Artisan Archive

This is partly an open mail to the SOE team in the hopes of making some of the more frustrating parts of a game that is undergoing constant change (and therefore the occasional bug) and keeping players happy.

Firstly I would like to say that i believe i am a fairly positive person but after submitting a ticket recently i feel totally dejected and displeased about the whole process and feel as though this is all a numbers game with no heart from the people that help support it.

A generalization I know but still relevant to the rest of this post.

Simply put I have stumbled across a bug, I have a fair amount of information that could help solve this and for it's immediate impact it has cost my character a large number of credits and time. In an effort to help fix this bug and hopefully recover a lost harvester due to this bug I started a CSR ticket, ticket number 1970731 (still open so it can be reviewed). In the ticket i describe that i placed 3 separate harvesters, loaded them up with credits and magically less than 3 days later one has exploded and another is well on the way to auto-deletion. (4% condition when i got to it and sent the ticket).

From there it only gets worse. Simply put i was quickly sent a few apologetic tells (admittedly about 20 mins later so great turn around) and that the devs are aware of the problem, please submit a ticket , thanks and goodbye. Shocked is the least of what I was at that point, more than anything I felt like i was just a number. I'm sure anger was in there also. I managed to draw the csr's attention for a little longer and on asking was then told that there was to be no reimbursement of any kind for the lost harvester, materials dug up nor credits for the repair. Struggling to hold back the fumesI stopped answering the CSR as anything further I was to say would have resulted in my being banned from the game for life.With all that said I now feelas thoughthe CSR was more interested in closing the ticket and moving on thanbeing a Customer Service Representative.

Spewing a little to my friends on teamspeak to aleaviate the pent up steam i hear from my friends that they have had similar experiences.

Now to my point, SURELY if there's a known issue and there's an upset client on the line you would at the very least make some token gesture. In my previous dealing with a CSR i managed to get a small reimbursement of some material for a similar issue and I was certainly much happier than I am now. If the CSR's in this most recent case however are not empowered to at least make some sort of effort rather than (asI feel now) fobbed off and basically just have to deal with it then I'm sure you would have many more happy customers!

Secondly as my second harvester (un touched at the time of the ticket) is displaying the same fault, being someone "behind the kimono" they could take a snapshot of the database record and other relevant information pertaining to this particular bug and help developers solve these things quicker, preventing the need to even make any token gestures!

I truly hope one of the developers reads this as I'm trying to as much as possible leave emotional argument out of this and keep it professional and constructive... Additionally knowing what I now know about this bugI would like to help resolve this (I have an account on tc and have been able to reproduce this once already on live) but no longer know how to proceed.

I really believe this game has a future but really guys this service level is awful and at the very least needs to be reviewed!

Please any other players reading this thread, don't flame about how you hate the CSR's over similar instances, rathergive examples if you choose, hopefully we can help the people that need to know what it's like from our side.

**nb, this thread was originally posted in tech support as i felt that this was the most appropreate area to send this, and told again to send a bug report for something that won't be resolved with a /bug! I didn't realise that CSR's were buggy? (yes i'm getting emotional now!)

I am personally in an on going debate with the CSR community over 60k a week i am getting charged for structures within my city that do not exist.

It took me a month of talking to approx 15 different CSRs on the same ticket, and having to constantly rexplain the issue at hand as well as recieveing horrid advice on how to fix it.

I gave up and simply continue to pay the exrta 60k a week out of my own pocket. This has been going on for close to 5 months. You tally up my expenditures on this.

The Devs are divided between two projects and the CSRs are not knowledgeable enough of the games mechanics to be of much more service than doing a Data base search of "fixs"...anything they forward upwards to the devs and coders to fix..is simply being ignored because of the current revamps and JTL timesinks.

Yea!

♠ Semi -Retired

For Public Viewing: LOWCA GALACTIC GALLERY of FINE ART: LOK -3219 -269 (StarForge)

ugh i hear you man,

you asked not to flame but im only going to say this once. support for this game as well as other companies totaly sucks. They take bums off the street that dont know anything and sit them down infront of a monitor and a piece of paper telling them what to say and it makes these people happy because they are getting a pay check for not knowing squat and reading from a piece of paper. For this is modern day support from companies. It sucks i know and i feel your pain.

I had a similiar instance one time where i got my mail in game spammed with emails in a matter of 25 to 30 seconds saying that my guild hall was decaying. Anyone knows as good as i do that they do not decay that fast. the mails were warnings of it being from 50% condition all the way to 1 % condition in a matter of 30 seconds. I quickly rushed to where the guild hall was and low and behold. It wasnt there. I logged out to see if it was a bug on my end. Logged back in and still not there. i did the CSR 3 finger salute (log out, run full scan, log back in) and still gone. submitted a bug report as well as a CSR ticket. It took a week for them to actualy come into game and talk to me. The CSR will remain nameless in this thread. When the CSR finaly came into game and talked to me, he told me the standard (paper reading) thing. "I am verry sorry for your inconvience on this matter blah blah blah. This is a known issue blah blah blah, please submit a bug report so the developers blah blah blah". Then I got frustrated with him and told him that this want right and i should be reimbursed for the guild hall not to mention the 250 items that were inside it. He said he could not reimburse me what so ever and logged out. 2 days later the same CSR comes in game and meets me. This time he was rude with me and said that the logs stated that i destroyed the PA hall myself by punching in a code to destroy it and that he didnt appreciate me lieing to him and trying to get something more from them. I told him he was full of crap and offered to send him my email as proof with the times on it because i had it copied and pasted. He told me that he couldnt accept it because i probably either made it up or altered it and he couldnt accept that as proof and that the proof was in his so called "logs". So again i told him he was full of crap and continued to take his rudeness. So being Imperial and all i stated my mind and said that CSR realy stood for **** smoking rebels. BAM i got banned for about a week.

End of that story.

Second thing is that i am playing on this new account now. I was in the chat rooms one day. Again the CSR will remain nameless. The CSR gave me a warning and told me to come back after i changed my name. I asked how to do that. He gave me some false information. I did what he said.... and couldnt change my account handle. I try to come back to general chat and low and behold i was banned from general chat. I went into another chat room that i wasnt banned from and sent him a tell and said that he was misinformed about being able to change your ahndle. And politely asked him to remove my ban from general chat, because if MouseFart was such a bad name then it shouldnt have let me creat it as my handle to begin with. He said that it wasnt his problem and i should have thought about that when i chose that as my handle. Naturaly i was PO'd at this and told him that we will see what your superiors say and told him he would be appologising to me after his superiors told him to unban me at once and quit being a lush. BOOOOOOOM! was kicked from that chat right after. Tried to log back in and BAM! banned from all chats. I posted a compaint to the CSR executives,the developer executives as well as the tech support. I posted 2 threads on this instance on these forums. one in tech support and one in Kauri forums. not even a day later both of my threads on the forums were deleted. not just locked but deleted. Finaly after about 4 or 5 days, kind hearted Jessica Webb got up with me after playing email tag and removed the ban from the chats for me. Although still she was acting as if i said something to get banned when in all actuality i got banned for having my handle the way it was.

to sum it all up. service sucks. but its not just with SOE and this game, its everywhere you go anymore. i mean... they have what???? 1 million people playing this game? that would mean they are making $15,000,000 a month on this game. I understand that 50% to 60% is going to Lucas Arts... but still... 50% of 15 mill is 7.5 mill. they arent spending close to that ammount on developers, CSRs, techs and server maintenance... and keeping all the rest to make themselves richer while they hire more people who dont know squat for a quarter of the cost of what it would be to actualy hire someone who was kind and understood our troubles and would encurage us and make the wrongs rights and fight for our bad experiences to be corrected. after all... we all are paying for this game... not jsut the game itself but also an additional charge monthly to play it. Making that much money they need to hire real people that fit the criteria of what the job calls for instead of picking up some stray dogs and setting them down in front of a piece of paper that tells them what to tell us on every singel situation that may occure. HENCE ------> "I am verry sorry for your inconveniance on this matter blah blah blah"... that i posted above. I mean its either that or "please log out and run a full scan blah blah blah"... LOL friggin rediculous.

-Jaggo Calanine: Kauri Server

This all makes me want to cry. There's nothing I can do for you, guys, but add in my voice of "I've had horrible experiences with /bugs".

As far as needing CSRs who are willing to be polite and fight for the customer, etc., I want to take a moment of defense for all CSRs in every business. I've been in customer service for my whole career and wouldn't trade it for a thing. Being a person who genuinely likes to help people and attempt to make people happy, I love working with people to try and get their problems fixed.

But this assumes that you, the CSR, are empowered to fix the problem. Nothing will beat you down faster than learning how to say "I'm incredibly sorry about that, and if I were able to do anything, I would, but I can't. Have a nice day." Except maybe saying it 50 times a day, every day, as your job. You quickly become jaded, tired, and irritable, not so much at the customers you're representing, but at the COMPANY you're representing. Thus, the good ones go on to the few jobs that take care of their employees, and leave the other 99.9% of CSR jobs open for people who just read the piece of paper

So remember...for anyone with a little bit of power who *does* fight to give you results, say "Thank you for fighting for us, we love you!"

~*~Morta Moire~Master Doctor~*~

~Affordable Radioactive Power~
~Theed, Naboo: -5486, 3280~
~Priced by PE; 1cpEu~

In my frustration, i guess that's exactly my point DangerGliz, I don't specifically blame the CSR's in the above stories, rather they should be allowed to use their own descression in these matters. Basically if there's a known issue, someone gets bitten by it, the CSR should be empowered to be able to assist the upset customer in some minor way. I'm not asking for millions of credits or anything else like that but something that eases the pain. The effort alone I, and i'm sure many others, would appreciate it.

Bugs happen, get over it but the difference is, this is a game, as such i come here to "escape", when a problem like this comes along i want someone to listen to me for 30 seconds and atleast aid me in some way. What I am getting from the current levels of support is further frustration and it goes against the need to "escape" and it's all too much like reality discourageing me in returning as often as I do.

The second part is that if someone potentially has the answer to an ongoing bug, surely it's worth a little investigation. atleast a breif foreward to someone else to follow up.

From the outside it just seems that the CSR's have no control over what they can do or say (hence the same repetative lines over "i'm sorry for the problems and frustration this may cause" type lines. Second they don't SEEM to have any ability to follow up and gather information for the developers to follow up bugs. This is a real shame and in my opinion a total waste of resources. The only role the CSR's seem to be able to perform is aiding a client who doesn't understand a particular function or is stuck in a building type roles.

This is what I am trying to point out in any case.