Character rolled back - 3 months worth of inventory lost

[rotf]

OP messed up by not being careful with his account details then messed up by not following instructions, suffering the very consequences said instructions were to prevent.

If the OPs story is true, and the time period of three months sounds sketchy to say the least, then certainly this reflects very badly on SE. The customer service standard is dreadful and needs to be addressed. However let's not beat around the bush here, SE aren't responsible for the OP losing some selective gil and gear, OP alone is responsible for that.

yes, but what is being discussed here is precisely the process they have in place to handle that, and how at present moment it is not acceptable.
How the account was compromised and how it could've been avoided in the first place is a different discussion and not my goal with this thread as I already have all the information I need on that topic.

[YojimboM]

Welcome to SE support. They won't talk to you. You won't get any updates. You won't have any clue what's being done or if anything even IS being done. And most of the time, they'll probably break something. Anyone that says SE support is "good/great" has never truly had to use it for anything technical like this, because they almost always find some way to screw it up or take an obscene amount of time to fix it.

From what I understand, none of their support teams are actually able to communicate with each other either, they are entirely separate and unaware of what each other are doing.

[YojimboM]

Not only did it say don’t play the character but you even posted the part where it said don’t play the character.

You played the character.

I don’t see the problem.

When no action occurred after ten days, why did you not file something or reach out to either inquire or get your ticket canceled?

You did exactly what it says not to do, and exactly what it says would happen; happened.

This mentality is absolutely mindboggling. The OP followed the information he was given and stayed off the character for 10 days. After which, he still received no communication from SE support WHOSE LITERAL JOB IS TO PROVIDE SUPPORT. It is not the customer's job to contact and maintain communication with the support, support exists to make sure that the customer doesn't have to worry about it.

As someone who has personally dealt with SE support, I can also tell you that they do not communicate with you even if you repeatedly e-mail or call them. The most you might get out of them is "your case is being looked at". Most of the time you won't even get that and will be left to wonder what they're even doing or if they're doing anything at all. In my case, I had to ask multiple times because they kept closing an open ticket and saying my issue was "fixed" when absolutely nothing had been done. It is not far-fetched to assume that after the time period had passed that your issue has been closed with SE, since they are actually just that incompetent and/or careless.

[Avidria]

OP messed up by not being careful with his account details then messed up by not following instructions, suffering the very consequences said instructions were to prevent.

If the OPs story is true, and the time period of three months sounds sketchy to say the least, then certainly this reflects very badly on SE. The customer service standard is dreadful and needs to be addressed. However let's not beat around the bush here, SE aren't responsible for the OP losing some selective gil and gear, OP alone is responsible for that.

Dude, I seriously don't care what was or wasn't OP's fault. I care that the character restoration system is apparently awful enough that it's (apparently) a roll of the dice on when that restore will actually happen. Saw one of those reddit posts someone mentioned earlier saying they've been waiting six weeks. Another, three weeks. That's insane. If I was expected to wait that long without playing just to have my account restored, you can bet I would not be paying for that game time anymore. I pay to play the game, not to sit and wait a month+ to get back something I've lost.

That this has happened more than once is worrying, to say the least.

[LittleImp]

lol @ people shilling for SEs legendarily terrible customer service.

[Rivxkobe]

I guess people in their eagerness to find ways blame the victim

I apologize, no one should be blaming you for Support taking 3 months to process your request, however stating something along the lines of "be proactive and contact them if you have more questions" isn't blaming you, it's stating something to keep in mind and something that would have helped if you had done it. Which, sure, isn't helpful now but its good to get it out there so if this happens to anyone else they can take the initiative and not wait as you did.

However, I have no sympathy for you when it comes to why this happened in the first place. I can only assume the link you clicked on was offering something unbelievable and you believed it. You clicked on it and put in your information. Something you should never do on the internet and is no one's fault but your own. When people start blaming others for this (ie. the "hackers", support not correcting your mistake correctly) I lose any sense of feeling sorry for you. YOU clicked the link and offered your info. You were not HACKED you were SCAMMED. You fell for it and broke the most basic and obvious rule of the internet: Do not click on unknown links and put in your information that is requested because it is 100% of the time a scam. There are consequences for your actions and while I am sorry it took so long for them to rollback your account, this is kinda part of the consequence of your actions. Because if you never did it then you never would have had to contact support about it in the first place.

Life. /shrug

The OP followed the information he was given and stayed off the character for 10 days. After which, he still received no communication from SE support WHOSE LITERAL JOB IS TO PROVIDE SUPPORT. It is not the customer's job to contact and maintain communication with the support, support exists to make sure that the customer doesn't have to worry about it.

Do people actually have this mind set? This is insanity. Are you seriously telling me that "I'll just sit and wait" / "I guess I'll just assume nothing is happening so I'll just go back to doing x" is really the best way to handle situations like this? Do you know what is better than this? Being proactive and trying to find out what is going on when you don't hear anything from support. Yes, support failed in this situation but lets not act like a customer washing their hands of the ticket they not only put in but created the situation in which they needed to create the ticket in the first place AND they are spending money on the service is how you should approach these situations.

The basic's of support's job is to provide you with answers or process something that you request. It is not always their job to contact the customer to ensure they are okay and if they are worrying about it. Yes, Square Support should have contacted OP to let him know it was taking longer than usual but this does not mean that the OP not contacting them before playing again was a bad move and was, honestly, not how something like this should have been handled on either side.

You should never expect a company's support or other people to reach back out to you if the allotted time has passed, they'll usually just assume you are okay with it. This is not good service, obviously, but some places don't have the time or want to spend the money required to reaching out to all the customers who may be questioning what is happening or who may be upset about how long it is taking. Again, its poor customer service but you should be more proactive and stop passively letting things happen and then getting angry when things happen without your knowledge or because you expected someone else to assume that you were not fine with how it was being handled.


It is good to get this out there so people know this is how their case may be handled. However, this may have been avoided if you had contacted them. Is this an issue with Square's support? Of course. But if you are not attempting to work with how it is done and try to make things easier and better for yourself you are basically telling them that you are okay with it at the time and that the only issue you have is with how it was concluded not with how it was handled at the time. You let them do their support how they do their support. Its poor support but at the time you let them know it was fine and that isn't going to help anyone.

[AngelCheese77]

Wow.

I guess after my 41 years on this Earth, I've come to realise you cannot rely on what you read. This goes with doctors, papers you sign, and stuff from Customer Service. I do feel for you OP, as things like this has happened to me in games in the past, and it was a hard lesson to learn.

I hope you don't leave the game, and your friends help you get more gear.

I don't know if contacting the BBB in your area can help. If the CS area for Square Enix is in the USA, you should be able to search for the state it is in. The BBB can help in some way, even if it's just making "someone" aware of things.

But for anyone reading, my advice? If you do anying that has a time limit to when it is to be done, make a note. If you don't hear anything after that time period, call/contact them. And keep doing it.

[rotf]

I apologize, not one should be blaming you for Support taking 3 months to process your request, however stating something along the lines of "be proactive and contact them if you have more questions" isn't blaming you, it's stating something to keep in mind and something that would have helped if you had done it. Which, sure, isn't helpful now but its good to get it out there so if this happens to anyone else they can take the initiative and not wait as you did.

However, I have no sympathy for you when it comes to why this happened in the first place. ...

thanks for your input, but as I said, that topic is not my goal with this thread... how it happened or how it could've been avoided is a different discussion, and I already have all the information I need about it.
still, they do offer a process to revert that, and the moment they start offering that, they need to make sure it is a process that works in acceptable terms

Do people actually have this mind set? This is insanity. Are you seriously telling me that "I'll just sit and wait" / "......

when I'm paying for something, I expect I can go by the information that is given to me.
besides, anyone familiar with how IT companies work knows there are procedures and guidelines when it comes to doing something in the system. backups are supposed to be taken, target dates are set, strict policies are supposed to be used by the analysts working on something.
I would expect that type of change control in a company this size
definetely wouldn't expect someone to take a case from three months ago and think "oh hey, look at this case, a bit old... but I'm sure the player hasnt been playing for all this time and it is definitely safe to go ahead without even asking for confirmation"

not to mention that from the additional testimonies here, it is safe to say that even if you contact them, you wouldn't be able to cancel the ticket (that they didnt even provide a number in the first place), nor get concrete information anyway as their teams don't talk to each other... I'm fairly certain the people from the help desk are not the ones working on the rollback actions

[Gwenorai]

Snip

Man, this post went from apologising to the OP to straight-up berating him in less than five seconds. Actually, if I recall - you don't HAVE to put in your information. You just have to click the link and it does the rest. It's not like when someone sends you a scam email.

The links would look like official links from Square - like the Twitch ones. All you had to do was click on the link and wham. So many people got trapped with that one. No idea how they actually go about that, part of me hopes it's false hearsay because that's a major 'Ooof'.

[Niqote]

SEs infamously terrible customer support aside... this is excellent advertisement for the physical security tokens ^^;;;;