Be very careful of "complaining" on the forums

[CplCarrot]

A word of warning to everyone.

Right, im bound to come on and say "Im a nice guy" - but theres a little proof here I suppose in my DAOC posts over 2 years ago (some of which were referenced on the official site , of which I was proud at the time).

Blizzard support and I have come to an irrepairable situation, heres how it happened.

1. Had some issues in game, resulting in lost G, lost items and a char rollback (thursday night logged off, post patch come back to lost stuff).

2. Contacted a GM ingame.


3. Started to have problems where I couldnt log on 9 out of 10 times.

4. Updated call ticket

5. Recieved an "IN GAME" mail that was a standard message apologising and saying lots have disco problems. I took a bit of a wobbler at this , as they promise in their support contract to contact us either in game through pm or via email if they cant contact.

6. Created a new ticket complaining and asking what they intend to do about my lost items.

7. GM contacts me in game, apologises and states clearly "I cannot replace the items, but I can get your 10g back from the AH item that also dissapeared" (I spoke to the seller and he was upset also at the loss of his epic item with an average sale price of 80g). GM also advised me to post this on the Tech support forums - as that is monitored by his boss in real time (allegedly)

8. 2 weeks later the call is closed with no contact at all. My forum post has a standard reply of "contact a GM in game, don't post here" - this showed they hadnt even read the post, as I clearly stated it was a GM that advised me to do so.

9. Very annoyed now, so I posted a thread called "I feel I have been treated unfairly" complaint

10. Insta banned from the tech support forums for "spamming and trolling".

Now that really really got my goat - firstly for considering a valid complaint as spamming and secondly that the ban points me to the rule on the US website which clearly states

ACTION TO BE TAKEN - One Warning.


So it seems that complain and be silenced. Well, I'm not very young anymore and like to fight when people take the piss so they can face the wrath of trading standards UK for a refund of the 4 months left on my 6 month, as I have cancelled.

I really wasnt sure TS could help, but I have been assured that there is a legally binding contract that they will, in return for my money - offer a game but not guarantee stability but DO GUARANTEE SUPPORT in the agreement.

I will keep you posted. By the way the lag does appear to be ever so slightly client side, as increasing the MTU on your network card does help - a packet sniffer shows that the lag co-incides with a shed load of "fragmented" packets getting dropped on inbound and a peak of 100% cpu during the lag time. It would appear that either

1. The client uses distributed processing technology to take some of the burden from the servers

OR.

2. The servers use pull technology to take updates from the client and the client is too busy processing to service the request (this would explain why it seems to happen on item manipulation and /who's).

Anyhoo, I waffle now, but I'm hoping ive won a little sympathy and also saved someone else from getting as irate as I did at a ban without warning for a genuine tech support issue.

<end spam> lol

[Sendraks]

Given that we have no idea what kind of language you used on the Blizz forums or how you framed your discussions with them, its hard to say if you've been treated unfairly or not.

I've seen some pretty harsh criticisms of blizzard support go unbanned and unwarned on the official forums, so I imagine you'll have to have do something pretty darn special for them to take action against you.

Or maybe not. We just have to take your word for it.

[CplCarrot]

the post is there to read yourself , well the first one anyway.

What I want to highlight is the fact that anyone who knows me here in the forums, (deepfat where are you? brynn etc) will know im a non leet speaking average "friendly" person.

I have read so many posts on tech supp that disappear from people with level 1 chars claiming they have been "silenced" and banned for highlighting known bugs that blizzard were at the time denying (such as the 225+ skill bug).

Now I was always sceptical and thought "yeah right, you must have done something wrong" but no - in fact we are just being banned for hitting sore subjects with blizzard.

Theres no way of glossing it over - if a GM ASSURES you that your problem will be looked at and asks you to post on Tech Forum - You don't expect the call closed with no explanation and a ban from the forum for posting!

I also have an email from them now that just tells me to contact a GM in game despite the fact the bloody forum guy on banning me tells me not to use the Forum but to email. They are taking the piss, no two ways about it.

[Fana]

Sounds to me like Bliz support do not yet have any clear and unanimous stand on certain issues and how to handle them (your GM even said he could get gold back for items lost on the AH when other GM's have said they have no way of doing this etc). Atm it seems to be a lottery when asking for support - i.e. will you get a nice, experienced, knowledgable and serviceminded person to help you, or will you get the guy with an attitude problem that was until recently flipping burgers at MCdonalds and woke up with a splitting migraine after drinking to much last night etc - and even if you get the serviceminded person he might have been told to handle certain issues one way by his superiors while the other guy might have been told something different.

They really need to sort out their support section in any event, atm its really unprofessional, and its a shame since it degrades an otherwise very nice game.

[Stekkerdoos]

Sounds to me like Bliz support do not yet have any clear and unanimous stand on certain issues and how to handle them (your GM even said he could get gold back for items lost on the AH when other GM's have said they have no way of doing this etc).

I had a comparable experience with support.

First, I accidently deleted my character (I know, thought that would never happen to me), luckily they restored it for me. Problem at that moment was that I was no longer in the guild. Being the guildmaster of my guild, you could call that a problem. My guild still existed but without a guildmaster.

Of course I sent a ticket and a day later a GM contacted me in-game . The GM told me that the only thing I could do was to recreate my guild so I would be guildmaster again. I forgot to ask how to get the exact same guildname again without a guildmaster to "delete" the guild....

Again I sent a ticket (I think GM's have everybody on ignore by default :P) and again a day later I received another solution to my problem, by mail this time. I had to ask one of my officers to send a ticket asking if he could get promoted to guildmaster so that he could make me guildmaster again.

This worked and I'm very happy they were willing/able to restore my character and I'm guild master again, also max. response time was a day so thats wasnt to bad either.
What I find strange is that one GM suggests me to recreate the guild (a lot more work) and the other GM tells me they can just promote someone in the guild to guildmaster (why couldn't that be me in the first case).

[[TB] Benedictine]

You seemed a reasonable guy in daoc Carrot

I agree with Fana - this appears at the very least unprofessional. It could of course be down to the huge success of the game. It would not surprise me to find a group of Customer Service ppl /GMs who are understaffed, underpaid and incredibly busy. If so, they should recruit more and more importantly train them well. MY only GM ticket was ignored and then deleted without even a standard reply.

That said, great game and loving it even at 60

[Gat_Decor]

I've had very good support from GM's, i think i posted somewhere else about 1 problem i had, they replied within 5 minutes, another ticket i sent, i got an email the next day and the last ticket i raised (about a named Mob not functioning correctly) i was contacted in game after a couple of hours to tell me it was fixed.

so np's with GM's or support atm.... just lack of communication when they patch the servers and tell you it'll be an extra hour, which ends up being 4 (slight exaggeration)

[Laston]

similar stuff happened to me i bought some blue gloves on AH and they never showed up, i ticketed and got a mail later informing they cannot give me money back for it. anyway after like a week the item appeared in my mail box

[Deepfat]

You the man Cpl

You might rant, spam and generally fill up any gap in guild chat with utterly random crap but fundamentally you're a great guy

I'd happily spend a night on the beer with you which is more than I'd say for the majority of players I've met

[Vantros of the Delerium]

i think its not so much blizzard support but the fact that many of the people just dont give a toss, they want a fast buck for doing nothing and your not helping that by asking questions lol. I think many goa peeps moved over to the bliz support and theres the problem right there lazyness.

A guildie friend of mine had his name complained about and couldnt have it changed to anything decent not because there where none left but because according to bliz nameing policy no names from myth, co-right, celebrities, or religous an be used... well that basically means peeps have what like 5 names to choose from lol.. oh and names aint allowed to be 2 words put together...
I told him to make sure he has the names of the gms he delt with written down and to make a direct phone based complaint about them, and to mention that thier name actually ment retard slangly in chinese and there for the gms own name was against the policy. I am not yet sure if anythings happened, but i agree with nameing policies not allowing anything offensive, however, some of the other stuffs just pure garbage, especially since there are many names of npcs in game which are dubious at best.

Imho its down to thier little bit of power, or maybe the fact they aint been laid in about 4 years.

Although as of yet i have had no problems with blizzard, and i hope if i do i get someone with a clue on thier end, not some idiot who is on a power trip.

[CplCarrot]

Originally Posted by Deepfat

You the man Cpl

You might rant, spam and generally fill up any gap in guild chat with utterly random crap but fundamentally you're a great guy

I'd happily spend a night on the beer with you which is more than I'd say for the majority of players I've met

Haha cheers - we never did meet up mate.

[Meduza]

CplCarrot... Same as Madonion?