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Any UO Subscribers Have a Positive Experience with Customer Service, Recently?

Xel The Wanderer

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Hail All,

Lately, it seems that the overall trend (if you want to call it that) has been poor customer service for Ultima Online subscribers. There have been some really positive results with satisfied customers and turn-arounds throughout the years; perhaps it would plateau for a bit, but is it me or has customer service taken a steep nose dive for the worse?

I've literally lost the count of dissatisfied customers from the previous forums to these "temporary forums", and perhaps I'm not looking hard enough, but has anyone (recently) actually experienced a positive customer experience via GM's or otherwise? Maybe? Hopefully?

It's difficult to ascertain and perhaps resolve certain issues, I get that, but when reading the patch notes and seeing that certain bugs were supposedly resolved, the patch goes Live, and the bug(s) wasn't resolved, I can't help but wonder, "What the heck happened to quality assurance, the testing, and even more testing?" Thinking along those lines, the funky stuff that was missed will trickle to the production shards, and hopefully, maybe, a GM or a representative will have knowledge of a bug or a particular problem and perhaps resolve it... but lately, man... It's like a lovely, crazy, introverted family reunion. "Looks like Uncle Vinny is singing his rendition of Thriller, you know how he gets when he has one too many." You don't want to look, but you can't help but look and cringe at Uncle Vinny's moonwalk.

Has UO become so saturated with layers upon layers of code, red tape, internal changes, business decisions, etc., etc. that it's become even more difficult for the gatekeepers a.k.a. GM's or even customer service representatives outside the game to assist their paying customers?

Has anyone, recently, had a positive experience with customer service, be it with GM's or people whom you spoke to on the phone or via e-mails? Part of me is optimistic; people are satisfied with the state of the current customer service, but another part of me is hoping that people will voice their opinions and The-Powers-That-Be won't be able to deny the fact that this should be addressed. I'm not pointing any fingers, I'm too drunk for that, I'm just hoping for a constructive solution with no bloodshed.

Then again, I can keep sucking down sake and eating sushi, perhaps walk around the beach nude, and contemplate the state of affairs pertaining to UO and all its lovely facets. So, here's my toast, "To things looking up for the UO crowd, and hopefully, we will finally get our Undergarment Dye Tub! CHEERS!" :shots:
 
A

Azureal

Guest
Had a major mental malfunction the other night and couldnt realise why an NPC was giving me a quest.

"I must be bugged!"

So I paged a GM. A couple minutes later, whilst I was forcing a plague beast to dry hump a bog thing, GM Glathin sends me a message along the lines of, Take your time, I'll be waiting when youre finished. I simply recalled out and met her at the offending NPC.

She did all kinds of cool roleplaying things, checking out the NPC for faults, that sorta thing, and then asked me in a classic moment, "Have you clicked yourself, and checked your quest log?".

Ye gods, I didnt even know you could do that. Sure enough I had a sneaky quest pending, got rid of it and the NPC started talking to me again.

In short, GM Glathin is a beauty. I love her. I said so in my customer service report thing they emailed me. Also said they need more GMs like her. We chatted for a little while, I mentioned how much fun we used to have when we were Counsellors, that I miss fooling around with GMs, and she said the GMs miss us too.
 
P

packrat

Guest
Customer service? What in the world is that?
In the past month I have paged GM's 4 times and not once received a personal response. It has always been a canned response. I have not seen a live GM in a year. Its sad. Very Very sad.
 
D

Desolation87

Guest
I had a quest scroll stuck in my bag, called a GM, minutes later. I really mean only afew minutes a GM came and found me dancing with a succubus. She (i think) was very poite and chatty, sorted the problem, asked if she could do anything else, wished me fairwell and good luck and left.

10/10
 
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Evilminion

Guest
Not one, but two very positive experiences in the past couple of weeks.

First, I finally got around to trying to have my original account reactivated. The account that I looooooong since lost the password for, no longer have the same email account as... you know, that sort of thing. No way in the world to get back into it via the online system. So I thought, hey, I'll call a human. Which I did: EA customer support line. And it took half an hour for them to get my identity verified (like I said, NOTHING is the same with me as it was back then, including real world address, credit card info... it's been years!), but the rep stuck with it and we finally found one common piece of info to reassure her that I was who I said I was. (And believe me, after all the tales here of hacked accounts, I am VERY glad that she took the extra precautions.) I am now once again in possession of my first UO account, which was originally activated the first day the game shipped. :D

Next up, I wanted to move my house from Malas to a gorgeous plot in Luna that a friend so very generously offered to me (thank you again, Painted!). Thing is, I thought the decay procedure took a wee bit longer than it actually does, and so I ended up recalling to what used to be my house to pick up the last load of plants, only to discover it had IDOCed and all my upper-floor stuff was floating in mid-air, out of reach. (All my lovely plain campions, noooo! :sad3:) So I paged a GM, and within minutes, my pretty flowers were all teleporting down by my feet. A cheerful "there you go" from an invisible GM, and all was well.

I'm sure there are some bad support reps at EA, since it's a big company and you'll find at least a few brain-dead reps at any big company. But I'm happy to say that I haven't run into any, and I'm pleased with my experience.
 

Bazer

Slightly Crazed
Alumni
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The one true good thing that happened was when my friend had her account hacked they managed to get the account back to her in 2 hours. 100/100:gun:
 

Zane_Xander

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I am very Excited for the players to have a positive experience with in game help/GM's.
I complain a fair bit and I always get a caned response. I Haven't seen a gm since I tried to shut up some dude beating there horse at haven bank. I so keep invising him because he wasn't even at his computer. I got teleported to jail and was warned not to invis other players after they tell me to stop.. GM told me that if I didn't like the noise to go some where else. I told the gm, no I wont and he was limiting my game experience and was a grievance to me and others near by. I said , I ask the ****** to stop making all that racket, he said no, so I invised him. However I have noticed you don't see that much anymore, thankfully.. The other complaints I have are the over charge of tax to game time subscription and all sorts of bugs. I have a soul stone that still wont release my skill to me.
In closing I remember back in the day, GM's were dynamic important role to the game. I personally think they need to quadruple the amount of in game help with GM's like mention above; they should show much excitement for there product as we all do for the game. In fact now that Im thinking about it they should have many in game staff walking around at times.
I get the Impression that UO support is more like an old car they don't want to but much money into fixing it up, because it may quit on you any moment.
 
G

Gwendar-SP

Guest
A friend on siege had problems with CBD yesterday. He blessed 3 items and only one item showed as blessed. The GM came and fixed the other two.
 

Blesh

Sage
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Just about ever time i page for something thats activly effecting me, i get a GM fairly quickly, and they either fix the problem or tell me how to fix it. But then agian i only page after thoroughly checking into the problem myself.

If more people checked into problems on thier own and answered thier own questions, we wouldnt have a 20min + long wait time to talk to a GM.

The GM's for the most part do an excellent job.
 
K

kennykilleduo

Guest
Right from sales support , Gm Support , even community rep support ,even employment , never had it never will.

I Still played UO though... :bdh:
 

Tomas_Bryce

Rares Collector Extraordinaire | Rares Fest Host
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I personally had to wait 3 hours the last two times before I gave up on waiting. Both times I had an email waiting in my inbox stating that they came but I was not around anymore. To me 3 hours + wait time is ridiculous. This was in the morning after 9 AM.

But it is nice to read about the good experiences of other people. Maybe there just arnt enough GMs which makes the response time very poor at certain times.
 

Kaj

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
I personally had to wait 3 hours the last two times before I gave up on waiting. Both times I had an email waiting in my inbox stating that they came but I was not around anymore. To me 3 hours + wait time is ridiculous. This was in the morning after 9 AM.

But it is nice to read about the good experiences of other people. Maybe there just arnt enough GMs which makes the response time very poor at certain times.
I think it really depends on the which GM is online at a certain time. I've had some good experiences over the past months and some horrible ones.
I think they should delete the standard messages and force GMs to type a personal reply. I think that would solve at least 50% of the complaints.
Whenever I get a reply like 'Hello there, please view our webpage' - the GM usually hasn't read my question properly (I always check the webpage BEFORE paging!). The irony is that when I paged about something on their website the GM said the exact opposite. So I paged again, and again, and again. And the GMs kept saying I was stupid for not listening, while the EA webpage said the exact opposite. I gave up in the end.
-The EA website isn't 100% correct
-GMs don't know the website completely
-GMs have different rules than the website
-GMs refer at least 40% of the time to the webpage
-GMs use standard scripts to refer to the website
-GMs rarely show up in game to say answer your problem. When they do they are usually invisible, which comes across as really distant.

I think that summarises the problems I have with the customer service.

For god's sake, open the volunteer system again and let them solve the small issues. I can imagine that hiring GMs is expensive and that UO isn't as profitable as it used to be, so why not use volunteers? It's legally possible. It's very positive for the game.

/rant
 
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Lord GOD(GOD)

Guest
Recently, I'd been taming Cu's for hours and finally one good enough (I'm picky) spawned! Only it spawned in one of those tiles it can't get out from. I paged and it was moved. (They didn't actually say they moved it - though they never just 'say' the answer - it was the go and review our GM service reply, I ran back and the Cu had been moved and I got it)

The last positive response from a GM before that was about 8 years ago, I was new someone switched the check at the last minute when buying my house and paid 30k instead of 300k, a GM showed up and made the guy go and get the rest of the money.
 

Bardie

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
The one true good thing that happened was when my friend had her account hacked they managed to get the account back to her in 2 hours. 100/100:gun:
i don't believe this for a minute :( i know well over 10 people's accounts that have gotten hacked and never received any help. Sorry
 

Xel The Wanderer

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Thanks for everyone's responses! :thumbup:

The responses seem pretty mixed, and I'm happy that some of you have had your UO-related issues resolved. HUGE props to those of you with a high tolerance threshold. One poster had stated that they had waited 3 hours the last times they paged for customer assistance. Man, I salute you for your patience, and I agree, three hours is a ridiculous wait time.

There are some very good and well-thought out points here. From what my semi-sober brain is getting, it seems that comparing customer service from 8 or 9 years ago, to the customer service of today, is pretty much comparing apples and oranges. It seems there's that big a difference. Granted, UO was a different game back then to what it's evolved to today; however, did customer service regress as well? Not just customer service but all the other facets that pertain to UO as well.

After 10 years, I'm still a fan of this game, call it stubborn stupidity or some form of introverted loyalty of sorts, UO is still a fun game. We've all had to adapt, and we've all had to change at one point or another because the game has changed. I just hope that customer service has changed and evolved WITH the customers and not AGAINST us.
 
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timbeOFbaja

Guest
I paged a GM about my vendor disappearing. I read up on it, but didn't figure out exactly how to access it through the house sign until a little later. I was #7 in the queue and just logged off. I got an email from a GM with a link to the procedures later that night. I was impressed at the followup.
 

Raina

Journeyman
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Last time I paged a GM was earlier this year when something in game wasn't working. I of course, got redirected to the website... which told me to page a GM in game... who told me to look at the support website. After about 2 or 3 goes at that I gave up as I obviously wasn't going to get any actual help.

~Rai
 

Xel The Wanderer

Lore Keeper
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Last time I paged a GM was earlier this year when something in game wasn't working. I of course, got redirected to the website... which told me to page a GM in game... who told me to look at the support website. After about 2 or 3 goes at that I gave up as I obviously wasn't going to get any actual help.

~Rai
D'OH!
 

Viper09

Grand Poobah
Stratics Veteran
Stratics Legend
Recently, I'd been taming Cu's for hours and finally one good enough (I'm picky) spawned! Only it spawned in one of those tiles it can't get out from. I paged and it was moved. (They didn't actually say they moved it - though they never just 'say' the answer - it was the go and review our GM service reply, I ran back and the Cu had been moved and I got it)

The last positive response from a GM before that was about 8 years ago, I was new someone switched the check at the last minute when buying my house and paid 30k instead of 300k, a GM showed up and made the guy go and get the rest of the money.
Wow, a gm who helped someone recover from a scammer, not only that, but made the scammer pay in full. Wish gms could still do that :p
 
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