This may seem to be a leading subject line, but I would honestly like clarification on this. I opened a ticket a couple of weeks ago regarding the classic alliance server transfer debacle. (Well documented here on the forums) With one member of my guild “left behind”, I reached out to customer service to see if anything could be done for my friend. I was told 3 times by GMs that there was nothing they could do, assuming this meant there was nothing that could be done at their level, I requested to be escalated or my message forwarded to whoever would be able to address this issue. I eventually recieved a response from a “Customer Service Manager” threatening that if I opened ANY other tickets my account would be deleted. Since I did not care to have any adverse action on my account, I did not persue the issue any further.
The next day, I noticed that I was selected for a GM survey, which I filled out. Four to five days later, I recieve notification of a Warning being placed on my account related to opening service tickets. In my opinion this seems a bit high handed and I cannot help but believe this may be some form of “revenge” for filling out a less than stellar survey. I would like to have some clairification on this subject as I am concerned about further punitive action on my account. (Especially if I find myself in another situation that requires GM intervention in the future)
I thank you for your time.
Basicly you were told no 3 times and even if they were to go higher the answer would still be a no and to avoid GM harrassment of further tickets they warned you not to perfectly normal.
No, he said your tickets would be deleted and it can affect the status of your account.
You probably said some NOT very nice things and the GMs had enough.
High handed would be Blizzard closing your account and banning you. You got a warning to knock it off.
GMs are people too, and do not have to take player abuse.
I was not told that, as I posted “I was told 3 times by GMs that there was nothing they could do, assuming this meant there was nothing that could be done at their level”. Not once was I warned of anything of sort until the last message, that I did not respond to. Also for the record, I did not abuse any of the staff and actually went out of my way to note in my survey that most of the folks I dealt with were exceedingly pleasant.
But I suppose live and learn, every ticket contains an inherent threat of adverse account action. And nothing but positive surveys. Thanks for the help.
if you wanna take it that way, that’s on you. I have had conflicts with GMs, and I never got a warning to knock it off by them.
GMS are bound by policy there superiors are bound by that same policy thats set by the developers if 3 GMs arent able to do it their superiors wouldnt be able to either except very rarely but not in this case, they warning was so you wouldnt get into trouble for opening more tickets on a issue that will never be a yes.
Perhaps I am just dense, I guess I just wish that would have been clearly stated; thus avoiding this situation. Like I said, live and learn. As for my actual question: As I am unfamiliar with the policy you are noting, does this keep the actual GM in question from grinding any further personal axes by taking action against my account? This was my primary concern.
No GM is gonna risk their job by targeting you. You can open tickets for different problems, but you cant open up tickets for this one.
I hope you are right about the part regarding different problems (as I have had a total of two issues since 2004), I don’t see being able to test that theory for quite some time. Either way, this did make me feel better, thank you Praetorian.
No problem, theres really nothing to worry about for this, well as long as you dont open another ticket for this issue 
. Have a goodnight and dont be afraid of the support staff, they are there to help, but sometimes they gotta end the cycle of a ticket being opened and them giving a no.
As I have been accused of “abusing” GMs, I would like to take a moment to present one of my responses so you can decide if I am indeed a monster:
Good Evening GM *****, (Name redacted)
I do really appreciate the solution you have offered, however, I do fear that reverting the roughly 30 character transfers which had already taken place is not the solution we had hoped for. A major sticking here is that much was done on the forums to convince the Fairbanks community that removing layering was going to result in the resurgence of queue times for that server. This is exactly what prompted us to decide to switch servers and take advantage of this migration. (Every Blizzard post regarding I read regarding this did not mention anything about allowing only one faction avoid long queues.) As you mentioned previously, this account has been around for a while and during that time, the lives of the friends I play with has changed as well. (If you look into all the accounts involved here they were created around 2004 also.) As most of us find ourselves in a situation where 6 to 10-hour queues (as we experienced after launch) are not feasible on an ongoing basis and I fear have kept many from playing anywhere near as much as they would have liked.
I honestly believe the best solution, from a customer service perspective, would be to fulfill Blizzard’s original implied promise regarding this transfer. I understand that the Dev team is attempting to address a very serious faction imbalance on Fairbanks (trust me, I have lived it for a while now); I am glad that they have taken notice and if it helps, I would certainly agree to revert two of my character transfers back to Fairbanks in order to allow my friend to transfer his two characters over to the new server. (Although I might mention that service-wise I do not believe this to be 100% fair, I am willing to take this “hit” in order to keep all 6 of the previously mentioned accounts active.)
As Game Masters are not able to facilitate a request of this nature, would you kindly forward this request to the Dev Team or escalate the ticket?
Thank you,
While in hindsight, this message was not going to solve my issue, I was not aware of that at the time. (I did not possess any understanding of the compartmentalization of Blizzard’s support staff) When it was mentioned that the “Dev Team” would be the only body able to resolve this, I thought “well, lets talk to them”. Seems stupid to me now after the fact.
I apologize for the long winded post, I felt the need to defend myself as I take pride in treating others with respect.
You opened too many tickets, when someone already gave you an answer.
There isn’t an “at their level” thing; The entry dude is the one who passes it on, if it is a valid thing to be dealt with but he can’t. They told you “no.”
The main issue is:
ONLY YOUR FRIEND can get something done. They can’t do anything about your friend’s account, based upon what YOU say. Your friend has to interact, if anything can be done.
It would make no difference if every person in your guild submitted tickets on that guy’s behalf, except to paint a very bad picture of your guild in Blizzard’s eyes; The guy is still the one who has to try to get something done, not third parties.
Players tend to make the assumption that if they go high enough up the chain of command they can get someone with the authority to do what the player wants. Blizzard support does not work that way. If the GM is not able to do it for you, their manager is also not able to do it for you.
The Dev team working on an issue is about making a solution for everyone, not just in one circumstance. You can’t just request that they work on your issue. There is a protocol for getting an issue escalated to the Devs. From what I’ve seen on the Customer Support forum, it is mainly limited to corrupted characters that need to be manually corrected and not issues like you describe.
Your friend can create new characters on your new realm. It may not be the ideal solution but it allows your friend to still play with you. Keep an eye out for other free transfers. Another could be offered from your old realm to your new realm. Your friend may have to wait until they offer paid transfers in Classic to move those characters to your new realm.
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No, you’re not only incorrect but also hyperbolic, and you’re doing a disservice to the community by spreading falsehoods like this.
“Every ticket” includes no such thing. Obviously. If it did, the forums would be rife with hundreds of threads about “account action threats” from simple tickets. In reality, someone comes forward with one of these threads here in CS only once every couple of weeks, and the customer complaint is always the same (“I was threatened for asking a simple question,” etc.)
Look, if you tried to return something to Target, and were told “no,” then you asked again and were told “no,” then you asked again and were told “no,” then you asked again and were told “no,” then you asked again and were told “no,” then you asked again and were told “no,” then you asked again…Target might demand you stop, and then ask you to leave.
I used to work customer service, and I’ve asked customers to either stop, or leave, for behaving exactly in this manner. Customers acting like this are wasting my time, wasting company time, wasting other customers’ time (in-person, or “virtually”; my time could be better spent helping others with valid issues) and will never get what they want because I told them already, politely, it’s not possible.
Same exact situation here.
That isn’t what was said, Vallient. Any other tickets on THIS issue would be deleted - not your account.
I don’t know why there would have been any delay - on 11/20 is when the warning went on your account and that is the same date as the letter.
Just to be clear - we are here to help when we can - always. That doesn’t mean we may always be able to help with a particular issue. Believe me when I say, no one here comes to work in the morning looking for someone’s request they can deny. All the numerous other reasons aside - yes is far quicker to say than no
Also doesn’t mean we may not occasionally make a mistake, we are very human. But our GM staff is well-trained in our policies and by the time you’ve asked more than once with the same answer - that answer isn’t a mistake,.
As to your actual issue, manual (or even paid at this point) transfers just aren’t available for Classic. At least not yet. I know it has been discussed but if, or when, those might be available - that I couldn’t say.
So no, this isn’t a ‘threat’, just a fair warning.
To answer the question in your thread title… No, it’s not okay for GMs to threaten subscribers. But I’m not sure that really happened in this case. A warning is okay, but a threat is not. I believe Blizz’s stance on this, according to Orylia, is that the GM response was a warning, not a threat.
And I’m pretty certain that the warning did not come in response to the survey. I’ve submitted plenty of tickets and filled out plenty of surveys (positive and negative) and have never suffered any action to my account.
If I can add a lil’ something, you gotta keep in mind a lot of people need help out there, and if you’re continuously sending tickets involving a situation that GMs cannot help with in any regard, it’s interfering with those others needing help
That’s why you got a pretty stern response and a warning, you weren’t really ‘abusing’ GMs, but you’re cluttering the ticket system and making it harder for them to help others
I understand that it’s not the answer you really wanted, but when GMs say they can’t help with something, they usually really mean they cannot help with something
Doesn’t really benefit them to go like, “haha loooole we trolled this person trying to get help with our game”, nor does it really benefit you to squeeze a ‘yes’ out of a ‘no’ situation
Hopefully the other responses and this one kinda clarified why things went down the way they did 
And there’s the full story.
Orlyia,
I would like to thank you for taking the time to help clarify this issue. I also do greatly appreciate your addressing my original ticket. Although obviously not the response I was looking for, I completely understand and accept the decision reached.
As to the concern that prompted this post: Please try to look at this from my perspective.
- Receive ticket response which includes the phrase " they will not receive a response and will result in disciplinary action up to and including permanent account closure." - I take this to mean that any further tickets submitted would result in disciplinary action in addition to the tickets themselves being deleted. From this point on, no additional tickets were opened.
- Fill out GM Survey. I did this not to “vent” or be negative but because I was hoping Blizzard may find my experience helpful in some way.
- Days after the survey (which is well after my last contact), I receive an “Account Action Notification” via e-mail.
I admit no understanding of Blizzard’s internal policies or procedures. From my point of view, a warning was issued with the last ticket response I received. (Which I respected by not re-opening the ticket or responding in any way.) “Action” was then taken on my account days after this (seemingly in response to the survey as no tickets were opened since the warning). If a survey generates negative action on my account, I hope you can understand how this feels more of a threat than a warning. (And leaves me wondering “where does this end? I hope I do have any other issues I need assistance with”) This is the root of my confusion and my concern.
I would also like to thank the authors of the replies to this post for taking the time to help address my concerns.
Again, you were would not have received any account actions as the result of a survey. This would have been a result of opening too many tickets after being told nothing could be done. It’s unfortunate that you read the reply to mean something different.
From Orlyia’s reply, it sounds like you only received a warning and not any actual account actions.
You have nothing at all to fear from putting in future tickets regarding different issues though.