From DDO fanatic (addict) to leaving the game due to appalling customer service.

From DDO fanatic (addict) to leaving the game due to appalling customer service.

Firstly I must apologise, this is a bit long, but there is a bit to say and for those of you who value good customer service in their games that they play online this is something you should read.

As many of you know DDO is a fantastic MMO and one can play for hours and hours on end. Like many MMO players I am one of those people. However recent events have made me come to the decision to leave DDO and look for another game or MMO system instead.

Firstly I have a full year VIP membership ($100 for the year) and would have renewed it if I was staying, but I find that DDO is happy to accept your money but when it comes down to supplying the customer with timely and more importantly sufficient (if not good) service that is severely lacking.

My reason for leaving is as such.About 2-3 weeks ago, I agreed on a trade ingame for a code for the pre-release pack of the new update (U18), and in return I was to get some items off the shard exchange and trade them with the player (yourdeadboy on Sarlona server). This cost me approximately 4500 Turbine Points, which I had been saving up to buy the expansion pack when it was released on the shop. 

I traded him the items and then he logged off without giving me the code. I sent him a mail saying that I hope he has not swindled me to which he did not reply. I then sent him a less civil mail accusing him of swindling me and he reply to me was “ Gregory House – “Everybody lies” “

Yes I was stupid and should have asked for the code before buying all the items and giving it to him, but that does not mean I shoud be ignored by turbine/DDO support as you will see below.

I was quite peeved at the time as you would imagine so I opened a ticket to Turbine about the matter to be told, we do not interfere with player trades. I then opened another ticket to complain about the service from them, and was even madder as Turbine did not seem to care that one of their paying members was just stolen from and as before the ticket was closed and I was told if I had a problem with their service I must log a complaint.

To cut a long story short I opened a couple more tickets in-game and on the support site. I got a mail saying that one of the GMs will be in touch with me within 5 – 7 working days. I was also told to reply to the email with my information and any other information that I thought was pertinent, which I did.

While waiting for a reply from a GM I get a mail from them asking me to rate their service to which I told them their service levels were terrible and that I wanted a response to my actual tickets that were open. 

After 7 working days I responded to the mail yet again to enquire why I had not heard from them only to get a return mail that the ticket was closed.

In nearly every ticket and mail I asked or demanded that someone contact me on my email to discuss the matter further, and am still waiting to hear from them. This to me is totally unacceptable and hence why I will not spend another cent on any Turbine game as they do not give their customers service that should be there.

I do admit that initially when I was angry, I was demanding that yourdeadboy be banned from DDO and that I get refunded my Turbine Points or get a code to the expansion. It was pointed out to me by someone on a facebook post that if they theoretically sell a cellphone and the cheque bounces the bank would not be held responsible for the money, so DDO cannot be held responsible for my turbine points. On that I do agree and in all my later tickets and mails to them I said if I could get my TPs back it would be an added bonus, but I was and am still adamant that yourdeadboy should have his account banned from the Turbine servers. 

I found out that he has swindled a few other people but DDO does not seem to care about those players. I cannot put a message on the social board or on the forum with his toons name as that would be against the EULA and I would get banned from DDO for doing that (extremely ironic).

I was chatting to a friend of mine who moved to Skyrim as DDO had peed him off with some stuff in the past and that he was having trouble finding groups whenever he was logged on. He had been planning on trying it again as I had been pushing him to come back, but after what I have told him, he will never touch DDO again either. So due to their inaction they have now lost 2 paying customers.

He explained to me that a while ago his EA games account was hacked and he lost all of his inventory. He logged a ticket on their system and they came back to him within a day saying that they would investigate the matter. Within 2 days they had rolled back his account to give him all of his inventory back. He did not hear what had happened to the hacker as he did not ask, but with that level of customer service and non-tolerance for theft, I can only imagine that the culprit was punished accordingly. That is what customer service is about. I do not have an EA account but if that is how their service levels are, I can see myself considering their MMOs.

In keeping with bad service levels from Turbine / DDO, previously I submitted a ticket to them as I had made a green steel (GS) item and somewhere along the line there was an error in it. For those of you who know GS crafting it is a hell of a process to farm the ingredients and then make the item. I showed them the error and showed that I had crafted another item that had the same power as the part made in error which is why I was certain I did not want to make the power (HPs) on that item (still do not know where the error came in). They told me that as I am not using their preferred crafting calculator they will not help me. Really all that was required is that they know how intensive and difficult the crafting is, and instead of fixing it and having a happy customer they choose to say no sorry we won’t help you. I understand that they must get a lot of people trying to get them to give them stuff, but all it takes is checking their logs and they will see that I crafted it. Yet again they took the easy road and did not help when the problem should be easily solvable

I really think that they need to look at their support processes as soon as possible because any successful business knows a happy customer is a returning customer. Even though it is a Freemium MMO people still spend money as soon as they can to get the benefits they need and/or want. Every time they lose a customer they lose money, so why would they not make their support agents and support processes more customer friendly is beyond me.

I will miss the game, this I do know, but I will find a game to replace it, that I am sure of also.

Anyways I hope this helps you decide and for those of you that I have had the pleasure of running quests with and those friends that I have made, I hope we can keep in touch and I will let you know what the new system I find is like. 

Play well, kill lots and why oh why do people still live in Stormreach with all the monsters that are there. Best regards Tankety (Fighter), Efffor (FVS), Emmfor (Monk), Tanety (Rogue/Wiz), Rougard (Rogue/Sorc), Highlystrung (Bard) and a few others I haven’t played in ages.