.50 for my package to picked up.    

So the last response that I received was from Marcus King.  Here that is:

Titan Games Owner wrote:Since I will be mailing this package with tracking, I
expect to be reimbersed within a few days of you
receiving the package back and also with my own
"handling" fees of $10.

Your anticipated cooperation in this matter is
appreciated.

Brian
Brian:  I am sorry you are upset.  We will, of course, refund your purchase, and cover your return postage.  If you think I should cover a $10 handling fee for you, I will.

Again, sorry you are upset.  That was not my intent.  Colleen was merely attempting to explain to you our S&H costs, not trying to cheat you.   This will be our last transaction, I am sure, as angry as you appear to be - but, please accept my apology for upsetting you.

If you had included a phone number with your order, I would have called to offer you several other alternatives.  Such as a $30 refund, and you keep the items, instead of returning them at all, thus eliminating your need to reship anything.  I don't know if that would have been to your liking, but at this point - with you being so upset, I feel it is best if you return anything you are not satisfied with, even if that is the entire order.

Thanks

Marcus King

Needless to say this was far too little far too late. I never returned his email because I was still so pissed that it likely would have been filled with lots of hate and profanity. Titan did refund me the $60 for the return items, but they still saw fit to pork me on my own return shipping costs and also the $10 fee I had demanded.  At that point though, I was just happy enough that they refunded me the $60 and took the rest as a daily dose of learning experience from Titan Games, although I fully understand that its that type of attitude that they prey on in the first place.  

I can assure you though that I will never even look at Titan's website again and if anyone asks me about them, I am likely to just direct them to this post and tell them to avoid them like Duke likes to say, "Like an infected hooker".  Its probably also worth mentioning that we should be more proactive in getting the word out about them and encouraging people to tell others about them and there practices, kind of like we do with the Coug.

"We pay a puller .50 to gather each item you order"
   

Always get shipping costs up front, particularly from a seller like Titan.



Once in a while I go nuts and buy some low-end items from Titan.



I figure the excessive shipping charges as part of my total per-item cost.



Titan has even stated this before....they offer low price, but not a break on shipping, in order to keep their margin up.



On the items that I purchase, condition has not been an issue.  If I were buying higher end collectibles, it might be.



Given the fact that Titan claims to pay people to do their shipping for them, it seems like they might ship faster.  (Their "puller" and "clerk" and "packager" are probably all the same person...Colleen herself, probably.)  The idea that they pay a postal clerk $2.00 per package is just plain silly.  They don't mean a US Postal Service employee.  They mean their own "postal clerk."



I would imagine that the way Titan does shipping is that Colleen is a contract employee, who is paid entirely through shipping charges...reducing the hassles for their store staff and allowing them to sell more bulk on ebay.  She probably works one or two days per week.



Titan always sends me a tracking number within a couple days...but their shipping time is always long compared to others in the same region.  Three weeks is pretty standard, really...sometimes more.



I think they make some of their errors on condition through haste.  They glance at a cover and post a listing...with a generous eye.  That would be the only thing that could explain 22 out of 32 pages missing.  Not even Titan is that brazen.  They probably bet as a business model that only about 1-2% of buyers will object.



Always get Titan's shipping cost in advance.



Mark  

Tharizdun wrote:"We pay a puller .50 to gather each item you order"
   

I guess the good news is that they pay their instore puller/packer only 50% of what they pay their Ebay puller/packer.