Guild Wars 2

Gaille, I know that you are doing your best. Your updates on tickets resolutions make that clear. If I hired you, I would give you a raise. And if you lived in the area, I would take you for lunch as a thank-you.

Unfortunately, what I experienced was the single-most worst customer support experience in my 40+ years on earth. I try to log in and enjoy the game but everything just reminds me of that experience. You may read in the news or have experienced the problems with government health care website (depending on where you live). I can honestly say that the customer support here is worse than that. I’m not being dramatic or exaggerating. I spent at least 20 hours of my life trying to resolve this.

I am the customer. I have contributed my share to your company beyond just buying the box. The least I would have expected would have been an apology. And, I’m not asking for anything. I’m just saying that I’m not alone in this. Others post about it on non-gw2 forums. Most don’t post because they just move on with their regrets. I’m posting in hopes that I’ll be little bit less resentful. But I’m 100% confident that I will research games in the future to ensure that are not affiliated with ANet or NCsoft.

Do you remember when Blizzard lost all of that respect for FaceBook comments about another company that was their original team? Your customer support is as lacking in integrity and valuing where your money comes from as they were.

Be well..again, it’s obvious that you are doing your best.

Carnage, post the ticket id so Gaile can look into this. If it was a bad experience like you say providing the ticket number would allow Gaile to perform a review.

Draygo, thanks for the constructive suggestion. Gaille knows. We were communicating via pm, there were forum posts, and follow-ups in the 3-day or longer thread. I honestly do not blame Gaille. I see him or her as the person stuck with the fallout.

I have to do a lot of online moderating and discussing in my line of work. However, I would not survive this for one day doing this. Gaille, seriously, while it doesn’t affect my attitude about the company, you are doing a great job and probably do not receive as much appreciation as you deserve.

I’m a bit uncertain why you are posting this in a public forum if you are certain that Gaile will review the case and take your feedback into account??.

Maybe you would like to warn people not to use support? Why should we be warned? Maybe you want them to understand that they need to improve. Well like you said yourself, you trust Gaile. Honestly, if you trust her this much this is a stab in her back. Specially cause in your warning you disclose no information what so ever bout what is so wrong with support.

I got about as much experience with customer support and my experience with Arenanet support has only been good. Yes it is not as good as Blizzard. But thats not something I would expect from a game without monthly fee. But it is, considering the budgets one of the bests customer supports I know.

Sometimes things happen. One can be a transistion off systems. I know from personal experience what kind off issues that can cause in specially waiting times. But that is often caused not by bad support, but by technical dificulty’s

I also know that support sometimes have to take a more neutral tone. This has to do with security issues. sadly it happens that hackers or other bad people try to mislead support. So when these kind of situations appear a more neutral tone is needed.

So if you still think you have a valid reason to stab Gaile in the back like this, atleast give her a fair change and say what happened to you. She can defend herself and we can judge for our own. Untill then I have to respectfully go with the opinion that this thread is an unfunded and actually outragious complaint.

A simple apology when mistakingly ‘permanently banning’ someone would go a long way. Or when advertising items that do not live up to their description. It would be nice if there was a change in the text that is scripted for some of the responses.

I am a great champion of ArenaNet and the Guild Wars franchise, but I think support needs some work and, perhaps, additional training in customer service.

I took a moment to review your posts on this issue and from what I can see you certainly WERE given a run-around (assuming all your comments are fair and accurate and I have no reason to think you they were not). Without knowing the details of your situation, however, I cannot fully form an opinion concerning some of the issues you were having with support (personal information provided multiple times, etc.).

I can fully understand that your situation was frustrating but this certainly appears to me (looking from the outside) that this was a situation of growing pains with their new support system. Certainly the fact that instructions you were being sent by Agents did not match what was available or possible at the actual sites you were sent to is a horrible error that needs to be resolved (if not already fixed) ASAP. Hopefully this post will help alert the right people to close that hole if it still exists.

Just so you know, I have dealt with Customer Support on several occasions in the past (pre-new system) and never had any issue (beyond it possibly taking a bit longer to resolve the issues than I liked….but I get they are busy). On the other hand, the fact that they WERE attempting to communicate and help you get a resolution is something you should NOT take for granted (certainly that should be what Customer Service does) as I HAVE had much worse experiences with companies that simply do NOT respond, have gaping dead ends in their support process and resulted in me finally just giving up and tossing the product in the trash. I guess what I mean is, it could certainly be worse….take my word for it (not that I intend that to be an excuse for you having a bad experience).

If I posted the specific details then I would be encouraging the active hacker community to do what they enjoy doing. (Personally, I find that to be a rather boring hobby, but whatever…) The details are also not relevant here; if so, then I wouldn’t need customer support. I would just ask on Players Helping Players. Others have asked on this forum in the past for more information. Given how insistent they are about it, it’s all the more reason why I only share it with Gaille and CS. (“The lady doth protest too much, methinks” ~ Shakespeare.) This is saying that people who chase after something irrelevant too much are probably up to no good.

For those who bring up how I might have fallen through the cracks with respect to the system, this is probably the most truthful explanation of all. HOWEVER (all caps), that does not mean that the victim should just smile, nod, accept that, and move on. Why? Because it enables the company in thinking that the customers are completely fine with it. In their defense, if no one vocalizes or verbalizes the problem, how would they even know? Last I checked, modern companies do seek to improve in order to remain competitive.

Now this is what should have happened. The warning about the system transition should not have been just a forum thread. It should have be on the log-in screen for the game. “Warning: due to a desire to improve your customer support experience, we are implementing and greatly improved system. This will take 7-10 days. It is likely that you will experience erratic behavior. We advise avoiding filing tickets during this period time. We apologize; however, you will be very satisfied with the result of our update.”

A message like that should have also been on the new CS webpage because, during that period of time, CS e-mails were telling people to log in and provide more information; yet, we all know that the new CS website doesn’t work that way.

Basic Marketing Psychology 101…not preparing the customer for transitions like this is a bad idea. In terms of training, CS should take a class on anything at an online university. Online professors are trained very well to be firm and professional with respect to policy while still putting the student first and attempting flexibility. Anet/NCsoft should work this out so that the university is prepared because, unfortunately, there are professors who are in the process of changing careers and will simply ignore those best practices. And some won’t last because they inherently aren’t able to wear two hats at the same time…or just need more experience. My guess is that ANet CS is only trained on protocol and policy with no inclusion of customer satisfaction and tone. (You can’t blame them if they aren’t trained and evaluated.)

I have 33 e-mails in a folder pertaining to this resolved issue.

3778 was the original ticket 10/24/13
Then they alerted me to the system change and asked for information such as paypal id’s and credit card last four numbers on the accounts. 10/26/13
Then they told me to use the new system, which wasn’t even available 10/26/13.
I replied while upset with:

“So what do you want me to do. You have everything that you need except for a DNA sample. All of the request is in the body of this response thread, and the response was made using the system that you want me to use. I filed the ticket yesterday, which was after the 23rd. If you are going to help via e-mail then I’m not sure why you are sending me the same response twice after Max was willing to help and asked for more verification.” They told me to start over. In other words, I was stuck in a loop.
They referred to this as request #11500. 10/26/13

Then I have several e-mail pertaining to your infarction, for which I accepted responsibility. My tirade and arguments with others who happen to be in this thread was correctly and appropriately punished. I’m surprised that I didn’t receive a temporary ban.

I gave up and started over thinking that maybe I will try to be as nice as possible (when actually that has nothing to do with why my ticket wasn’t being resolved…but I tried anyway).

Received another e-mail telling me to go back and use the new system that wasn’t even available. It was another response to 3778 but now we are on 10/29/13. I replied acting like this was my first time experiencing this and let them know (again) that the link doesn’t work. (Obviously…you can’t use the old system when the new one doesn’t ask for log-in and all of that.)

Two days pass…I receive two e-mails asking for me take a yes/no customer satisfaction survey since somehow everything is now resolved after I told them that the links do not work. (Nothing was resolved.) So, I responded no on both of them and commented that the issue is not resolved. They referenced 51701 although I do not remember and do not have a record of that ticket.

I decided to try filing the tickets but to file them using the account e-mail addresses on both parts of the form (not just the area that asks for your log-in e-mail). So, I filed two separate tickets. Both were resolved in 30 minutes – 2 hours. 11/9/13…case closed. These were 51809 and 55814. And I was wrong…those responses that let me reset passwords did include an apology.

I found some more e-mails…they tried to correct the problem after correcting the problem. But in these last e-mails, they referenced 3778

As you can see…even if someone wants to say that I should have never filed additional tickets:

1.) They encouraged me to file new tickets.
2.) Over the entire period of time, 3778 was never resolved to the extent to where they wanted me to take surveys. It was not resolved until it was resolved. Does that make sense? Barely makes sense to me!

TL/DR: It went something like this but with tickets numbers and e-mails.