Feedback to Square-Enix reg. The early access & the SE Stores.

[Griever_Zero]

So I’m gonna dedicate this thread to feedback on the following subjects.

SE Stores
SE Customer Support
And Early Access.

First of all, BIG CONGRATULATIONS Square. The launch of Heavensward has been amazing and near flawless. Credit should be given where it’s due.
But sadly this doesn’t fix the other issues that have plagued me and some players around the world.

So this is my feedback, starting from the very day I preordered my Heavensward Collector’s edition.
Do note: I live in Denmark and use the EU SE store.

Timeline
March 16th.
The stores crashed worldwide.

March 18th.
Physical Heavensward CE preordered without any issues. Same goes for my 2 friends, let me refer to them as guy A and guy B. We all get our confirmation mails and early access codes without issues.

June 7th.
Got a confirmation mail that I will soon being charged for my order. Super!

June 8th.
My credit card is charged with no issues.

June 19th.
The HW CEs leaves the Square-Enix store for a lot of excited fans.

June 23th.
Guy A and Guy B receive their games.

June 23th - 25th.
No game arrives for me.

June 26th.
It’s the final day of Early access, and I’m still without a game to be able to continue.
I contact DHL since they are the chosen courier for orders at the SE store. They’re not able to locate my package with just an address.
I then contact the Customer support in hopes of getting a tracking number and hoping they have some sort of idea what went wrong.

June 29th.
Customer support replies, telling me that my case is being escalated, and that they will try to provide a tracking number.
I later that day contact the phone support. No tracking information available and no update regarding the case.
I’m asked to confirm my address is correct.
I contact DHL in hopes they’re able to assist with locating the package, still nothing that has to be delivered to my address.

June 30th.
No mail from the support.
I contacted the phone support in the morning. No update at all.
Even the guy I spoke with was confused that no tracking number seems to exist.
But nothing can be done until the “Escalation team” has given their verdict.
We confirm my address for the 2nd time.

Now this is where it became a long morning for me.
I learned that Guy A was given his tracking number at the date of shipping. Guy B didn’t get any tracking number.
I then search 600 tracking numbers on DHLs website and supposedly found all the SE orders that was going to Denmark. Only one order was being shipped to the town I live in, DHL confirmed that package was not mine.
I find Guy Bs tracking number.
And this is where I believe either the packaged never shipped correctly, or has been overlooked and is sitting in a warehouse somewhere.
My reason to believe one of those options? DHL makes tracking numbers for all shipments. It’s a policy.
I contact the phone support again, now my ticket seems to have vanished, but the support guy is able to help with the case, thanks to my SE username. Still NO update at all.

July 1st.
Verdict Given.
I confirm my address for the 3rd time and they will ship a new copy.
I ask if it’s possible now that I waited this long to be given a quicker shipping in hope it can arrive in good time for me to finish my leveling as well as gearing up for Alexander that launches soon.
I never heard anything back on that request.

July 2nd.
I ask the mail support if the new copy has shipped yet and if there’s a tracking number?
The reply:
“We have updated your escalation with the confirmation of your delivery address. As soon as we have a tracking number for you we will contact you and provide you with it.”

In other words. Not yet… I replied with my address June 1st - 10:41 GMT+2; that is 5 minutes after I had received the request to confirm my address. The SE store support is active from 8 GMT - 18 GMT; 10 hours total. You had 9 hours to actually update, ship and fix this case, yet the next day is still hasn’t been done! (yeah my patience is running thin…)

July 3rd.
I mailed the support in the morning and got no reply.
4:06 PM GMT+2 - I finally received that mail that I have been waiting for.
A new game is finally being shipped, and a tracking has been delivered.
So it took more than 48 hours from when I did deliver my address for them to ship a new copy…. I’m pretty sure this could have been done in a matter of hours rather than days.
So for those that actually did read the story, it shows quite clearly the support team is very slow, too slow in my opinion.
I tried to remain as patient as I could, but it got harder for each day when the contact with the support is bare minimum. At least now there’s finally a new game on its way and I’m tracking it like hell!
But it’s doesn’t change the fact that my SE Store support experience has been… To put it nicely… Really horrible…
So here’s the general feedback I would to report.

FOR THE GAME TEAM.

EXTEND EARLY ACCESS.
This was the biggest jack-ass move, we’re given 1 week to receive our games, and you end early access just as a weekend is starting. NOT COOL.
Give people 2 weeks at least, since shipping issues and other stuff can occur. Just look at this thread with the Canadians having a similar problem, due to customs.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...s-on-June-27th.

What would’ve been a fair length for the Early Access?
June 19th - July 5th.
This way you have given people 16 days to get problems resolved and hopefully have received their games instead of being locked out.

DON’T LOCK PEOPLE IN THE EXPANSION.
The moment early access ended, and people were located in Heavensward content, you couldn’t log in again on that character, and you are forced to buy a copy to do so.
Why the hell doesn’t there exists a system that will throw you character back to say... Limsa if the expansion isn’t detected.
Even if you mentioned this in the early access details, don’t expect that everyone reads them.
Funny thing is your return and teleport systems can do this.
I died in northern Thanalan with my return point set to Idylshire. The game returned me to Limsa instead.

FOR THE EU STORE

QUICKER AND BETTER SUPPORT!
I cannot stress this enough, your support is very slow. 1 e-mail a day on something they definitely should be able to have done in a matter of hours is beyond sad.
If you really need to have your own store and exclusive products, then you damn well also have a support team that can match the level/amount of the sold items. I’m not asking for amazon level support, but something close to that level of support would be really appreciated.

EXTENDED SUPPORT HOURS IN THE WEEKENDS WHEN AN MMO RELATED SOFTWARE LAUNCHES.
When you got a brand new expansion for an MMO, I can’t but wish I could have been in contact with the support team over the weekend, and having set this into motion quicker rather than rot in ARR content.
You were able to do so in the USA/Canada. So why is Europe being shafted?

TRACKING NUMBERS SHOULD BE MANDATORY!
This I seriously don’t get. Why isn’t it mandatory to deliver the tracking number for an order?
From what I’ve seen, the US store does so, but why isn’t the EU doing it?
As I mentioned in the story:
Guy A got a tracking number, Guy B and me didn’t, but I was able to locate Guy Bs tracking number.
If I did have a tracking number I would’ve been talking with the DHL support, and not you. Crisis averted, as long the tracking number exists that is.
So please from now on inform the customer of his tracking number.
We really shouldn’t have to do this (Written at the very top of the Contact us page for the EU store team):
“To find the tracking number of a FINAL FANTASY XIV: Heavensward Collector’s Edition pre-order, please check your order history. If you're unable to see a tracking number for this, please contact us using the form below.”

DIVIDE THE PREORDERS AND PREDICT THE AMOUNT OF PEOPLE
March 16th was the date for HW preorders to open, yet the stores crashed worldwide and only very few actually did get a preorder.
EU fixed this by dividing the preorder dates for the Digital and physical vers.
So please do that again for future expansions instead of simulating a DDOS attack.

A TICKET SUPPORT PAGE!!
On the SE support site it’s impossible to actually check your support tickets.
Please make a page for that so we’re able to “Create, Edit, Reply, New Information to share, Delete ect. Ect.” said tickets.
At the moment, I have no idea how many tickets I ended up making for trying the different support options.
So a nice touch would also be to be able to contact the different supports without having to make a new ticket every damn time.

So this ends my feedback for early access and the EU store, hopefully somethings will be done and resolved for when 4.0 is actually a reality.
So please post your feedback guys so square can get better at things, and we as the players/customers have less headaches to deal with.

[LunaHoshino]

Going to add to this... have a way to issue temporary codes for people who receive damaged copies or whose copies get held up in transit. We paid for the game and access to it; there is no reason we should be locked out of playing it due to factors that are not our fault.

In my case, the physical CE I received was damaged. It took nearly a week to get a response okaying a return, four more days to send it back, and they haven't shipped the new one yet. I haven't been able to play HW at all since EA ended despite having paid for it.

[Cakekizy]

When I was unable to sign in to SE store to place HW order, took a week to hear back from SE. Of course, in that time I had managed to resolve issue, but still.

[Kirito]

Honestly I think for the future they shouldn't extend early access but they should have some means of linking the game code with the package so when the game is released SE will email everyone their code. They should have this ability at least for cases of needing their code because of an issue with shipping. If the support team just gave you the code, I think there would be no issue.

[Cakekizy]

Or just ship them out earlier.