Customer support standard; Dissapointed

#1 - Dec. 15, 2012, 9:39 p.m.

I have a had a recent dissapointing encounter with the support services at blizzard, and am actually quite suprised by the fall in standard over a few short years. I have been a big fan of blizzard since the release of orcs and humans and over the years have often quite proudly told friends and family of the superb customer service available.

Now i have finally managed to convice my partner to start plaing (After 6 long years) and things had been going really well until several nights ago, where, after a router reset due to lag her account was locked for suspicious activity. Over the following hour i tried to reset her password as required and ran into multiple error messages during the process. Due to these errors the account has now been locked due to to many unsuccsessful atempts, and we now have to contact customer service. After much searching i came accross the New Zealand number for customer service and was very pleased to see they are open to 11pm NZST, however when i rang at 9pm the support service was closed, as it was yet again at 5pm the following day.

So unable to contact blizzard, and with her account locked i lodged a ticket from my own account. I went into detail regarding the exact steps i took and the error messages recieved and submitted the ticket. My first response from a GM consisted of them telling me i needed to follow the link in our emails to reset the password, despite me explaining in detail within the first paragraph that i had already tried that and we had encountered error messages. I expalined that i had already tried that and that we require further assistance. The next reply (From a different GM) stated the exact same thing as the first, but also added a second step, which once again i had fully explained; this time in my second paragraph.

I replied once again, explaining that i understood they were busy and asked that they took the time to read the actual ticket as i had already followed all of the steps set out in support articles. The third GM to reply started by telling me that with the coming release of Diablo 3 and Mists of Pandaria that they were experiencing high demands in customer service. Now whilst i am pretty sure i havnt invented time travel, this GM stated exactly the same thing as the first two.

All of my interactions have been automated emails in response to the title of the ticket. One of the GM's even had the response set up wrong as it started Hi %N%. In previous encounters with customer support everything had ran so smoothly and issues were quickly resolved through interaction with a GM. Now i get the same information from the support articles sent repeatedly to me in an automated fashion. I still fail to understand how the standard could fall so quickly, and i really hope that it is just a case of the weekend staff having a few sore heads after a christmas party.

What does everyone else think of the current state of blizzard support, do you think i have jsut hit a run of bad luck or are things truly declining?

P.S Any helpful suggestions regarding the problem with my parters account will also be greatly appreciated.

Hermf

Support Forum Agent

#14 - Dec. 15, 2012, 11:19 p.m.

Dynamais - I must agree with Pahanda and state that Blizzard can only assist the registered account holder with their account and not anyone else. We appreciate that sometimes newer players may not know best how to navigate some of our support systems, but ultimately we can't help anyone with an account that's not theirs.

That being said, there are self-help solutions on the Can't Log In? page for accounts that were locked for this reason. You can submit a ticket here without being able to log in.

Ultimately, it's not a matter of hours or personnel, but making sure you're contacting us correctly in order to get the assistance you need. In general, you are more than welcome to reopen tickets that were not resolved to your satisfaction (as you seem to have done), but remember to be clear and concise in describing the nature of your issue and your request. There's a long queue, and the easier it is to understand your issue, the better. Also, each response from a GM comes with the opportunity to rate the service you received via survey through Battle.net. While I appreciate your frustration, posting here doesn't really gain you much in the way of feedback for individual GMs.

I'm personally always excited to hear when someone brings their partner into the fold. I like nothing more than raiding with loved ones, and it's really a lot of fun. I do hope that we can manage to get you guys sorted sooner rather than later. It's helpful to note that our SMS Protect feature can also help resolve these locks rather quickly if you're eligible.

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https://us.battle.net/support

Hermf

Support Forum Agent

#20 - Dec. 16, 2012, 1:08 a.m.

We're not here to dissect the conversations he's had with any GMs. I'm here to help provide the best information I can to get him and his partner squared away and adventuring. That information was provided, and if further assistance is needed in the matter or an additional issue pops up, please feel free to open a new thread outlining the issue clearly and concisely. I will try to be of assistance. The CS Facebook page is also a good place to receive similar assistance.

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https://us.battle.net/support