My Horrible experience with SE Support and why it's causing me to leave..

[Zell]

On November 5, 2013 at 11:20 p.m., I turned in a quest in Coerthas on my lvl 41 Summoner. I immediately noticed that my gil dropped down to 0 from 71k. My seals also went from 28k to 0. I said to myself, must be a bug. I'll log off and log back on and hope everything is ok.

I tried to log back in. It said, "World Data cannot be obtained, Please try logging in later. Error 1016."

I got the same error for the next 2-3 days. Every time. I can log onto other characters, but not my main, legacy character. This character has 2 million gil I brought from 1.0. I has all classes except arcanist at 50. It has 4 crafting classes at 50. It has two gathering classes at 50. It is my 2 years of devotion put into FFXIV. I love my character.

I contacted customer support. They told me that Error 1016 is a port forwarding error. It was 100% my router or my ISP. I did all of the following:

1. Open the ports they asked. Didn't help.
2. Update the firm where on my router. Didn't Help.
3. Contacted the ISP and confirmed they're not blocking any of my ports.
4. Connected to the internet via modem only. Didn't help. SAME ERROR.
5. Did a clean reboot of my computer and confirmed none of my programs were the problem.
6. Tried to log onto my account using my ps3. Same Error.
7. Took my PS3 to my cousin's house, in the same city but another ISP. Same Error.
8. Days later, went to my friend's house 100+ miles away, different city, different ISP. SAME ERROR.

All this time, I called customer support 6+ times and everytime they told me. It's a port forwarding issue. It's not our end, there's something WRONG on your end. AFter taking my PS3 to my friend's house and getting same error, they agreed to "escalate the ticket" and have someone look into it. That was on November 8, 2013. They told me, you'll get an email in the next couple of days keeping you informed of the issue. They even told me, "hey there's going to be a maintanence, that should fix your problem. Call us back if it doesn;t"

November 12 SAME ERROR, I call them back and they say "Oh the maintenance didn't help, now we're going to really escalate the ticket. WE didn't escalate it on November 8 while we waited for you to call back." This really pissed me off.

It's November 18 going on 19. I have yet to receive a single email from them even acknowledging they're working on it. I've paid for the 6 month sub because I love this game. I stayed with this game when it was horrible. I paid for a subscription because I believed in YoshiP and the direction of teh new game. I have never bought gil. I have never sold million gil priced items on the market wards. My account has never been compromised. I have repeatedly pleaded that they roll back my character, or copy/paste a confirmed and working version. Each time they've said no "they have to look into it."

Going on two weeks, i'm still waiting for the infamous email from them.

At this point, while my 6 month sub is being milked dry, i'm starting to feel my devotion is also being taken advantage of.

Flame me all you want, but when I played WoW, it had teh BEST customer service. You had your issues resolved in one to two days TOPS!. Even stolen and compromised accounts.

SE this is a joke. Because I havn't played in 2 weeks, I'm starting to have less of a reason or desire to log on even when (or if) I get my character back.

This isn't how you should treat loyal customers who've done nothing wrong other than ask for help.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

It's been years. SE's is one of the worst customer support in the gaming industry, and a real cause for concern; it goes far beyond any gaming consideration, since we're talking about real money and too often, SE's behaviour is at best abusive and at worst a borderline breach of contract—charging for a service which you don't provide due to your own incompetence. If it were a physical service, they just wouldn't be able to act with such negligence and get away with it (imagine a gym club that would deny you their service for months, claiming they must re-print your stolen member card, while charging you the whole time… yeah, but no).

Real-life laws should really step up on these matters and punish abusive companies (to the very least, allow customers to sue/class action, and obtain reparation).

Meanwhile, we can vote with out wallet, but that doesn't protect others. Voicing discontent only works to some extent and didn't make SE, for instance, change in over a decade of awfully disappointed customer feedback.

[Richard_Rahl]

I really feel for those this has happened to. I know if this ever happens to me, I'll be doing a chargeback on any subscription fees that cover the time I'm unable to access my account. You didn't get what you paid for, you have every right to file a chargeback. This is absolutely atrocious handling from a company that you pay for a service, and is not acceptable. As much as I'm loving this game, SE is really trying to push us all away.

When I mentioned to the Support Agent I talked with on Chat Today that I would need to contact my credit card provider to cancel the charge since they wouldn't refund me, all he did what quote the Terms of Service saying that if SE has a charge charged back to them, that this would result in a permanent ban on the account....

For me, it doesn't really matter because I'm leaving the game anyways...but other people should be aware that if you do a chargeback, it's in the ToS for them to perma ban your account.

[Richard_Rahl]

Does anyone know if it's against the rules to post the log from your Support Chat Session? I saved the communication I had where I actually got escalated to a manager and will post it. I just don't want to post it and have the thread deleted because that violates some forum rule.

[Quesse]

It was actually a really really old Guild Wars 1 ArenaNet account that got hacked. My problem was that I re-used the same username and password. .............. now they're basically saying "*** you" If you want to go play with your friends, you'll have to pay me another $18 to do it.

Actually what they're saying is that its not their fault you got hacked. Which... its not.

SE's support is not stellar but not seeing the problem here. You want them to bend over backwards for your mistake?

[Richard_Rahl]

Actually what they're saying is that its not their fault you got hacked. Which... its not.

SE's support is not stellar but not seeing the problem here. You want them to bend over backwards for your mistake?

No, at this point all I wanted was to get the Free Character Transfer that everyone else who suffered through the horrible launch of the game got. I'm not asking for them to bend over backwards at all...and honestly...with the fact that it took 54 days to get a compromised account back...I don't expect a thing from this company anymore.

All I've been saying to them is that if they give me the transfer, they'll keep a subscription for the next couple years.

[Giantbane]

Did you pay by credit card? Call your card company, explain the situation, ask if you can have the charge voided. They'll probably side with you because you were not able to access what you were paying for.

However, this will almost guarantee that your acct will then get locked and never be unlocked so make sure you do this only if you are certain you do not wish to play any longer.

[Blarp]

I would do a chargeback via my bank. SE will invariably perma-ban your account, but I'd be so disgusted by this point, I don't think I'd care very much.

[Alcyon_Densetsu]

Actually what they're saying is that its not their fault you got hacked. Which... its not.

SE's support is not stellar but not seeing the problem here. You want them to bend over backwards for your mistake?

Regardless of whose responsibility it is, a 'good' customer support tries to actually help customers. Many good companies sincerely try to accommodate their formal rules in order to help their customers who experience problems. That's just how good business is done. That's possible because customer support and business relationships are done by human parties, not rigid computers. in this case, SE's is partially responsible for him missing the free transfer window because their investigation took much more time than the industry average, so it would only feel logical, and nice, that they gave him that free transfer (exceptional situations call for exceptional answers).

You surely don't expect much from a customer service. That's too bad for you, because many companies must be able to get away with minimal efforts with you as their customer, and I suspect you may often have got much less than you could have obtained, when you had issues with a product or a service. Trust me, you have the right to at least ask for help; and you'll see that companies and stores are often willing to help you, to give you freebies and very nice solutions to your problems, because that's just good practice if they hope to keep you as a customer.

[Alexb150]

I sympathize, but only up to a point.

If your phone breaks or is stolen, does your cell phone provider credit your account for the time you don't have a phone? If your tv is stolen, does your cable company credit you for the time you were unable to watch tv?

I'm not saying that it's right that they didn't credit you, just saying that it shouldn't really be expected, at least, not these days.

that is completely different and your examples are ridiculous. yes if your phone is stolen the company supplying the contract would credit you the time, they'd also replace the handset. cable and a tv are completely different items.. he wasn't saying his computer was broken, hes saying that they aren't providing a service which they provide and is essentially stealing his money