I wasn't in at NA release, no, but I spent several years on FFXI and the two years on FFXIV, and SE GMs in general can't do almost anything besides give canned responses, tell you they're investigating, or tell you they can't do X.

Can't restore items, "investigating RMT", "investigating spam", can't unstuck/use teleport/warp, you have to report with the character having a problem despite not being able to log in, whatever. Take this with a grain of salt because I can't find the posts anymore, but I've read a few leaked accounts of former FFXI and FFXIV GMs where they basically said SE made a very rigid policy that didn't let them do anything, or simply didn't give them the tools to do anything beyond investigate and report the problem to someone higher up.

It's seriously among, if not the worst customer service from any subscription based MMO.