Community Relations Archive
Thread: The Story of Someone Who Doesn't Matter...
Colaboy
Mon Jun 06, 2005 2:55 pm
#14
I feel for you. Unfortunately CSR's try and find the quick fix all the time. I dread dealing with them. I always expect a responce that doesnt help my issue. One time I wasnt able to log in the game and contacted the CSR in the launchpad chat. She told me to make an ingame ticket on my issue....................Another time I was making mark 2 sub components for shipwright parts. All mark 2 parts dissapeared from the vendor and I made an ingame ticket. A CSR told me that making SW components on a factory is not allowed and shewouldnthelp me.. Matter of fact, those parts are still missing. Its that sort of sheer ignorance I hate dealing with. I think the problem stems from those CSR's dont play the game.
aazatgrabya
Mon Jun 06, 2005 4:09 pm
#16
Funny, that reminds me of the first day I logged in after the CU. My 4th vendor had gone along with it's stock of space loot. I reported the issue considering it one of the many bugs but wasn't too concerned as although there must have been a number of items on the vendor there were none I would have actively used. Nevertheless it had disapeared and I've not heared a peep from any CSR, I haven't reported this twice.
Not terribly impressed. Not too worried, but that's not the point.
MajorXP
Mon Jun 06, 2005 6:50 pm
#17
I'd like to say, "wow..what an amazing story...I'm glad this almost never happens".
....I'd like to say that....but as a leader of a large guild, I know it happens all the time....
I think csrs are rewarded for going through as many tickets as possible, instead of solving the issues.
Which of course, leads to people filling out 3 and 4 tickets for the same issue......
Oh well... It was obvious from the feedback at the Fan Fest that nobody from soe reads the bug threads, so why would they bother with this either.....?
Raanan
Mon Jun 06, 2005 7:52 pm
#18
Morwaul wrote:
Hello, The name is Vulkyn Ironweaver from the Corbantis system, and if you care to read it, here is my story.
Right after the Combat Upgrade, I noticed that one of my vendors was deactivated. (hmm, I thought) I checked to see if it had maintenance. It did, but it still said that I needed to add more money. I added another 100k to the vendor. Hmmm, no change.
(Brief Note: This is the vendor that I use for storage, not only for myself, but for my entire guild.)
That is when I decided to go down a different road, a road that would prove to be dark and lonely and full of frustration. I opened a ticket for the CSR’s.
*deleted so the post isn't so huge*
Thanks
Vulkyn Ironweaver. Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Merchant, MIA
World of Warcraft and Guild Wars are great games. The engine WoW uses is so much less of a system resource hog, you can acutally play it and do other stuff on your pc at the same time (like chat with friends over msn). It's also a very beautiful game. It has sort of a cartoony or deam like feel to it (especially in the elf lands). The gameplay is fun though solo stuff, once you reach about the mid teens in your level, becomes a pain. Make a friend to group with on a regular bases and it's a blast though. Pvp is also a blast in WoW. It's fairly well balanced and Blizzard recintly patched in the Honor system so ganking of lowbies will be detrimental to your survival.
Guild Wars, I've only played once in one of their beta weekends. It was pretty fun actually. It's definitely not as beautiful as swg or wow but it is really stable and fun to play. Also, once you buy it, it's FREE! Can't beat that. Also, content you don't have, is dowloaded WHILE you play the game so no waiting for stuff to download unless you need it fora zone you're going to and even then, what's needed for that zone is prioratized and dl'ed first so you don't have to waste time waiting for huge ass patchs.
With Tiggs and TH working on your situation, I'm sure it will be resolved but you're right, it should have been taken care of long ago. If you can stay, I would say stay, just because SWG is a great game despite it's p roblems and it's consistently gotten better. However, if you do decide to switch games, you do have some great options for stuff to play. Cheers mate. Hope you get your stuff back.
Leezeldafuz
Mon Jun 06, 2005 8:33 pm
#19
That's interesting. Same thing happened to me. My vendor in my house poofed a couple weeks ago. opened a ticket, and they said I deleted it. Of course, I did no such thing. I haven't worried about it much, since 1: I don't think there was anything incredible important on there. and 2: I've been playing EQ2 for the past 2 weeks.
Morwaul wrote:
Hello, The name is Vulkyn Ironweaver from the Corbantis system, and if you care to read it, here is my story.
Right after the Combat Upgrade, I noticed that one of my vendors was deactivated. (hmm, I thought) I checked to see if it had maintenance. It did, but it still said that I needed to add more money. I added another 100k to the vendor. Hmmm, no change.
(Brief Note: This is the vendor that I use for storage, not only for myself, but for my entire guild.)
That is when I decided to go down a different road, a road that would prove to be dark and lonely and full of frustration. I opened a ticket for the CSR’s.
Day 1, I opened a ticket.
Day 2, a CSR left me a message saying that I should wait for a server reboot and then all my problems would go away. Not a big deal as this was the day before the big reboot after the CU went live.
Day 3, Reboot. Hmmm, No change, Still broken. Added a comment explaining that it was still broken.
Day 4, Still haven’t heard from anyone, Left another message, Still Broken.
Day 5-7 Didn’t here from anyone, figured I’d quit worrying about it and headed to Coronet for a little shopping. (not sure if it was 3 or 4 days)
Day 8, Woot! Happiness!, I see in my email that a CSR has left a message. The message: (paraphrased) “I am sorry for your recent trouble and would be glad to help you but I see you have deleted your vendor. If you should have this problem again please contact us. Thanks” CSR Closed Ticket! WHAT! Deleted! I didn’t delete Jack! (Insert nauseous feeling here) Didn’t feel like dealing with it, logged off.
Day 9, Hope the CSR was just smoking. Went to check vendor. (Relive nauseous feeling) The vendor is gone. Since the CSR so kindly closed the ticket, I open another ticket stating that my vendor is gone and that I didn’t gone him. I also referenced the previous ticket ID.
Morwaul
Tue Jun 07, 2005 12:21 am
#20
Hello, The name is Vulkyn Ironweaver from the Corbantis system, and if you care to read it, here is my story.
Right after the Combat Upgrade, I noticed that one of my vendors was deactivated. (hmm, I thought) I checked to see if it had maintenance. It did, but it still said that I needed to add more money. I added another 100k to the vendor. Hmmm, no change.
(Brief Note: This is the vendor that I use for storage, not only for myself, but for my entire guild.)
That is when I decided to go down a different road, a road that would prove to be dark and lonely and full of frustration. I opened a ticket for the CSR’s.
Day 1, I opened a ticket.
Day 2, a CSR left me a message saying that I should wait for a server reboot and then all my problems would go away. Not a big deal as this was the day before the big reboot after the CU went live.
Day 3, Reboot. Hmmm, No change, Still broken. Added a comment explaining that it was still broken.
Day 4, Still haven’t heard from anyone, Left another message, Still Broken.
Day 5-7 Didn’t here from anyone, figured I’d quit worrying about it and headed to Coronet for a little shopping. (not sure if it was 3 or 4 days)
Day 8, Woot! Happiness!, I see in my email that a CSR has left a message. The message: (paraphrased) “I am sorry for your recent trouble and would be glad to help you but I see you have deleted your vendor. If you should have this problem again please contact us. Thanks” CSR Closed Ticket! WHAT! Deleted! I didn’t delete Jack! (Insert nauseous feeling here) Didn’t feel like dealing with it, logged off.
Day 9, Hope the CSR was just smoking. Went to check vendor. (Relive nauseous feeling) The vendor is gone. Since the CSR so kindly closed the ticket, I open another ticket stating that my vendor is gone and that I didn’t gone him. I also referenced the previous ticket ID.
Day 10, was that a cricket?
Day 11, CSR leaves message, I tried to contact you in game but you just weren’t around from 5:00am to 5:01am for the amount of time it took me to paste this message into your ticket. (he didn’t really say that but that was what I got out of it) He also left me about three paragraphs of instructions on stuff that I could try that had absolutely nothing to do with a missing vendor. I left a comment. No, my vendor really is missing, no I did not delete my storage vendor with all my stuff on it. Please fix it.
Day 12 – 16 ah, lovin those crickets. (not sure if it was 4 or 5 days)
Day 17, (Last Thursday) I’m logging on at about 10:00 am just to see. Oh my God!!! A CSR just sent me a /tell!!! My problems are solved, the world is a shiny and happy place. The CSR (CSR_GeorgeD) says he is going to create a house and put all my stuff in it. (restored from vendor) After about 2 hours he warps me to the house. He then says he wants to try something and that he needs me to log out for 30 minutes then log back in. 30 minutes(tick, tock, tick…..) tried to log in…It got to the little radial dial where the bars light up 1 at a time….The first bar lights up but none of the others. Ok maybe he is still working on it. 2 hours later, nope. Called the tech services number (1-858-790-7827 option 6) They say, it sounds like someone is still logged in as your character give it a while and you will be able to log in. 2 hours nope, 2 more hours nope, …nope…nope…nope…ARGGGHHHHH!
Day 18 (Last Friday) …..Nope. Called Tech services again. Tiffany the service rep walks me through all the stuff that may help (deleting profiles, etc) and finally tries to log into Vulkyn from her PC. She can’t, same problem. Hmmm says Tiffany, Let my see what I can do and I will call you back or send you an email as soon as we figure something out. (gave Tiffany my number (no, I’m married) and made sure she had my email.) tap, tap, tap….can’t wait, try again, nope…..nope….errr,nope…..wimper. about 7:00pm Central I called tech services back…It’s Tiffany! Hey Tiffany, about Vulkyn???? Response, oh, we tried everything we can do from here and everything looks good on our side we have sent the ticket to the online CSR’s………AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!.....nope…..nope……
Day 19-20 ….nope…..nope…nope…..nope….(repeat)
Day 21, (Today) ….nope, called Tech services again and spoke to some guy…couldn’t understand his name…who looked and told me that the ticket had not been updated and that I should log in to another one of my characters and open another ticket and that it should only take the 3 to 7 days to respond…..(I think I forgot to thank him as I slammed the phone down)
Ok, so that brings us to here. Now for some things I have been considering over the past 21 days.
1 Do the CSR’s care?
2 I noticed that the CSR’s always reply quickly with some kind of garbage and then don’t respond to the comments for days. Do they get rewarded for initial response time but not actual ticket closing?
3 Are the CSR’s so over worked and short handed so that they don’t have time to give CS?
4 If the last is true, Does SOE care?
5 Am I too hasty? Is 21+ days an acceptable amount of time to wait for an issue to be resolved?
6 Should there be a way to contact the CSR’s more directly?
7 Should the CSR and Tech Services departments be divided like they seem to be? (The Tech services people either could not, or refused to contact the CSR’s directly when I was speaking to them)
8 Will anyone at SOE take responsibility for this kind of stuff? (This may answer #4)
Ok, so, now, considering all this, what do ya’ll think I should do. I have been frustrated more since the CU than I have enjoyed the game. (and I even liked the CU) I am seriously considering quitting. I just don’t know any other way to get Sony to understand that this is not acceptable. But, as the title of this states, I’m afraid I don’t matter anyway. What we really need is a mass exodus. (Ok, so what we really need is for SOE to care enough to fix the problem. I just don’t have much faith in them.) I just hate to leave SWG as I have been here for nearly a year now.
The reviews for World of Warcraft and Guild Wars have been awesome. I think I will go to one of those. Has anyone here tried them? Are they any better than SWG? If I leave I will let everyone know and will also ask my guildies to follow me. Some will, Some won’t.
Anyway, Thanks for your time. Please feel free to post any other insight or your own horror stories.
Thanks
Vulkyn Ironweaver. Armorsmith, Weaponsmith, Merchant, MIA
GAThrawn_MIA
Tue Jun 07, 2005 6:09 am
#21
The_Shruberer wrote:
lol lucky you- i can't even send a ticket (the 'I found nothing let me open a ticket' butotn doesn't work, even after I search)
I had this problem for a while, then I realised that the button doesn't let you click it until you've both run a search, and actually clickded no and read at least one of the articles.
So if you're trying to submit a ticket about something that doesn't show up in the online help you need to try searching for something completely different just to get a result before yo ucan click the button.
Buka_Starwalker
Tue Jun 07, 2005 6:35 am
#22
The problem with the search function of the holocron is if u search for something it can't find the search will continue indefinately and you can't stop it. Only a server reset clears this. So in effect, your stuck, unable to search, therefore unable to open a ticket until the next server reset, which could take several days.
I have aboutmany tickets I opened for vendors and the CSR's have not helped me in any of them becuase they can't their is a bug with vendors when dealing with their maint.
Try this test and you can see. Create a new vendor and put 20 days of maint on it. Note the maint of the merchent tent or house the vendor is in and the DURATION o fhte maint cycle. Both should be equal. 20 days for tent and 20 days for vendor. Now come back 10 days later and the House will be at 10 days left and the vendor will be at 6 or 7 days left??????
What is causeing this? If I put enough maint and initially and DO NOT touch the settings the vendor since its placement itshould last EXACTLY the specified time it was originally maint put into it but it DOESNT!!!
Vendors are stealth syphoning creds from their maint cycle and therefore will delete themselves and other mysterious actions like this guy had. THERE IS SOMETHING SERIOUSLY WRONG with the vendor code.
I had a CSR once reply to my ticket that he can't help me and that vendors aren't meant to be used for storage. He promptly closed my ticket and I just about saw blood red right then and there.Who the heck is he to tell me how to play my game? A master merchant has every right to use his vendors for storage as he is for selling goods. The 4000 item limit is our perk for the profession we chose. Who is this CSR to tell me how and what I store on there and then close my ticket without helping me get back my nice 100k of rare steel that disappeared off the vendor
grrrr inept CSR
CSR's have a high turn over rate at SOE cause they don't pay them well it seems.
ken37096
Tue Jun 07, 2005 7:02 am
#23
And vulkyn still cant stay loged in more than 30 seconds.Seems like this may be more smoke being blown.
But then again this is the kind of service you get from soe. I have played since 2 months after launch. I have never had a csr help resolve any issue that has ever came up,with my account.I have filed to many csr tickets to men tion them all,and the only responcesI get are bold face lies,or tough crap its a bug deal with it or cancel your account.The csr's are incredibly unhelpfull.I have even sat in the chat rooms trying to get answers to my questions yet I get ignored because i dont sit there whining and spaming them with pm.
You try to be polite and you get ignored.I still have not had any of the things fixed from socalled bugs in the game and never will untill SOE descides they have lost enugh customers from csr's mistreating there customers, and accully hire some people who will try to help customers.
zead
wildcat84
Tue Jun 07, 2005 8:15 am
#24
Nice to see a response, and that this guy is getting help, but shouldn't the CSR ticket system resolve these issues without having to resort to forum posts and the CR director intervening?
Things would work out much better for everyone if that were the case.
I have guildies who STILL haven't received their clone armor... And they've opened ticket after ticket and have had nothing happen.
Things would work out much better for everyone if that were the case.
I have guildies who STILL haven't received their clone armor... And they've opened ticket after ticket and have had nothing happen.
Morwaul
Tue Jun 07, 2005 9:07 am
#25
First I would like to say thank you to all of you for either providing advise or someone to comisurate with. Thank You.
Update:
Day 22 ….nope. I would like to say that I have now been in contact with both:
TSR Chad who said he will resubmit this to the CSR’s. This morning he sent me a PM asking me to try it, that he had been told it was fixed. It was not unfortunately.
Tiggs who is handling it a different way I believe. He told me that if I haven’t heard anything from the the CSR’s within 24 hours (around 5pm central) to contact him again. As of now, I have not.
I would like to take a minute to restate (and maybe form up) something (an idea I guess) that I have noticed while reading everyone else’s posts. Please correct me if I am wrong.
We, the customers or clients of Starwarsgalaxies and SOE feel that the CSR’s are unreachable, unresponsive, and maybe under experienced. Granted, I would imagine that many of the tickets the CSR’s get are from people who either are having problems due to education (of game mechanics) or are trying to be underhanded. Many of them are not, however, and for those of us who have a clue this is very frustrating. The reason it is frustrating is because the CSR’s are unresponsive. Let me give an example.
When I called and got TSR Tiffany she had me try a bunch of stuff. The greatest portion of it I new would not resolve the problem but trying it did not upset me because I new that once she came to the same conclusion we would move on to something that might help. Unfortunately we found that the problem was in the CSR’s realm and that the TSR’s couldn’t help me. Tiffany still did a wonderful job. The only thing she did wrong was hand off the problem to someone else without informing me.
Now when we open a ticket with the CSR’s it works a little differently. 1st we send in a ticket, not a big deal. Then, usually within the first 6 hours or so (I have seen it longer and some claim they have never been contacted which is unforgivable) we are contacted with an update to the ticket which is usually the equivalent of the technician asking us to reboot. This would be fine except that when we leave a comment stating that the reboot didn’t work, It takes about 5 days for another CSR to come along and answer that. The another 5 days for another CSR to respond to that comment. Thus, many people with valid problems simply get frustrated and give up.
I fear that this is what the CSR’s are hoping for. This is not good customer service and should be addressed. The problem, I believe, is the system. It makes the CSR’s unresponsive. (Note: there is also the possibility that the CSR's are way way way under staffed. If this is the case it is inexcusabe and SWG/SOE shoud be repremanded, but I doubt it is the case.)
Let me propose a better system: (A telephone # would be great, but lets pretend that is impossible.) Ok here is how it works.
1 A CSR Ticket is generated. It is automatically assigned to a CSR who is online at the time and responsible to that area.
2 The CSR gets ownership of the ticket, it is now his direct responsibility.
3 If he is unable to fix the problem but thinks one of the other CSR’s is more experienced in that area (or he is about to leave for a 2 week vacation) he should have the ability to reassign the ticket. Everything should be logged so that the client can see what is happening and why.
4 He should be automatically notified when any of his tickets are updated as well as when any of the people he has opened tickets for log in.
5 He should not have the ability to close his tickets. All tickets should either be closed by the client or the Manager of the CSR’s.
6 He is graded (read review time) on how quickly he responds to and closes his tickets.
7 If the ticket is opened for more than 5 days the manager of the CSR’s should be automatically notified.
8 If the ticket has been opened for more than 10 days a member of the customer relations department (read Tiggs) should be automatically notified. (By notified I mean, they should be sent a copy of the ticket so they can easily read the history and react appropriately).
If any of you recognize the process then yeah, I used to work on a helpdesk, you got me.
Ok, that’s basically it. Please feel free to add any suggestions that may be helpful, and please try to keep it constructive. I know we are frustrated because of the system that has been in place but lets try to put together something good here then we can submit it to SWG/SOE as something we want in place and see what they do. If nothing, then we can get unconstructive J
Thanks Again
Vulkyn Ironweaver of Corbantis
Gaarotobuckymi
Tue Jun 07, 2005 10:12 am
#26
The same thing could be said of bug reporting too. However, your proposal assumes that the gaming industry, and SOE in particular,followsnormal ITBest Practice customer service procedures and uses some form of tracking software instead of an internally created and managed set of procedures.