Awful experience with SE support

(1/2)

A couple things to preface this post.

Since the forums has a 3,000 character limit I have to split this into two parts.

I'm not really the kind of person that likes to complain about things, whether that be to support or on a public forum. However, in 11 days of contacting support, the only actual response I got was "To submit feedback, please visit the forums at https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv and make a post..." So I decided I would.

Additionally, I'm not expecting anyone from SE to read this, as obviously not one person on their team spent more than 30 seconds looking at my tickets up to this point. I'm also not expecting anyone else on the forums to read this or care about the situation, its just that at this point I don't know what else I'm supposed to do.

With that, I'll explain what happened from my POV.

On 6/19 (the day prior to the most recent patch) I logged out sitting next to my wife on the bench in my yard. My plot was an unrestricted large Shirogane.

On 6/20, while I was at work, I got a text from my wife stating that she logged on and my house wasn't there. We figured it had to be a mistake - not only was I logged out on the bench in my yard, but I hadn't received an email about the demolition. Was the email deleted in one of my spam filters? I don't know. After I got home I contacted SE support asking for help.

My ticket on 6/20 covered the following: I did not receive an email about demolition, I was logged out in my yard the night before the demolition took place, and I thought there was no way I hadn't entered my home in that 45-day time period.

I got a response on 6/21, however this response was clearly a bot or template. It simply told me that gil could be reclaimed and that I was encouraged to leave feedback on the SE forums, without addressing any of the things I mentioned in my ticket.

After getting back from work on 6/21, I opened another ticket. In this ticket, I simply stated that I was going to copy paste my previous ticket, as it didn't look like anyone bothered to read the original message.

On 6/22, I got a response. This ticket asked for character, world, plot, and email information, which I gave them later that day.

On 6/23, I was told my ticket would be escalated for further review.

On 6/30, I sent another ticket stating that I'd logged on, spent about an hour reclaiming items, and placed a bid (126) onto my old plot. I'd mentioned I'd felt a bit cheated by this whole process, as nothing had been communicated with me at any point.

On 7/1, they responded with the following message "We sincerely appreciate your desire to share your feedback and apologize for being unable to speak with you directly. We are constantly striving to improve the game and our services to our customers, and are open to any feedback you might have. To submit feedback, please visit the forums at https://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv and make a post..."

(2/2)

On 7/2, I logged on to claim my money from my failed bid.

That leads us to today, 7/3. There's a couple things that are extremely upsetting to me about this whole situation.

1. At no point was the status of any investigation communicated with me. I wasn't told "We found that the email was sent to you on XX/XX/XXXX", or "We found that despite sitting outside your house almost daily, you hadn't entered your home since XX/XX/XXXX and per our policy are unable to help you", or anything similar.
2. Most of the communication with SE support felt like bots. This is not a free game - I've spent well over $500 on this game by this point, can you really not afford to have a real person spend 2 minutes looking into my tickets?
3. I do feel cheated about losing my house like this. I wasn't inactive. I was logged out the night before sitting next to my house.

Now, I wasn't naïve enough to assume you'd actually help me get my plot back when I contacted you. But you can't even tell me that you won't be able to help me? Seriously? Did you even do anything other than copy paste template responses? At this point I have no idea.

It's in the housing page that you have to actually enter the house to cancel the auto demolition process, being outside is not enough, if it did get auto demo'd, you just didnt enter it in 45 days, with that said I do have to say that I've had multiple auto demo cancels and I have never gotten a single email about them, but even then, if you actively used the house in its entirety you wouldnt need a reminder.

Another thing, I will say it and if I get banned so be it, SE support is the absolute worst I have ever seen and I have played a LOT of multiplayer games that had support.

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Originally Posted by Stormpeaks

Another thing, I will say it and if I get banned so be it, SE support is the absolute worst I have ever seen and I have played a LOT of multiplayer games that had support.

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Agreed 100%

Sorry but SE support...at least that I know of in this game is a prime example of how to be the worst. It's simply not good at all and I seriously believe it is all automated and there isn't a single real person looking into anything.

Housing is also one of the worst things about the game. Im sorry for your loss and I hope you are able to get a new home. If so I strongly suggest logging off inside your home. Hard to explain a reason for demolition if you are inside it.

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Originally Posted by Kalk

Additionally, I'm not expecting anyone from SE to read this, as obviously not one person on their team spent more than 30 seconds looking at my tickets up to this point.

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I can confirm they don't really read the forums. They don't even moderate them usually. But they usually read tickets.

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she logged on and my house wasn't there.

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Too late. Doubt there is anything support can do once it's gone because it's now part of a lottery for others to bid on. This is why SE support (who are not developers) directed you to the forums - so you can post your feedback to the developers, who can consider changing the system to make it harder to lose your house.

Of course, it's unlikely they will change anything, especially since they don't pay much attention to this forum category, but all SE support can do is get you to petition the developers to change the system. Because SE support can't do that, it's far beyond their job description and they aren't exactly going to interact much with developers who speak japanese.

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it had to be a mistake - not only was I logged out on the bench in my yard

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My understanding is you have to enter the house to reset the demolition timer, but I'm not an expert on houses.

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I got a response on 6/21, however this response was clearly a bot or template.

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I assure you that a human read it. They use templates because your question won't be anything they haven't received before. When they receive interactions like yours on a regular basis, instead of repeating themself over and over, it is logical to write a template for efficiency. The templates allow them to optimize the wording to be as respectful and polite as they possibly can.

They definitely stray from the template if they feel it necessary. If they didn't, then they didn't feel it was necessary. The template was sufficient to convey what they wanted to convey.

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It simply told me that gil could be reclaimed

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That is legitimate if the gil for your house can be reclaimed. I know it is lacking in empathy because, you just lost your house, and you want your house back, not compensation for it in gil. But you can't get your house back as far as I know, so pointing you to gil compensation seems like an appropriate answer.

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Originally Posted by Kalk

Now, I wasn't naïve enough to assume you'd actually help me get my plot back when I contacted you. But you can't even tell me that you won't be able to help me? Seriously? Did you even do anything other than copy paste template responses? At this point I have no idea.

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On the other hand, yes, the support system sucks in many ways and I'm unconvinced that real people actually work there. But still... if there ever is a right moment to send a template response to a customer, it's when they contact support because they feel like rules shouldn't apply to them or they didn't even read the rules. There is no reason for them to craft a custom apology and explanation over a game play mistake, nor is it their job to fix those kinds of mistakes. Customer support is there to fix bugs, cheating, harassment and other things the player has no control over.

https://i.postimg.cc/ryHJt982/Inkedf...215310-450.jpg

Assuming you did in fact enter your house within the time period, and it is some wonky bug, contact a GM in game and talk to them directly. Still might not be able to do anything, but at the very least it will be an actual human you are communicating with, who might have the ability to look into files.

Worst case (as long as you don’t go full Karen on them), they’ll just say sorry that they can’t help.

Man these threads keep popping up, where people lose their house despite swearing up and down that they went in and saying they got no email warning or anything. Shit's got me paranoid af and at this point I'm inclined to just believe the people over SE's ability to code properly.

It was intern kun. All the SE customer support tickets are handled by one person: intern kun.

And can you really blame them?

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Originally Posted by Avoidy

Man these threads keep popping up, where people lose their house despite swearing up and down that they went in and saying they got no email warning or anything. Shit's got me paranoid af and at this point I'm inclined to just believe the people over SE's ability to code properly.

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The bug exists, I know that from watching a friend enter his own house and the demo timer not resetting (my character was a tenant so I could verify through my own timers).

What triggers the bug? Haven't the faintest idea.

We could have fun dreaming up explanations such as they've got some dumb coding that registers house entry between 12:01pm JCT and 12:00pm JCT but not between 12:00 and 12:01pm, and those affected have been those who finally got around to entering during that single minute of the day. Unless enough players who only enter their house once every couple of weeks get into the habit of checking their estate timers (or system messages in chat) to make sure it's not showing active for demolition and catch the failure to reset so it can be reported with specifics, the bug will never be acknowledged by SE or the cause determined.

If you're going into your house regularly, there shouldn't be anything to worry about. Even if your entrance isn't registered on one occasion, the timer will no doubt reset the next time you walk in.

It's those who rarely go into their house that need to be cautious.

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Originally Posted by Kalk

SNIP

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What do you expect? SE giving you back your plot which is most likely purchased by someone else?

Sounds like you did a mistake and had to face the consequences for that.

The most interesting aspect of this thread is how most of the replies completely ignore the message I actually wrote - the exact same way SE did. I never asked them to "bend the rules" for me, I simply asked if they could look into it, because I don't believe for a second it was even close to 45 days since I'd last entered my home, and it was the day of the newest patch.

If you actually read the post, you'll notice my main complaint was how SE didn't communicate anything during my entire interaction with them. This game is not a free service - you should at least be able to expect a person to look into your request if you ask support for help.

I firmly believe they never spent more than 30 seconds investigating my tickets to begin with.

I guess the replies aren't surprising though, as this games awful housing system makes players who own plots into villains in other players eyes - especially those with a medium or large plot. I can't see why else so many players would be misinterpreting this thread to such a degree.

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Originally Posted by Kalk

The most interesting aspect of this thread is how most of the replies completely ignore the message I actually wrote - the exact same way SE did. I never asked them to "bend the rules" for me, I simply asked if they could look into it, because I don't believe for a second it was even close to 45 days since I'd last entered my home, and it was the day of the newest patch.

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6.4 was on May 5th - 60 days ago

6.41 was just a bug fix patch - 14 days ago

I still don't know why people just don't enter their own house every couple of days, making it a habit to ensure you don't get screwed by the timer or whatever.

I did that with my houses back on Cerberus, then on Odin. Now I'm on the US servers and personally I want people to give up their houses so I can get one again, hue. /joke

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Originally Posted by Kalk

The most interesting aspect of this thread is how most of the replies completely ignore the message I actually wrote - the exact same way SE did. I never asked them to "bend the rules" for me, I simply asked if they could look into it, because I don't believe for a second it was even close to 45 days since I'd last entered my home, and it was the day of the newest patch.

If you actually read the post, you'll notice my main complaint was how SE didn't communicate anything during my entire interaction with them. This game is not a free service - you should at least be able to expect a person to look into your request if you ask support for help.

I firmly believe they never spent more than 30 seconds investigating my tickets to begin with.

I guess the replies aren't surprising though, as this games awful housing system makes players who own plots into villains in other players eyes - especially those with a medium or large plot. I can't see why else so many players would be misinterpreting this thread to such a degree.

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There's nothing to look into or help you with. Do you want them to convince you that their system is working as intended and despite what you vaguely remember you didn't enter the inside of the house for 45 days? Demolition happens hundreds of times per year on each server. They'd have to hire a bigger team than the actual dev team to deal with everyone who wants to speak with the manager. It's been a day and you still don't believe it could have been your mistake, so anything beyond 30 seconds would have been a waste. This is why they send templates and ask people to post on the forums instead.

But keep calling us villains. I work in customer service so my response is more from that point of view than that of a potential house buyer.

You need to go inside the house if it is a private house to stop the timer, that you did not do it, then you havent been inside your house for 45 days and don't care about it or just got it as some status symbol.

It say under housing somewhere, if you do not enter it for 45 days on private = demolished, if a FC if none of your FC mates enters if for 45 days including the owner of the FC, it goes bye bye as well.

Also in whichever way they respond, they do read your claim, but often use the appropiate template to reply to you for actually optimal and most precise respond, if something fishy has gone on or the likes with the timer or something down those lines, then they will actually ask into additional things.

Alot of the issues and people claiming that the support is ridicoulous or whatever could be solved right away if people actually decided to read partsof the ToS, and this and that about things they are involved with, that could even stop you from even sending a ticket in the first place, as you would have the answer right away.

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Originally Posted by Reinha

There's nothing to look into or help you with. Do you want them to convince you that their system is working as intended and despite what you vaguely remember you didn't enter the inside of the house for 45 days? Demolition happens hundreds of times per year on each server. They'd have to hire a bigger team than the actual dev team to deal with everyone who wants to speak with the manager. It's been a day and you still don't believe it could have been your mistake, so anything beyond 30 seconds would have been a waste. This is why they send templates and ask people to post on the forums instead.

But keep calling us villains. I work in customer service so my response is more from that point of view than that of a potential house buyer.

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Truly convinced you haven't read a single comment on the thread. My villain comment was derived from the fact that most comments met me with hostility (as a villain), despite the fact that all I wanted was some communication from the support team, with hostility likely stemming from the nature of plot ownership in ffxiv. It wasn't directed at this so called "us".

And yes, I'd believe them if they found me to be at fault. I've never implied otherwise. The point of the thread, to put it bluntly, is that the customer support team for SE is worse than my local Walmart. Yes, I wanted them to communicate that they found I was at fault. Instead, they told me my ticket would be escalated and ghosted me.

Later edit: I'm not going to be replying to this thread anymore. I hadn't posted this because I was looking to get into arguments - I posted it because the only thing the SE support team bothered replying with was to leave feedback on the forums, which I did. There really isn't anything else for me to add at this point. It's easy to see why they want their feedback funneled here.

SE's support is so bad it feels non-existent.
Are you sure you ENTERED within 45 days? The condition is to enter the instance or it gets demolished. There are past reports of people who got demo'ed without a warning, which sucks. But yea to be safe, it's better to just enter the housing instance every 45 days.

Is the 'L' in your name silent OP?

On topic, I have had exactly one experience with SE support. I had to get a security key removed, and chatted with a nice person online who helped me almost immediately. Was amazing. Shocking actually.

One of the first things I do when I log in is enter my house. I intentionally log out in the yard, inside it, or in front of it so my OCD just pilots me inside it without even thinking. That's the only fail-safe way I've found to keep your place. Don't need to worry about "did I go inside my house lately?" if you habitually just go in it every time you log in. Yes, I even do it multiple times a day sometimes.