Customer Service trainwreck is costing players

aandrethegiant · October 2019

We have been receiving multiple reports from our guild and alliance that customer service responses, or lack thereof has been causing our members to either stop playing or play a lot less often. Absolute frustration.

This is in no way, shape, or form a doom thread of any kind. We are among the game's most loyal, and longest playing members. I am simply seeking a POA here not only for our guild/alliance, but for the playerbase as a whole.

PS: Our last complaint by a VERY loyal and helpful guildie:

"I went from buying zen each sale to not spending money to now, not even playing much. All because of the way I was treated by "customer non-service" and the way they make me feel with their uber-heavy handed failures. So I can't speak for anyone else, but I know for me, their revenue has been impacted by their actions. And I find it real hard to believe I am the only one who has stopped giving money to them. "

WHAT is going on here CRYPTIC? And HOW CAN YOU FIX THIS??

tribbulater · October 2019

Some information on what kind of issues are the source of the customer service complaints, why the players find the responses unacceptable, and whether any requests to escalate the issue to a higher customer support team member might help.

As it is, your post amounts to "I'm displeased, do something!" and nobody has an idea what the specific problem even is.

gridlocked · October 2019

I stopped using support.

When issues get escalated the escalation tier is not helpful at all. We are taking time out of their day when they could be sniffing glue.

I have been a supervisor many years. These people would be fired in my line of work, because of their lack of customer service.

wylonus · October 2019

i support that, they stop helping me over 3 years ago, never fix my character'd few quest updates, bugged and never finished. they are the worst and cant help at all. those guys in help service need to be fires and 100% replace entire staff members. it made players utterly very upset.

as far i know, they dont assist if you have "Missing items" and the dont give replacements, all we get "Sorry to hear this and we cant do that" responses.

what i wanted, get one of my characters get fix on broken updates, there about 3 broken, have to check other 2 bugs, cant remember which. one was from Sharandar reward for completing, and i think other 2 were achievements or dungeon but will check it soon.
last time i was helped was Zebular, but he not around, he just seem vanished. he is one of my fav NWO moderator who really understood my issues.
i am losing faith and trust with customer services. maybe i got blacklisted, i dont know.

we really need special kind of "in-game help services", sort of like "Teamwork" and they can see. i didnt like "robot reply from email responds", that didnt solved. it all seem canned ticket messages and unsolvable.

aandrethegiant · October 2019

tribbulater said:
Some information on what kind of issues are the source of the customer service complaints, why the players find the responses unacceptable, and whether any requests to escalate the issue to a higher customer support team member might help.

As it is, your post amounts to "I'm displeased, do something!" and nobody has an idea what the specific problem even is.

True, I see your point tribbulater, but my post is meant more as a general wake up call than to get into specifics, publicly.

This is a compounding issue on top of an already tired, mentally freyed playerbase, and the direction the devs are taking the game is making matters much worse. Did they listen to Alpha play testers? Of course not. So many things, so many glitches, so many broken dungeons and skirmishes, so much broken.

Too many of our friends are just so sad every time they open the game now. The ones that stay, say they stay because of the community and family we all built here. But its the GAME that is the dead weight. The ones that leave, they tell us they WANT to stay, and are looking for REASONS to come back. FRUSTRATION!

wylonus said:
we really need special kind of "in-game help services"

In Game GMs would be a nice start!

Devs: FIXING WHATS BROKEN is the best way to stop the bleeding. Serving the Neverwinter Community requires moving the game forward in the brightest light. You can't put your BEST FOOT FORWARD without legs. Bugs must be fixed NOW, on a grander scale, or this will just keep getting worse for all of us trying to entertain our guildies and alliance members. And I'm not just talking Tyrs Paladium and the Neverwinter Fellowship, I'm talking about ALL the guilds and alliances in this game.

tom · October 2019

wylonus said:
i support that, they stop helping me over 3 years ago, never fix my character'd few quest updates, bugged and never finished. they are the worst and cant help at all. those guys in help service need to be fires and 100% replace entire staff members. it made players utterly very upset.

as far i know, they dont assist if you have "Missing items" and the dont give replacements, all we get "Sorry to hear this and we cant do that" responses.

what i wanted, get one of my characters get fix on broken updates, there about 3 broken, have to check other 2 bugs, cant remember which. one was from Sharandar reward for completing, and i think other 2 were achievements or dungeon but will check it soon.
last time i was helped was Zebular, but he not around, he just seem vanished. he is one of my fav NWO moderator who really understood my issues.
i am losing faith and trust with customer services. maybe i got blacklisted, i dont know.

we really need special kind of "in-game help services", sort of like "Teamwork" and they can see. i didnt like "robot reply from email responds", that didnt solved. it all seem canned ticket messages and unsolvable.

As far as im concerned they always were polite and helpfull. So far they restored my Bonding rank 12 that i accidently destroyed way back when that was the max rank. Aswell as my Legendary Alabaster Offhand with 2 rank 14 Enchantments in mod 16.
Maybe i just got lucky with the ppl i got to work on my tickets, but so far i cant complain, and the Guildmates i talked to also positive experiences with CS:

zimxero · October 2019

My experience has with customer support has been outstanding. I've only used it about once a year, but every time there was a detailed response within a couple days. I have not had an issue lately though. I get a feeling that a lot of the peeps who complain about customer service are not actually fielding an issue which is serious, merits being fixed, or perhaps they do not provide enough detailed information. I can only imagine how many people try to get freebies using customer service, or are just generally unhappy and want some sort of a perk or personal attention.

Once I tried to transfer a Legendary companion to my bank window and it got deleted instead of transfered. I never made a ticket. Maybe I should make a ticket now.

aandrethegiant · October 2019

Of course we are happy to hear good reviews for CS! And we want to see it get better. As I stated -- this is not a doom thread or sourced from people who dislike the game and want to see it fail. Just the exact opposite, actually!

drakkon5 · October 2019

Well I'm glad to say that everytime I have an issue, Customer Service will help me with my problem really fast.
Also like someone else pointed out before, you should post the issue your guildies or member from your alliance are having with customer service, so they can make adjust and be more helpful to the community.

stark760 · October 2019

My last topic for support was around 2 years ago when x2 professions was coming up. The masterwork quests to progress in chult was bugged and couldn't hand in the quest. 4 guilds in alliance built up for the x2 profession and got temp vendors. Support's response was there was nothing wrong on their end, turn off my computer for 5-10 min and see if that fixed it. They eventually fixed "their end" with 1 day left on event, and our vendors were gone. They then closed the ticket.

Also, when reporting a bug in-game. I would say it's best not to give a system notify and a ticket #, only to find out later that the ticket number given is non-existent and doesn't show up in known issues. If you don't come here and post on support, it never happened.

Lastly, the first automated response from support. I don't see the reason you go out of your way to use different fonts, to purposely show no one really read it.

Sometimes they can be helpful, but many never post again, after hearing for example, "sorry about your problem, we can't help unless it's a "zen" purchased item"(heard from many people why they quit playing over the years).

stark760 · October 2019

wylonus said:
i support that, they stop helping me over 3 years ago, never fix my character'd few quest updates, bugged and never finished. they are the worst and cant help at all. those guys in help service need to be fires and 100% replace entire staff members. it made players utterly very upset.

as far i know, they dont assist if you have "Missing items" and the dont give replacements, all we get "Sorry to hear this and we cant do that" responses.

what i wanted, get one of my characters get fix on broken updates, there about 3 broken, have to check other 2 bugs, cant remember which. one was from Sharandar reward for completing, and i think other 2 were achievements or dungeon but will check it soon.
last time i was helped was Zebular, but he not around, he just seem vanished. he is one of my fav NWO moderator who really understood my issues.
i am losing faith and trust with customer services. maybe i got blacklisted, i dont know.

we really need special kind of "in-game help services", sort of like "Teamwork" and they can see. i didnt like "robot reply from email responds", that didnt solved. it all seem canned ticket messages and unsolvable.

I've had similar issues. I've probably only posted to support 5-6 times over 4+ years. When Mod 6 came out, when lvling to 70, when I hit lvl 66, I couldn't spend my skill points and lvl up. I contacted support, they told me everyone got a reroll at lvl 70, use that. I asked, why should I have to use the lvl 70 reroll on a bug like that, I would rather be able to spend my points and then use the reroll when I wanted to(they were scarce back then). After 10 day or so they gave the me the reroll, or I couldn't lvl. My issue was this: the final message from support was rude, almost angry that they had to give the reroll, and said to make sure, I could not use the reroll for anything else...like what? It was a account bound reroll.

I understand they might be understaffed, but I got the feeling I would rather not be heard from at all. I reported botting in siege one year. I was told to move to another instance.

lordtweety · October 2019

My only requests for customer support were responded to with a generic "can't do that, too bad, so sad" response. Followed up by a customer service rep sending me a ridiculously stupid response that I posted on the forums and get severely moderated for.

My girlfriends only request to support was to swap an item that she accidentally purchased because when you double click on an item to buy it, the zen market doesn't realise that you have double clicked something different than the first item in the list. And she did it too fast to read the message. The response from customer service was basically 'suck it up cupcake'.

Needless to say, I will never spend $$ again and neither will she.

So, yeah. Customer service is definitely helping to kill Cryptic income.

aandrethegiant · October 2019

Thank you all for staying respectful, even though you may have had a negative experience. D&D communities are a very special people. Whether its Neverwinter, or DDO, or Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 playerbases, even tabletop, we are a very LOYAL playerbase.

As for specific CS issues, and bugs that are hurting the game's playerbase, the damage has already been done to those members I mentioned. I am interested in gathering opinions, and hopefully solutions moving forward. Information is powerful for us but also for the Devs.

A wakeup call is in order. Good solutions are really our only goal here. We are 100% for the health and well being of this game, as we always have been through the years.

stark760 · October 2019

I now post in the bug reports area, but that's about it. I figure better to see if others have the same issue, instead of getting a isolated ticket. They wipe the tickets after 2 years? I think. Even the bug report area can feel like efforts are not wanted. Either they ask for screen shots on a known issue to make you feel like you're filling out paperwork...and then nothing anyways, or just no response.

stark760 · October 2019

tom#6998 said:

wylonus said:
i support that, they stop helping me over 3 years ago, never fix my character'd few quest updates, bugged and never finished. they are the worst and cant help at all. those guys in help service need to be fires and 100% replace entire staff members. it made players utterly very upset.

as far i know, they dont assist if you have "Missing items" and the dont give replacements, all we get "Sorry to hear this and we cant do that" responses.

what i wanted, get one of my characters get fix on broken updates, there about 3 broken, have to check other 2 bugs, cant remember which. one was from Sharandar reward for completing, and i think other 2 were achievements or dungeon but will check it soon.
last time i was helped was Zebular, but he not around, he just seem vanished. he is one of my fav NWO moderator who really understood my issues.
i am losing faith and trust with customer services. maybe i got blacklisted, i dont know.

we really need special kind of "in-game help services", sort of like "Teamwork" and they can see. i didnt like "robot reply from email responds", that didnt solved. it all seem canned ticket messages and unsolvable.
As far as im concerned they always were polite and helpfull. So far they restored my Bonding rank 12 that i accidently destroyed way back when that was the max rank. Aswell as my Legendary Alabaster Offhand with 2 rank 14 Enchantments in mod 16.
Maybe i just got lucky with the ppl i got to work on my tickets, but so far i cant complain, and the Guildmates i talked to also positive experiences with CS:

I think that's part of the problem, certain things get fixed no problem, and others get the line: if not bought on zen store, we can't help. I know many in alliance have similar stories to support helping on destroyed items as you mentioned, but at the same time, others with similar issues, get told: sorry, out of luck.

oremonger · October 2019

I have had two bad experiences with support both having to do with ingame purchases. You would think that those would be handled quickly because they can verify the purchase rather easily. To be fair I have also had a few others that were handled quickly and professionally.

My very first time dealing with PWE/Cryptic the representative was rude and dismissive and closed my ticket. I replied to the email that told me my ticket had been resolved and closed and I asked for my ticket to be elevated to a supervisor. The supervisor apologised and fixed my problem immediately.

The second time happened a few months later with a the Knox recruitment order I purchased ( I think that is what it was called I can't be bothered to look it up ) I reported that the character I purchased it on was not leveled to 70 upon purchase like it advertised at the time. I got all of the campaign completions as advertised but not the levels. I was told to report the issue in-game via the help menu and here on the forums because there was a bug. I waited a few days after reporting and never heard back. I had already leveled to 70 on that character by the time the bug was eventually acknowledged and fixed and never received any form of compensation for the "bug" and never personally heard anything more about it.

In both cases my tickets were closed before there was resolution and I had to deal with someone who was dismissive and rude. Keep in mind I spent quite a bit of money in this game up to this point, I was not trying to get over on anyone or get free stuff. I just wanted what I PAID for. Both times there was a record of EXACTLY how much I spent and when I spent it. A normal company would have been like "We are sorry Mr. Oremonger, let us fix that for you right away." but good old PWE/Cryptic is more like "Yeah, what do you want?" "I don't believe you, send me a screenshot." "Use the ingame bug report system, I can't be bothered to report it for you."

These experiences lead me to only post about bugs here on the forums and to avoid using PWE customer service. We all know how reporting bugs here on the forums goes. If you don't just pop over and look on the bug threads. IMO the ingame reporting mechanism is set up in a way that discourages reporting bugs, it is difficult to use and states right up front that you will not get any communication so you don't even know if they actually got the bug report. There have been several times where I have purchased Zen when it bound anything I bought to my account for 7 days for no reason even though I have used the same payment method for years. I never bothered to report, I just stopped buying Zen. (See how this works Devs?)

To be honest there are so many bugs and nerfs in this game that it makes it hard to justify buying anything at all. If you make a purchase of many items on the Zen market that purchase either becomes obsolete or gets the nerf bat within a few months anyway. Even VIP is not worth what it once was, repeated game changes and nerfs have made it all but a glorified teleportation scroll. I won't be renewing VIP for the first time ever when it runs out this time. I will also be skipping the 40% off sales for the first time in years.(See how this works Devs?)

One last thing, I had a fellow guildmate, officer and friend who spent months grinding for a Staff of Flowers. He finally got it and was really excited! Unfortunately he got it on a character he did not need it on and either through a bug or clicking in excitement it became bound to that character. He was a PAYING and LOYAL customer, he asked for the incident to be investigated via customer service and they told him to come here and report it on the forums. You can go an look at the post and responses here for yourself. Instead of just taking the staff of flowers from him and giving him another he was given the runaround and treated badly. IF they had instead looked at his account they would have seen his purchase history, IF they had looked at his account they would have seen the amount of activity on it. ALL it would have taken was a new staff of flowers that costs Cryptic/PWE literally nothing except a few key presses to make this customer happy. Instead they did the opposite, they made him angry, they treated him like trash and gave him the runaround.

This was a guy who loved the game. He was very active and went out of his way to help new people, support his guild and was active almost daily for years. Now he rarely logs in. WTG Cryptic! Not only did you lose a paying customer, you also lost an active community member!(See how this works Devs?)

DYSFUNCTION! One more straw on this old camel's back. I wonder how many more it will take before I am gone also.

For those who have nothing but good experiences with customer service and cryptic I am truly happy for you. There are those who have quite the opposite. I could tell stories for pages.

@mimicking#6533 @nitocris83

pwimagicgame · October 2019

Quote: "I never bothered to report, I just stopped buying Zen. (See how this works Devs?)"

This.
I lost one million AD by an unnecessary delay in moving AD to my account. Customer service help was non-existent, told I had to suck it up.

Well I did, along with my wallet. Hamster you.

aandrethegiant · October 2019

So what I would like to see personally is a response from @mimicking#6533 and @nitocris83 .

I think it would show at least a shred of recognition of this dilemma, of losing LOYAL community members, many that have been around for YEARS.

First they close their wallets, then they leave.

If you can make the game's most loyal leave because they have lost faith in this game's leadership and direction, it needs to be recognized & addressed.

SOLUTION: I am simply seeking a POA. Let's see some TRANSPARENCY, and an EFFORT to repair. Leave it up to the great guilds in Neverwinter to reconnect with their ex-guildies that left.. maybe just maybe, they'll come back. For some... it will be just too little too late. But you have to throw them a bone. Improve your CS dept and rework that dev schedule to include fixes to BUGS BUGS BUGS.

I understand you only have so many resources and just about everyone I've ever spoken to in Cryptic was AWESOME. Just about every forum moderator, also awesome. But THESE TWO ISSUES, Customer Service and Bugs.... need your LOVE BADLY at this point.

Lack of recognizing and dev planning is KILLING this community from the core out. I propose this. Your TRUE resource... your shiniest shiny... is your paying customer. Never forget your roots my old friends.

mystar · October 2019

I've only contacted customer service a few times and every time was a quick helpful response. The most recent was the changes for the number of wards being used to upgrade an enchantment. I had noticed the wards I was using weren't counting towards a 100% upgrade...they asked how many wards I had used and was ready to replace them, but I had figured out I was looking at the enchant stats for the upgraded enchant. I probably could have gotten some free wards, but it's more fun for me to actually earn the stuff than to get it dishonestly.

There's no details about the circumstance these guild members had for why they had a bad experience so I can't jump on the bandwagon saying they have bad customer service when I haven't personally experienced it in my connections with them.

ecrana · October 2019

I think one of the main issues with complaints about customer service is a lack of knowledge as to what exactly they are and are not capable of.

I've had a few run-ins with CS and most have been handled very well (by that I mean I left satisfied by the result).

But sometimes people want to complain to CS about an in game bug that they don't, and can't, do anything about. Then you get the standard "post to forum bugs" response which is obviously not what someone wants to hear regardless of whether it's correct.

I will say that all of my tickets were handled professionally, even the 1-2 times the issue was not resolved to my satisfaction.

aandrethegiant · October 2019

mystar#5733 said:
I've only contacted customer service a few times and every time was a quick helpful response. The most recent was the changes for the number of wards being used to upgrade an enchantment. I had noticed the wards I was using weren't counting towards a 100% upgrade...they asked how many wards I had used and was ready to replace them, but I had figured out I was looking at the enchant stats for the upgraded enchant. I probably could have gotten some free wards, but it's more fun for me to actually earn the stuff than to get it dishonestly.

Congrats on the good customer service! I like to hear that!

mystar#5733 said:
There's no details about the circumstance these guild members had for why they had a bad experience so I can't jump on the bandwagon saying they have bad customer service when I haven't personally experienced it in my connections with them.

Yeah I understand. This thread is simply meant to be a general game wide thread, not meant to go too deep into specifics of anyone's troubleshooting needs. That's best for PRIVATE ONE on ONE communication between the player and the CS dept. (then on a public space here where hundreds if not thousands of people can read or comment.

Thanks for commenting Mystar!

aandrethegiant · October 2019

ecrana#2080 said:
I will say that all of my tickets were handled professionally, even the 1-2 times the issue was not resolved to my satisfaction.

That's good!

regenerde · November 2019

Well, just adding another drop into the bucket, a recent experience with the Cryptic support regarding the purchase of a Temporal Agent Starter Pack in STO and the problems with it.

I could buy and then claim the pack without any issues in game on 3 different characters, but the main part of that pack the
Temporal Battlecruiser [T6] - Paladin Class
was still locked behind a 3000 ZEN price tag in the ZEN shop. At first i tried restarting the game and looking for that ship in the ship vendor too, but that didn't help and i had to contact the support in the end.

I received a reply after a day, had to explain this mess again, waited again, and then was told that this was a bug, it would be reported to the Devs and i should write a bug report in the forum too... in essence i was told to sit and wait for the Devs for Q knows how long to come up with a fix for this bug before i could get the ship i paid for.

I don't get it, shouldn't a "Game Master" be able to check if something is missing from a purchased pack, and then have the tools to simply create or unlock the missing item for the player? I mean, even if they can't unlock the ship directly, there is
https://sto.gamepedia.com/100%_Discount_Coupon:_Tier_6_Ship
or the option to add enough ZEN to an account for the purpose of letting the player get a missing ship by himself.

Anyway, just imagine for a moment a new player buys a pack here in NWO, gets everything except the epic mount, contacts support and asks for help, has to explain the issue even with screenshots several times, and is then being told to wait for that mount until a bug is fixed through a patch at some point in the far far away future...

Customer Service trainwreck is costing players

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