Exploitative Activity - COMEDIC INCOMPETANCE

#0 - Jan. 15, 2010, 9:17 p.m.

Recently, myself and a couple friends decided to have some fun on our own, and run a bit of an experiment. We put a bunch of things to sell on one character, moved it to another realm, bought and sold for profit and returned with some different things, the purpose being a bit of a competition to see who could make the most gold, and whether or not it was viable. This was confirmed via e-mail, and on these very forums to NOT be exploitative behavoir. Upon returning to Arthas, I was notified of a 72 hour suspension for exploitative activity, and my mage, Rhydin and that account, was suspended. At several points, bother over the phone, in game ticket, AND my ticket through the website, I said my account was NOT COMPROMISED IN ANY WAY SHAPE OR FORM.

I wrote a long, detailed ticket through their system contesting the 72 hour suspension. Here is the recount of the resolutions offered by blizzard, in their exact timeline.

14 hours after I put the requests in.
1) I received a notification from Blizzard that the suspended account password had been reset. This led to a host of errors on the website when i attempted to do it, because THE (insert 4 letter word of frustration here) ACCOUNT WAS STILL SUSPENDED.
2) Then I received a letter saying the password on my OTHER account was reset. Why? I have no idea. maybe that's the next solution on the list when someone does't feel like reading a ticket.
3) Then i receive another email saying that my battle.net account password was reset again. I don't even know what happened this time, but I'm sure they deal with tickets the same way computer tech support works. Reboot, 3rd times' the charm right?
4) 24 hours after the initial suspension, I received a notice, HEY SORRY WE MESSED UP, your account is now restored! YAY!
5) 1 hour later, I receive a notice that my character is locked, because a transfer didn't process. I attempt to log in, but I can't do anything.
6) 48 hours after the suspension, today, I call blizzard to find out that Blizzard ninja transferred the character back to the server we went to to sell and buy. Except they did it without all the mail he had and auctions that were up when the account was suspended, and I was missing one of my 3 mech choppers (the other 2 were already equipped by other people, and I can only assume the chopper was one of the items that flagged their system in the first place). But it's ok, some random guy answering the phone lines was "sorry". I then ask him to please ticket all my missing mail to get it restored, because I was using a spreadsheet as part of our experiment.
7) just now, I received a whole bunch of mails with cryptic letters and numbers, assuming to be the recorded auction sales and events, with gold attached and for the expired auctions, the items. While the numbers look about right, I have no idea what item was attached to which auction, or where to put anything on the spreadsheet, which is something I specifically mentioned to the person on the phone to write down and include in the ticket, which either wasn't written down, or whoever just resolved it, didn't bother to look at it, or take the proper time to at least do the right thing for something HIS SYSTEM screwed up on. AND I'm still missing my chopper.

So there you have it, 7 independant, incorrect responses to my ticket. I'm at the point now where I don't even know what to say, or what to expect. I'd have a better chance getting stock tips from a homeless guy then getting someone to actually pay attention to my ticket, and give the right solution. So far, 0 for 7 on gettin this one right. So, to make up for all this lost time and hassle, I'm taking bets on Arthas on this character.

Max bet is 100g per person as to what happens next with this ticket, and below are the odds.

2-1 my password gets reset by blizzard again
5-2 my other account that was not involved in any of the in game transactions gets 72 hours for exploitative activity
4-1 my other account gets characters randomly ninja server transferred by the system to Dawnbringer. If this happens, you will have to collect on dawnbringer BTW, since I won't have any gold on Arthas.
7-1 I actually get the correct response to the issue.
15-1 One of the people who bought stuff on the Dawnbringer AH from gets mysteriosly ninja transferred by Blizzard to Arthas.
50-1 My character gets transferred back to Drenden where it originally came from 18 months ago before I went to Arthas
6-1 Other

Malkorix

#2 - Jan. 15, 2010, 9:55 p.m.

We've already discussed this matter in another thread, and as I stated previously, if you wish to dispute the matter, the only appropriate course of action is continued dialogue with our Account Administration team.

If you'd like to furnish me with the name and realm of characters on the affected accounts, I may be in a position to explain the situation further, though as I've stated before we have no purview over account suspensions, nor are we in a position to review them. Only our Account Administration team has that authority.

Malkorix

#3 - Jan. 15, 2010, 9:56 p.m.

Q u o t e:
I think my ticket was actually serviced by <removed>... the <removed>! Rush them fire extinguishers to the flood!

Be very careful, Tamral - while you may have had disagreements with other posters in this forum, this kind of behavior will not be tolerated.

Malkorix

#5 - Jan. 15, 2010, 10:10 p.m.

To reiterate, I may be able to provide further guidance if you can in turn provide the name and realm of a character from each affected account.

Malkorix

#13 - Jan. 15, 2010, 10:27 p.m.

Q u o t e:

I provided this in an earlier post, and yes, please, if you can explain what happened in this train wreck of customer service, I would LOVE to know.

I'll be happy to look into this further and get back to you as soon as I can, but an investigation of this nature can take some time.

Malkorix

#15 - Jan. 15, 2010, 10:34 p.m.

Q u o t e:
That's all I got. Anything I'm missing?

Thanks! If there is, I'll let you know.

Malkorix

#26 - Jan. 16, 2010, 12:42 a.m.

Q u o t e:
any updates malkorix? or any information about it found out?

I'm still gathering information, Tamral. Thanks for your patience in the meantime.

Malkorix

#32 - Jan. 16, 2010, 2:11 a.m.

Q u o t e:

2) Then I received a letter saying the password on my OTHER account was reset. Why? I have no idea. maybe that's the next solution on the list when someone does't feel like reading a ticket.

That account password appears to have been reset due to the report of compromises occurring on your account.

Q u o t e:
3) Then i receive another email saying that my battle.net account password was reset again. I don't even know what happened this time, but I'm sure they deal with tickets the same way computer tech support works. Reboot, 3rd times' the charm right?

I can see all the emails sent to your accounts during this time frame, and only the two previous messages you mentioned are visible.

Q u o t e:

4) 24 hours after the initial suspension, I received a notice, HEY SORRY WE MESSED UP, your account is now restored! YAY!

The reason that your account was initially suspended was due to the remarkable similarity that your enterprise bore to exploitative activities, though I apologize for the inconvenience that this issue seems to have generated =(.

Ultimately, I'm relieved that our staff were in a position to help in a relatively swift time frame.

Q u o t e:
5) 1 hour later, I receive a notice that my character is locked, because a transfer didn't process. I attempt to log in, but I can't do anything.

That seems to have occurred because this issue was also reported via your other account, and that report was being processed at the same time that you were attempting to process the transfer. This prevented the transfer from occurring due to a security lock initiated by that report.

Simultaneous contact with different departments from different accounts about an identical issue can generate some confusion.

Q u o t e:

6) 48 hours after the suspension, today, I call blizzard to find out that Blizzard ninja transferred the character back to the server we went to to sell and buy. Except they did it without all the mail he had and auctions that were up when the account was suspended, and I was missing one of my 3 mech choppers (the other 2 were already equipped by other people, and I can only assume the chopper was one of the items that flagged their system in the first place). But it's ok, some random guy answering the phone lines was "sorry". I then ask him to please ticket all my missing mail to get it restored, because I was using a spreadsheet as part of our experiment.

7) just now, I received a whole bunch of mails with cryptic letters and numbers, assuming to be the recorded auction sales and events, with gold attached and for the expired auctions, the items. While the numbers look about right, I have no idea what item was attached to which auction, or where to put anything on the spreadsheet, which is something I specifically mentioned to the person on the phone to write down and include in the ticket, which either wasn't written down, or whoever just resolved it, didn't bother to look at it, or take the proper time to at least do the right thing for something HIS SYSTEM screwed up on. AND I'm still missing my chopper.

It appears that there was misunderstanding. Judging from the records I have available, the transfer moving your character back to the realm of Arthas (this would be the transfer that was interrupted by the compromise report), was initiated from your system via the Account Management page. The interruption temporarily confined your character to Dawnbringer, but our representative attempted to help set up a presumably desirable transfer back to Arthas.

Regarding the in-game messages you received, I can understand how they might have been a bit cryptic. While we try to honor the requests of our players, this is not always possible. Fortunately, the Game Master in question was able to go the extra mile and acquire those successful auction items for you at all, and I've since been able to confirm that the cryptic nature of those messages was a direct consequence of the techniques necessary to directly forward the completed auctions to your character. I apologize if itemized lists were not immediately available.
Also, all three of those Choppers have been separately identified and accounted for as having been sold for in-game currency and learned by the recipients.

In the future, you may find that streamlining communication to a single avenue and originating from a single account, and avoiding repeated requests for help via multiple points of contact will help prevent 'crossed wires' from occurring. Rather than incompetence, this appears to have been an issue of communication, I'm afraid =(.

At this point, and unless my own wires have been crossed, I believe that you did not intend to move Rhydin back to Arthas after all? If so, please reply to the most recent email you've received on the subject from our Billing & Account Services department, and our staff will attempt to resolve the matter as swiftly as possible.

Malkorix

#35 - Jan. 16, 2010, 2:59 a.m.

Q u o t e:
I had every intention of moving rhydin back to arthas. That was the point of the experiment. Move him from Arthas to another server, buy and sell stuff on that auction house, and then return to Arthas and sell what I came back with.

Got it - I just wanted to make sure that you've ended up where you intended to be.

Q u o t e:
Furthermore, 2 of the choppers were learned by Blowout and Gozz. That was intended. Who learned that third chopper, because I sure as heck don't know? Can you provide me with that?

While I'm unable to provide the name of that character, I can provide the sequence of events.

It appears that three Choppers were traded to Blowout on 01/13/2010 at approximately 8:26 GMT. About eight minutes later, he traded one to Gozz and then approximately eight minutes after that, he traded the last one to the player in question. It was learned by that player very shortly thereafter.

Q u o t e:
I'm sorry if I've seemed harsh, but put yourself in my shoes, and given what I originally put in my ticket, compared to what actions were taken, I was at a complete loss as to what was going on and why, and received no communication from Blizzard as to why the incorrect action was taken over and over.

I realize why you might have been frustrated - after all, I've devoted a substantial amount of attention to helping iron out what seems to have occurred in this case. I would like to point out that there was communication every step of the way, but this communication from various sources overlapped which likely generated a measure of confusion.

I can certainly understand why this might have all been a bit bewildering, and I really am sorry about any frustration that this might have caused for you =(.

Q u o t e:
And also, I can only assume I was initially flagged by an automated program of some sort, so can I safely assume I will have this same hassle if I ever do this again in the future? or is there something that can be done to prevent this ridiculous hassle?

If you have concerns on that count, then the best course of action would likely be direct communication with our Account Administration staff. As always, that email address is [email protected].

Since you appear to have continued reservations about the way this situation was handled, I'd like to provide you with the best avenues to present your feedback. Should you have concerns about any interactions that you've had with our Game Master department or here on the Customer Service forum, then you can submit your comments via email at [email protected].

Contact with our Billing & Account Services staff will often generate an automated survey via email, which is the best way to express yourself regarding the service you've received. If you do not receive a survey or accidentally deleted it, then you can submit an email to [email protected] with ATTN: Feedback in the title.

Q u o t e:
and I'm sure you will also understand if I wait a couple days and count to a hundred thousand before filling in those customer service surveys, of which I have about 10 in my inbox now.

Ah, I was typing my response as you posted this, and I certainly do. Your forbearance is appreciated, and more than that, thank you for bearing with us over the course of a rather unusual situation.