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Do You Hear an Echo When You Talk to Support?
The_Grump
Member Posts: 331
I have a problem and I'm curious if anyone else out there has had similar problems in the past.
On 09 June 2010 at around 2:35am I put in a support ticket about Guild Wars with NCSoft's online support. Later in the day it was retrieved and redirected to a Guild Wars GM who responded and said they would look into the issue. As of today, 25 June 2010, I haven't received a response. This means it has been 13 business days (2.5 business weeks) and 17 total days without a response to the ticket. (Note: I don't include the revtrieval and passing of my ticket to the GM a response.) I looked into calling phone support but, unfortunately, it would not apply to my query since it is game-related and putting in another ticket asking about it would just be idiotic.
So, that's my current support experience. Has anyone experienced anything similar to this before, with NCSoft or any other MMORPG publishers? What has been the longest you have had to wait from putting in a support ticket to resolution (even if that resolution is that there is nothing they can do about the issue)?
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain.
(2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.
Comments
Blizzard is terrible about this, too. Their ticket system is a joke and their phone support is even worse.
I've been pretty fortunate in my experience with customer service in the mmos I've played. I've only had to contact SOE a couple times and Blizzard. Both companies went out of their way to help me out.
I was looking to transfer one of my characters to a different server in EQ2 but on the target server there was a toon that already had my name. The toon was only level ten and hadn't been played for years. I called up SOE and asked if there was any way possible that the toon could be deleted so I didn't lose my toon name.
He looked into the name and found the toon. A couple hours later I checked my email and had one stating that the toon was deleted and I could take the name assuming nobody else already had.
Now Ebay on the other hand... Can't leave neg feedback for buyers or sellers anymore so you have to contact Ebay instead if there is a problem. I had some bum try to yank funds from Paypal twice after he won an auction. I contacted Ebay over a week and a half ago and still no response. Funny thing is, I did get an email two days ago to see if I wanted to fill out a survey about my experience with customer service. Yeah, I had no problem fillin that thing out.
Considering how much money they actually have and how much they really seem to put toward support and QA I have to agree. Do you think they are worse though? Even though I had a wait time of just over 4 days for a ticket once, which wasn't answered appropriately and caused me to put in a ticket for a senior GM, NCSoft is still taking the cake on this one.
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain.
(2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.
I've personally had no bad experiences with support from any of these major companies, my main problems were actually with f2p games but again can i really complain there?
I meant specifically MMORPG publishers, but all terrible support is really in some way relevant.
When I orderd a m17x from Alienware last year I not only had problems with getting through to the correct people, the laptop was delivered on the wrong date and it came broken. I sent it back for repair the next day and it was sent back later in the month without warning or notification. When I contacted support about this and wanted to cancel, still within the 30 day window, I was told I couldn't even though their TaC said that I could within that time. I was also told there was no one higher I couldspeak with. So, they sent me a M17...that was broken as well, having heat and cosmetic issues. At this point Critical Issues Resolution Staff contacted me and I sent it back. After telling them my story they decided to fix and upgrade the system and, no, I still couldn't cancel it. The laptop arrived two months later and it was still broken, having heat issues. So, two broken laptops and no fixes and they had to see if they could get approval. As it turns out, I ended up dealing with the head of the CIRS department and he got me the refund: I purchased the laptop in May and did not get a return until 31 December, even though I had all but $100 left to pay at that point and never had a working laptop.
Such is the state of business, eh?
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain.
(2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.
LOL... You're dealing with the same company that gave me the worst customer service experience in all of my years of gaming. I was a high level Clan Leader in Lineage II at the time and someone was blatantly breaking the EULA to scam my Clannies. When I put in a ticket about it I got the usual canned response you always got from the GM's in that game, "Player Conflict". So I pressed the issue and I actually had a GM PM me and he told me that it wasn't the GM's job to enforce the rules as described in the EULA... To which I replied, "Then what the hell is your job? Getting stuck newbies out of trees?". To which the GM replied, "Pretty much, Yeah.".
I'm not sure if Arena or NCSoft runs the CS in GW but if it is NCsoft I wouldn't expect much help as they just don't give a shit. They will just give you canned answers and if you try to press the issue to far you'll just get banned from the game. I didn't get banned but I didn't stay subscribed for too much longer after that experience. I haven't touched an NCSoft game since.
Bren
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I've actually heard similar stories from other people and that just blows my mind. GMs can level the banhammer but somehow, for some reason, can't enforce the EULA. That sounds...like business as usual? Is that too cynical or an unfortuante observation?
When I got hit with a slew of bugs around the Summer-Fall of 2008 and had responses to tickets telling me that they couldn't replicate the issue, despite them being regular even though intermittent, I had enough. When I heard AION was coming out ahead of GW2 I thought, 'well, that's where all their support went.' When I saw what happened with AION I thought, 'wow, this makes a hell of a lot of sense and this is really unfair to ArenaNet.' I don't have much beyond praise for ArenaNet because of what they do and have done, watching NCSoft support such a great developer so poorly has been a real sore spot for me. I'm actually looking forward to GW2 because of this, because I think that ArenaNet can really do some good for the MMORPG genre despite the chain NCSoft has them tethered with.
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain.
(2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.
Just to keep things in perspective, a ticket I put in on 23 June was answered on 28 June and when I asked for more detail the same GM provided said detail on the issue. The ticket that I put in on 09 June still has yet to be answered and when, on 28 June, I put in a separate ticket asking if I could speak with a supervisor a GM merged that ticket with the one from 09 June. No mention was made as to the content of that particular request and after 16 business days and 22 calendar days I'm simply shocked at this sort of support, it actually reminds me a great deal of my experience with Alienware.
Edit: oddly enough, or perhaps not oddly at all, there is no way to contact anyone at NCSoft other than the incredibly ridiculous support hours (who only handle billing and technical support issues) or via the 'Ask a Question' feature (only if you have an account with NCSoft). So, ultimately, the company has stonewalled anyone actually attempting to reach support. If I am missing something and there actually is information somewhere please do not hesitate to post it here so I can contact someone at NCSoft to figure this out.
(1)TL:DR must be your way of saying that thinking hurts. Then again, this may explain why it looks like you responded to the post without using your brain.
(2) It's not about community, is it? You just have nothing better to do.