Be wary of CDKeys

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I had used them on and off before,and had been fine. I bought a game key a few weeks ago,for something which was released in the last week. It never came - so queried their CS a few days ago. No answer outside an automated E-mail. Waited 24 hours,asked what was happening. Used social media to contact them no answer,and then looked on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/hashtag/cdkeys?lang=en

LMAO,loads of people not receiving their keys,sometimes upto 4 days after a CS query,there was no answer!!

Then saw this:

Note: Due to a heavy influx of requests, we're expecting a response time of 24-48 hours to get back to you. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. Occasionally, there may be a situation where order confirmation emails take longer than usual to arrive. Kindly check your spam/junk folder. If there's no email even after 30 minutes passed, please raise a support request here. For faster resolution, raise only 1 support request. Sending in more requests or replying more than once to your unanswered request, will push your request further back in the queue, causing a delayed response. Be assured that our Customer Care team will reply ASAP. We truly appreciate your patience.

It seems they are having major issues now,so are having a heavy level of CS queries. That tells me they are not delivering keys.

So after two working days in Dubai(this is where they are located),I had no response and the key had been bought weeks ago. Then I decided to contact them via Paypal mediation. Waited another working day and nothing. So at this point I had used e-mail,social media and Paypal to contact them. The joke is before using Paypal to contact them they say it normally takes around 2 hours for a response. LMAO.

Then I had to escalate it to a claim and got my refund within a few hours.

So for the time-being be wary of them. You might get a key from them,you might not. Make sure you check Twitter.

Also if you have a problem,and they do ignore your CS query within 48 hours,just go straight to your payment provider.

Investigating this further it might be more with newer games.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

This is how bad it has gotten:

https://i.imgur.com/HpeLZGm.png
https://i.imgur.com/FFsqMqZ.png
https://i.imgur.com/Px4pAgH.png
https://i.imgur.com/YWh4LCb.png
https://i.imgur.com/Ro2Rceg.png
https://i.imgur.com/YodYbcY.png
https://i.imgur.com/23IOWEp.png
https://i.imgur.com/BZLCKiq.png
https://i.imgur.com/EGGsvDJ.png
https://i.imgur.com/MRxW4O7.png

Another one today:

We have been inundated with tickets with the releases in the last few days

Look at their Twitter replies:

https://twitter.com/cdkeyscom/with_replies

So after like 4 days they only answered social media queries!

It mirrors my own experience,it took nearly 4 days to force a refund.

That is terrible CS. When crap hits the fan,now you know they are useless.

They said the following:

Note: Due to a heavy influx of requests, we're expecting a response time of 24-48 hours to get back to you. We are sorry for the inconvenience caused. Occasionally, there may be a situation where order confirmation emails take longer than usual to arrive. Kindly check your spam/junk folder. If there's no email even after 30 minutes passed, please raise a support request here. For faster resolution, raise only 1 support request. Sending in more requests or replying more than once to your unanswered request, will push your request further back in the queue, causing a delayed response. Be assured that our Customer Care team will reply ASAP. We truly appreciate your patience.

We have been inundated with tickets with the releases in the last few days

That is over a period of 10 days. The affected games were still being sold during that period on their website too!!

However,this is what their "CS" looks like - rubbish.

Moral of the story,if they don't respond within 24 hours of a query,just go to your payment provider. Its most likely they are being "inundated" again.

PS:

I posted this elsewhere and I didn't realise internet fanism existed for companies selling games.LOL.

[Ferral]

I have only ever used them once before and the key I got for an older game at the time was showing as already used, didn't bother doing the CS thing with it only being around £2 but have never went back since.

I have found Instant Gaming worthwhile using, never had a problem with them at all and their prices are competetive, I discovered them a few year ago when Eurogamer had a banner ad up for them

https://www.instant-gaming.com/en/

There is also Greenman Gaming who are excellent, only once had an issue with them with a key saying it had already been used. Tokk them around 2 hours to sort it for me which is all good.

[philehidiot]

Cheers for the heads up.

[Andy00900]

Thats a shame, I've used them once or twice before and both were instant delivery. I always use Paypal on these sites luckily never had to request a refund through Paypal though.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

I posted this on OcUK,and it seems CDKeys has fans who rush to defend them and are having a go at people who are having the problems and blaming them,and saying it is fine for CDKeys to oversell keys. Its bloody hilarious - why should a company give a damn,if they have "fans" who defend shoddy CS. LMAO,there are "actual" fans of a games key reseller. That is a new one.

[peterb]

I posted this on OcUK,and it seems CDKeys has fans who rush to defend them and are having a go at people who are having the problems and blaming them,and saying it is fine for CDKeys to oversell keys. Its bloody hilarious - why should a company give a damn,if they have "fans" who defend shoddy CS. LMAO,there are "actual" fans of a games key reseller. That is a new one.

Or of course they might have had a good experience. Complainers tend to be a self selecting group in that people are more likely to complain about bad service (because it’s an exception) rather than praise good service because it’s the expected norm.

Labelling people as fans because they don’t support your view is a bit of a cheap shot (a bit like Android enthusiasts labelling iPhone users as ‘sheeple’ when many Android users exhibit similar behaviour/loyalty to their preferred OS and by indirect association, Google.)

[spacein_vader]

Shady grey-market key reseller has poor customer service.

I'm shocked.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Nvm.

[CAT-THE-FIFTH]

Shady grey-market key reseller has poor customer service.

I'm shocked.

CDKeys has a ton of online fans on tech forums,as people vouch by them as they are meant to be "brilliant",so I thought they were fine and they get pushed a lot on HUKD. They seem to sell it as a normal shop like GMG,etc - I hadn't realised they sell legit keys but from cheaper regions so grey market. They also seem to drop ship keys delving into things - many new titles must not have actual stock.

The worst thing is they had problems for certain titles,but kept selling them. So either there is some cashflow issue there and they are going in a downward spiral,or their internal organisation is really poor,and the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. Another person I know also got affected by these issues. Apparently it has happened before in recent times.

Like I said I only use them on and off(last time was two years ago),ie,I use Steam,GOG,HB,etc usually.

But it increasingly makes me think,whether the fans are self selecting for burying periods where they have problems like this.

It reminds me about certain structural problems with games - had one YouTube channel make some criticisms of The Witcher 3(which were valid and CDPR acted on it too),and they had legions of fans attack the channel(he took the video down),and then trying to blame the chap.Evidentally CDPR did agree with him in the end!

The same with microtransactions - legions of fans attacking commentators who made valid criticisms,who were then validated when companies pushed too far and regulators got involved.

I learnt my lesson. I also learnt the lesson about posting company problems on the internet especially regarding tech- people would rather troll the people affected,rather than question the company involved. It now is starting to explain many things in the tech world.

[peterb]

Having seen the pre-edited posts where it seems that any disagreement or alternative point of view receives a vitriolic attack with distorted facts (which fortunately were edited before I saw them) I am closing this thread before it descends any further into the ridiculous comments - regardless of the validity or otherwise of the original post.

I have no opinion on CDKeys - I have never used them or any similar site and never likely to but often if something seems too god to be true, it often is.

I am always wary about reviews/recommendation on sites like hot UK deals and similar simply because the authenticity of the poster can rarely be verified.

As always “caveat emptor” (let the buyer beware).