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Hey... those Improved Bags of Holding for VIP sale were unbound, now they are BTA?! Bait and Switch?
nachodx22
Member Posts: 42 Arc User
Yea, exactly what the title says. I was saving the 1 that I bought to sell later when prices went up (buy low sell high right?). But I went to sell it today, and it's BTA! What gives?! If you're going to do stuff like that, there should be a warning. This kind of dishonesty is unacceptable. I am disappointed in this company.
-Nacho Skymont
Quixaltic Guild Leader
GH20, pm for inv
Quixaltic Guild Leader
GH20, pm for inv
1
Comments
Quixaltic Guild Leader
GH20, pm for inv
If you buy it from Zen store, the bag you get right now is still unbound. It is "Single purchase, tradable with players", "Binds on Equip (Account)".
Support will not refund your ZEN for a malfunctioning item from the ZEN store, because its "outside their sphere of influence" (its a bug, something the devs are "supposed to fix" - customer support has "no tools to fix it" )
This means, in order to fix the malfunctioning item, the devs need:
- a separate bug report (customer support will do nothing),
- then they need to trace down the bug and fix the code, so that the bug does not happen in the future
- they also need to write extra code for those cases, where the bug already did happen and the malfunctioning item needs to be replaced with a functional one
It seems to me, that customer support and the game development team live on two different planets - with very limited communication between the two.
The general problem with the current paradigm is:
There are many bugs that are never fixed, so nothing at all happens in those cases
- this is particularly true for bugs that only affect "few" players, are difficult to trace down, difficult to fix, etc.
Customer support - being powerless to help - takes the" easy way out".
Players are told (in a nice way, but the endresult always seems to be the same) to "shut up" and cut their losses.
A company that cares about its customers would at least acknowledge the bug, even if they cannot fix it and refund the ZEN
I wonder, if this is too much to ask?
It is not a bug of the current running game to be fixed. It was a one time data conversion bug when they did the upgrade. Something they ran it once and threw it away.
I expect they run certain SQL script to scan the database to find the Zen store bag in player's inventory and mark them to be account bound. What they did not do was they did not refine the "where" clause properly.
i.e. Mark the Zen store bag in the player's inventory to be account bound where the the bag is character bound.
To fix it, they need to dig out the old data and craft a proper SQL script to make the current data. It is also a one time tool that they ran it once and threw it away.
It is true that they acknowledged this particular bug ("working on it"), which is commendable.
However, you only referred to my last sentence and took it as referring only to this particular bug.
From the context of my entire post it should be rather obvious, that my post was meant as a general criticism of what appears to be the current policy of CUSTOMER SERVICE, including a lack of communication between customer service and the development team.
I also had other cases in mind, where things were handled quite differently: Two people I happen to know very well have been victim to a different bug, that was never acknowledged, resulting in a totally malfunctioning product that cost 2000 (possibly even 3000) ZEN each. ZEN was never refunded.
Based on past experience, and based on the initial handling of the "bag-bug" by customer service (see the respective thread in the Bug Report Forum), the general policy of the company (e.g. customer service) still seems to be in place, when it comes to
- "spurious" (difficult to reproduce) bugs,
- that affect only a small amount of players,
- and that reduce the usefulness of items bought by ZEN (down to zero usefulness)
Interaction with customer service in the above mentioned scenario consists out of
- round after round after round .... of escalating the complaint to "higher tiers of support"
- with a fixed final outcome, namely that customer service is "powerless" and the customer (not the company that sold a malfunctioning product) is advised to file a bug report.
The fact, that this particular case was finally acknowledged (not by customer service, but by the CM), after it was repeatedly reported by different players on the forums, does not (yet) lead me to believe, that the general policy of costumer service has changed for items bought via ZEN.
Gentle reminder: Contrary to what some posters seem to think, every ZEN in the game is purchased by real money.
For this reason a product purchased via ZEN is in exactly the same category as a product purchased by real money.
Customer protection laws apply. These include either repair or - if that is not possible - a full refund, provided the company is responsible for the malfunction. This is obviously the case for a programming bug.
An entirely different question is, whether one wants to go through the tedious process to enforce the customer protection rights.
I personally would not even bother to report such bugs (at least not for <5000 ZEN), because the real money I can earn for the time wasted reporting far outweighs the loss, even if the company policy would guarantee a full refund for a malfunctioning product or to repair it (by fixing every spurious bug, we all know that even the common bugs are rarely fixed).
What I will do, however, is to report and point out the deficiencies of the current policy, in the hope that we might get a better way of handling things in the future, increasing customer satisfaction in general, increasing revenue and thus increasing the longevity of the game.
Experience has shown, that the company policy of the past does
- neither refund ZEN for a malfunction item,
- nor fix spurious bugs in the majority of cases.
The policy seems to be designed to lay the customer off. I will not speculate if this is intended, or just bad design.
However, having seen the pattern repeat itself several times, I personally would not waste my time.
I am not a gambler, and the chances of receiving a leg mount from the lockbox are better than to get a refund for a bugged item bought from the ZEN store. The chances of getting a repair (via a bug fix) for a "spurious" bug might be slightly better ...
Furthermore, I think it is bad business policy.
Any customer that has been "treated" by customer service will think twice, whether she wants to spend real money on the game.
Even in the rare cases, where the issue is finally resolved in a satisfactory way, its likely that people will hold a grudge for having been forced into a tedious and time-consuming process, that looks more like customer scare than customer care.
0. you are correct. I only talked about your last sentence because that is the only sentence I disagreed (because they did acknowledge it).
1. they screwed up and they should fix them.
2. customer service has been useless. Period. No argument.
3. they are slow to fix the problem regardless the reason. It does not matter if it involves money, Zen, game play, etc. Every bug/mistake costs players. How many event companions of various events that do not give the currency bonus they are supposed to give? Have they fixed it? If they have not, how many years now? How many useless paid companion out there? How many people cannot collect their VIP key because of the game client crashed? Relatively, the bag bound issue is minor because you still have a bag and may be one day, it will be unbound or you just decide to use it for your account.
4. I get used to it and don't expect any better. Yes, my expectation has been significantly lowered by experience. Yes, Chris is onboard and it seems to give some 'excitement'. As far as I concern, nothing changed until the change does happen.
https://www.arcgames.com/en/games/neverwinter/news/detail/11352603
...
Zen Market
Bags are now Bind to Account on Equip, instead of Bind to Character.
All character-bound bags from the Zen Market in players' inventories have been converted to account-bound instead.
...
Fun fact about this, once upon a time bags were bound to account after EQUIPPING them, then some bean counter got the glorious idea that changing this might increase bag sales, so the bags became bound to character.
And considering that they're cutting discounts and extras all around the game, i'd dare say that the bag idea backfired, so they reverted it again. Only problem with that, instead of coding something along the line
"turn all character bound bags in character possession into account bound bags"
like the patch notes indicate, they actually went with
"turn ALL bags in character possession into account bound bags"
and here we are with our fudged up bags, waiting for another patch to fix this mess.
Last but not least, if they can find time to fix some appearances issues, then they can find time to fix this HAMSTER as well.
2. For regular Zen store bag, it is stated ""Single purchase, tradable with players", "Binds on Equip (Account)". Key part is "Binds on Equip". It does not say "Binds on pickup".
3. I have not checked if VIP Only bag has different wording.
2. agree
3. grumpyjeans is wrong here as well: VIP only bags were NOT bound.
Before the patch they were Bind to Character (Equip), e.g. unbound until you equip them, single purchase, tradable with players
The patch should have changed them into Bind to Account (Equip), single purchase, tradable with players
It wrongly changed some bags in inventory into bound to account (not tradable)
Bought one myself and am not yet senile :-)