Have I been ripped off?

Apologies for the blunt title...

Anyway, I downloaded the FM14 demo the other night as I was bored out of my skull and ended up surprisingly addicted. I say surprisingly because up until literally said other night, I've been playing CM0102 and have often scoffed at FM (yeah, I'm a real hipster).

Long story short I thought f*** it and I purchased the game today and came straight here for the real badges/kits/faces etc,(basically the first site that came up on google when I searched). Realising I couldn't be arsed downloading everything in small parts (and acting on a bit of an impulse) I paid the £10 subscription thinking it'd be worth it in the long run considering how much I'm likely to play the game.

As I say, I'm pretty new to the FM scene, and now I'm seeing a lot of other sites (I won't mention names, I don't know if there's any bitter rivalry or not!) who offer kits/badges etc that look more or less exactly the same quality as here and which (it seems) I can download entirely for free(?)

Basically my question is, what am I actually getting for my £10 which I can't get from other sites for nothing? Are the packs here 'better' in some way? Is there more stuff in these packs?

Not trying to belittle the work put in here in any way, it's a genuine (perhaps slightly 'newbie' ) query...

Cheers

Generally the packs here seem to be bigger, updated more often and of a higher quality.

But then you're bound to say that aren't you?

Joking aside, having browsed most of the sites now, this one does seem to be the most legit (for lack of a better phrase), but yeah, I got that sinking "wait have I just paid a tenner for no reason?" feeling and thought I'd see what the deal was. In fairness I should have probably posted this before I paid...

Why would I say that? I post on other football manager sites. Don't think there is another facepack with 150,000+ faces. The metallic logopack has 142,475 logos as well.

Fair enough mate, as I said, it was a tongue in cheek comment anyway. I appreciate that you've replied!

Yeah the logo pack seems impressive on the face of things. The other ones I've been looking at elsewhere have "over 6.000 logos" which is obviously minute in comparison!

What's a tenner in the long run anyway? (says the guy who's paranoid about money )

I personally prefer the torrent files, which are free.

Yeah, just noticed the torrents... damn.

I started downloading after paying though so I guess that'd put me in the 'already used the service so no refund' category.

My own fault for jumping the gun I guess

You get an extra bit of love from me and Rob?

That's worth a tenner of any-ones money.

The moneys not intended to be seen as us charging for a product, we need subscriptions to cover costs and keep the site running thus it's considered more of a donation. In all honesty it's probably not value for money just to download the big megapacks especially when you can get them from free (even from us via torrent and mirrors) but I hope it is considered good value in terms of keeping the site running for the past decade.

It's up to you if you'd like to ask for a refund, we don't have strict legal rules about having already used the service etc. However it does set an awkward precedent for us if we do go about letting people pay, download and then be refunded.

I've been a prominent member of forums before that work similarly, so I completely understand the donation side of things. My initial doubts were short-lived to be fair and I thought hey, it saves me from downloading everything in multiple parts and overcomplicating the process. I'm completely onside with the awkward precedent you mention too.

Having said that, given that it's taken me two days of huffing and puffing trying to download with no success, I'd be lying if I said I was still completely happy with the donation.

I am quite happy to keep trying though and hopefully I'll find out what's actually going wrong. I could be downloading things for FM15 in a few months and thinking "good job I paid that tenner last year!"

Rest assured I won't be prematurely chucking my toys out the pram and demanding a refund or anything like that. I'm sure you can understand that not being able to download having paid is niggling a bit though.