Experience with SE Customer Support

[Vahzl]

I am posting this on behalf of a friend who has recently had a rather terrible Customer Support experience with SE.

It started with his account being compromised, which he was quite happy to admit was his own fault. There is no issue with blame here, we both understand that compromise is the fault of the PC user, not the company, and that's fine.

So he contacts SE.

Contact 1.

The first contact attempt told him over the phone he does not have an open ticket through their web support system, so he would need to go back once the call is over, open one, and then contact them again.

Not great, but fine, if that's the system, let's roll and work on getting this account secured and recovered.

Contact 2.

The agent on the phone (after being on hold for quite some time, again though not the issue, and we understand the company is busy, holding can't be helped, but still, this is call time ticking away on the phone bill each time) tells my buddy that the ticket he has opened is invalid, and a new one will need to be created. At this point, he does as recommended, opens a new ticket, even though this is not something he should need to be doing on behalf of what is possibly a fault in their ticketing system.

Contact 3.

Another long hold period, and an agent picks up. The ticket is yet again invalid. This is now 3 days after the initial compromise, the account is still under the control of the RMT, and is still being abused. My mate decides to play devils advocate and enquire as to why his tickets are invalid. The agent tells him that no information can be revealed, and he is to open a new one, and try again.

Now, it is at this point I should point out that I too work in a very similar role, and I was offended to hear that this is common practice within Square Enix Customer Support. This is not helpful in any way to either party, and is further extending an issue that could be resolved in one contact from the customer. Clearly there is a mistake being made somewhere, either on fault of the system, or on fault of the user, but when asking where the mistake is, and getting the response that no information can be given, this leaves with a very sour taste in your mouth.

The role is Customer Support, not Customer Hindrance.

Contact 4.

New ticket opened, another long hold period, 4 days after compromise, hope and patience are both wearing thin. The agent picks up, guess what, the ticket is invalid again. So we are on Ventrilo with my mate, and he tells us the outcome while he is still on the phone. I am actually feeling angry for him. I tell him to get a senior on the phone, and get the issue sorted, it's clear there is an issue somewhere, and the buck is being passed.

The senior eventually shows himself, but states point blank that the reason for the ticket being invalid cannot be revealed.

I used some clever conversational pointers here to get him to corner the senior, and he finally reveals the reasoning for the invalid tickets.

The security answer given had an incorrect capital letter at the start.

...

This is the reason for a weekend of pain and aggravation? A single capital letter?

So the senior tells him to open another ticket with the correct capitalization. No, not happening this time. Not on your life. I told him don't even think of putting that phone down till you are logged back into your account.

Time passes, I hear exchanges, and then, after him saying he was going to bring this matter to the forums, literally 5 seconds later, the account is restored, the character is recovered, and he is logged in standing in Ul'dah, back to his previous glory with nothing missing.

5 seconds of an agents time, over what totalled up to nearly 85 hours of anguish.

I am sorry SE, I love your games and all, even for their foibles, but your Customer Support is pathetic. This is a very poor way to treat your customers, and indeed that is what we are, having paid for the game in the first place. While it may be free to play right now, we have still handed over cash for this, and expect a minimal level of service.

I am not one for saying "WE PAY FOR THIS OMG" but in this case, I feel it is close to the mark. I have never experienced such poor customer support in any game I have either played, or been part of.

I hope that should I need to contact your support in future, the agent who is on the end of the phone is ready to play ball, because being in a very similar job as you guys, I know where I stand, and respect each CS agent I ever speak with, but I will not be played the fool.

[SuzakuCMX]

Cool story and absolutely irrelevant to anything.

[Vahzl]

How is it irrelevant, this is the community general discussion forum, which is the closest I can see relating to the subject matter, to bring this to the attention of their team.

[Nero]

Grats? Dont know what this post is about. Ive never had problems with the Support. Not in FFXI and not in FFXIV.

It started with his account being compromised, which he was quite happy to admit was his own fault. There is no issue with blame here, we both understand that compromise is the fault of the PC user, not the company, and that's fine.

^That. After that, the Post should have end. Why? You know what were causing the Problem.. deal with the fact, that a phonecall in that circumstance dont will be like "Hey bud, restore my Account".. "Yeah of course.. 1 sec". <_<

[Xatsh]

Yea that is good old customer service from SE.

Account was hacked in XI as well.

Took me over 4 calls before someone would finally reset my account password... I had all the info from the original game btw. Kept getting the responce "there is nothing we can do". This took me around 8-9 hrs on the phone total with this mess.

Turns out my character was moved to Ifrit server and my credit card was charged for the transfer.

I called them again about that and got this response. " Yes we see your account was compromised, but unfortunately the server transfer was a legitimate transaction and there is nothing I can do" now note this happened in the middle of the time I was hacked. This is a $25 charge for the transfer to the server... a now 2 1/2 month lock in that server away from my linkshell, and another charge to get back to Garuda. I lost around $50.....

I told them it was an unauthorized transactions and I was told the account would be suspended if I was to cancel the charge based on the ToS agreement.

That there is SE's customer service at its finest... and a prime example of why a $10 token is more then worth it... I just wish they where out when this mess happened to me.

SE has the worst customer service out of any company I have ever seen.

[Vahzl]

Grats? Dont know what this post is about. Ive never had problems with the Support. Not in FFXI and not in FFXIV.



^That. After that, the Post should have end. Why? You know what were causing the Problem.. deal with the fact, that a phonecall in that circumstance dont will be like "Hey bud, restore my Account".. "Yeah of course.. 1 sec". <_<

As I said, the issue is with the fact it took 4 contacts over a long weekend to get a reason for them to not answer his tickets. There is no issue with the compromise itself, the actual restoration was done on the spot once the ticketing rubbish was dealt with.

Am I alone in seeing the actual problem here? It worries me that you guys are being so defensive over this.

It was just an experience we had, and not something you need to white knight over.

It also concerns me that you think that because you were compromised, you should no longer have any chance at getting your stuff back, or even securing your account. What a very bizarre standpoint indeed.

[Gun_Anam]

First of all, I'm glad to hear your friend got his account back. I know of 2 people who haven't been so lucky.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of response you were expecting on this topic. The vast majority of people on these forums will not have had any dealings at all with SE customer support and are therefore not likely to feel sympathy to your problems. Were you really just looking for people to come on here and say "You're right. SE customer support sucks."?

The correct course of action with your complaint would be to provide feedback directly to SE with regards to their handling of tickets, not complaining on the forums where it makes absolutely no difference. However, since you work in customer support, I guess you knew this already.

I would encourage you to provide feedback to customer support suggesting that they take a little more common sense into consideration when they are dealing with tickets, with details of the problem you had in your opening post. This is more likely to better serve the FFXIV community than a bitching session on the forums.

[Vahzl]

First of all, I'm glad to hear your friend got his account back. I know of 2 people who haven't been so lucky.

I'm not entirely sure what kind of response you were expecting on this topic. The vast majority of people on these forums will not have had any dealings at all with SE customer support and are therefore not likely to feel sympathy to your problems. Were you really just looking for people to come on here and say "You're right. SE customer support sucks."?

The correct course of action with your complaint would be to provide feedback directly to SE with regards to their handling of tickets, not complaining on the forums where it makes absolutely no difference. However, since you work in customer support, I guess you knew this already.

I would encourage you to provide feedback to customer support suggesting that they take a little more common sense into consideration when they are dealing with tickets, with details of the problem you had in your opening post. This is more likely to better serve the FFXIV community than a bitching session on the forums.

While I appreciate the advice, we did take that route to begin with, and the mail address was invalid.

[Nero]

It also concerns me that you think that because you were compromised, you should no longer have any chance at getting your stuff back, or even securing your account. What a very bizarre standpoint indeed.

I did not say that. I said:

that a phonecall in that circumstance dont will be like "Hey bud, restore my Account".. "Yeah of course.. 1 sec". <_<

[Vahzl]

I did not say that. I said:

that a phonecall in that circumstance dont will be like "Hey bud, restore my Account".. "Yeah of course.. 1 sec". <_<

So you feel instead it should take 4 days just for a single capital letter?