Lang and calendars.com: The ultimate recurring disaster

Ah yes, here we go again.

Calendars you say? Do people still use the physical ones? They sure do.

Lang calendars have always been around from what I can remember. A high quality product with various scenes of nature, animals and plant life. They’re still useful for certain things but the digital side of things are a mess.

The size of the actual calendar is unique and requires a specific calendar frame if you choose to use one. The problem is that this frame and the calendar itself is not the size of a standard calendar so if you try to put one of those in this frame it doesn’t fit properly.

The original drm as they would say.

In later years Lang has started to include a digital download code on the back of the calendars. This allows you to download a digital copy of the 12 pictures that form the calendar. This should be a simple process yet it is not and for some reason I torture myself each year attempting to redeem the images.

Right off the bat the url that is printed on the back of the calendar is incorrect.

http://www.lang.com/2024fourseasons redirects to a “OOOPS, SORRY! WE COULDN’T FIND THAT YOU HAVE REQUESTED A PAGE THAT DOES NOT EXIST.” page on calendars.com.

You’ll be seeing this error page often.

You will need to do a search on calendars.com for the product you purchased.

One search later for the desktop wallpaper version and I end up on https://www.calendars.com/shop/four-seasons-2024-desktop-wallpaper/2024-Four-Seasons_WP

There we go. The page appears.

Be sure to click on the “ALL” button to get all 12 months. Apparently you can digitally pick and choose which months you wish to buy.

Everything is in the shopping cart and you can now apply your coupon. This works and we can check out once we log into the site.

I have an account from several years ago created for this situation. From what I remember there was an issue checking out digital products. Since it’s digital you do not need to add your address but due to a bug on their end an address was required.

They used to have a page that told you to use the following information for the process to work.

Guest NOSHIPMENT
6411 Burleson Road
NON SHIPPING ADDRESS
AUSTIN TX 78744
US
(555) 555-5555

I’m not sure if this is required anymore and I sure hope it is not but it probably is!

Now the fun begins.

You checkout and you get a page with your order confirmation and a download link. The download link does in fact work but you receive a 0 byte file every single time. You will eventually receive your confirmation email but the problem there is that they redirect you back to your account where there is supposed to be a download link on the page.

In my case my digital purchases never appear under the “My Digital Products” section. You can clearly see the digital purchases I have made and yet they are not visible under the previous banner. The download link of course is missing there too.

This happens every single year when I go to make this traditional digital calendar redemption.

I email their help at [email protected] to retrieve the files sent via email.

This year I was more adventurous and annoyed at the same time. I wanted to see if I could get some answers.

I use the chat function and wade my way past the annoying chatbot to a human operator.

My question is simple.

The My Digital Products section says I have no products yet I have purchased several in the past. How can this be fixed?

I get disconnected after I’m told to wait for a human. I try several more chats and eventually get through to a human once again.

The customer service representative says that they do not have any wallpaper from before 2023. This is an interesting response considering it’s a digital purchase. They also recommend to download these purchases as soon as possible.

So much for a digital version and this is quite shocking. You must remember that a 12 month calendar digitally doesn’t surpass 20 megabytes from my experience given their relatively low resolution of 1024x900 pixels. Storage space is not an issue here and I wonder if this is truly the case.

Having the digital products not showing under my account poses a problem here. I cannot test whether or not this is true. Do they actually delete those files off their servers if it’s not the current year? Do I actually lose access to old purchases? If this is true it’s a huge problem and would make me question why anyone would buy a digital copy.

I must also note that these calendar wallpaper are the images used not the calendar itself. You are getting a digital copy of the artwork. So why would these older versions be removed? Is this a licensing issue with the artist for one year only?

Their boilerplate terms and conditions make claims that digital purchases can be removed at any time for any reason. In the world of digital purchases this doesn’t sit well but most would assume you could still access older content for at a minimum of a few years. Apparently not.

The real issue is why their site never works at all for me and I assume others. They cannot fix anything apparently. I want my account to actually register those digital purchases properly so I can at least see that download link. Even with an actual purchase history visible it tells me I have no digital purchases.

Assurances are made and nothing changes each year.

I really wonder how many people are making digital purchases without these codes found in the physical Lang calendars? Very few I imagine.

Stopping the tradition of buying these calendars may be the real answer as this yearly process is always annoying yet I still am curious to see if they have fixed anything.

Apparently not, same old nonsense and a new year on the horizon.