Is Blizzard customer service always this bad?

[Onikaroshi]

That case would not speak well for the Support in my Opinion.

Them trying to say their systems are infallible and denying legit appeals doesn't speak well for them either.

[MrLachyG]

so this guy got banned, got sent an email with the reason why he was banned, and is blasting Blizzard for not telling him the specific actions which caused him to get banned despite them telling him why they cannot tell him that (which is a valid reason) and this is considered bad customer service? ok Karen.....

[SirCowdog]

I just saw this on YouTube and if this is the standard of Blizzard's customer service or lack thereof, then I hope I'll never need them. How is it possible not to get any information on the reason you were banned?
https://youtu.be/cxjhTVR_dJw?t=3376

This might come as a shock to a lot of regulars(since they seem to think I'm some kind of super-anti-blizzard activist or something), but I've never actually had anything but good experiences with Blizzard customer service or GMs. Occasionally they get overwhelmed and take longer than I'd like, but that's about it.

As for the video, I'd guess it has something to do with the guy in question just not being happy with the outcome. He specifically mentions an email that tells him it's an external program. Maybe he's just not willing to admit on camera that he's using a bot or other 3rd party program.

I will say that, in general for the gaming industry as a whole, appeals and communication with the customer is all around poor. Getting your case escalated to someone who's actually really competent and fluent, that can explain things well is rare. Largely due to, I'm assuming, shipping customer service centers out of country.

I do wish there was a more tiered approach, where there are higher-paid "experts" who can handle more serious cases, but with players having to accept that it may be weeks or months before a more advanced case is looked at due to the necessities of the lower employee count. Because as it is, mostly it's a case of "there's just too damn many tickets to process, so we're just not even going to try. Case closed." Like what happened with the guy in the vid.

[Master Factician]

Blizzard still has customer service? I thought it's all automated now and they laid the rest of them off?

The last time Blizzard made cuts to their CS department was in 2012.

[Stormspark]

The last time Blizzard made cuts to their CS department was in 2012.

Yeah, the cuts in 2019 were to QA and community staff. Which is why they don't have any community managers anymore, and why there is no more QA and patches are being released in beta. It didn't affect CS...this time.

[|Dexter|]

He knew the reason it was for a 3rd party program. And he already contacted Blizzard to fight the ban but they chose to uphold it after checking it and close the case, this chat happens after this and the GM told him all he needed to know, with you are free to play on another account or in 6 months on this one...

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Yeah, the cuts in 2019 were to QA and community staff. Which is why they don't have any community managers anymore, and why there is no more QA and patches are being released in beta. It didn't affect CS...this time.

They still got community managers!

[Zyky]

I just saw this on YouTube and if this is the standard of Blizzard's customer service or lack thereof, then I hope I'll never need them. How is it possible not to get any information on the reason you were banned?
https://youtu.be/cxjhTVR_dJw?t=3376

In terms of bans they use this phony logic of "we can't tell you because it would danger the security of other players" which is just fancy PR for we're actually attaching spyware to the games you download. Overall though, yes, Blizzards customer service has been lacking for over a decade.

It took a huge nose dive around the release of Cataclysm/D3 and it's just progressively gotten worse. It's now to the point where most customer support reps just ask you if you checked fan sites for help regarding bugs or they just stick you with copy/pasta without even reading your ticket. I once had a GM reply to a ticket telling me to check wowhead regarding my character disappearing after a faction change, which I then had to wait 18 hours for the ticket to get reprocessed for a fix.

[Master Factician]

Yeah, the cuts in 2019 were to QA and community staff. Which is why they don't have any community managers anymore, and why there is no more QA and patches are being released in beta. It didn't affect CS...this time.

They cut 11 of 337 QA positions.

3.2%

[Spiffums]

Yeeeaaaah I dunno if I buy that. I did that all the time and I never even got a warning.

I'm not selling anything stated what happen. I put the BoE up on my warlock and a friend on the horde side bought it for me. I had it at like 1c or something. Warlock caught the time out for "trying to disrupt the economy".

[Shaetha]

We have all the greatest hits here:

Multiple people that have false positives even though I've never heard of one from someone I would trust to tell me the time of day.(bonus points for someone acting like they know what caused a third party software ban, even though it's been established they won't tell you.)

People that think customer service is poor because they didn't get their way.

People that think customer service is poor because they think they're the only person with a problem.

People that are stating things that completely contradict personal experience and every single trustworthy account of service I've heard.

People saying it couldn't possibly be false positive.(it could, but almost never for something that trips warden.)

People that don't understand the difference between false and unknowing. (The ban probably isn't a false positive. It's probably just ignorance. Why else would they ask what software tripped it if they aren't a shyster?)


All in all, none of this story adds up. Either you know what caused the ban or you don't. It's incredibly improbable it was a true false positive. If I was poking at something with cheat engine, had WoW open without thinking, and got banned for it, that's my fault. This person probably should know what caused the ban. Even if it wasn't something hooked into the game. You might get it overturned if you're nice, but frustrated people are rarely nice to customer service. The thread topic does nothing to change the feeling that this person was probably an asshole, and I'm not watching a video, because fuck videos that are saying things that could be said in text without wasting my time.

Also, 6 months is a not an amount of time for a first offense. Either it's so flagrant it's an automatic permaban, or it's an escalation ban, and having a record is not a good look.

Finally, to the person that said things about spyware: Never play a game with public matches again. Literally every game that has any kind of public match has cheat and third party software detection. That is a hard requirement of the game's working. The last game I remember that didn't was Diablo, and the online in that game was a total shit show of trainer programs. You cannot trust people to not cheat. If you have a problem with cheat detection, don't play online games.

[Ringthane]

Those morons are always trying idiotic things - remember how they set up a watercooled server, and then put it in a rack... Above a bunch of mission-critical servers and storage? And remember whole-room water cooling? What a waste of time that was. So it's no surprise to me that they had something running that triggered this. Could it be a false positive? Sure. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

But here's the facts: any company can ban you from their establishment for any reason they want, so long as it does not violate the law in doing so. You are a guest in their establishment, whether it be building, online forum or game, vehicle, whatever. And if they decide to do so, once they have told you you're no longer welcome, they do not have to spend one second explaining anything more or elaborating on anything or giving you any more information than they are prepared to give you. Period. I don't care who you are. If a company says you're done, you're done.

[Cosmic Janitor]

It has always been dogshit. Even back in the day when not everyone was from some callcenter in some 4th world country, some GMs would claim they totally can't do a thing, yet half your guild already talked to another GM that did the thing. So you you just nodded, said to yourself "what a useless cunt" and opened another ticked 5 minutes later in hopes of getting someone who isn't complete dogshit.

[WowIsDead64]

I just saw this on YouTube and if this is the standard of Blizzard's customer service or lack thereof, then I hope I'll never need them. How is it possible not to get any information on the reason you were banned?
https://youtu.be/cxjhTVR_dJw?t=3376

Quality of customer service started to decline back in Cata (as everything else). I guess, it's connected to gold selling somehow. You know, how many peoples/bots do you need to have "Any amount of gold, at any moment, at any servers, guaranteed" quality of gold selling service? This couldn't work without GMs being involved into this business. So, Blizzard have 2-3 lines of support now. First line can be even AI bots, that analyze theme and keywords in your ticket and try to give standard copy-pasted response. In 99% cases response doesn't match your problem. Such as "Gear token has dropped item not for my class bug, give right item" - response "Can't do quest? Read about it on WowHead". Second line are "girls on a phone", who also do nothing, but at least they're humans, so they can read your ticket, understand your real problem, but they usually say, that they can't help you, "we can't help you with loot", "everything works as intended", "if you don't understand it - go read WowHead" and suggest to write something to placebo-form, if you don't agree. Nobody knows, if it even really works outside of Beta testing, as it doesn't even have any restrictions on amount and frequency of messages. Does anybody even read it? They answer you, if you reopen your ticket and remind them that customer service in this game IS PAID, i.e. you pay sub fee to have access to it. Third line is... May be only one employee, who has authority to give you real help. He is their boss, who doesn't like, when somebody disturbs him. So, if any ticket would ever reach him - employee, who allowed this to happen, would lose his wage bonuses. He may answer you, if you reopen your ticket for the second time and it's right moon phase to consider your problem to be real and not that one, that can magically be solved by "Reading Wowhead". Yeah... "It's not bug - it's feature. Go find our, how to play around this bug." Lol. They also have psychologist. He answers you, if you talk about unsubbing, and tries to prevent you from doing it, instead of really helping you. He asks you "What do you dislike about this game?", "What xpack do you want it to look like?", "Let's talk about it", "Blah blah blah". But no problems really solved by this guy.

[helloapathy]

Its always been bad tbh

[LanToaster]

Them trying to say their systems are infallible and denying legit appeals doesn't speak well for them either.

But is it a "Legit Appeal"?

Do you know that? I Dont. If you do, I´d like to have some Proof.
If he´s been Running a software in the Background that can be used to Manipulate the game the Ban is legit.

If you are in a job that requires that software, dont play on your work PC.

In terms of bans they use this phony logic of "we can't tell you because it would danger the security of other players" which is just fancy PR for we're actually attaching spyware to the games you download.

Thats common, every game that has decent Anti-Cheat software scans your Running Processes while you play.

[yomammyass]

Interesting - and it did get overturned?

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No, no you weren't.

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Got overturned though didn't it? So Blizzard clearly knew they made a mistake, that's not what I asked

You can't find anyone who got a proper ban for NO reason and didn't get it overturned

I was bro.......

[Djuntas]

Those morons are always trying idiotic things - remember how they set up a watercooled server, and then put it in a rack... Above a bunch of mission-critical servers and storage? And remember whole-room water cooling? What a waste of time that was. So it's no surprise to me that they had something running that triggered this. Could it be a false positive? Sure. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

But here's the facts: any company can ban you from their establishment for any reason they want, so long as it does not violate the law in doing so. You are a guest in their establishment, whether it be building, online forum or game, vehicle, whatever. And if they decide to do so, once they have told you you're no longer welcome, they do not have to spend one second explaining anything more or elaborating on anything or giving you any more information than they are prepared to give you. Period. I don't care who you are. If a company says you're done, you're done.

Jesus this forum sometimes...Damn. Dude, their a company, and one of the biggest on youtube - Of course they do projects thats entertaining, but you obviously dont understand fun or how youtube works ^^

Also, hes a casual player in wow, still dont know why he got banned, through I think it was an automated ban due to VPN that he didnt turn off when playing games.

[Onikaroshi]

But is it a "Legit Appeal"?

Do you know that? I Dont. If you do, I´d like to have some Proof.
If he´s been Running a software in the Background that can be used to Manipulate the game the Ban is legit.

If you are in a job that requires that software, dont play on your work PC.

Oh, I have no idea in this situation, but there is others, not every single ban is legit, just most of them.

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Interesting - and it did get overturned?

Yea, not on the first ticket though, he had to explain a couple of times, took like a week. But this was back when they used to perma instead of 6 month

[SkagenRora]

It sounds a lot like Blizzard fanboyism to automatically assume that they did the right thing, without feeling the need to find out what and why.
If it's false-positive, then it means that Blizzard can do whatever the fuck they want and just write a standard email to cover their ass.

You should read the rules you agree to once in a while maby?

You pay a subscription to acess the servers that blizzard owns, They can terminate your acess for any reason at any time.

(Yes it says that in the rules, so again.. read what you agree to)

[Seranthor]

I was bro.......

The reason you were banned was in the email you got... Not agreeing with their reason doesn't mean the reason didn't exist.