#1 - July 19, 2011, 9:07 p.m.
I simply wanted to share my experience with the customer 'dis'-service department. I will be posting my exact unedited tickets that I have opened (with the exception of name removal). Please try to let me know what other people think on this subject before the thread gets locked. Perhaps I will inspire some people to come forth with some of their significantly less than desired encounters with Blizzard as a company.
BEAR IN MIND, EACH RESPONSE FROM A CS REP WAS A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT PERSON, NO PERSON RESPONDED TO ME MORE THAN ONCE.
me:
I recently reactivated my two World of Warcraft accounts, and paid for a character transfer and faction change for two of my characters (one per account) to play with some friends. A lot of time was invested in other characters on both accounts, and it has come to the point where it does not seem worth playing without access to my other characters, everything is just much more cumbersome. I cannot afford to server and faction change all of my other characters, but I would like to have them on my new server with my friends. I don't know if I want to continue playing if I cannot play the characters that I have worked countless hours on.
cs:
Greetings _____!I am very sorry to hear about the financial roadblocks you have run into, but I am not able to process free transfers for your characters. Unfortunately if you would like to get these characters on the server you currently play on you will need to process transfers for them as well. We do not offer any bundles, discounts or free services. I sincerely hope you continue to play with us for the foreseeable future. If you have any further questions please reply to this ticket or contact us via phones. Our contact information can be found at http://blizzard.com/support/article/cs.
me:
Although there are no bundles etc., is there any possible way for my accounts to become linked as if recruit-a-friend was active (simply for the xp boost) so that I do not have to start completely from scratch should I decide to continue playing?
Having to start over is what makes me want to cancel my accounts and stop playing again.
cs:
I do not see another wow account on your bnet. Can you please include the informaiton for this second account that you want linked via recruit a friend?Please reply with the wow acct name or bnet email address. YOu can also call in to resolve this issue.
me:
My second account is under my same name, _________, the wow account is _______, and the email that the account was bound to was _____@____.___ (the accounts were made prior to bnet accounts being bound to emails, hence they were never merged to a single one.)Thank you for your time.
cs:
Greetings!After investigating your issue, I saw your second WoW account with the Battle.net email address [Removed] is an already active Cataclysm account. We can only link the veteran WoW account to Recruit-A-Friend trial accounts if there was an error in the linking process. I apologize for any confusion this may have caused. If you have any further questions or comments, feel free to respond to this ticket.
me:
The response that I recieved from _____ sounded like he understood my request. I would like to be able to talk to him if possible. It feels like my issue is just becoming convoluted and misunderstood, as the number of different people that respond to it grows. I understand getting a different person responding to an issue that has spanned over a few days, however, less than an hour difference feels like I should be able to talk to the same person.
cs:
Hello _____,I understand that you want to link your two accounts with the Recruit a Friend program. Unfortunalely we are not able to link the accounts, as this feature is only available for linking an existing account to a new one.If you have any other issues feel free to contact us again, have a great day,
me:
Although there are no bundles etc., is there any possible way for my accounts to become linked as if recruit-a-friend was active (simply for the xp boost) so that I do not have to start completely from scratch should I decide to continue playing? Having to start over is what makes me want to cancel both of my accounts and stop playing again. My second account is bound to the email ______@____.___.
cs:
Greetings _____,Thank you for contacting Blizzard Entertainment. My name is Justin and I will be assisting you today.The only way accounts can be linked with recruit a friend benefits is when a new player is coming to the game. Existing accounts are not eligible, only newly created accounts. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. Should you wish to discuss this issue further, please fee free to contact us by phone. You may reach the Account and Technical Services department at 1-800-592-5499 between the hours of 7am and 8pm pacific, 7 days a week.Account and Technical ServicesBlizzard Entertainment-North American Region.
At this point, my ticket was automatically closed, without the option to reopen it, saying that it was resolved by customer service. Leading me to submit a survey, which will be included in my next segment of ticket. As you can see, the people getting back to me simply read whatever my last blerp was, and pasted from their clipboard the canned response regarding whatever pop word they must have seen in my ticket.
Here is my second ticket that I opened, beware the wall of text.
me:
I recently reactivated my two WoW accounts, paid for a character transfer and faction change for two of my characters to play with some friends. A lot of time was invested in other characters on both accounts, and it has come to the point where I do not want to play if I cannot play what I have put effort into over several years of playing, simply because the server that I initially played on was massively under populated and full of immature players that make it impossible to play on. I cannot afford to server and faction change all of my other characters ($990 total, which is absolutely ridiculous), but I would like to have them on my new server with my friends, where I would like to continue playing. My previous ticket was marked as resolved, when it was not. I would like people that actually read my ticket, and understand my issue. I had four different people respond to my ticket within less than an hour, I do not see any reason why I cannot be kept in contact with the same representative within such a small time frame. I was forced to re-explain my issue multiple times, and was then simply treated as if I was ignorant, and could not comprehend the information that was given to me. I was essentially requested to close both of my accounts because there was no resolution, or suggestions and my ticket was simply closed. I felt like an unwanted customer with no attempt to assist me, every response I received was a cut and paste response based on my general issue, but not actually investigated. If it is not possible to get my old characters, achievements and professions, I would at least my two accounts (this and _______@_____.___, under _________) linked with recruit-a-friend so that I can maintain interest in having a reason to continue paying to for my two accounts and having respect for Blizzard as a company. If Rift can give everyone free transfers that apparently cost $25, I would think WoW, that is immensely more successful, would be able to.
cs:
Greetings, _____. Thanks for contacting Blizzard Entertainment.At this time, our Value Added Services, like the Character Transfer Service, do have a fee attached to each character undergoing the service. We always welcome feedback from our players, and if you feel this should operate differently, I'd love to see you present your feedback on our Forums where the developers and policy makers can hear your take on the issue first-hand. While we cannot guarantee a response, this is the best way for you to make your voice heard to the groups that make these decisions for our overall approach.If you have any questions about this or any other issue, feel free to reply to this Ticket. Alternatively, you can give us a call anytime. Our contact information can be found at http://blizzard.com/support/article/cs.
me:
I wish I would stop being treated like I am incompetent. If you even ever read the forums, I'm sure you see countless requests for free transfers. There was never a post saying, please, charge us to cut and paste our character files to another server file, yet the insatiable greed of Blizzard made it so. I would still like to hear from someone who actually reads me ticket, since I know that posting on the forums goes unanswered, and unread, making that suggestion a complete waste of my time. The fact that anyone thinks that paying a thousand dollars to play a game with your friends is even remotely acceptable is absolutely absurd. I think I will just take myself, my friends and my family to Rift, or another game that does not try to force me to anally @#@@ my bank account to play with my friends. It will cost me less to purchase Rift for twenty five people than it will to transfer my characters.
I appologize to the next person that gets this ticket (since I know it will not be any of the same people that have driven me to this point).
cs:
Hello,Thank you for your reply. At this time we are not offereing any free character services. If there is anything else we can help you with, let us know.Thanks and have a great day!
me:
Yet another response leaving my issue unanswered.
cs:
Hey there %Character:Name%,I do apologize for being unable to speak with you directly; this message has been sent to you while you were offline.Answer: I have gone ahead and request a VERY special exception to be made, please keep in mind that it not saying we are going to do it for sure, either the transfers or the RAF link. I did however make a case for you in hopes that it is something that we can get approved. I will contact you as soon as I hear something ^_^If you have additional questions or concerns, please reply to this ticket. If you would rather speak with a representative directly, please contact Account & Technical Services. Our contact information can be found at http://blizzard.com/support/article/cs.
me:
Great, thanks so much, I really, really appreciate all that you've done. I'll be keeping an eye on the ticket on the website.Thank you again.
cs:
Hello,You are welcome. If you have additional questions or concerns, please reply to this ticket. If you would rather speak with a representative directly, please contact Account & Technical Services. Our contact information can be found at http://blizzard.com/support/article/cs.
At this point, I waited three days, and then called the CS hotline. I was told that my issue would be looked into. I gave the employee my personal contact information. I never got a response via phone or email, or to my ticket, which lead it to be closed due to inactivity (one week from the last response on it). I reoppened the ticket saying the following, while on hold calling for the second time:
me:
No one has contacted me about this, and has simply been automatically closed. I am now calling for the second time, and will likely be leaving my account unsubscribed.
cs:
Greetings _____, I apologize that it took awhile to get an answer. After looking into the mentioned account, we will not be able to link them with recruit a friend. If an account was created and upgraded incorrectly, and is *less than 90 days old*, our Account & Technical Services department can assist with linking the accounts directly. However, none of the recruited accounts listed in the message that was sent us were less than 90 days old. Therefore, we will be unable to assist in retroactively linking these accounts for the Recruit-A-Friend benefits.If you have additional questions or concerns, please reply to this email. If you would rather speak with a representative directly, please contact Account & Technical Services via telephone. Our contact information can be found at http://blizzard.com/support/article/cs.
---This is the end of the cut and pasted ticketing---
When my call was finally answered from calling the CS hotline, I was essentially told that everything that I was told prior, was a lie. Any sort of hope that anyone had given me to get my issue resolved was simply a ploy to get me to go away. To me, this was the ultimate insult to injury. To me, it feels that Blizzard was waiting out until my subscription reupped, to tell me no, not going to happen, just to milk me for another $30 on my accounts.
Please post your feelins on this, or any situations where Blizzard has treated you as though you were an idiot, as they've treated me.
Here's to a quick thread lock.
-nomadd/bam
