Wizards Of The Coast Shows Their Love Of Customers... With... Pinkerton Agents?

Just when I believe things are calming down, I get pulled into another GIGANTIC and public Leadership Faux-Pas with Wizards of the Coast.

Earlier this year I wrote 12 articles and a Future Analysis on Wizards of the Coast and how their Leadership team had recently mishandled their D&D product horribly.

Now, I hear that they are showing their continued "love" of their customers by sending Pinkerton Agents to break into their homes and intimidate them!

Honestly, I wish I could say I made this up.

For those of you who don't know, Pinkerton Agents are essentially a private security guard and detective agency that have a... murky history.

Their more modern history has been famous for spying on workers to bust any union activity, including at organizations like Starbucks and Amazon.

However, today we are going to look into what happened specifically to one Magic the Gathering player.

The Story

Imagine, you are in your home relaxing on a Saturday.

You get a knock at the door, and your wife calmly answers.

As soon as she answers, a man aggressively demands her to tell him where you are, claiming you are a thief.

Your wife gets scared.

She asks the man to wait outside, and attempts to shut the door, only for the man to brutally attempt to force themselves inside, preventing her from closing the door.

Now your wife is crying.

You approach the aggressor, pulling the conversation outside.

They continue to call you a thief and claim you are in possession of stolen property.

They threaten to get law enforcement involved, telling you that you are going to be charged with copyright infringement and jail time between 1 and 10 years if you don't turn over the stolen property.

Along with this, they continue to intimidate you by telling you that you will be charged with fines up to $200,000 + legal fees.

What was the stolen property?

A set of trading cards for a game you play that you spent $4,000 on.

Other Details

This is what happened to Dan Cannon and his wife.

He had purchased a specific set of Magic the Gathering playing cards, only to accidentally receive a set of cards that had not officially been released.

In some sort of supplier error, Dan Cannon received the incorrect cards.

Dan also has a small, hobbyist YouTube channel (about 4,000 followers) where he had shown some of the unreleased cards he received in error days before the Pinkerton agent arrived.

This supposedly led to Wizards of the Coast calling Dan from unlisted phone numbers, leaving no messages.

When Dan didn't answer these rumored calls from unlisted numbers with no messages, Pinkertons were sent.

Pinkertons supposedly made an attempt to contact the day before, with Cannon and his wife being out.

This led the agents to questioning neighbors and lying to them about "having a meeting" with Cannon.

This is also NOT the first time Wizards of the Coast has utilized Pinkertons - there is a history of this occurring going back at least to 2017.

After all of this, Cannon gave up the cards that he received in error, and Wizards of the Coast offered to replace them with what he originally ordered.

When questioned about the events, Wizards of the Coast denied that the events occurred in this manner, and claimed, "Under no circumstances would we instruct any employee or contracted agency to intimidate an individual."

The Leadership Takeaways

Where do I even begin?

Let's start with their statement about how they would "never" instruct an agency to intimidate an individual.

Well, Wizards of the Coast has a history of lying in their official reports and using intimidation tactics.

Just earlier this year they lied, multiple times, about attempting to intimidate creators into awful legal contracts that essentially allowed Wizards of the Coast to steal their work.

So, we already know we can't trust their official reports and have a history of intimidating others.

There is also a case of, "What you do speaks louder than what you say."

Even IF we were to believe Wizards of the Coast didn't explicitly tell any agency to intimidate an individual, they DID choose to HIRE an agency that is NOTORIOUS for utilizing intimidation tactics and lying to get results.

They may not have "said" to intimidate anyone, but their actions implicitly prove that they are more than happy to have intimidation tactics used.

Actions ALWAYS reveal the truth, and TRUTH always comes to light eventually.

Along with this, Wizards of the Coast claims that they called Cannon... from unlisted numbers... without leaving any messages?

No one answers calls from unlisted numbers!

If I answered every call I got from unlisted numbers, I'd never get work done!

Plus - no messages?

How is anyone supposed to "know" anything is wrong if you don't tell them?

They could have left a voicemail. They could have sent an email. They possibly could have even sent snail mail!

Wizards could have sent a friendly employee to "calmly" discuss matters with Cannon first.

But instead, their first reaction is to send a notorious organization almost immediately.

There are so many breaks of extremely common communication practices here.

Plus, their IMMEDIATE reaction is to threaten a customer - a customer who paid $4,000 dollars for card packs that are usually $4 - $15 per pack - and call them a thief!

In business, this is what you would call a "Superconsumer" and they tend to be your BEST customers.

This is how Wizards of the Coast treats their best customers?

Customers who buy hundreds of packs of cards at a time?

On top of this, after all the trauma that they sent this customer and his wife through, all they offer is an even match of products?

Most companies would be completely ashamed if this occurred and would try to remedy, not only for products, but also for damages caused in an effort to maintain the customer relationship.

All of this, based on a supplier mistake made on Wizards of the Coasts' side?

Not to mention this is coming from a company that recently said that their products are, "Undermonetized".

There have been many allegations that the quality of Magic the Gather cards has been greatly reduced in the past few years.

Many cards have come "brand new" which were cut wrong and deemed completely unusable, and there have multiple reports of LITERAL tons of cards going straight to landfills due to quality issues.

Their products aren't making enough money for the company, and they don't have enough money to make a decent quality product, but they have more than enough money to hire Pinkertons to threaten customers based on their mistakes?

To me, this shows horrible mismanagement of funds, on top of all the other obvious issues at hand.

Final Summation

So, this is the list of issues I see with Wizard of the Coasts' Leadership Team:

➼ Continued Lying to the Public

➼ Lack of Care for Best Customers

➼ Intimidation as a First Move Practice

➼ Lacking Basic Communication Skills

➼ Broken Priorities

➼ Mismanagement of Funds

➼ Unaddressed Supply Chain Issues

That is just what I got from THIS singular incident!

It doesn't even cover everything that I talked about earlier this year!

It also makes me wonder about what we "don't" hear about at the organization.

It is truly sad to watch a company destroy two of the oldest and most interesting games of the past 50 years with some of the most well-developed communities of fans.