"You acted like a normal human under the condition of being treated unfairly.... So you remain banned even though the fault was ours."

Mistake 1: using flimsy evidence to ban someone Mistake 2: insisting that the ban is valid Mistake 3: holding the ban even after the person has been proven innocent And the big mistake: posting about it publically. *facepalm*

A boycott is a consumer's only recourse to legal but inappropriate corporate mistreatment. If a consumer feels slighted, there is nothing wrong with them requesting a response, expecting it in a timely manner, and calling for a boycott using facts if ignored or brushed aside. (Personally, I would have allowed 72 hours before moving to the next level.) To punish an otherwise powerless consumer for using facts to present their case to the greater community is further inappropriate corporate behavior. Businesses like this live and die by customer advocacy. They deserve to burn.

Normally I would side with a company in a situation like this, I work a customer care position and I am flooded with a huge amount of people who are mean just because it makes them feel good to take out their anger on an employee. However. The least they could have done is just un-ban him and keep an eye on him for 3 months to make sure he wasnt being toxic in the community. If he wasn't guilty of the original accusation. Say, "we sorry for the mistake we are trying to protect everyone in the community who is a constructive user" That being said. Have you seen DawnForgeCast's new video? He legit just quit roll20 after promoting them for years because him and 4 other youtubers wanted to promote the platform with a game and their response was, and I quote "We don't need 5 white guys as a promotion."

Nolan has done far worse things, this is nothing but the tip of the iceberg.

The correct and professional way to have handled it would have been to apologize for what was probably a legitimate mistake on roll20's part, and reinstate the user. If they felt he might be toxic, just keep the ban hammer handy and as soon as he steps out of line, THEN ban him. Getting upset because you were treated poorly by people you're giving money to is a pretty reasonable response.

Banned him incorrectly. Ignored his protestations of innocence, and worse, uses those protestations as cause to ban him anyway. So he should have stayed silent, and what? ...remained banned? WTH?!? So glad my group uses Fantasy Grounds, and that they actually care about customer service!

Point blank, these people at Roll20 don't understand customer service. Normally when someone makes a mistake, they apologize and admit the mistake and then RECTIFY THE SITUATION, not double down on it. Especially when it comes to paying customers. I have been thinking about switching from R20 anyhow since their sevice is shitty slow on weekend nights. I may now have more reason. The more I hear about this Nolan person, the more of a douche he sounds.

19k hours in abandoning roll20 over this. Ive paid for multiple subs but this is the end of my support of the company

You should look at DawnforgedCast's video talking about Roll20. Him and four other KZfaqrs approached them to sponsor a new game they were going to run and upload, and they said "We don't need five white guys" representing them.

"we treated you wrong, you got angry. you reached to us, angry. this justifies how wrong we treated and are still treating you"

I was just about to use roll20 but I won't support these kinds of practices

I pulled my two games on Roll20 tonight. I'm not going to support this.

End Racism, end roll20.

I had just been coming around again to the idea of trying out Roll20; I had thought about it previously, but I abandoned the idea as it was around the time that NolanT had made the comment about women only games were fine, but if you had men only games you were sexist and Roll20 didn't want you using their service. At that time, I didn't know that he was a co-founder; the fact that he is, and is responsible for this latest dumpster fire, has finally cemented my decision not to use their product. I'll be looking at FG again; I had some of their early products and was largely pleased with them at the time, and I've been hearing good things about FG and the Devs for it.

RIP Roll20. Resistance is victory.

Wow! I have to admit I'm only slightly surprised. I went to a Roll20 panel at Gen Con. They gave off a ... immature (???) vibe to me. :(

Not only does Roll 20 have terrible customer service, they are also a racist organization.

Deleting everything i'ts not about the money, it's about to send a message.

Well... at least I have a good name for random idiot npc’s. Noland.

Nice reporting on this by the way. Nolan handled this twice in the wrong way. 1:He should had made sure before banning the person that it was truly the same person he thought it was. Better to be correct than to punish someone who did not do anything wrong. 2: He should had come right out and said "I screwed up!". I know I would be more inclined to give the guy a break for owning up to it. But now he's just cost himself a business.

7:55. No, absolutely not. Nolan is the toxic one. ApostleO was not out of line in the way he responded. Nolan deserved to be treated the way he was treated, especially in light of the fact that it’s coming out that he has a history of behaving this way.

I was lucky enough to be browsing Reddit when I saw apostleo's big post a few hours after posting it and I looked into it. This could have literally just been avoided by Nolan checking the IP *FIRST*

I was going to use roll20 but I wont now.

Dont play there only know of it. But strictly business he is a paying customer did nothing wrong and got banned, i get that if he plays a lot and u get banned for no reason i would like to get an answer and there not responding or checking anything... The admin was clearly wrong and did not handle the situation correctly. I dont blame the guy for posting on social media appartly thats the only way they will respond i mean 3 days for costumerservice come on

Bad Customer Service can destroy a company. ApostleO had a problem, and tried to get it fixed. When he was ignored, he escalated his attempts to get things fixed. Customer Service would not help, and got upset that someone would dare to be offended by their lack of reasonable response. ApostleO outed them for their actions. ApostleO deleted his account as he does not want to do business with a company that has mistreated him.

He gave them money, was wrongfully banned, and then no effort was made to contact him for, quite literally, days. Threatening to blast them for bad customer service because they went silent for days after jumping to conclusions with out getting proper evidence and not caring since they already had his money? Not toxic. How do you think someone would react at a brick and mortar store if they bought a bad product and then couldn't find any employees to provide customer service? Couldn't find any, for literally, days? That's no way to run a business. Roll20 should apologize. Had this been a product complaint to a retailer during Christmas or some other rush time, then sure, maybe.. but there's just no excuse, I'm sorry. This Apostle guy is 100% in the clear on this.

I really don't think it's unreasonable to try and contact customer support once a day if you haven't received any word from them at all. The least a company can do is say "We've received this email, we're looking into this, please allow us (time) to resolve this matter." That's all they had to say. At any given point anyone involved with roll20 could have said "we're going to check in with this, we're gonna confirm some things, for the time being we're going to keep the status as it is until we get confirmation from Reddit about the IP addresses"

How hard would have been to reply to the guy so who knows it's being looked into? Of course he had to escalate.

Roll20 has a bad reputation among a lot of people for how they handle things.

The guy who got banned didn't get any where near toxic until this Nolan guy got all high and mighty and refused to give the Roll 20 customer the benefit of the doubt. This Nolan guy is going to ruin Roll 20 if someone doesn't rein him in and make him apologize to the customers he has treated like crap.

As something of an outsider (used Roll20 a few times, only recently gotten heavy into D&D,) it seems pretty undeniable that Roll20 was completely in the wrong. You ban people for violations of terms of service, not because you decide you don't like them, or you choose to believe they will at some point somehow in the future maybe do toxic stuff. Seriously, this is kinda Business & PR 101. That they took such a hard stance and tried to justify it, to the point of destroying the very forum they allegedly wanted to protect, is just more evidence to me that these people don't deserve to remain in business in an industry that so closely interacts with the public.

I spent the good part of about half an hour just goign though the comment thread replying to Nolan"s response and didn't even get to the end of it, so I came to YT to see if anyone had compiled some info during the time it was going down. Personally, I like to think of this situation as factual proof that having a subreddit that is kept by devs that don't censor you, but take proper criticism is beyond a blessing at this point. While it wasn't what I looking for (since I wanted a deeper take on the situation), it was a pretty good video, keep up the good work.

It was them that were in the wrong, and then they doubled down because HE GAVE THEM THE CHANCE TO MAKE AMMENDS before exposing their ineptitude, and that's toxic, apparently.

Not to mention the Nolan racism towards 5 white males

So as a person , who on occasion complains, I can see doing what Apostle O did. I think Roll20 is a business, with human employees who probably are not particularly good at their jobs, and are not interested in being yelled at. It takes about 10 positive reviews to drown out one complaint. Thats a truth in business. These complaints will never go away.....a restaurant would put up the under new management sign by now.

Once he said the previously banned account wasn't him the mod should have gone to reddit and checked the IP addresses of the accounts and let him know they were doing that so he knew where they were in the process.

negative 34,200 karma on that comment, the second most disliked post on reddit.

This is a ridiculous way to identify and ban someone for subverting ban policy, not even remotely close to acceptable behavior. This is something a kid would do on some minecraft server because he doesn't know what evidence is, not something a professional platform would ever do. I've heard far to many disturbing things about roll 20, i'm never sending them another penny until they prove without any doubt that they figured their shit out. I can't believe how incapable and unprofessional those roll20 staff are, they might be old but they are still children.

Deleted my account yesterday, I'll be looking for something else to play on, thank you.

The amount of posts from individuals who are leaving Roll20 due to this can be a cause of concern for Roll20. Many other individuals have stated the issues they have had with Roll20 as well. The customer service is abysmal and I for one can attest to that. I left them years ago and to this day I am still getting emails from them no matter how many times I unsubscribe. From the hours I have spent reading almost every post on 2 of the sub-reddits, Roll20 is about to have a mass exodus. There are other options available and they are not the end all be all VTT. As an SaaS, Roll20 needs to mind their P's and Q's if they want to stay in business. Nolan T. Jones needs to formally apologize to ApostleO and many others. Not just in reddit but, an actual video apology on twitch would be best. Or at least you tube. This situation is just the tip of the iceberg. Check out Taking20's video about other issues.

Time after time ive seen how roll20 run. Ive had a fair few bad experiences personally too. Im no longer using

Subbed up, I love your style of calm explanation

sorry.... the ban was EXTREMELY POOR customer service..... that level DOES get companies closed...

as a long time user and subscriber of roll20 I am really glad all this stuff is coming to light. I guess it's time for me to check out fantasy grounds.

"A customer has a complaint, roll charisma check". Rolls a 1.

this plus truth of how Roll20 treated the D&D KZfaqrs who do Save or Dice coming to light, I say Roll20 is in some deep dragon dung.

If Fantasy Grounds was smart, they'd run a fucking fire sale right meow. Take advantage

I think it is times like this when you need to have a dedicated community manager to act as a middle man between the moderation staff and the users. Cases like this can be quite common and the moderators will usually go with the ‘guilty until proven innocent’ stance because if they don’t they will let far more people get away with doing wrong by others. How both sides behaved was out of self interest but as a company I think Roll20 should have taken the initiative and had something or someone in place to help keep Apostle updated on their situation instead of leaving them in the dark. Banning someone on an assumption is foolish and wrong, maintaining the ban when they get upset is wrong. It was just a big collection of events that blew way out of hand.

This is why I tell all my friends never to play Roll20 and playing in person is much more fun anyway.

I don't agree with that reason to keep someone banned because it's dumb.

My DM made the switch to Fantasy Grounds about a month ago. We all love it! Looks great & runs smooth

My Roll20 of 6 years has now been cancelled and I am now using FantasyGrounds

Fantasy Grounds is nice if you want another subscription platform. Personally I love playing using Virtual Tabletop on Steam. We have virtual dice, minis, character sheets, etc. It's almost as good as playing in person. We use Discord for audio though. Just works slightly better. Plus no subscription required. It goes on sale every now and then. A four pack is very reasonable at that time.

Nolan T has been way more toxic in the past and now notable content creators are revealing their stories about him being blatantly racist and sexist. Wheres his ban? so ontop of everything roll20 is worse than hypocritical...

Such a shame. Roll20 should have just apologized once the IP facts came in. Instead they double downed. Roll20 really missed an opportunity to take a bad situation and make it better. This customer was clearly a promoter of their product, having been with them for so long. Instead Roll20 actually moved the customer from active promoter into the active detractor category. Also, they made it worse by not having a thick skin, and understanding the users frustration. I cant say I fault the user for planning to share his frustrations if it was not resolved. Its perfectly natural to share good experiences with friends, family and the public at large, this is what Facebook thrives from. Likewise, when you have bad experiences, you share those too. Its not diabolical at all...just how word of mouth works. I repeat, such a shame. Too bad they couldnt work it out. Shit happens, sometimes by our own hands...its how we respond to it that matters.

looks like im switching to fantasy grounds

Sounds to me like ApostleO was the victim of a toxic company/mod

Banned for sending so much requests the customers support employees had to pause their daily Netflix binge. Gosh some people can be really annoying, so unmindful.

The fact that he had only two posts should not have had any influence on the decision process, at all. The argument just makes Roll20 look weak. So effectively, one of the (indirect) reasons they banned him was a lack of engagement? Try to ignore irrelevant details when making decisions.

an example of "How not to conduct PR"

Thanks KZfaq algorithm

A toxic customer would have gone immediately to the public with a banning this unbelievably incompetently handled. The fact that he waited is more than enough proof to me that the fault here is entirely with Roll20.

If you cant wait for them to figure it out...if your that needy..something is wrong anyway...ban him...

The only thing they're controlling is damage control

I use roll20 because its the simplest way to get into a D&D game since my aria doesn't have anywhere or anyone I can throw dice with. Until a better site or program comes along that better facilitates creating and joining D&D games, I'll be using Roll20 but at least now its solidified in my mind to *never spend money on that shitty service.*

There is a simple answer to this. I have worked in customer service for over 10 years, anyone who has posted high may supersede my opinion(everyone else sorry but you have already been superseded). I am NOT a firm believer of, "The Customer is Always Right". THAT is a MARKETING cliche, not a business motto. That being said, if you are the business and you make a mistake then it is imperative to resolve the issue ASAP, otherwise, you look like you don't know what you're doing. The person that got banned did more than their due diligence to inform the company of their mistake. The business, understandably(considering today's level of technology), is suspicious. I get it, I've been on both ends. But customers tend to be entitled to certain things, some may act overly entitled, but customers of walmart should not have to be worried about being mugged in the aisles, they are entitled to that(should Walmart want to continue having customers). In a given situation you have to allow for some over the top responses, that is almost in the nature of a customer, ESPECIALLY returning ones. I am NOT saying bow to their wim, roll20 may ban whomever they choose, but they should understand that this is not an action that is always performed without a cost. Sometimes banning the wrong person can have a negative impact, this is such an occasion. Unfortunately, I feel the situation has gone too far for any advise but the simple fact is Roll20 should have apologized and ASKED THE CUSTOMER TO BARE WITH THEM WHILE THEY VERIFY HIS STATEMENT AND ANY PROOF THE CUSTOMER CAN PROVIDE WOULD HELP THEM RESOLVE THIS CASE SOONER. They should have known about the IP stuff considering they deal with the environment enough, they should have ALREADY performed this check prior to banning. This would have solved everything, now let's see how the dice fall :-p

I was interesting in signing up for this too, not now

I was looking at using roll20 but after this I have decided to use fantasy grounds instead so they lost at least one person who was going to be a new customer because of this.

Sounds like abuse of power. They should of sent a email notifying the individual that they're looking into it. The fault lies with the company for failure to communicate. 36 hours without a reply to a customers messages after maybe being ban unfairly and you wonder why someone is being toxic?

Was the original ban a genuine mistake or did Nolan have a grudge against the subscriber?

This is how typically any bureaucracy deals with complaints, the rules are the rules (ie. we are GOD and you are a worthless nobody) and we can not make an exception for you no matter if whether you are just unhappy about it or if we are wrong in whatever we did.

Haven't watchedt the video yet but kudos for linking to old reddit.

Is there an alternative to Roll20 that can be used for free?

Well, this helps my decision between roll20 and Fantasy Grounds

I and my players left Roll20 long ago....time to wise up and look into alternatives

Nothing new management could not fix.

it sucks that even after this they have just pushed on like nothings happend, relying on folk that dont care or dont know..arghh. that just basicly means this will happen agian.

If I had to add my two cents... It would be that they should have given him a warning of 'we are investigating your claims, we have seen your messages. Continue your negative feedback and the ban will stand, but understand that until we finish our investigation we cannot unban your account. Please wait patiently.' It would have been the proper response to go 'hey, we're working on it, calm your shit.' And would have avoided a great deal of backlash on somebody who was basically announcing that they were going to put it all on blast.

I’m interested in the down votes of this video. If I was paying for a subscription I would want a timely response or at least a extension ( free months ) to cover the time I was paying for something I couldn’t use at least fully. Unless his two post were toxic I wouldn’t call him a toxic member. So what made viewers thumb it down did they intend to unlike the situation or honestly not like something about the video.

Nolan's comment is now down to almost -60k. That makes it easily the second most downvoted comment in Reddit history as far as I can tell.

Anybody know where I can get warm? Oh yeah, next to the roll20 company burning down!

I love that your name is “One Crit Wonder” and this is kinda your only video to get this many views. Hopefully it won’t be the only one, you make good stuff.

I honestly hate reddit... the rampant amount of censorship is disgusting.

Roll20 cannot catch a break this week lol

Roll20 has had abysmal customer support for years. Honestly it has never bothered me, and I work in Customer Support so it probably should. The initial ban was unwarranted, I agree. But blowing up the email of the guy who banned you isn't gonna get you what you want. This whole scenario was handled poorly by all parties involved. The derelict reddit admin, the inattentive Roll20 support rep, the edgelord who got banned and threw a conniption fit about it, and Nolan T. Jones who was yet again a complete d-bag (as expected). The whole scenario has been entertaining to say the least...

"well, that's a shitty opinion to have" lmao

With the current political environment being what it is, I wonder if the name of ApostleO had something to do with getting this started. What were those original posts that drew so much controversy about?

Someone needs to get a Communication degree. There was never an apology. There was never a phone call. There was an asumption that the person was lying. That's never going to work. Think if you had golf course. How would you act? Admit it the guy put a bag of poop on the porch and NOLAN lit it on fire. This is CLASSIC PR problem. Appologize and give the kid something and move on, cause life is too short.

I would love to drop Roll20 and switch to a different platform, but unfortunately, I can't afford any subscriptions or Tabletop Simulator, I will herein refuse to purchase anything off their store.

Idk, I find it odd how passionate he was considering he only posted a few times, just saying there are plenty of ways to give yourself a different IP address....

Hey, hey people. With Roll20 losing a lot of customers and a lot of you want an alternative. If you don't want to spend money but still want a huge chunk of functionality (real time gm-ing, line of sight etc) I can suggest checking out MapTool for everyone. It is free and open source. It is entirely system agnostic, like Roll20 is (I know this because ton of people don't want to be restricted what Fantasy Grounds have to offer). The only thing that is really absent is the Polished community function. On the other hand it is much more flexible with the networks you can use it with.

Torches and Pitchforks folks, its time to purge our community of this pestilence. If a company that is accepting your money does not provide the customer experience that you are expecting, then you are well within your rights to both spend your money elsewhere, AND inform others of your feelings and experiences.

Thankfully I don’t have any products with Roll20 I think I will move my business to Fantasy grounds though

Roll20 got pissy because ApostleO was pushy and threaten them because was not answered in a timely manner. Yeah, ApostleO acted poorly in not giving time for the mod to research the issue and then threatening Roll20. At the same time, as a business, Roll20 needed to put an sock in their anger and apologies to ApostleO. What we have here is a pissing contest with both people getting their shoes wet. The winner? Every other business that does the exact same thing because they are not Roll20.

Fanticy grounds is pretty good. I'll be using it for 2 weeks. I'll see you over there!

This isn't the first time (even this week) that roll20 people have been d-bags. DawnforgedCast (148k subs), who has supported roll20 for 6 years along with 4 other big streamers were looking to do an event and asked roll20 about sponsorship. roll20s response was "we don't need another 5 white guys." You can see his video "Why I Quit Roll20" here on YT.

This is why I use Roll20... but don't go anywhere NEAR its forums, twitter, or reddit. I'd switch but there isn't a comparable program (And Fantasy Grounds is built for modules... and I make custom content)

Wow I have the same first name as the Boston Strangler, I guess I should stay clear of Massachusetts.

i never new reddit was so complicated