Cover swapping 5*/improve customer service

alaeth

Interesting quote from an alliance-mate when we were chatting about it...

I've spent more on other games because {the other game's customer service} was willing.  Because D3 is so stingy, I'm stingy with my money.

I agree with this... if you want more income, give us a better customer service experience!

ZekeBarrett

alaeth said:

Interesting quote from an alliance-mate when we were chatting about it...

I've spent more on other games because {the other game's customer service} was willing.  Because D3 is so stingy, I'm stingy with my money.

I agree with this... if you want more income, give us a better customer service experience!

And I have for sure.  When I see that CS is willing, I'm willing to open my wallet but if a CS is stingy and wants to go by their rules and not make exceptions, my wallet stays closed.

ZekeBarrett

As a small business owner, I make exceptions and because of it I get repeat business.  If you aren't willing to work with your customers, they'll just spend their money somewhere else.

fmftint

ZekeBarrett said:

@Brigby
Why is it some players can get one-time exceptions for cover swaps on non-Latest characters and others can't?  

They won't answer this,  I'm 0-7 on exception request
"What we do for one ticked ticket has no bearing on what we do for others"


I've even been flat out LIED when they told me, no customer will be granted an exception, ever

ZekeBarrett

fmftint said:

ZekeBarrett said:

@Brigby
Why is it some players can get one-time exceptions for cover swaps on non-Latest characters and others can't?  

They won't answer this,  I'm 0-7 on exception request
"What we do for one ticked ticket has no bearing on what we do for others"


I've even been flat out LIED when they told me, no customer will be granted an exception, ever

Or it will be the old reply, "We'll look into it."

akboyce

Complain about CS thread? Cool.

So I bought a $1.99 Hero Points to activate bonus rewards. Bought it on Android using Amazon to take advantage of coins I had lying around. Made sure to kill the app (both on android and on my ipad) and switched back to my iPad. Oops HP is gone. Also no bonus rewards. No biggie. Contact CS making sure to say hey I am not really worried about the HP what I REALLY need is my account flagged as a spender so I can start getting bonus rewards.

Day later get canned response saying I have been credited the HP. Still no bonus rewards. I send a reply saying hey I need bonus rewards or I need a refund. Later that day (because sale was going on and the anniversary vault was calling me) I am like look you guys just give me the bonus rewards for the days (2 at this point) I missed so far and I will make another purchase and we will call it even. Made it clear I would not make another purchase until I received missing bonus rewards so the faster the response the sooner I will give more money and less compensation I will need. I will give you more money, despite this issue and lackluster CS, if you just agree to give me the stuff I missed out on.

Next day I get an automated message saying please explain the issue....

SO send another email detailing the issue once again pointing out that the only reason I made the purchase was for bonus rewards. Next day I get an automated message saying my issue had been escalated.

4 days later I finally get a message saying I have been credited 250 HP and 2500 Iso and my account is not flagged as a spender. No bonus rewards for me. Seems bit low for over a week of missed bonus rewards (let alone a full month I was cheated out of). I want to say I was strong and this made me not give them any more money down the line but today I made another purchase to enable the bonus rewards. I guess my acceptance of their tinykitty CS and still being willing to give them money is the root of the problem. 

Maybe its because they are "so swamped" with 5* swap requests but every time I contact CS I feel like I am dealing with bots and that they are doing the bare minimum to fix the issue rather than trying to apologize to a customer they have had for over 3 years. 

tiomono

corytutor said:

There should be some exception to that. 3 years and over 5 grand in purchases, youd think occasionally you'd throw that guy a bone. Especially considering i very rarely use customer service in the first place. 

You mean a bone like 5* swaps on latest legends? They technically don't even need to do that but they do.

You paid them money knowing exactly what you were receiving for your money. They fulfilled their part of the transaction. How often do people walk into a grocery store and say " I am 3 years and 1000's of dollars in with you guys. Throw me a bone."

They offer a service you give them money, they give you exactly what you paid for. If you feel the price is too high don't pay. It's really that simple.

That last part was more general and not spscifically at you. 

huktonfonix

At some point it was stated on here by a blue name (Brigby, or before his time?  I forget) that CS WANTS to do swaps, but needs a technology (code) solution for it because the current process is too time and labor intensive.  Their compromise was to only swap latest, as that was a more manageable load, but they keep asking Devs for a tool to allow them to easily facilitate additional swaps.

We know it's a small team working on this game, both on the CS and development sides.  It seems, rightly or wrongly, that other technology enhancements have been prioritized over this requested functionality.  I personally hate it, having sold a handful of 6th and 7th covers for 12-cover 5* characters in the past few weeks and a guaranteed wasted OML cover coming from resupply soon, but I suspect that it's a small minority of players who have 5* characters at 5 covers in a single ability.  I'm guessing that the powers that be have decided that focusing on things like creating a 3* Gambit will impact more players and better increase customer satisfaction.  Sucks for me, but they're probably not wrong.

animaniactoo

fmftint said:

ZekeBarrett said:

@Brigby
Why is it some players can get one-time exceptions for cover swaps on non-Latest characters and others can't?  

They won't answer this,  I'm 0-7 on exception request
"What we do for one ticked ticket has no bearing on what we do for others"


I've even been flat out LIED when they told me, no customer will be granted an exception, ever

Eh. You weren't exactly lied to. Having some understanding of what CS environments are, you've run into a couple of CS agents who exercised independent judgment and either got away with it or were disciplined for it - but either way they really don't do it often. And then you got the guy who is not really aware of those very sporadic incidents (or knows that somebody just about got fired for one of them) and is parroting the company line - going forward - as they were told that it is.

Bowgentle

animaniactoo said:

fmftint said:

ZekeBarrett said:

@Brigby
Why is it some players can get one-time exceptions for cover swaps on non-Latest characters and others can't?  

They won't answer this,  I'm 0-7 on exception request
"What we do for one ticked ticket has no bearing on what we do for others"


I've even been flat out LIED when they told me, no customer will be granted an exception, ever

Eh. You weren't exactly lied to. Having some understanding of what CS environments are, you've run into a couple of CS agents who exercised independent judgment and either got away with it or were disciplined for it - but either way they really don't do it often. And then you got the guy who is not really aware of those very sporadic incidents (or knows that somebody just about got fired for one of them) and is parroting the company line - going forward - as they were told that it is.

There are three CS guys.
We all know them by now.
Hard to believe they don't talk to each other.

corytutor

The auto cut paste responses kill me. They dont even read sometimes as ive already provided information they turn around and ask for. 

As for the grocery analogy above, it doesnt fit. 

First off most of that was spent chasing oml. He was later changed. So already the "knowing what you're getting" is out the window. 

Secondly a grocery store gives the impression most are spending. Most are not. Of the population who does spend, how many are over 1000, 2000, 5000 etc? The higher that number goes the lower percentage of players it represents.

Im nearly five digits in and if we're making analogies about it, instead of me purchasing in a grocerey where everyone buys, itd be more appropriate to say im in a soup kitchen, where everyone partakes and a small percentage donate. In that case itd be nice to get the occasional brownie with my bowl of grool.  

  

animaniactoo

Bowgentle said:

animaniactoo said:

fmftint said:

ZekeBarrett said:

@Brigby
Why is it some players can get one-time exceptions for cover swaps on non-Latest characters and others can't?  

They won't answer this,  I'm 0-7 on exception request
"What we do for one ticked ticket has no bearing on what we do for others"


I've even been flat out LIED when they told me, no customer will be granted an exception, ever

Eh. You weren't exactly lied to. Having some understanding of what CS environments are, you've run into a couple of CS agents who exercised independent judgment and either got away with it or were disciplined for it - but either way they really don't do it often. And then you got the guy who is not really aware of those very sporadic incidents (or knows that somebody just about got fired for one of them) and is parroting the company line - going forward - as they were told that it is.

There are three CS guys.
We all know them by now.
Hard to believe they don't talk to each other.

Possibly. It's also entirely possible that there's now a "Rob" replying to queries that show up in "Mark's" docket. I dunno. I'm just saying... it'd be really rare that a) there are only 3 CS people, and b) it's actually the same 3 as were there 2 years ago.

corytutor

Seems to be. Or at least using same mailboxes and cs tags

Wolarsen

Are there limits to the amount of latest 5* that can be swapped? I mean, if you hoard and draw 6 covers of DD could you be granted a full swap for 6 spideys?

broll

Wolarsen said:

Are there limits to the amount of latest 5* that can be swapped? I mean, if you hoard and draw 6 covers of DD could you be granted a full swap for 6 spideys?

You can only trade for a different color of the same character.
The only limit (to my knowledge) is must be Latest (or exception made in other), be same character, the cover your swapping must already be at 5 (you can't swap around to get your character to 4/4/4 for example).

Pants1000

broll said:

Wolarsen said:

Are there limits to the amount of latest 5* that can be swapped? I mean, if you hoard and draw 6 covers of DD could you be granted a full swap for 6 spideys?

You can only trade for a different color of the same character.
The only limit (to my knowledge) is must be Latest (or exception made in other), be same character, the cover your swapping must already be at 5 (you can't swap around to get your character to 4/4/4 for example).

They'll also swap for a different character if the original is 550, as if that's a concern for anyone except a few mega whales.

Are we allowed to post CS copy-and-paste responses?  They explain it in detail if you ask.

agarber

It is a common knowledge that Latest 5* are eligible for color swaps though it was never officially posted on the forums. Also we all "know" there is no 5* exchange for classic 5* regardless of the source there were obtained from. I personally was declined for a color swap with classic 5* obtained from

• No More Guns token (yes, I got unusable 5* from the free token that was given as idea to thank players for support);
• Daily resupply (yes, the color set be developers and meant to help progress was not helpful to me);
• Mes Amis token (yes, it is equivalent to Latest but really).

I sent numerous emails to CS asking for the swap providing various arguments, but was never given any reason beyond "Classic 5* can't be swapped regarding the source they are coming from. No exceptions."

However my alliance mate asked to swap his 5* Strange recently he received as a bonus hero, and guess what he got as CS answer? 

CS offered him an exception even before he asked for one. However when I asked for an exception the answer was "No exceptions", and when I asked what are the conditions for the exception the answer was "We apologize for any inconvenience in regards to this policy; however, we are unable to provide the service you have requested." Thus it implicitly follows that there are exceptions, but we don't want to disclose any details and want to do classic swaps through the backdoor.

So, here is the overview of the situation from my side:

• Swaps are available for some players;
• The conditions were never phrased explicitly;
• Some players might satisfy these conditions but they will never know about that unless asked and CS will not hide beyond "no exception".

I know one main difference between me and the player who got the swap. I am generally f2p and he spends constantly. I do understand that paying players should have additional benefits comparing to f2p players, but I think these benefits must be explicitly stated. People should know what they are paying for and ask for missing goodies.

So here are a few questions to @Brigby


Is there a next level of Customer Support that we can achieve by supporting game? Can we get an explicitly phrased conditions? If there is a threshold for amount spend, will it work for week/month/year or for the rest of our life? Also there were several situations in which paying players were forgiven for cheating or breaking EULA, can we get a full price list?

PS. My guess is that Google/Apple/Amazon/Steam (or all together) forbids different levels of service from Customer Support to paying and non-paying customers, so d3 prefers to operate the black market instead of giving more official stuff to players.

Brigby

Hi Everyone. I'm afraid I don't have any new / further details available to provide. Apologies for the inconvenience.

fmftint

Brigby said:

Hi Everyone. I'm afraid I don't have any new / further details available to provide. Apologies for the inconvenience.

So just more of the same,  we will for some but not for others,  and we still won't tell you why 

tiomono

corytutor said:

The auto cut paste responses kill me. They dont even read sometimes as ive already provided information they turn around and ask for. 

As for the grocery analogy above, it doesnt fit. 

First off most of that was spent chasing oml. He was later changed. So already the "knowing what you're getting" is out the window. 

Secondly a grocery store gives the impression most are spending. Most are not. Of the population who does spend, how many are over 1000, 2000, 5000 etc? The higher that number goes the lower percentage of players it represents.

Im nearly five digits in and if we're making analogies about it, instead of me purchasing in a grocerey where everyone buys, itd be more appropriate to say im in a soup kitchen, where everyone partakes and a small percentage donate. In that case itd be nice to get the occasional brownie with my bowl of grool.  

  

So you didn't know what you were getting with oml when you spent on him? This is a video game that could close it's doors and stop tomorrow and the company would be well within its rights to do so. 

When you spend money on digital product you should know that you are getting exactly what you paid for when you made the purchase. Also know that it's at the developers discretion to alter or remove any part of the game they want to.

Spending any amount does not automatically entitle you to extra perks, it entitles you to what you paid for at the time, whether it was iso or hp.

What you decide to spend those digital goods on within the scope of the game can and very often will change over time.

If I dumped 5k to champ doc ock because I really like the character it would not entitle me to demand he be reworked to be stronger. I spent 5k on digital goods,and got my 5k worth of digital goods, that I decided to spend to aquire a specific character. 

My opinion is CS should just stop cover swapping period and we need some kind of system set up in game to allow us to do it. That way there is no doubt what you can or cannot do to swap a cover.