Direct2Drive Avis 

(Note: This review is for games bought in March 2010 and March 2011. I have not had any experience with the site since then)

I have bought two games here, downloaded, paid for and installed without trouble. Direct2Drive was also the cheapest on the market with these games. (I bought RIFT and The Witcher 2)

Luckily, I have not had to deal with their customer service. It sounds like it's the CS that is responsible for all these bad ratings.

To future buyers: Do not just look at the total rating, rather look at the individual reviews. Some 1-stars are simply because people cannot find out how to download or install a game.

In my case, the company provided what I need, which is a game download. Cheaper than the rest of the market, too. I do not see the big problem here.

I tried ordering Tropico reloaded from this site. Was my first attempted purchase there. When I checked out the system told me my card couldn't be processed and they did not give me the game I ordered. Went to my cards website to find out why and saw that direct2drive had charged me for the amount of the game! I have been waiting for a response from them for a couple days now. Even went to ignsupport as well and opened a ticket there too. Still haven't heard anything. I really want the game or my money returned!! They seem nearly impossible to get hold of. I'm very disappointed with this company. :(

I have re-downloaded the installation for Fable 3, 4 times using their download manager. I only used their download manager because no browser download for Fable 3 was even available. Once downloaded, and the installation launcher opens, I click install only to receive an error to insert disk 3. FAQ says this error happens because when installing through the web browser, not when the download manager is used. Customer service keeps telling me to check FAQ even though I tell them it isn't helping. The fact that they do not have phone support is rediculous to me. From now on I will check the site throughout, before purchasing. I let me excitement get the better of me.

Bottom line I paid for a product, and what I received was more or less broken. I would like a browser based link provided so I can download and install my game using the directed solution they have provided.

Incident:111031-006693

Bought 2 games from D2D and it's been a good experience. Once i got the download to start (i used comrade as couldn't get it to work otherwise) it was plain sailing. Downloaded and installed BF3 in around 4 hours, not bad for a game of that size.
I would thoroughly recommend them and find it difficult to understand the huge list of negative comments (which is why i've posted here to try to give some balance). I used them for BF3 as they were cheaper than amazon.co.uk and .fr (i live in France)

I'LL NEVER DO BUSINESS WITH D2D AGAIN. SUPPORT GOES OUT OF ITS WAY TO REPLY TO NOTHING I'VE COMPLAINED ABOUT. THERE HAS BEEN NOTHING DONE TO GET MY PURCHASE RUNNING CORRECTLY, NOT ONE SINGLE TIME HAS SUPPORT TRIED TO HELP ME, AND I WANT A REAL TECH THAT KNOWS WHAT HE'S DOING, NOT THESE PRE-SCHOOLERS YOU HAVE TRIED TO PAWN OFF ON ME. OR REFUND MY MONEY IMMEDIATELY.
STEVE PARKER

I buy the game Sims 3 Town Life on the mac version on July 30, 2011. The game doesn't want to work and I do not understand why. It is installed but i can't play. I send a message to the customer service the same day and I have not always had a response. I can belive tha't a pay 20$ and can not play, or even call for help. Website stupid !!!!!!

Ticket #: 2833-8533791

I opened a ticket with customer service on 6/26 and still no response as of today, 7/5. Hard to give them a good rating based on their lack of response. I certainly will not purchase from them again.
Ticket #: 2833-8525121

Take note of this companies overall low rating, and look at the number of complaints and excuses given on this page. Personally had a bad experience, £15 lost to game I couldn't get to work, I had not activated this game and felt asking for a refund/exchange was not unreasonable. Customer service quick to respond to electronic only customer service, but unable to offer the help required.
Order Reference Number : 10006-6286104

Have purchesed several titles through D2D.No billing issues and everything that I should have gotten,I did.Web-support,when it was needed was realitively fast and correct.

(the one issue I had was due to a demo version conflicting with the d2d version)

Pricing is per the norm.A greater variety of seasonal sales than steam,and sometimes gets things quicker than steam.

Attempted to place an order with direct2drive.co.uk, however encountered the same telephone authorisation problem others have encountered here.

I contacted the Customer Services department and as per other users, received a response after about 4 hours. They stated what the authorisation was required for (manual review to confirm account is genuine and valid) and informed me they had activated my account at their end after checking my details.

Unfortunately the price had since gone up for the item I wanted. After a couple more messages explaining the situation, I received a response within a similar timescale. They very kindly credited the difference in price to my account.

As the sale had ended and without authorisation being cleared for my account, there was no trace I had previously tried to place this order, so direct2drive would well have been within their rights to state they could not honour the original price, so the credit was greatly appreciated.

I understand that a chat forum would be quicker to deal with these queries but considering this is an IGN owned service (and the support is probably run from limited sites for all global queries), I’m pretty sure query levels are quite high and I’d rather wait 4 hours for an email/ticket response than spend 20mins online waiting for someone to become available.
The 4 hour response time is more than acceptable for an online query and end-to-end my query was dealt with, more than to my satisfaction, within 12 hours.

Overall, very pleased with the experience I’ve had with direct2drive, will be using again and would recommend to others with the caveat of just being clear if raising a ticket query is required and advising just a little patience.

I went to buy and download the sims 3, put in a landline verification phoneline...said that it couldn't be processed please contact customer services so tried again, still the same thing. Now im worried I am going to be charged 3 times for a game i havent even got!!! ticket number 2833-8520786

Firstly Direct2Drive, please don't bs. You can't use a UK mobile phone, mine is on am 18 month contract, and has been for 9 months, yet my phone verification failed twice, so please don't come out with that spiel about 'mobiles being accepted as long as they are not prepaid'. I entered it twice to check, firstly missing off the 0, (as you added +44) and then as normal with the zero. I don't know if this has charged me twice as there is no info, or anyone to speak to.
The customer service is the worst I've ever encountered! It beats even Student Finance -notorious in the UK. There is no other option than email, and it takes forever.
Meaningful information is non existent on the site.
I can't even find out if my card has been charged, there is no one to talk to.
This is hilarious as all through the site users are told 'they are covered' and directed to customer service. Covered? haha. If you call waiting hours for a response covered than you are frankly mad.
The fact that purchases are so confusing, time consuming and errored along with crap steam-age customer service is oxymoronic to concept of 'direct to drive'. It would have been quicker for me to get a bus to town and spend a few hours searching for the classic game I wanted. Don't use Direct 2 Drive. It's useless.

Without trying to go into an irrelevant rant about my own outstanding issue in attempting to purchase a game today, I just want to provide a bit of user experience feedback about the nature of the payment/customer service system. I will note that this is for the UK section of the site. Though back when I lived at home in the states, I did try this service once which, for an entirely different reason, had to go through the same slow and cumbersome customer service system, when I rarely ever have to do so for any other shopping experience!

First of all, for payment, they require phone verification with a LANDLINE. In the 21st century, this is not very practical. I haven't had a landline phone since I left my parents house after college, the same with just about every one I know and this has to be a trend with people younger than I.

Secondly, the error messages really need to be more clear. If the verification of some aspect of the process failed, please explain. Nobody wants to see a cryptic message like "we could not validate your transaction. Please contact customer service to complete your purchase." Is it communicating with my bank? Paypal (I've tried many payment methods forms) My account? Was my phone number not formatted correctly? Is it an internal error? The system has immediately made a decision about why something like a phone number didn't work, please enlighten us to what it was so we may have less aggravation. The ratings for this company aren't stellar even on this site, so if people are frustrated with customer service and errors, it may help to provide more information so the whole process isn't mysterious and unsatisfying.

When you finally get to the customer service system (for which you need to register an entirely new account) it is very buggy. The resulting form fields do not always carry the same information (if any) over, so you may have to add additional comments to make up for the system errors.

At this point, my own issue is still open - (2833-8496888) it was only today but even if they do answer within 12 or 24 hours, my question is only in what other retail environment is it acceptable to take this long to make a purchase? Especially one that is predicated upon instant gratification of direct download of games...

After many hundreds of terrabytes of downloads, through routers, firewalls and even windows defender. I have resumed broken downloads from hundreds of low quality servers without issue. My first try with a 7.7 gig DL from D2D onto my laptop for a PC I was building failed usually between 2 and 4 gigs. I would get a 'no mirror available' error. After a few dozen resumes you get a corrupted file. What does customer support have to say? Despite the fact that their server seems to support resuming what they actually tell you to do in the event of a broken download is to erase the partial file and start over. So it's a server that supports resuming running a service that doesn't support resuming. So I go to the new system, it's only got windows 7 home. NOTHING else. Disable windows firewall and Defender. Direct hookup to the cable moden, no router, nothing. Even rebooted everything. According to D2D customer service this is the BEST way to download. NOW my downloads fail at the 20 MEG point of a 7.7 gig download. What else do I have to do? Check which direction the wind is blowing? Make some pagan sacrafice? The more of their advice I take the worse things get. I have ZERO faith in this outfit. Never have I had this much trouble downloaded from ANYWHERE, and the no resume resumable server is just a bad joke! Where did they get this equipment? Did some 3rd world country throw it in the garbage and these idiots (who claim affiliation with FOX news) pluck it out and foist it off on a unsuspecting public? I can see with some really small games how this might work, but with such a delicate server I'd never recommend it to anyone, especially anyone looking for larger games. Another review said it best.. Just go out to the store and buy it.. Look on $bay if you want, you'll get better and more reputable service.. AND FASTER!

Direct2Drive=Dud.

I once bought the Sims 3 off of Direct2Drive for my mac. My mac had had all the right specs so it should have worked just fine, except it didn't. The game was incredibly glitchy and slow. So I emailed a complaint to them. There reply was that they couldn't refund me, and if I wanted to fix my game I would have to go through EA. So currently I am trying to unsuccessfully fix my game while Direct2Drive stole my money.

First off, this company's customer service is atrocious. They want to pretend like their internet only CS system is for our benefit, and it's much more thorough than a phone call because it can be referenced later - this is bull crap, its an excuse to save money by not offering a call service which is faster, more efficient, and doesn't leave a potential customer waiting.
I made 1 purchase without much difficulty, and if that is all you are going to do, this site might be for you. But trying to purchase my second game I ran into a whole slew of errors. All 3 methods for payment that they support stopped working for me, I had to make a second account, and even that account was bugged and messed up. Their vaunted Customer Service has taken upwards of 4+ hours to give one response that a phone call, IM, or chat room would have solved in less than 2 minutes.
Ticket 2833-8487009

Poor customer service from Direct2Drive...

I purchased a discount code for $20 off of a video game; however, please note Direct2Drive used the term discount code which apparently is not the same as the typical gift card/code/credit. A normal gift card/code/credit is like cash, but only for that related store. You can use coupons and other codes in addition to the gift card/code/credit.

I was not able to use use the discount code with a promotional code for 20% off during Presidents Day weekend.
The terms for the discount code did not state anything about not being able to stack with promotions.
There are also no terms regarding stacking of codes on Direct2Drive's website.

I spoke with with a customer service representative which simply stated the codes cannot be combined on a single purchase.
I replied asking for wording on where it states they cannot be combined and presented my argument on how a $20 discount code should be like a gift card.
My comment was escalated to a Lead Technical Specialist, which only stated they cannot be combined. She chose to completely ignore my request to show the terms of using codes on Direct2Drive's website.

After pushing the matter further, Direct2Drive finally issued a refund and closed my account.
They also tried to retain me as a customer with a $20 credit on my next order, but why would I do business with a company like this?
The extent I had to push was threaten that I would start a credit card dispute, file complaints with the state Attorney General, the FTC, and IGN Entertainment Inc.
Again customer service with this place is abysmal and the terms are ambiguous.

Update:
I know I said I did not want to do business with this company anymore, but the complimentary game offer from IGNChristine really shows the effort IGN is doing to address my unique situation.
With this level of customer service I have updated my review and give my thanks to IGNChristine for turning this issue right side up!

Was able to easily find the game I was looking for in addition to a coupon code for the holidays.

Check out was smooth and easy. Very impressed with their security measures where they call with a validation code to input into the website; wont find that kind of security in many places.

Couldn't pay for a game with American Express due to an error saying "unable to save credit card" or smth like that. Really unconvenient.

First, just trying to normally add the Rift preorder to my cart gives "Bad Request - Invalid Verb HTTP Error 400. The request verb is invalid", and I have to remove all my cookies to have it stop giving an error. Then, once I finally figure out how to trick the system into actually letting me add the game to my cart and check out, they require my phone number (very odd, but I can live with it), and when I try and submit it I am IMMEDIATELY presented with an error, saying go to support.direct2drive.com to get help, and that page won't load at all. I try and go through the process two more times, and now I can't even pay with Paypal anymore, because I tried 3 times and it failed when it wasn't even my fault! Like an earlier review said, I'm surprised this site is operated by an actual company and not some guy out of his basement, because stuff like this is amateur and unacceptable.

Garbage site, can't even get customer service because their site is so trash. I'll enjoy giving my money to any other site but this one now and in the future. I suggest anyone looking at direct2drive instead consider Steam, which actually functions promptly and has customer service that's actually reachable.

20% off all titles, none of which you can purchase because of their busted system. Happy President's Day.