Excellent customer service

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Just an FYI & heads up for anyone that missed my reply in a former post.

Not too long ago I discovered that one of my children deleted a main character of mine.

As soon as I found out I paged an ingame GM and after a fairly long wait I received a non-automated response stating that Gm's cannot recover lost characters bla, bla, bla.

I then phoned Customer Service & was connected fairly quickly. The phone rep put me on hold for a few minutes & came back stating basically the same thing(Gm's cannot recover chars)I then complained a bit & the same rep said he would escalate my issue to a higher tier rep who would email me in a few days.

A few days later I received a personal email that said they apologize for not being able to recover my character but that they would give me 9 months free gametime for my loss.

All in all very good customer service IMO.

I started this thread for 2 reasons:

1) I am sick & tired of people constantly whining about lack of support. Ofc I realize that this is just 1 isolated incident but too many people on these boards have the juvenile mentality that since they are paying a few bucks a month they should be personally treated like royalty. It doesnt happen in rl incidents & it most certainly doesnt happen in a fantasy MMORPG. I mean does anyone honestly think that there should be countless staff standing by to help you retrieve the uninsured crap in your backpack that is decaying somewhere you cant reach? Lol to that. You left town on an adventure. Deal with it.

2) I hope that if anyone else has lost a character they will phone customer service & receive the same treatment & free gametime.

Peace

 

[Madrid]

Too much negative here on stratics no wonder they don't want to communicate more!

Good post!

 

[Taylor]

That's actually really incredible. Sorry to hear that they couldn't recover your character, but 9 months of game time . . . that's some amazing compensation, especially considering that they weren't responsible for the loss.

Nice job, EA.

 

[Tanivar]

EA Customer Service over the phone is very good. Only time they've not made me a happy camper is their being unable to clean my accounts by removing High Seas. EA should send the GMs to the classes the phone people take to learn how to keep customers unticked off. It would do a world of good.

 

[Lord X]

EA should send the GMs to the classes the phone people take to learn how to keep customers unticked off. It would do a world of good.

This. Though I imagine if GM's had a phone number to answer to they'd BE nicer by default.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

So interesting...

 

[Clog|Mordain]

You get posts like this, that are great.


but then this happens.....
http://vboards.stratics.com/uhall/241753-no-oceania-again.html

 

[AtlanteanAngel]

The Devs / EA really should have some form of failsafe for accidentally deleted char. Due to the online/internet lag when logging into the client and choosing the shard, sometimes clicking too fast or impatiently (or simply unfortunate lag timing) can result in a character being accidentally deleted.

Proposal : instead of immediate server-side deletion of characters, instead have the player, through the client, flag a character for (server-side) auto-deletion after 24 hours, but before the 24 hours are up, the player should be able to deflag that character via a client-side feature.

This would eliminate virtually all cases of accidental deletion.

 

[G.v.P]

The Devs / EA really should have some form of failsafe for accidentally deleted char. Due to the online/internet lag when logging into the client and choosing the shard, sometimes clicking too fast or impatiently (or simply unfortunate lag timing) can result in a character being accidentally deleted.

Hm isn't there a confirmation window when you delete a character? I'll have to try it on Test Center, but I could have sworn there was a confirmation window. I mean, I agree it would be nice to have an undo button, lol...but...I'm not sure how people accidentally delete their chars...maybe it's the kind of something you don't think will ever happen till it happens...like the insurance bug, ;/.

 

[lucitus]

I had also a nice GM last week, he was friendly and helped me with my problems. In deed there a very nice people at the support, but you have to try it, you cannot whine about the support, if you never used it.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

I whined about the bad handling of CC payments by EA many times... I was offered to manually upgrade to SA by Cal himself...

he said drop me a line I'll help ye...

well I dropped a line 3 months ago... I dropped another line 2 months ago, and on the phone they did not even know how to get me to someone who knew how it worked.

I dropped a ton of lines in public in threads.

Even in one thread, Cal helped someone out but I was ignored. It's painfully obvious some of you receive excellent support however...

Not arguing on that, it's just so very interesting who gets good support and who does not.

 

[Bethany_lg]

This post is just nagging at me. To me it's another example of bad customer service. Or maybe I should say inconsistant service. Your example is one of the times when the proper response should have been...We are very sorry this happened to you but it was your own fault and there is nothing we can do. Either you left yourself logged in and left your child unattended or you gave them access to your account information.

This just frustrates me that we see many unresolved issues caused by this bug or that... Some flaw in game design. Issues with TOS and scripters...yadda yadda yadda. And what I'm taking from this post is if we want to make this game free to play we should "accidently" delete a char every 9 months and demand the same reimbursement you received.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

This post is just nagging at me. To me it's another example of bad customer service. Or maybe I should say inconsistant service. Your example is one of the times when the proper response should have been...We are very sorry this happened to you but it was your own fault and there is nothing we can do. Either you left yourself logged in and left your child unattended or you gave them access to your account information.

This just frustrates me that we see many unresolved issues caused by this bug or that... Some flaw in game design. Issues with TOS and scripters...yadda yadda yadda. And what I'm taking from this post is if we want to make this game free to play we should "accidently" delete a char every 9 months and demand the same reimbursement you received.

Very amusing.

1) your read on my issue was that I received bad or inconsistent(correctly spelled btw)service? I assume by bad you meant that I should have just been blown off so that someone else with a real issue could be taken care of? Really no other way to construe your statement IMO.
And I assume by inconsistent you meant what? You personally can say what is consistent customer service as it pertains to tens of thousands of people playing in a fantasy pc game? Very impressive.

2) I never 'demanded' any reimbursement. I simply complained that I believed that lost characters should be able to be recovered. You have issue with that belief?
The higher tiered customer service rep must have agreed with me a little as he offered the free gametime.

3) The only person I see in this thread thinking about scamming the company for free gametime is you as you are the only one suggesting to "accidently" delete characters.

 

[georox]

Wow, 9 months free game time? When I woke up one day with all of my characters/my house gone (back when you couldn't place an 18x18, let alone a 7x7 anywhere) all I got was "tough luck" from a GM, emailing and calling. Oh, and 2 hours of being on hold. Honestly though, I've never had a good experience from support on Ultima, or anything related to EA for that matter. Glad to hear someone has though.

 

[Vlaude]

I had to call EA about an issue with one of the games for my xbox and they were really fast and polite. Paging GM's I usually get a good response, just not a fast one (though some answers come faster than others).

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

The escalation of the deletion of my grandfathered account gave nothing and took two weeks of calling and e-mailing.

My friend called in for a problem with activating an account and received 2 months free game time for the "hassle"...

 

[Fayled Dhreams]

This post is just nagging at me. To me it's another example of bad customer service. Or maybe I should say inconsistant service. Your example is one of the times when the proper response should have been...We are very sorry this happened to you but it was your own fault and there is nothing we can do. Either you left yourself logged in and left your child unattended or you gave them access to your account information.

This just frustrates me that we see many unresolved issues caused by this bug or that... Some flaw in game design. Issues with TOS and scripters...yadda yadda yadda. And what I'm taking from this post is if we want to make this game free to play we should "accidently" delete a char every 9 months and demand the same reimbursement you received.

/agreed

"beating" a long established and well known RULE

can in no way be seen as "good" Customer service
now ...

If they would like to "reward me" and mine (2 accounts)
something like 4 years of free game time for characters "lost" accidentally over the last eleven years
and all others that suffered and reported the Exact same plea ...

.... nope

still not "Excellent customer service"

 

[SchezwanBeefy]

Wait, so something stupid you/your kids did meant you got something free from EA?


BRB, I need to call EA and make up some story to get free game time.
(Good things like this lead to abuse)

 

[Lord X]

Hm isn't there a confirmation window when you delete a character? I'll have to try it on Test Center, but I could have sworn there was a confirmation window. I mean, I agree it would be nice to have an undo button, lol...but...I'm not sure how people accidentally delete their chars...maybe it's the kind of something you don't think will ever happen till it happens...like the insurance bug, ;/.

There is a confirmation screen. But all it says is 'Delete Char X' and gives you an lil X button or a lil check button. Its not the greatest confirmation. One with a Yes and no box would be alot better.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Wait, so something stupid you/your kids did meant you got something free from EA?


BRB, I need to call EA and make up some story to get free game time.
(Good things like this lead to abuse)

I am sorry if you are too clueless to realize that you cannot make up a story about a main character being deleted.

They do have the ability to confirm the actual lost character with his/her skills.

Nice job trolling though son

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

This post is just nagging at me. To me it's another example of bad customer service. Or maybe I should say inconsistant service. Your example is one of the times when the proper response should have been...We are very sorry this happened to you but it was your own fault and there is nothing we can do. Either you left yourself logged in and left your child unattended or you gave them access to your account information.

This just frustrates me that we see many unresolved issues caused by this bug or that... Some flaw in game design. Issues with TOS and scripters...yadda yadda yadda. And what I'm taking from this post is if we want to make this game free to play we should "accidently" delete a char every 9 months and demand the same reimbursement you received.

/agreed

"beating" a long established and well known RULE

can in no way be seen as "good" Customer service
now ...

If they would like to "reward me" and mine (2 accounts)
something like 4 years of free game time for characters "lost" accidentally over the last eleven years
and all others that suffered and reported the Exact same plea ...

.... nope

still not "Excellent customer service"

It truly is sad & pathetic that you & others in this thread are so blindly negative that you cannot even recognize the excellent & positive customer service in this issue.

Even sadder though is the fact that all the negative people crying about support are still dropping their $13 a month.

Btw Fayled, were you just incapable of doing the correct math or did you delete 5.3 characters over the 4 years you mentioned?

 

[Theo_GL]

Yes, you got some sort of 'help' but I really worry about a company that gives you 'free goods' for your mistake. Was that just a trinket to appease you for having bad coding? I guess - but hard to make a business where you give away free service because your service is subpar. Eventually people's free service runs out.

Back to the character issue - what EA SHOULD do is run the character transfer code that exports your char, pets, bank box and prepares for the next shard - and SAVE the XML file for a period of 30 days.

At any time in a new char slot you can create a new char or restore an old char. So that way you can bring back deleted characters for some amount of time.

There is a possibility of this being abused a bit but honestly its worth the risk. It should be MUCh harder to make a char disappear permenantly that simply clicking a delete button. Way too easy for someone with access to your account wipe out a 10+year character, all pets etc.

I mean, what if that char that was deleted had 3 dread mares in the stables? How do you replace that? etc.

To delete char's you should have to log into your UO.com account or something with no way to do it from the client...

 

[G.v.P]

There is a confirmation screen. But all it says is 'Delete Char X' and gives you an lil X button or a lil check button. Its not the greatest confirmation. One with a Yes and no box would be alot better.

Ah okay. Sounds like a reasonable change. You'd have to think they could bring back deleted characters once they implement character copy for Test Center. But maybe there would be too many loopholes. Like you could remove all your items, pets, soulstone skills, then ask for your char back to try and duplicate what you had. There must be a technical reason.

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

This is one of the most ridiculous threads I seen in a long while, it's full of Fayled...

I might say win on that one...

I mean rofl...

 

[chad]

So I read this and it gave me an idea.

I now have the high seas upgrade and 12 months free game time.

I love EA customer service!

Much better than my 110'd out character on Lake Superior.

 

[phantus]

So I read this and it gave me an idea.

I now have the high seas upgrade and 12 months free game time.

I love EA customer service!

Much better than my 110'd out character on Lake Superior.

 

[longshanks]

i had a char with bugged resists once and ea gave me an advanced token to make up for them not being able to reset the char.

it was nice of them to do that for you, considering the error was not there doing.

i often wonder how much better the customer support would be if the gm's werent running around fielding the ''cat got stuck in the tree calls''

some of the people that play this game are down right scary from a mental capacity standpoint.

 

[RaDian FlGith]

No offense, but... why in the world would they compensate you with 9 months of free gametime because you shared your password with your child who then permanently deleted a character of yours?

That'd be like getting a 12-month lease, free of charge, from General Motors for having rammed your five year old Chevy into a wall. "Sorry, we can't fix your old car, but here, have a new one on us for a few months."

They're either desperate to keep customers around, or yeesh.

(By the way, this isn't intended to slight you for having gotten good customer service. I'm actually very happy to see that they're doing something that borders on appropriate for systems that maybe should be better built with a safety net. Just very curious the notion behind this level of service on their end, that's all.)

 

[SixUnder]

Just an FYI & heads up for anyone that missed my reply in a former post.

Not too long ago I discovered that one of my children deleted a main character of mine.

As soon as I found out I paged an ingame GM and after a fairly long wait I received a non-automated response stating that Gm's cannot recover lost characters bla, bla, bla.

I then phoned Customer Service & was connected fairly quickly. The phone rep put me on hold for a few minutes & came back stating basically the same thing(Gm's cannot recover chars)I then complained a bit & the same rep said he would escalate my issue to a higher tier rep who would email me in a few days.

A few days later I received a personal email that said they apologize for not being able to recover my character but that they would give me 9 months free gametime for my loss.

All in all very good customer service IMO.

I started this thread for 2 reasons:

1) I am sick & tired of people constantly whining about lack of support. Ofc I realize that this is just 1 isolated incident but too many people on these boards have the juvenile mentality that since they are paying a few bucks a month they should be personally treated like royalty. It doesnt happen in rl incidents & it most certainly doesnt happen in a fantasy MMORPG. I mean does anyone honestly think that there should be countless staff standing by to help you retrieve the uninsured crap in your backpack that is decaying somewhere you cant reach? Lol to that. You left town on an adventure. Deal with it.

2) I hope that if anyone else has lost a character they will phone customer service & receive the same treatment & free gametime.

Peace

dont let them fool you. remember all the items lost in luna on gl or this last problem when new mag was released they were able to recreate items.

they can, its a matter of it they will

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

No offense, but... why in the world would they compensate you with 9 months of free gametime because you shared your password with your child who then permanently deleted a character of yours?

That'd be like getting a 12-month lease, free of charge, from General Motors for having rammed your five year old Chevy into a wall. "Sorry, we can't fix your old car, but here, have a new one on us for a few months."

They're either desperate to keep customers around, or yeesh.

(By the way, this isn't intended to slight you for having gotten good customer service. I'm actually very happy to see that they're doing something that borders on appropriate for systems that maybe should be better built with a safety net. Just very curious the notion behind this level of service on their end, that's all.)

I hear ya & I wonder if in my case I was compensated mostly for telling the truth and not making up some bs story about how my character got deleted. Who knows?

I didnt ask for it. I simply complained that I believed that they should be able to recover deleted characters.

But I will say that the fact that I am an adult and have worked in the customer service/retail industry myself went a long way. The reality is that it is rarely a simple matter of right or wrong, black or white. What you say & how you say it is always a huge factor when dealing with any type of customer service. Anyone who doesnt understand this is not living in the real world. No pun intended

Bottom line is that any rational adult that has played UO for a long time KNOWS that 90% of GM pages are total bs. No way any amount of Gm's could keep up with the nonsense. I am willing to bet that every hour they get dozens of pages from characters that are simply out of town and lost lol.
Not to mention the hundreds of pages they must get daily because people are having trouble decorating their house. Are you kidding me?
And just based on the large number of posts on these boards I am sure the Gm's receive hundreds of pages daily from the righteous claiming to have discovered cheating going on. Just how many times can you cry foul play because you got beat in pvp?
And how many first or second or third time pagers have actually gone to the website as directed to read FAQ?

*shakes head*

 

[Ahuaeyjnkxs]

The GMs have been very nice to me... but hey.

I had 5 7x gm characters on my account 3 years ago (and they found proof of that)

and then they all went poof, not MY error.

EA said too bad heh.

Even worse, when I realised that and said well, activate my other account instead they refused.

Ensued a long e-mail series, and a call, and two calls...

Finally they said sorry, you paid for this account you have to play this account, NO WAY we can deactivate this EMPTY account and give you free game time on the other !

NO WAY !

I even yelled on the phone...

but I'm Ahu... and he's Mr. Goldberg...

*chuckles*

9 months... why not 8 ? lol...

I mean this is painfully obvious.

They must have tought, oh another 10 year old vet who gave us thousands of dollars... he had many accounts.

LETS GIVE HIM BAD SERVICE

 

[Picus at the office]

Yes, you got some sort of 'help' but I really worry about a company that gives you 'free goods' for your mistake. Was that just a trinket to appease you for having bad coding? I guess - but hard to make a business where you give away free service because your service is subpar. Eventually people's free service runs out.

Back to the character issue - what EA SHOULD do is run the character transfer code that exports your char, pets, bank box and prepares for the next shard - and SAVE the XML file for a period of 30 days.

At any time in a new char slot you can create a new char or restore an old char. So that way you can bring back deleted characters for some amount of time.

There is a possibility of this being abused a bit but honestly its worth the risk. It should be MUCh harder to make a char disappear permenantly that simply clicking a delete button. Way too easy for someone with access to your account wipe out a 10+year character, all pets etc.

I mean, what if that char that was deleted had 3 dread mares in the stables? How do you replace that? etc.

To delete char's you should have to log into your UO.com account or something with no way to do it from the client...

Have you ever made this mistake yourself? Deleted a single char on error?

If your worried about some person deleting your chars don't give out the information....easy.

 

[Tanivar]

I deleted one years back by deciding to play UO after a long spell playing another game and did a sleeply 'select character' click, a 'go play' click and a 'yes mark' click. The suddenly shorter character list jolted me awake, aww %^&%&^

I'd like to see the 'delete' option made a bit harder to get to. I have gotten to the 'go play' click on a couple of other occasions if I've been playing something else with a multi step login. Heck make the graphic around the name list go glaring red if the 'delete' key is clicked. An attention-getter to go along with the yes/no mark display. Shouldn't be hard to code in.

 

[SchezwanBeefy]

I am sorry if you are too clueless to realize that you cannot make up a story about a main character being deleted.

They do have the ability to confirm the actual lost character with his/her skills.

Nice job trolling though son

Actually they don't.
They can't even log in game, let alone look into that kind of information over the phone.
I have called in about issues involving bad GM service, to which CS couldn't help out because they had no access what so ever to get in game and do anything. So how did they verify that you had that character and "accidentally" deleted it?
It's not new news that EA has been giving out free game time frivolously. I've heard them giving out game time for petty, sad reasons that people have completely abused. So the more time they give to their players, the less money they make and the less time you get to play the game.
But keep taking. That's what UO is all about. Gimme gimme gimme those vet rewards, those holiday items, EM events and free game time. Eventually you'll only have free servers to play on.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

I am sorry if you are too clueless to realize that you cannot make up a story about a main character being deleted.

They do have the ability to confirm the actual lost character with his/her skills.

Nice job trolling though son

Actually they don't.
They can't even log in game, let alone look into that kind of information over the phone.
I have called in about issues involving bad GM service, to which CS couldn't help out because they had no access what so ever to get in game and do anything. So how did they verify that you had that character and "accidentally" deleted it?
It's not new news that EA has been giving out free game time frivolously. I've heard them giving out game time for petty, sad reasons that people have completely abused. So the more time they give to their players, the less money they make and the less time you get to play the game.
But keep taking. That's what UO is all about. Gimme gimme gimme those vet rewards, those holiday items, EM events and free game time. Eventually you'll only have free servers to play on.

You really are a tool kid.

Had you actually read my OP you would have noticed where I clearly stated that my issue was escalated to a "higher tier rep"

They DO have the ability to log ingame & confirm or deny the existence of characters(active or deleted)on an account & the email I received actually referenced this FACT.

But what do I know right? I only received a personal email stating facts.

You on the other did what? - "I've heard them giving out game time for petty, sad reasons that people have completely abused"

You have HEARD things lol? Wow, arent you a serious source for reliable UO information?

*shakes head*

 

[Mook Chessy]

Goldbergs kid is a bad egg plain and simple...rotten to the core.

 

[Madrid]

One thing I'd like to add to this and I know this for a fact:

When you toggle between multiple accounts in the SA Client I've seen characters from account #1 appear on the account #2 Roster.

I'm login on multiple accounts quite a bit and this happens from time to time.

This cause me to delete a fully trained character on Sonoma with loads of items.

There should be an archive of deleted chars for 90 days or something. I don't care if it asks for a confirmation or not. It's a good thing to have for us players and I can't imagine it would be that burdensome on their side.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

Goldbergs kid is a bad egg plain and simple...rotten to the core.

Mook should know.

One of my kids is living in his house & has his last name. Ouch!