Customer service fail

simonsez

So customer service has been telling people that they will disassemble your dupes, but only as a one-time thing. Therefore, it would have made sense to complete whatever championing you needed to do, before making the request. Except now, they're saying they will no longer do it, period. This, with no warning or communication of any kind, that this policy was expiring.

Why incentivize people to wait to make the request, and then basically say, "Sorry, you waited too long!"

Why is it so hard for stuff like this to be communicated in advance?!?!

dr tinykittylove

I have an equally delightful story. In early January, I asked for CS to merge my alt account, with which I have a fairly long history of posting about on the forum. No question at all that it is mine.

They asked for screencaps with the ign. They asked for receipts of in game purchases to "verify" that the account was mine. Then they said "Sorry, this service has been temporarily disabled due to the volume of requests."

Since then, I have been asking semi-regularly just in principle, jumping through the same hoops of screencaps receipts "sorry you are not worth our time" because I knew account mergers were happening even while they were rejecting my request and they have been sending me form letters to tell me they were "sincerely sorry" that I am upset and that they will personally update their database with my feedback.

I am "sincerely sorry" that your "sincere" form letters make me angry and express my dissatisfaction in the customer satisfaction poll. Truly "sincere".

Mawtful

You're just not spending enough money.

Twysta

Oh, so they're not merging accounts anymore?
Does this mean I don't need to keep playing on my noob account as well?

Eddiemon

simonsez wrote:

So customer service has been telling people that they will disassemble your dupes, but only as a one-time thing. Therefore, it would have made sense to complete whatever championing you needed to do, before making the request. Except now, they're saying they will no longer do it, period. This, with no warning or communication of any kind, that this policy was expiring.

Why incentivize people to wait to make the request, and then basically say, "Sorry, you waited too long!"

Why is it so hard for stuff like this to be communicated in advance?!?!

Because it was a one time thing for people to gain value from their duplicates that they created before championing existed.

It was not an endless opportunity for people to keep storing covers earned as dupes until they had championed enough characters.

Why didn't they assist you in exploiting archiving of extra covers by telling you the optimal trade in time? I think the question answers itself really.

Pylgrim

Eddiemon wrote:

simonsez wrote:

So customer service has been telling people that they will disassemble your dupes, but only as a one-time thing. Therefore, it would have made sense to complete whatever championing you needed to do, before making the request. Except now, they're saying they will no longer do it, period. This, with no warning or communication of any kind, that this policy was expiring.

Why incentivize people to wait to make the request, and then basically say, "Sorry, you waited too long!"

Why is it so hard for stuff like this to be communicated in advance?!?!

Because it was a one time thing for people to gain value from their duplicates that they created before championing existed.

It was not an endless opportunity for people to keep storing covers earned as dupes until they had championed enough characters.

Why didn't they assist you in exploiting archiving of extra covers by telling you the optimal trade in time? I think the question answers itself really.

Regardless of your opinion about his advantageous use of given information, it's still poor form not to cleanly communicate these things ahead. If you print a flier stating a discount on a product and failed to include a clause of "one per costumer" or the such, you still have to honour your ad if someone goes around gathering fliers. You cannot all of a sudden say "er, no, yeah, see, the promotion was available only until, um, like, 10 minutes ago? Sorry!" to try to get out of it.

frachr

I was lucky and got my initial Android account merged with my main Steam account last week. The hole process lasted about 14 days and I had to provide both ss of IGN and receipts from the accounts.

dr tinykittylove

frachr wrote:

I was lucky and got my initial Android account merged with my main Steam account last week. The hole process lasted about 14 days and I had to provide both ss of IGN and receipts from the accounts.

I provided ss of IGN and receipts from both accounts... three times, because apparently they do not keep records even when you are replying to cs using the last email they sent about merging being "temporarily disabled"

Dekliko1978

They've merged my Steam account to my Android account 2 weeks ago and I had to send the same proof as you did.
So they haven't stopped doing this, it's probably as been said before that you haven't spend enough money to justify the amount of work that is involved in these mergers.
And it's not only a lot of work for them, receiving around 400 different covers takes some time as well. I had to force close after around each 10 covers, and after that I had to manage it from the roster with still no possibility to sort or select on starlevel.

But in the end it was of course well worth it, and receiving these never gets old either:

Crowl

I also got the sorry we don't do that reply after jumping through the same hoops with receipts etc.

This was the bit where they make the claim of changing their policy:

Unfortunately, there has been a change of policy regarding account merges, and we are no longer allowed to proceed with account merge requests. We are truly sorry for this inconvenience or any frustration that it may cause, but we are unable to proceed with the request due to this policy change, and are unable to proceed with an account merge.

Stanley71

dr tinykittylove wrote:

I have an equally delightful story. In early January, I asked for CS to merge my alt account, with which I have a fairly long history of posting about on the forum. No question at all that it is mine.

They asked for screencaps with the ign. They asked for receipts of in game purchases to "verify" that the account was mine. Then they said "Sorry, this service has been temporarily disabled due to the volume of requests."

Since then, I have been asking semi-regularly just in principle, jumping through the same hoops of screencaps receipts "sorry you are not worth our time" because I knew account mergers were happening even while they were rejecting my request and they have been sending me form letters to tell me they were "sincerely sorry" that I am upset and that they will personally update their database with my feedback.

I am "sincerely sorry" that your "sincere" form letters make me angry and express my dissatisfaction in the customer satisfaction poll. Truly "sincere".

I made the same experience!
Why are they not able to say in the first reply that merging accounts are no longer possible? Why do they ask for screenshots and receipts?
Very annoying support

simonsez

Eddiemon wrote:

Because it was a one time thing for people to gain value from their duplicates that they created before championing existed.

It was not an endless opportunity for people to keep storing covers earned as dupes until they had championed enough characters.

Congrats on being such an awesome mindreader that YOU know exactly what customer service is doing and why. People should be encouraged to forward future inquiries to you, so we can finally get the straight poop right from the horse's whatever.

Ok, we get it, you don't like that CS was breaking up dupes. But this isn't about whether or not you think it was a good idea. They were doing it. And they were advising people to wait. And then they changed the policy with no notice. This is indefensibly bad communication. It was actually worse than no communication at all, since plenty of people who waited at their suggestion, are now stuck with worthless dupes. That is the point. The only point. So take your worthless contrarianism to another post, because it's not gonna fly at all here.

JamieMadrox

Account merges and splitting dupes were never policy. They have always been exceptions. They even tell you when you ask that it is an exception they will make this one time. They never had to do it in the first place and don't need to do it now.

That said, you can always PM Cthulhu and/or Hi-Fi with your ticket number and see if they can help.

simonsez

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Account merges and splitting dupes were never policy. They have always been exceptions. They even tell you when you ask that it is an exception they will make this one time. They never had to do it in the first place and don't need to do it now.

I understand they never had to do it, but again, that is not the point. The point is that the following is an unacceptable sequence of events:

Player: I'd like to split my dupes.
CS: Ok, sure, but this is a one-time only deal, so make sure you REALLY want to do it now.
Player: Oh, ok, thanks, I'd better hold off for a bit.
(later)
Player: I'd like to split my dupes now, thanks.
CS: Sorry, we stopped doing that yesterday. But we truly apologize for the inconvenience.

dr tinykittylove

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Account merges and splitting dupes were never policy. They have always been exceptions. They even tell you when you ask that it is an exception they will make this one time. They never had to do it in the first place and don't need to do it now.

That said, you can always PM Cthulhu and/or Hi-Fi with your ticket number and see if they can help.

I didn't need the merger - started asking just out of curiosity about the process, though the additional resources would have been nice - but the rigmarole and blatantly untrue form letter replies while they were merrily merging everyone else just....

At this point I'm just thinking that I'm really not worth their time and should have remained f2p. Going to bow out of this discussion now before I get mad enough to quit the game entirely.

JamieMadrox

simonsez wrote:

Jamie Madrox wrote:

Account merges and splitting dupes were never policy. They have always been exceptions. They even tell you when you ask that it is an exception they will make this one time. They never had to do it in the first place and don't need to do it now.

I understand they never had to do it, but again, that is not the point. The point is that the following is an unacceptable sequence of events:

Player: I'd like to split my dupes.
CS: Ok, sure, but this is a one-time only deal, so make sure you REALLY want to do it now.
Player: Oh, ok, thanks, I'd better hold off for a bit.
(later)
Player: I'd like to split my dupes now, thanks.
CS: Sorry, we stopped doing that yesterday. But we truly apologize for the inconvenience.

No I agree with you. If they start the process and make you jump through hoops they should finish it with you. That's why I suggested contacting David directly with your ticket number to see if he can make them see reason.