WoW Classic | Extreme dissatisfaction with Customer Service| 06/27/22

Support Customer Support
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Hello there. I hope whoever maybe reading this is doing far better than I am.

I recently created a ticket in regards to a T6 token I acquired in Black Temple (The chestpiece to be exact) involving an error I made, though the staggering lack of customer service I received was just startling. Though I’ll start from the beginning for perspective…

Earlier this week I raided Black Temple, and I was fortunate enough to get all three separate tier tokens from the raid. I was completely beside myself with joy, after the raid I went straight over to the Isle of Quel’Danas to go redeem my gear (Since I’m a big PvP nut.) I went ahead… Converted my tier tokens over into PvP gear… And I was three pieces of vengeful gear richer… I put all three pieces on only to immediately notice that my Gladiator’s Chestpiece was greyed out… Moused over it… Realized “Oh !@#$ I bought a Retribution Paladin piece.” Talked to a few friends / guildmates… They all said something along the same lines… “No big deal… Just make a ticket.” And at the time I TRULY had faith in Customer Service for Activision Blizzard.

Until I got the first reply about 12 hours deep into the ticket… Which was a very strange and exceptionally robotic automated reply that just told me to go search the forums or wowhead for an answer to my problem… Not too big of a deal… Disregarded it… Shortened my ticket a bit and replied to it, stating I still needed help.

Then a day or two later I got at least a semi-empathetic reply from a typical customer service representative Only I was COMPLETELY shocked when they told me something along the lines of. “Sorry there’s nothing we can do about it.” I was extremely upset, and disheartened at this point to think that this sought after tier token might as well have just gotten thrown in the trash can; But alas, I didn’t lose hope… I remembered an 'age old ‘ye’olde’trick’ to just about getting any problem resolved in a ticket… And mustered up the least upset and least passive-aggressive reply I possibly could at the time… And stated my dissatisfaction And asked for the ticket to be escalated (This usually involves a SIGNIFICANTALLY longer wait because -typically- this means the ticket will get funneled to a Senior Game Master / Supervisor - depending on the severity of the issue.) Sooo I patiently waited… Took about two or three days… But finally got a reply…

(This just happened about a half hour ago by the way - I would know because I am / was online on WoW at the time) and first thing I saw was a reply to my ticket… Which I thought was strange considering I am online… This person from Customer Service - whom I expected to be a Senior Game Master I figured would’ve at least taken five-or-ten minutes to chit-chat with me… But I was ‘greeted’ (if it can so-be-called) with an essentially mirrored, and somehow less empathetic ‘drone’ reply - telling me there was nothing to be done. And this person didn’t introduce themselves at all so I truly have no earthly idea of my petition was even escalated or not.

I want to state a few things for the record… I’m well aware that this is entirely my fault. I am well aware it was my mistake. I am also well aware it was my responsibility. I am also aware that there are safeguards in place to prevent these sorts of redundancies.

Though in all reality I honestly and truly expected better from Activision Blizzard’s Customer Service team. It’s almost heart-breaking considering that - across multiple accounts - and multiple friends and verified accounts - I’ve seen multiple instances similar (If not exactly the same) as my own whom were treated differently than myself.

The following is somewhat of a ‘rage’ vent though I’ll try to keep it as civil as possible.

I must wonder at this point… If Activision Blizzard’s Customer Service doesn’t help or even interface with it’s customers… What do they do?.. This ‘Hands off’ approach is completely perverse in the world of customer service that it just honestly baffles me to no end that the multi-billion dollar company, Activision Blizzard doesn’t -actually- ‘do’ anything in-game for it’s arguably most profitable platform. They obviously don’t help with in-game items… They don’t help with quests or quest items… They don’t help with the botting or cheating… They don’t help with character stuck requests… They don’t help with civil disputes… They don’t help with gold or auction house issues… I can’t honestly think of a single thing that Activision Blizzard’s Customer Service still actually -does- for it’s Customers who actually -need- assistance in-game. (And I am actually genuinely trying here.) Seems like it’s either “There’s an automated tool for that.” or “Sorry we can’t do that.”

As someone who’s been a loyal customer for who honestly knows how many years, I am truly grieved by this experience… Anywhere I go, anywhere I can possibly think of in the world - (I’m going to just use Amazon as a quick example) Another multi-billion dollar company, if lets say I buy a pair of shoes from Amazon… Go to put em on… Realize “Oh crap this is the wrong size.” I make a ticket, send em back, and I get a new pair in a day or two. No harm no foul. Again… Large company… Lots of support requests… Probably takes a LOT more time and resources to do a physical item exchange than a virtual one but; I digress, you get the idea.

Once again, I am well aware this was my fault. I take responsibility for that, but this has honestly completely shattered my faith in Activision Blizzard’s Customer Service team from a request that I ultimately thought would be a quick and simple fix. I just honestly expected to be treated better than this.

I am more than open for a civil discussion about this here, or if another CS Rep wants to review my ticket by all means. You may also reply to my ticket, or even DM me directly in-game as I’ll be on this character for all day, most of the day.

Respectfully,
Koorban

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The refund system is in place in classic as far as I know. There’s warning about not being able to refund an item when you use it, or even enhance it. It’s ultimately up to the players to verify their choices in game.

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Because it help cuts down on time and man power because players have a bad habit of trying to fight GMs on things to try to strong arm to get things they want even if its something GMs can do.

Because things can be re-earn, farm and the like.

Because…most of them are pretty straight forward. Don’t really need to help in that regard and trying to get them to check off a quest because the player doesn’t want to do it themselves isn’t something they do. And the only time they handle quests is when the devs give the green light to ensure nothing else breaks because of it.

Because the folks whom handle such ain’t GMs and the ones whom do don’t talk about what is happening behind closed doors.

The AH is a free market, they’re not going to demand an item back from someone buying a high value item that was brought for cheap or anything like that.

A lot of the time, folks doesn’t understand or refuse to think their understanding of what GMs can do and limited can do is brought up by the players. More often then not, the playerbase think the GMs are push a button and make whatever the player wants happens without issues.

Horrible idea, it’s like comparing apples to jet plans. Amazon doesn’t have popups saying “Are you sure?” when you try to put on a short. They don’t have a lot of warnings popping up saying this isn’t in your size ranges, etc. Trying to compare a video game to what physical them doesn’t work as it comes off a weird and makes little to no sense.

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Hello there. I am very well aware of this. Though I appreciate you pointing it out. It was my mistake which I own up to that entirely.

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This forum is a player help player forum. Your feedback wont be seen by anyone posting it here.
Telling a customer no is not bad service, they are not able to do what your asking. If they break the rules for you they would need to break it for everyone else.
Blizz customer service is and always has been for billing issues, some technical issues, for account compromisation and harassment issues. They generally dont help with loot or in game disputes, can not help with quest objectives or game hints and will direct you to wowhead for example.
They are not able to do anything and everything a customer can think of. They have set limitations like any company.

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Hello there. I can see a few cogent points in what you’re saying but marginalizing people at the cost of good customer service is hardly what I would call customer service at all.

As far as getting goods / services exchanges, pretty much every place you can think of offers comprehensive customer service for returns / exchanges. Regardless of the organization and or ‘apples and oranges’ if there’s one ultimate truth is that Customer Service exists to Service Customers and there was little no service received by the customer in this instance and there’s no fathomable way where you can articulate that and if you can I would be VERY interested in hearing about that.

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Hello there. I am well aware I am essentially venting into the ether most likely I am also aware that this is my fault, and I take responsibility for that; Though regardless of venting into the ether I figured I would offer up my frustrations for the sake of transparency for others as well as the small chance where it could be resolved.

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Clearly you’ve never been in a store that had “no returns for any reason” posted.

People wanted the classic and bc experience. You got it. You made the error, as you’ve said. Learn from your error and go slower.

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I don’t tend to do shopping at places with poor customer service track records but I appreciate your candor.

This isn’t about a ‘classic’ or ‘non classic’ experience - It’s about customer service experience. Which. Mine was pretty abysmal. (respectfully)

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Uh yeah, it is. Those didn’t have return windows on items. Retail does. This is a point of evolution of the game where you have chosen to stay in the past. This is a consequence of your choice.

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To be utterly frank, this forum isn’t up for debate on what is or isn’t customer service or what it means to that person. The GMs and a supervisor GM step in and told you ‘No’ in this regard. I’ve worked in CS before facing customers. No, no amount of trying to talk me into giving discount for a dent or damage item because someone along the pipeline to here will make me do it.

But to the point: posting here won’t make the trade for the item you want will happen, nor would trying to, basically, guilt trip folks will make it happen.

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Hi there.

Respectfully the items actually DID have a return window on the item. Akin to retail. Once it’s equiped… Enchanted… Or transmogged… The item can no longer be refunded. (Which I obviously immediately realized once I equiped it and realized…) "Oh crap. I got the wrong piece.

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Your friends steered you wrong. Blizzard has rarely if ever replaced a token item once you equipped it. If it can be earned or dropped again they have always been hands-off.

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You seem to know that this is not something you can expect help with. Once those systems are in place Blizzard does not get involved. It is a matter of player responsibility, as you said. The GMs are not allowed to refund tokens outside the in-game system that has been created.

They used to do more, but as usual, people abused it. They would get gear for one purpose, use it for that, then want to switch it out for raid or something. It drove up ticket times as you might imagine. Blizz changed the game to ensure it is harder to make mistakes, that players have a refund option for a set period of time, etc. Players in the end have to have some responsibility.

GMs would love to help - but honestly they are not allowed to fix every little thing a player wants. You are right, there is not much they do in-game anymore. Not that they ever really did.

  • Char unstuck has a self help tool but if that does not work the GMs WILL move you. Some cases require that, but they want the tool used first so people don’t sit in a queue if they don’t have to.
  • There is a self help tool to un-delete characters now.
  • There is a self help tool to restore items now - and it sees what the GMs see.
  • There is a self help tool to get back lost mail in some cases. That one is super time sensitive.

They gave the GM tools to the players.

The rest of the things you said - no Blizz is not allowed to give game hints, they don’t get involved in civil disputes between players, and they don’t get involved in the free market AH.

This article on what GMs can (and can’t) do might be helpful.

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I really don’t enjoy analogies because it’s not really accurate to compare two different services from two very different companies. And there’s always a way to poke holes in them –

In your original analogy, you are operating within the retailers existing refunds and exchange policy. In your original analogy, you exchanged your item with the vendor within 2 hours of purchase without equipping or modifying it. In your original analogy, Blizzard and your example retailer are actually offering the same customer service.

Lets modify your analogy to more accurately reflect the interaction with the game. You ordered a pair of shoes, you thought “I’ll run faster if I paint them red” so you modified them to better suit your desires. Then you realized you made a mistake and try to return them. I cannot imagine that a retailer, seeing that the product has been modified after purchase, is going to be too keen to accept the return from you.

I appreciate that you understand and are willing to take responsibility for the mistake. That also means accepting that the rules that apply to everyone else in this type of situation also apply to you. The in-game refund/exchange system is there so that players can resolve these mistakes without a Game Master. Because of that, our policy is that we will not assist if the system is not utilized.

We often see players who are upset with a declined request because from their perspective it is a very simple thing to fix. And yes, a lot of things can ‘technically’ be done very simply. If I wanted to max out a players gold, for example, I could do that very easily. If a player were to request that, I would still tell them no. Customer Support Departments (no matter the industry) operate based on policies which guide what they can and cannot do regardless of what may be technically possible.

When you’re told no, it doesn’t mean that the Customer Support team doesn’t care or doesn’t empathize with your situation but they do need to follow policies that were put in place for good reasons. In this case, the reason is that these types of requests took up a LOT of time in Customer Support in years past. So much time that the dev team decided building an in-game system would ultimately be more efficient even though it took developer attention away from other things. Now that is the system the game team expects players to use, and Customer Support is able to focus on problems where there may not be an in-game option to fix.

It’s ok to be dissatisfied with that, and we do provide surveys when your tickets are closed in order to gather satisfaction information and feedback. You should see them on your ticket history page:

https://battle.net/support/case/

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They do, and quite often, whether you’d like to believe it or not. Just last week we saw one person who managed to get their banned accounts back after a mistake led to their sanction. We’ve seen people with accessibility issues advised or taught how to go about an issue that was preventing them from play. I could sit here and tick off so many times we’ve seen people who come back here to tell how their ticket experience worked out - for better or for worse.

Being told “no” isn’t terrible customer service when it’s on us for the mistake. It sucks, yes. But luck may favor you again with another tier chest piece, should you continue to keep playing.

They don’t really do this so much anymore, or I couldn’t say the last time I knew of it. They respond to tickets via tickets. The interactions were great, yes. But I can imagine it’s helped to drop back some of the ticketing times to just answer them via ticket and move on to the next.

The thing is though, there are no GMs, Devs. QA or any other staff that comes here to this particular forum. It’s only us, your fellow players and our pretty rad SFAs. And they have nothing to do with ticket resolution. This is Customer Support, not Customer Service.

I will tack on though, if you want your feedback heard, the only way to do that is the survey when your ticket is closed out. Normally, it would also be to post in the appropriate forum, but you’re really not supposed to be discussing tickets and this sort of thing on any of them. That leaves you with the survey and/or using the in-game suggestion/feedback tool.

Again, I am sorry for the spot you’re in, but trying to push through to try different folks to get what you want and ending up with only a resounding ‘no’ is not poor customer service. They’re doing what they’re told they can by The Powers That Be.

[Edit] Kalv ninja-ed in while I was typing and I’m not deleting my repeated mess just because. >[

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You outline the refund window and criteria and then admit you moved outside the criteria. You’re asking for an exception. Asking doesn’t mean you get it.

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Big reason they are hands off now. They used to have to help people exchange items all the time and it ran up ticket times. So they made refunds and exchanges like this self serve to cut down on ticket times and help cut down on needing more personal to keep up. After all there comes a point when throwing more people at a problem is not worth it, Better to find ways to streamline.

Players need to own their mistakes and not expect blizzard to come along and fix them. Just expect that you made a mistake and own that and it will not be fixed for you. Yeah it sucks but that is life.

It is not bad CS but a company taking a stand and not fixing every little mistake someone makes.

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Hello there and good morning, apologies for the late reply.

I just wanted to start by taking the time thank you for replying, when I created this most I was aware that it was (Mostly) futile to expect any different outcome. In a manner of speaking I simply wanted to be heard, though I had a modicum of hope someone from Customer Support might actually be able to hear it rather than feeling like I was shouting into the void with a survey that reflected my dissatisfaction. I also wanted to make my dissatisfaction known to the general populous as both a warning for the error which I am completely responsible for; And for what I -respectfully - still see as a complete lack of customer care.

As far as your analogy goes it (respectfully) doesn’t really ‘fit’ the bill; Though this may in part be due to a possible ‘fail’ in me articulating the problem I experienced so I’ll re-give the ‘reader’s digest’ version… I got three tier tokens… Redeemed them. Equiped them. Upon equiping them all, I realized one of them was for the wrong spec. Within minutes of realizing that error. I submitted a ticket. And here we are. I didn’t buy the token intentionally, and I didn’t alter it or change it in any way shape or form in order to gain some sort of advantage. I purchased it, equiped it. took it off, and it sat in my bags untouched throughout the entire process of me awaiting reply(ies) for my ticket. Obviously any retailer wouldn’t take something back if I had altered or changed the product that was sold to me hence why I articulated my analogy the way I did. So hopefully that possibly clears that up for you.

As far as the event itself, yes I full and well take absolutely full responsibility for the error as it was my fault, I purchased the incorrect item, didn’t check it thoroughly before equipping it. And I am aware of and appreciate the safeguards in-place.

I am (Respectfully) still upset with the outcome (And I apologize if it seems exceptionally juvenile as it’s not my intention.) And still (respectfully) find it to be exceptionally poor customer service especially given the situation at hand. At the end of the day, I truly don’t feel like I was treated as a valued customer; Which is why I made this thread to begin with. I honestly, and truly believed and had faith that this was a simple, every-day problem that could’ve been resolved with relative ease. Everyone is of course entitled to their opinions; And this is an open forum for civil and respectful conversation.

Again, thank you for taking the time to reply; While I sincerely and respectfully disagree; If anything this hands-off line of customer service only further validates the things I had heard recently. I still really do appreciate the time you took to reply. All too often I’ve seen peoples voices go unheard, even if they think it’s the wrong answer I appreciate and respect you taking the time to say -something-

Sincerely,
Koorban.