#0 - Aug. 21, 2008, 11:13 p.m.
First and Foremost I would like to say that You, Blizzard, have the WORST Customer Service system I have ever had the misfortune of meeting.
So the Obligatory Back Story - I have played this game since April 2004 - In that entire time, I've never had ANY violations against my characters or account - Not even a language or conduct violation - Nothing, until Tuesday 7.08am AustEST. At that time I receive an E-mail - Subject - "World of Warcraft Password Reset"
9 Minutes Later at 7.17am AustEST, I recieve a second Email - Subject - "World of Warcraft Account Notice - Final Warning"
The body of the Email then goes like this:
* * * NOTICE OF FINAL WARNING * * *
This is a notification regarding the World of Warcraft account ********. Access to this account has been temporarily disabled for exploitation of the World of Warcraft economy or for being associated to accounts which have been closed for intended exploitation. Based on a review of the information presented, this World of Warcraft account has been given a final warning and a 72 hour account suspension, in addition to any previous warnings issued. Until the suspension has been lifted, the account will not be accessible. Please note that Blizzard Entertainment will be unable to provide further information regarding the specific time an account will become accessible again.
After the shock of getting this email - I try to think over what I have done in the last couple of days - nothing I can think of as exploiting the economy. So I go through the motions as described and email [email protected] with information about the suspension and how I believe it's incorrect etc. I get the wonderful Confirmation email about 5 minutes later - Great! I think - Things will be settled in a day or so .... it's Tuesday so the servers shut down so I can't play anyway - Wrong of course it's a rolling restart night ... but that's fine I have work early in the morning so no real problem. Still I stay up till 1am (8am Pacific Time) only to find that you can't actually talk to anyone on the phone for a suspension or ban.
All of Wednesday - No Information - No Contact - Nothing ... fair enough they get a lot of emails. All of Thursday - Beginning to get ridiculous the suspension is over in 12 Hours. Friday 7.30am Ban is over - Still Nothing from Blizzard. In my email I gave them every conceivable method of contacting me - including home and mobile phone numbers.
At this point most people would say fine - You've got your account back - shut up and be happy, but I am not! My account with a perfect history to date is now tarnished and Blizzard still haven't had the courtesy to contact me even by Email to let me know just how I "Exploited the Economy of World of Warcraft" The 1 thousand odd gold I have spread between 9 characters is some serious exploitation I must say
For the Record - I Do Not, Have Not and Would Not Buy Gold
I Do Not Bot or macro - in any form
I Do Not Use Power Levelling Services
I Have Never Scammed Anyone
Nobody but Me Knows my account details
Nobody Plays on my account but me
I do not have Spyware/Malware/a Virus or Keyloggers on my System - I have checked it with multiple detection programs
I do use a proxy service called Lower Ping (They can be found at http://www.lowerping.com/) - Something that is almost a necessity over here in Australia so I can get a stable ping of about 250-300ms instead of between 650 and 800ms (Thanks Telstra). I did actually speak to a GM in game about this - so u'll have a record of it somewhere no doubt - Though he wasn't able to really say if it'd cause a problem or not.
***I have been thinking still about things I had done in the days leading up to the suspension - perhaps this was caused by me logging in one day without my proxy active - noticed my ping was sitting at 700ms - looked - found Proxycap wasn't running - exited turned it on and logged back in ... but I really don't expect that to be the case - In the past I've changed the proxy server settings to 3 different ip's in under an hour while I was testing for the fastest server - also my ISP dynamically allocates IP's anyway so it would be regularly changing ***
Why is there No way to phone account administration.
Why Do Emails go unanswered for days. 24 Hours is acceptable - anything beyond that is just gross negligence on your behalf
Why are we unable to log into our account to access the forums and speak to somebody.
Why aren't characters with long histories contacted first as a courtesy - My account has been active and played for the last 4 years almost every day
Why are the Suspension Emails so Generic - If I had some idea of what I've done wrong I'd like to be able to remedy it for the future - or at least I'd have some idea of how to proceed
This stinks! If this is what passes for customer service there's no wonder at all that there isn't an Award for Customer Service amongst your *Gaming Mag's* Awards. So what I want to know is When are you going to remember that customers pay your wages? Something better is going to come along, and soon, then all the long term LOYAL customers who have been - for want of a better word - shafted will be gone
I do actually love this game - am still excited by this game - I enjoy the friendships I've formed and the progression we've achieved. Each and every character I've levelled from 1 to whatever - they all have a story - I'm excited by the upcoming release of Wrath of the Lich King (a little saddened that instead of getting a Beta Invite I got a suspension instead) I've even saved 2 weeks of annual leave to use as soon as I know the release date - but this leaves an extremely sour taste in the mouth
I do expect that this warning will be removed from my account and I would expect remuneration for game time paid for and lost, thus I would appreciate a response to this and I am happy to have this passed onto higher authorities.
I'll also add a copy of this to the suggestions forum if you feel it's necessary
Thanks
Drum
