Expressing your unhappiness about a bad purchase is not ranting. It is not “insulting” ANet. It is not “being unreasonable”. This situation isn’t about how ANet feels, it’s about YOU…the customer, and how YOU feel.
I haven’t had any account problems, but many of my friends have and their customer service experience has been really bad. What is turning me away from this game (aside from the fact that my friends can’t play) is the attitude of support and community management on this forum. Most of the responses I see from ANet blame the customer for not waiting for days and days for a person to actually read and understand their problem, blame them for being unhappy by characterizing posts as insulting or they excuse and justify their poor performance by saying that incorrect automated responses are a good thing for some people.
The sheer volume of people in this forum unhappy about their game issues and their customer support experience shows that there is a problem within the company. ANet is responsible for ramping up their support staff numbers during launch. They are selling people a product with the promise that people will be able to use it. It is their responsibility to build out and maintain support systems that will accomplish that goal. How they do that and what their internal issues may be, are not the concern of the customer.
Rather than the defensive posture I see here on the forum, ANet should apologize to customers having problems and having to wait for days, then have an actual person who can read and empathize, address their issues in a timely manner.
I hope that this situation improves over time and that ANet can improve the quality and quantity of their support. They might consider sending out customer satisfaction surveys to 1/5 of their support ticket contacts and make those metrics their guide. Until then, I’ll go play something else with my friends who can’t log in.
