Square Enix should be ashamed of their customer service and lack of transparency

[Kinkoz]

Sounds like you're wanting instant satisfaction for a problem that's just barely popped up and requires further investigation. These things take time. Besides that, would you really be any happier if they made an announcement about it? Because it would probably amount to little else than a description of the problem currently happening as well as a vague addressing of the issue by way of the "we're looking into it" answer that customer support has already given you.

[YojimboM]

This has nothing to do with transparency or the quality from the customer service.

This has been going on for over 72 hours at this point. And there are other people out there experiencing the same thing right now, for multiple days at a time, without any sort of update on the status of their situation.

The issue is that there is no meaningful level of escalation or confirmation that an issue is being reviewed by someone or a process to receive non-canned or regurgitated copy/paste information like every other triple A game developer has.

I've dealt with EA, Blizzard, Trion, Turbine, and various other companies' CS teams and they ALL had processes for tracking issues and keeping things up to date. Squenix's policy is "lol something's wrong".

[YojimboM]

I think they meant the bug forums.

Already tried bug forums. No reaction, not even moved to accepted bugs. I'm pretty sure someone having a character seemingly deleted would fall pretty high under their list of priorities, but apparently not.

As for the rest, I have been reasonable for the past three days straight and have asked multiple times to be escalated to speak with a manager and have never received it because there is no process for it. Every single other large company has an escalation process that I have ever dealt with.

[YojimboM]

Sounds like you're wanting instant satisfaction for a problem that's just barely popped up and requires further investigation. These things take time. Besides that, would you really be any happier if they made an announcement about it? Because it would probably amount to little else than a description of the problem currently happening as well as a vague addressing of the issue by way of the "we're looking into it" answer that customer support has already given you.

"Character transfers can potentially disable your access to characters across multiple data centers indefinitely" would have gone a long ways towards me not filing for one and getting into this mess in the first place.

[WellFooled]

I think they meant the bug forums. Not here. Also what do you expect a call center agent to do? They are just answering you honestly and you DEMAND to know more. If it is a new bug that is going on what do you want more of? I get that you are upset but you need to not take it out on others that are just the messenger. Someone will be more willing to help you if you are reasonable.

If the log posted is accurate, the OP never took anything out on the messenger and was never unreasonable in that entire conversation. Ive worked in customer service many times before (never again!) and the OP looked downright calm compared to most people who are filing a complaint or having a problem that's being dealt with by customer service.

Square does have miserable customer service and this is hardly the first case of it. One example from the post is how little the customer service rep does to sympathize with or reassure the OP at all. With every interaction they are nothing but curt and give the impression that they wanted to do anything else but talk to this customer. Even if they could do nothing and had no information to share a simple, "I know how I would feel if I were in your place. We're so sorry this has happened to you. We're making every effort to get you back to Eorzea as soon as possible." would make a world of difference.

[Fyce]

This has been going on for over 72 hours at this point. And there are other people out there experiencing the same thing right now, for multiple days at a time, without any sort of update on the status of their situation.

The issue is that there is no meaningful level of escalation or confirmation that an issue is being reviewed by someone or a process to receive non-canned or regurgitated copy/paste information like every other triple A game developer has.

I've dealt with EA, Blizzard, Trion, Turbine, and various other companies' CS teams and they ALL had processes for tracking issues and keeping things up to date. Squenix's policy is "lol something's wrong".

"Agent 19:37：I do not know anything, as this is brand new. I'm just informing you as of right now that it's being looked into."
Being looked into = the bug is in the hands of the dev team.
You say that there's no confirmation of them looking into this issue, when the CS dude already told you that it was. You can call them liars if you want, but don't expect sympathy from anyone here then.

You probably don't know anything about bug fixing. First, they need reports, and then make sure that these reports aren't fake or something in which the user did something wrong. After that, they need to collect as much data as possible and then try to reproduce the bug to see where it's coming from and what caused it. After that, they need to come with a solution to fix it.
This can take some time depending on the bug and how spread it is.

You already told us about a very few number of people experiencing this bug. If it was a very widespread issue, then it'd be top priority and it'd have already blown up by now. But it doesn't appear to be the case.
So, it s*cks, but it seems that you experienced a very rare bug that SE didn't saw forthcoming, and tries to fix it with a priority it deserves.

Obviously, for you, it's the #1 priority. But you have to understand that it might not actually be the case for SE, and that you have a very strong bias on the matter.
Still, that's not a reason to start hating on everything and calling names on things that have absolutly no connection with your actual issue.

[Kyuuen]

It sucks that it's happening, but at the same time bugs/glitches found in programming and coding isn't something that typically gets fixed in a short time.

As to Escalating the issues, to whom? For what manner? If it's a coding and programming problem it's being looked into. There's no one for it to be escalated to.

And this part is just me having a poke, but EA and Blizzard have better CS? lol not from my experiences. Can think of several times that it felt like I was being completely unreasonable before getting an appropriate response.

[Lind420]

Im going through a very similar experience right now, put a transfer in on Thursday. The money was immediately taken out but the transfer failed. No notification email or nothing, still stuck on Balmung. After waiting all weekend to call SE support Monday I was on hold for almost an hour just to be told I needed to contact. GM through the report harassment setting so I did. Got a reply email from a GM today saying to contact support again because they cant do anything. After sitting on the phone for over an hour again today was told AGAIN that they cant do anything for for and it is indeed in fact a GM who needs to help me fix my transfer. I just finished emailing the GM a second time explaining all of this in hopes I can get help.

How can they expect people to leave Balmung like this? Im stuck here because I refuse to pay another $18 I dont have, and I do not want to be here since my best friend started playing and is on the server Im trying to get to.

[Kinkoz]

"Character transfers can potentially disable your access to characters across multiple data centers indefinitely" would have gone a long ways towards me not filing for one and getting into this mess in the first place.

Who said it was indefinitely? To repeat, as customer support has already told you, this is a brand new problem that they're looking into. I can understand why you'd be upset, and maybe even impatient, about this issue. I probably would be too if I were in the same boat, but it's not a transparency or customer service problem on Square Enix's part. I'm sure they're doing what they can to fix a problem such as this, but being that it's not a completely widespread and prevalent issue (that we know of as of yet), coupled together with the fact that you've attempted to move a character off of a high-traffic, population-locked server that's probably already receiving a bunch of transfers in the first place and has already been reported as having several stability problems, something going wrong in the transfer process like this is just one of those strange, out-of-left-field problems that have a higher likelihood of happening, which is pretty hard to prepare for as well as to solve right away. You'll likely have your character restored in time in addition to potential compensation for the sudden and unexpected delay.

Like the rep told you, please wait patiently. You said you submitted your application on 6/25 and, at least in my neck of the woods, it's still 6/27. It's only been two days. If it takes a full work week or longer, then maybe your grievance would hold a bit more water.

[Aomine1992]

Sorry this happened to you :/ hopefully they fix the issue soon, you shouldn't be locked out of something you pay for.