Dear Blizzard,
I can’t help but take to the forums to express my disappointment with my first experience with your Gear Store. I ordered one of the 15th Anniversary Server Blades back in September. The website kept crashing and it took an hour for the purchase to be made. A few weeks later you redid the entire shop interface and it was a convoluted and hidden back entrance to review old orders. My order didn’t have any updates for weeks and it was up to fans on the forum to update me as to why the order wasn’t shipping, no clear communication from Blizzard. At the beginning of December it finally shipped. I was excited when the item arrived on Christmas Eve. But that excitement soon faded when I could hear little pieces rolling around inside the box. Who would have thought that a very heavy server blade falling against a perspex cover with almost no protective wrapping during shipping would cause it to shatter in several places. So I contacted your customer service department who say they’ll get back to me in a few days but it’s likely the item cannot be replaced.
I realize this is a first world problem, but it doesn’t make me feel any less disappointed. I only hope that you have learnt a lesson from this server blade fiasco, and that other people didn’t experience the same disappointment I did.
Sorry to hear about your order. You did the right thing reaching out to Customer Service directly and I’m confident that they will do their best to make things right.
I wanted to comment on a couple of your points too. First, the update to the gear store wasn’t, as far as I know, related to any issues regarding purchases prior to the update. They moved to having a third party, Fanatics, run the gear store.
As for there being no updates on your order, from what I heard, it was stated that the server blades would ship by the end of the year. That info was available to everyone prior to making a purchase. I think people just got their hopes up that it would ship immediately when really it was going to take longer.
Now, all that said, the CS forums here are really more of a Player-help-Player forum. It’s moderated by the Support Forum Agents, but feedback would be better suited for the General forums or the Shop Feedback forums.
My server blade arrived today and was also damaged. You can still log in and go to the order on https://gear.blizzard.com/us/customer/account. The live chat does not seem to work anymore but I was able to open a return ticket for the item for exchange describing the issue. Hopefully that gets some sort of answer.
I received mine today on the east coast and it was also damaged. The 2 inside hooks were broken off (seems like a weak point anyway), inside front scratched and one of the acrylic screws was almost broken in half. The cover seems too delicate for the blade imo. The shipping box didn’t seem like it had a rough ride and I agree with the packaging not being sufficient. It may have had a much better chance not assembled with each piece protected separately since my damage seemed to be all on the inside cover. I would like a replacement cover rather than refund and I hope BLizz works that out.
Now, I don’t know if Fanatics had anything to do with the packaging but I would like to take this opportunity to say that I do not like the new gear store. As someone who bought a lot of things from the better store, I am not a Fanatic of; product price mark ups on items from previous store pricing e.g., statues (leads me to think its all more expensive now), “discount” codes, daily countdowns-because it’s not an auction and will be put up again with another countdown, and FANCASH!! Gimmicky. I may be alone on this and I am ok with that.
So sorry to hear that. From what I’ve read, the damaged servers seem to be pretty widespread. Make sure you send in a claim through customer support. I imagine Blizz is still pondering how they want to handle the issue. But it’d be nice to at least see some acknowledgement and maybe a commitment to resolving the issue for those dissatisfied customers.
I don’t think so. From what I’ve seen, the server blade purchases were handled by Blizz as the orders were prior to the handoff to fanatics.
I don’t either. Fanatics has a very poor history of customer dissatisfaction.
Ordered 2 server blades in the US. Both arrived damaged. The live chat on their old site doesn’t seem to work anymore and I’ve tried about every method of actually talking to someone without success. Not sure what else to do. Only options it gives me is to submit a ticket to return it which obviously isn’t an option.
I’d open the ticket and explain that you do not wish to return the item, but that it did arrive damaged. Identify the damage. They will likely ask for photos later.
On reddit someone said they got this response from support , now 2 days ago, "We are currently in discussions of our available resolutions for damaged orders and hope to have an update within 3-5 business days. We are unsure if we will be able to provide replacements, but if we are not will we move forward with a full refund. "
Agreed. I doubt that the people answering those return tickets are robots; if you explain the issue and what you want, they’ll do their best to help.
That said, I (obviously) don’t know if they can do a replacement case; I guess the best help available all depends on how widespread the issue is (lots of forum posts could still be a relatively small number of people who bought them) and some kind of analysis from higher-ups now that the holidays are over.
Just received an update from Blizz, after sending them pictures of my damage a week and a bit ago.
We’re still determining what resolutions we’ll be able to offer. With the holidays, many people have been out of the office, but we hope to have an update soon! As soon as we do, we’ll add a new comment to your return. We truly appreciate your patience!
This is after receiving the email asking to wait 3-5 Business Days.
Actually, worst case would be Blizz claiming the blades were sold as is and no refunds would be offered. I can’t imagine Blizz going this route. That they are taking time to make a decision is a good sign. Also, I suspect some of the key decision makers are on vacation until today.
Unless it actually said “as is” or something similar on the product page there wouldn’t be much of a case for it and you could still get the chargeback as long as you can prove it arrived broken.
A charge back isn’t a magical thing to get your money back with no backfires. Things could’ve gone wrong in between them shipping it and the person getting it. The delivery person should’ve mishandled it and doing a charge back on this because the guy were tossing it like a football is gonna backfire for the person doing such.
No, please don’t suggest that people do chargebacks. I worked in the credit card industry for 15 years and it is not something that you just do. First of all you will have to prove that the company that you purchased something from is not willing to give a refund, you would need to contact the company first. As Blizzard has already explained that they are attempting to make this right and are simply trying to figure how that will work, there is no need to do a chargeback.
Chargebacks can not only effect your credit score, but could also get you in trouble with you bank and or credit card company as they WILL do an investigation and if they find that you did not try to work with the company they will take action against you. You will also find that a company that you do a charge back against will tend to fire you as a customer and or not allow you to pay via debit or credit cards again.
We do not suggest that people do charge backs here on the CSF and would tell people to work with Blizzard.
the packaging was as expected, and the items should have been able to withstand the standard bumps/drops/falls which they’d be subjected to.
boxes have arrived with no signs of damage, but the contents didn’t survive.
the cases were poorly constructed, and the mounting was subpar.
the slightest bump has caused them to shatter.
