Another in a long string of occurrences that make me question Blizz and their notoriously bad customer service.
I love the Warcraft. It is a wonderful social game where I have made several good friends, friendships that bleed over into real life and will be there when wow is dust. I have also had the honor of having experienced the wonders of their customer service as I watched my brother log in when it was not him, watched him go from the bank to the mailbox while not answering tells, watched him strip to his shorts and make one last trip to the box. The whole time I had in a ticket, for hours no one replied. Locking the barn after the horses get away is pointless.
Even with the screen shots, the instant ticket put in, and phone calls my brother tried to make while we watched him get ransacked, it still took weeks to get his character back. Now in a knee-jerk reaction Blizz seems to be throwing their nets wide and not caring about the consequences. I suppose when you have ten million accounts losing a few might not seem to matter, but new things are on the horizon. If folks are unhappy enough they will move elsewhere.
Remember all the companies that outsourced tech support over the last decade? Look into how many lost business as a result. Now many companies are moving back to doing their own in house customer service. A shining example of this kind of callousness can be found on Temerity-Janes blog Here. I don’t know what else I can say other than good luck. Some times bad things happen to good people, I hope your story has a happy ending.
Edit: An interesting post about the why of the ban series can be found at priestly endeavors here.
My point is not to scream at Blizz for this particular issue, but for their very difficult to work with customer service in general.
Their recent tactic in using prior purchases with the same credit card information to support a ban I strongly disagree with. A for instance would be if I were to purchase a gaming keyboard that has programmable keystrokes with time delay built in as a gift for a friend who does not play wow, never installing it or it’s software in my system. Would this be considered sufficient wrong doing to hit me with the ban hammer? I understand that the credit card info they received was for purchasers of glider software, but it sets a dangerous precedent.
I don’t see this as having a long term impact on purchasing such things, it merely makes sure the “bad guys” pay for their hacks with cash and their accounts with game cards. I don’t know how far this will go, but I would like Blizz’s customer service to be a bit more forthcoming and a bit less confrontational.
Filed under: random ravings |
Be Nameless 
Thanks so much!
I wrote this on Kirk’s blog, but “bans” don’t happen unless Blizzard feels they have ALREADY done the due diligence in determining the account is in violation. They don’t do this wily nilly and only when they feel they have very compelling evidence. History has shown that when it comes to bans, they err far more with regards to caution. As a result, ban reversals rarely ever happen and it is unlikely you can provide any new evidence to Blizzard that would sway the decision. A quick personalized reply isn’t going to make you feel better about getting banned no matter how kindly it is written.
Your “I got hacked” story is a bit different in that you are a wronged party and that wrong is easily verifiable. Criticizing Blizzard for being slow to respond in those cases is justified. However, let me ask you, how would you feel to know that your customer service rep wasn’t able to respond more quickly because they were inundated with e-mails from banned botters? Which of the two should take a higher priority? Particularly considering that Blizzard already did considerable due diligence prior to issuing the ban.
Not knowing the particulars it the case I cannot say one way or another with any degree of certainty weather this is a legitimate case of botting or not. I do not personally know the individual in question, nor do I have access to his system.
What I DO have is a first hand experience with the customer service section at Blizz which was extremely frustrating and at times seemed down right rude. And as you pointed out, this was for a relatively easy to find “my brother got hacked” situation.
It seemed to take much longer than it should have, considering the circumstances. One other complaint I have in that particular case was the fact that you do not have to confirm a password change through an email link.
Had something like this been in place my brother could have kicked them off his account and changed the password before much damage was done. I know the software for it is in place as I had to follow an email link to complete a character transfer.
Somehow i missed the point. Probably lost in translation 🙂 Anyway … nice blog to visit.
cheers, Effulgence!