DO NOT buy a Rip Roar Creation Station.

For Christmas, we bought my daughter Mira a Rip Roar Creation Station. Looks great right? A video camera for kids that does green screen video? Too bad it's crap.

I help her get going and do the software install. After a convoluted set of steps that required CD install, downloading from the internet, plugging and unplugging of the camera USB cable, and even a good old command line patch, the software won't run. Crashes everytime.

Undaunted, I uninstalled and reinstalled. Same problem again. It doesn't work.

My daughter is standing there ready to go, dressed for he video with the green cloth background ready. Utterly disappointed that her 'big' Christmas present doesn't work. Breaks a father's heart to see this.

I track down the customer service line for Rip Roar/Toyquest. Amazingly a real person answers. I speak to him for a bit, but he tells me that they can't support the Rip Roar Creation Station, that I need to use the 'Help' email address. I asked if there was a phone number to call, since solving software problems via email is usually useless. He said there was no phone number and that only the email address.

I expressed my concern that waiting for an email to resolve the problem for a Christmas problem was not good. He responded that the 'Help' email people should get back to me "in a few days". He also suggested that I could return the item to "my local retailer". Yes, I'll enjoy explaining that to my daughter.

All I want is for the camera & software to work. I guess that is too much to expect these days.

I started searching on the net for help, since none was forthcoming from Rip Roar. I'm not alone in having trouble. Read what the Amazon Reviews of this product say. I wish had read them before buying this.

Not one to give up easy, I tracked down the parent company, Toyquest. I gave them a call at (310) 231-7292, trying to track down help on the problem. Of course, Toyquest doesn't make it easy to find their number, it's nowhere on their website, but I found it anyways. No people there to help, just recordings that wanted me to email for help instead of speaking with a person.

I thought that the President of Toyquest, Brian Dubinsky, would want to know how his product was doing, so I left him an voicemail explaining my frustration with the product. I'm sure that Mr. Dubinsky is a nice man in person with his family and friends, but his business operations leave much to be desired.

So, my hope is that when others search for the Rip Roar Creation Station, they find this note and are warned off. My fear is that there are many parents in the same boat as me with disappointed children with non-functional gifts. My PageRank is pretty good, so this will likely float to the top, but any extra linkage would be helpful.

Posted by michael at December 26, 2007 09:53 AM