What's worse than customer service not compensating you?

Ebolamonkey84

Answer: Getting sandboxed instead.

One of my alliance members had about 20 3-4* covers disappear on him last week, so he submitted a ticket. After a week or so, he got this message on Friday.

Thank you for contacting D3 Go! Customer Support.You are not eligible for compensation because your account has been flagged for cheating. We have reviewed the evidence and determined that the ruling is correct.You are eligible to have your account reset to the start of the game, and will then be able to create or join an alliance. Please note that you will permanently lose all game progress and purchases.

My first response to that would be, " If I was a cheater, why the **** would I put in a ticket when I could just generate HP and ISO out of my ****?" Scoville is more level headed than me, though, so he simply PM'ed David and tried to get a hold of IceIX. At this point, we could still see him in alliance, so maybe the email was a mistake. Then he got a PM from someone in his bracket asking why he wasn't in the top 10, since Scoville is a PVE machine.

Then he finally disappeared from the alliance today. He is not a cheater. He started with us 8 seasons ago with one of those dirty underleveled PVE rosters Simonsez always complains about, and eventually decided to invest in maxing out some 3 and 4* to help the alliance in PVP as well. We would like him back in the alliance before Unholy Outlaw ends, please.

Mawtful

Surprised the email didn't just read "this too shall pass".

What a bunch of arrogant tinykittys.

Bishop

Unless you and the accused take long walks along the peer you don't truly know somebody until you know somebody. You may be smart enough to not summit a ticket if you where cheating but he/she apparently wasn't.

That being said IF he was accused wrong I apologize.

Heartburn

maybe it is a warning to all the other low level max rosters once you want to graduate to pvp instant sandbox. at least until they invent a de-level button.

Phumade

This is terrible news! I've competed against Scoville in the past and I've never thought or saw anything that made me think that cheating was going on. I hope your able to get this fixed!


phu

nwman

I've grinded top 2 with scoville so I recognize the name. If I was cheating I wouldn't grind for a top 2 placement, but that's just me.

Now I can see some cheating a bit as it were to get some hp here and there without paying but not cheating so much as to take the fun / point of the game away.


Hope this gets resolved.

Deadpool369

We just went through this in my alliance..it took a few days to get resolved by Dave did get right back to him saying it was done in error..so hold out hope for him

Ebolamonkey84

aesthetocyst wrote:

Ebolamonkey84 wrote:

Answer: Getting sandboxed instead.

One of my alliance members had about 20 3-4* covers disappear on him last week, so he submitted a ticket. After a week or so, he got this message on Friday.

Thank you for contacting D3 Go! Customer Support.You are not eligible for compensation because your account has been flagged for cheating. We have reviewed the evidence and determined that the ruling is correct.You are eligible to have your account reset to the start of the game, and will then be able to create or join an alliance. Please note that you will permanently lose all game progress and purchases.

My first response to that would be, " If I was a cheater, why the tinykitty would I put in a ticket when I could just generate HP and ISO out of my ****?" Scoville is more level headed than me, though, so he simply PM'ed David and tried to get a hold of IceIX. At this point, we could still see him in alliance, so maybe the email was a mistake. Then he got a PM from someone in his bracket asking why he wasn't in the top 10, since Scoville is a PVE machine.

Then he finally disappeared from the alliance today. He is not a cheater. He started with us 8 seasons ago with one of those dirty underleveled PVE rosters Simonsez always complains about, and eventually decided to invest in maxing out some 3 and 4* to help the alliance in PVP as well. We would like him back in the alliance before Unholy Outlaw ends, please.

Sc0ville got 'boxed???

When you say "invested" you mean he spent hard currency? Or just decided to start leveling up? If money spent D3 should have those records .... and so should sc0ville.

I certainly hope he didn't turn to the darkside.

I had a near-death experience myself with customer service. I play on Steam, and there is this odd thing that happens randomly on Steam ... for brief periods the animations will process at double speed, maybe its even triple. It's a blast, like "blitz MPQ", but like I said, sporadic, random, short lived. But awesome when it happens. Really picks up the pace.

So, my dumb self decides to be Johnny Good Player and report this to the devs. See if they are aware of this oddity. And i suggest they look into offering a "Turbo boost" because PvPers would be all over it.

The response? "It appears you have been engaging in irregular gameplay..."

"Irregular gameplay"??? What? Nope. Not me. Never mind. I was mistaken. I saw nothing. I know nothing. I never sent any messages. Cheerio!

I hope everything works out for sc0ville ... and that he gets compensated for unjust incarceration / time lost!!!

By investing, I mean he was sitting on a large pile of ISO and HP from keeping his characters underlevelled and dominating PVE.

optimus2861

aesthetocyst wrote:

So hoarders are cheaters now

No doubt some CS rep saw the sudden surge in use of ISO and HP and just assumed it was ill-gotten.

Hoarders beware.

But that's...

A player's levels of ISO & HP are stored on the server; they have to be, because they are purchasable commodities and would need to be logged & tracked for Google & Apple, and their own internal audits. D3 would have a log showing that player's levels of same slowly growing over time, then suddenly depleting as it was spent. It should therefore be a trivial matter for them to learn that the player wasn't cheating, merely spending down a stash.

That CS rep should be disciplined for shoddy research. And who checked his/her shoddy work?

Shee-oot, I've got about 300K ISO right now. If I spent it down today on levelling characters from 127 to 140, would I get flagged?

sc0ville

Ebola did a great job of explaining my situation, but I can clear up some of the questions from the replies and provide a bit more detail:

A little about myself. I've been playing the game for 522 days and have been predominately focused on PvE (until about 3 seasons ago when I started increasing my participation in PvP). Most people that would recognize my name would probably be due to PvE, I typically finish in the top 3 for any new character release. I've probably spent about $40 on the game, for character slots and the occasional cover early on and I've mostly been self-sufficient on HP for a while because PVE provides enough, and doesn't require spending on shields.

The incident occurred on Friday the 17th, I had about 30 covers waiting for me to either sell or apply, one of which being a PX Yellow I had just received. My phone battery died while I was using the camera and after I recharged it, I noticed my saved covers were missing. I immediately put in a cs request and patiently waited for a reply. throughout the course of last week I got multiple emails telling me that my request had been escalated and it was still pending a response. On Friday at 5:00pm is when I was informed my account had been suspended and I had been accused of cheating. I immediately responded, denying the accusation and asking them to provide me with some explanation of what type of cheating I'm even being accused of. I knew I wouldn't get a response over the weekend, but I still haven't gotten an explanation as of this post.

I've sent a PM to David [Hi-Fi] Moore, and he graciously told me he would look into it. I'm still hopeful that my account will be restored but dumbfounded that it could have gotten this far. My account has been removed from my alliance but thankfully they should still get top 100 without me (even though I'm once again top 3 in the Hulk PvE). The main reason I still play the game is for the competition and contributing to my alliance. The Skrull Empire were great and gave me a shot when I was still a poorly covered 3* transitioner unable to contribute much in PvP but able to make up for it with my PvE scores. Without either of those things there's no point for me to play any longer.

This is more a cautionary tale than anything else at this point, I guess you should engage in some pretty heavyduty soul searching before you put in a CS request. "Is resolving this issue potentially worth having my account taken away from me?"

PuceMoose

aesthetocyst wrote:

Ebolamonkey84 wrote:

By investing, I mean he was sitting on a large pile of ISO and HP from keeping his characters underlevelled and dominating PVE.

So hoarders are cheaters now
No doubt some CS rep saw the sudden surge in use of ISO and HP and just assumed it was ill-gotten.
Hoarders beware.

As a heads-up on a related note, Hoarders should be careful about accumulating too much ISO. I've been sandboxed twice because of this. I was sandboxed when I passed two million. Since I got it resolved I've kept my ISO at 1.85 million or less and haven't had any problems since then.

Phumade

Ebolamonkey84 wrote:

Answer: Getting sandboxed instead.


By investing, I mean he was sitting on a large pile of ISO and HP from keeping his characters underlevelled and dominating PVE.

Oh he got boxed for hoarding? LOL. While its not funny, I'm pretty sure he can get that appealed. We've all heard the stories that there is some 'bot that watches ISO and HP totals. The computer cant tell the difference between magically generating 1M ISO in an hour and saving a 1M Iso over a month.

Good luck getting this fixed. I'm sure I'll see scoville grinding like a machine in PVE very very soon.

sc0ville

Phumade wrote:

Ebolamonkey84 wrote:

Answer: Getting sandboxed instead.


By investing, I mean he was sitting on a large pile of ISO and HP from keeping his characters underlevelled and dominating PVE.

Oh he got boxed for hoarding? LOL. While its not funny, I'm pretty sure he can get that appealed. We've all heard the stories that there is some 'bot that watches ISO and HP totals. The computer cant tell the difference between magically generating 1M ISO in an hour and saving a 1M Iso over a month.

Good luck getting this fixed. I'm sure I'll see scoville grinding like a machine in PVE very very soon.

I think it was likely something else, I had about 500k iso and 9k hp, I don't think either of those are so unreasonable that it should have set off any flags.

simonsez

sc0ville wrote:

I think it was likely something else

Racial profiling?

Stax the Foyer

It's one thing to make a mistake, or to overzealously flag behavior as problematic. I trust this error will eventually get resolved, as it has been in the past for other players.

The non-CS people like David have been responsive, which is very much appreciated, but the lack of communication on the customer service side is absurd.

Here, the first communication in response to a CS ticket was a cheating allegation sent on Friday afternoon, with the actions to Sc0ville's accound apparently already taken (or set in motion). After waiting all weekend, and now even after a full workday has gone by, Sc0ville still has no idea what behavior triggered this. If the evidence was really reviewed as the CS email claimed, it would have been trivial to include a summary in the initial email, and it should absolutely have been provided in response to his followup inquiry. There's no excuse for radio silence at this point.

It's my understanding that the Customer Service duties are contracted out to a third party, but if there's anything that the devs/publisher could do to encourage (or require) better communication with players when drastic actions like this are taken, it seems like that would be worth doing. An allegation like this should include enough information that the player can know where they stand, and how to respond. Otherwise, honest mistakes can turn sour quickly.

Bishop

aesthetocyst wrote:

sc0ville wrote:

I think it was likely something else, I had about 500k iso and 9k hp, I don't think either of those are so unreasonable that it should have set off any flags.

Yeah, this developer's default mode of guilty 'til proven innocent.

Seriously ...

Game crash? Your fault, we assume you did it on purpose.
Hoarding? suspicious.
Bug report? Sounds like 'irregular gameplay' to us.

This attitude makes this feel like a sucker's game.

But then, sometimes, they respond quickly and even generously when a documented case is made.

In order for them to behave that way they must have many people doing that to them and thus become suspicious. That's the problem with cheaters once they start that and they get caught its human nature to be suspicious of everyone else. It's like a plague when one cheats it spreads like a disease.

Just like real life some go to jail innocent. I hope that doesn't happen to me but if it does I know where the delete button is..

simonsez

Bishop wrote:

In order for them to behave that way they must have many people doing that to them

But, doing WHAT to them? We still don't even know specifically what they think he did.

DrNitroman

I hope that your issue will be fixed Scoville, but I'm a bit worried too by the fact I may be experiencing the same kind of issue.
Yesterday, I found that I wasn't in my alliance anymore although I'm a commander. I can't join any public alliance so I could have been sandboxed?!
Of course I sent a ticket, but knowing your story I wonder if this could make the things worse...

sc0ville

DrNitroman wrote:

I hope that your issue will be fixed Scoville, but I'm a bit worried too by the fact I may be experiencing the same kind of issue.
Yesterday, I found that I wasn't in my alliance anymore although I'm a commander. I can't join any public alliance so I could have been sandboxed?!
Of course I sent a ticket, but knowing your story I wonder if this could make the things worse...

It sounds like you got caught up in whatever happened to me as well. A couple of other people have messaged me on line about people they know getting sandboxed recently. I'm thinking something has gone haywire with whatever triggers their anti-cheating procedures.

DrNitroman

sc0ville wrote:

DrNitroman wrote:

I hope that your issue will be fixed Scoville, but I'm a bit worried too by the fact I may be experiencing the same kind of issue.
Yesterday, I found that I wasn't in my alliance anymore although I'm a commander. I can't join any public alliance so I could have been sandboxed?!
Of course I sent a ticket, but knowing your story I wonder if this could make the things worse...

It sounds like you got caught up in whatever happened to me as well. A couple of other people have messaged me on line about people they know getting sandboxed recently. I'm thinking something has gone haywire with whatever triggers their anti-cheating procedures.

Yep, it seems so. Might be a good time for a break ...

Bishop

simonsez wrote:

Bishop wrote:

In order for them to behave that way they must have many people doing that to them

But, doing WHAT to them? We still don't even know specifically what they think he did.

It could be any number of "What's". But would you rather let their system not flag accounts if it sees something suspicious? The cheating population would be even worse. At the least if he didn't do anything wrong theres a chance they'll spot it.