How life changed in my city since the refugee crisis of 2015 and the Ukraine war of 2022

Just to make sure, this article is just my opinion and based on my experience of the city of Mannheim where I live. This doesn’t necessarily mean it is the same way in smaller of larger cities in Germany.

As a little background, I was raised with zero emphasis on foreigners, to consider them different or deal with them different than my own people wasn’t even a consideration or topic in our household, so I grew up with zero pre-judgement or stereotypes against other cultures, religions, whatsoever.

I was also a witness of one of the refugee trains arriving in Frankfurt On The Main Central Railway Station back in 2015, I was standing a few tracks away and witnessed the whole arrival procedure of the refugees and how they have been welcomed by individuals and refugee help organizations, given care packages, etc.
It was – for a person raised as open-minded as I am – a moment that gave back faith into humanity and that one can do good to others and just being human.

That being said, I also witnessed a few moments of frustration of my fellow Germans when e.g. in a refugee camp, somebody got into a fight and got his shoulder broken, however in the hospital’s emergency section, the nurses couldn’t speak any English, so it was a bit of a troublesome process to get things sorted out.

A few years further, I also witnessed a situation where I was in the queue of the DB Travel Center, and the person behind the counter’s mood degrees by the minute as the person before me couldn’t understand neither German, nor English.

In my daily life, I more and more came across people who would try to deliver a Hermes parcel to the neighbor, groceries or food, just to be approached by the question: “Do you speak English?”.

Who knows me well, knows that 99% of everything I am doing on the internet is in English, I also communicate with friends abroad on a daily basis.

Yet, at first I came across moments where both of us would be standing in front of my door trying to sort things out in German as I am used to do that in my life outside of the internet, just to have the realization afterwards “Perhaps I should have asked if the person speaks English, could have been so much easier”.

Nowadays, I come across more and more people who do not understand a single word of German, and now here comes the shocking realization: It does not really matter!

Why it doesn’t, you ask? Because of both parties are fluent enough in English, it’s just working as well, and even better than beating around the bush by using German which the other person doesn’t fully grasp.

I’d rather deal with somebody in English, than sitting in a Flixbus arriving from Luxemburg where the destination is written on in a language I don’t speak and the driver doesn’t speak any common language with the people he transports and is responsible for.
How do I know? Because it has happened to me at a long distance bus station for myt trip from Mannheim to Frankfurt On The Main Airport, and I didn’t feel safe knowing if anything is happening to the bus, his French is wasted on me.

The flood of immigrants forced us to be more flexible, and realize, while it might be not something for me to be only living in a bubble, because I do not speak the language of the society I am living in, learning German is not for everybody.

Be kind and considerably to each other.

Nacon and their Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Collectors Edition pre-orders

As many others I did pre-order the Test Drive Unlimited Solar Crown Collector’s Edition and was granted 2 free games on top. I had picked 2 Steam games in this regard.

The confirmation was in German, the subject line was in French which I already found wild in itself.

According to the email, the Steam keys should be automatically being sent to me, once 2 weeks after the purchase have passed.

First, I emailed the tech support of Nacon asking if I can get the keys earlier than that if I agree a waver to my EU right to cancel the purchase within 2 weeks.

I was told to email to different email addresses instead, and after writing to both, neither received a reply, nor did I receive the keys 2 weeks after my purchase.

Calling the German customer support number resulted in telling me I can only reach the game purchase department via a email by using their contact form.

Done so, no reply either. I did complain to the tech support email address, just to receive the same email address again which nobody replied to.

I did contact BigBen which is the head company of Nacon, no reply.
I did contact Nacon via LinkedIn, no reply.

After over 4 weeks of being ignored and nobody willing to help, today, I  was so pissed about the lack of assistance, I was calling the bigben HQ in France and fortunately the front desk told me there is a direct support number for digital game purchases via +33 969397959

I called them and it turns out the German email confirmation of the Test Drive Solar Crown pre-order is wrong, as it falsely says it would ship the Steam codes 2 weeks after my purchase, while instead it should say the Steam codes will be sent 2 weeks after the physical  Test Drive Solar Crown limited edition has physically been shipped.

Furthermore, I was told the reason why I received no reply in 4 weeks from neither  assistance.nacon@games.fr  nor vpcgames@bigben.fr, is simply, the fact, that they are overwhelmed by the sheer amount of emails so they are not able to answer them.

I was told, the better email to use would be support@nacongaming.zendesk.com

That a huge company like Nacon neither can word emails correctly (even the auto-reply tech support email is riddled with errors as mentioned before) nor has enough staff to answer emails is a big shame.

I’m expecting better from you.

I was really close to open a buyer protection with PayPal due to the lack of (proper)  communication 

It should not require your customer to google phone numbers and call the HQ of Big Ben in France to get working phone numbers with people who actually want to help.

I worked in the field of customer support myself for many years for 3 companies, and if a customer sent an inquiry to the wrong department, we would just forward them ourselves, instead of handing out email addresses knowingly being aware that they will never ever receive a reply.

Shame on you, Nacon.

By continuing to use the site, you agree to the use of cookies. more information

The cookie settings on this website are set to "allow cookies" to give you the best browsing experience possible. If you continue to use this website without changing your cookie settings or you click "Accept" below then you are consenting to this.

Close