Blizzard customer service etiquette

[Mukind]

I don't care about your anecdotal as much as you care about mine. This have nothing to do with what I asked to begin with either. So not sure what your purpose of responding was.

I doubt you can recall what I initially asked without going back.

Are you blind?

Do you not see your quote in here? lol

Yes i ignored your stupid question, yea i remember you giving your anecdote.

You disgusting beta

[Kumorii]

Are you blind?

Do you not see your quote in here? lol

Yes i ignored your stupid question, you're a stupid person. lol

How ironic....responds to me and then when I respond back I'm the one who initiated? Are you drunk or high? Once again, nothing you've said had anything to do with what I initially talked about in which YOU quoted me.

Do you even know what my question was? I doubt you do without going back.

[tangers58]

Call this a whine post or what will you, but i`d like to know people thoughts on this.

So recently i decided that i would actually make an effort to get PvP gear on my paladin, since the golden armor set has been dream of mine since i started 14-15 years ago. After already putting in many, many hours, i was to hit rank 8 last wednesday, and then i log in, only to find my account had been suspended for 6 months.
Curious as to why, i reached out to blizzard, only to get slapped with the "We have gathered evidence that you have been using third party software or similar programs"
At this point i was mad, very mad, since personally i have hated people who use bots with a passion as long as i`ve played this game, then the guy i chatted with said "If you want to, you can appeal your ban at <insert whatever link he sent me>" to which i responded i would very much like to appeal my ban, this is complete and utter BS, to which he replies instantly that "Your appeal has been declined, your account will be playable again when the suspension is lifted"

I thought this was weird, so i still clicked the link, wrote down my thoughts and arguments, and sent them an appeal, to which i got the same response just a couple hours later. Also, like with anyone, they refuse to tell what this so called evidence they have gathered actually is, and from what i`ve heard from others in similar predicaments, they dont really have any, it`s just that when trolls and random a-holes send in reports on you, they just do it on a hunch..

Luke from Linustechtips was in the exact same situation, banned for the same amount of time, for the same reason, but him being famous in the PC world, and being able to throw blizzard some bad PR, they even called him up, and unbanned him..

Is this the customer service people want? Is there even a point to actually getting into contact with a GM or similar? Thoughts?

Same thing happened to me the day before WoD launched. Ban out of nowhere for the same reason, weird thing is that all I had been doing for a couple weeks before was grinding archeology achievements. CS was just as useless as well, won't tell you what they think you did or present any actual evidence. I suspect the entire thing is just automated and if you somehow trip the bot-detecting program (I forget its name) you are immediately banned without an actual human ever looking at it.

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Are you blind?

Do you not see your quote in here? lol

Yes i ignored your stupid question, yea i remember you giving your anecdote.

You disgusting beta

lol poor wittle incel is still using "beta"

[Dasmerte]

There seems to be a lot of misinformation on this thread, so lets clear few things. Yes, you can get banned for afking in BGs. Or to be precise, of course you can AFK if you get some RL situation that requires you to step away from the computer, but for these situations there is an antiAFK system in game that boots you out after 15 minutes(?). Now if you ABUSE this antiAFK system by jumping every 5 minutes or autorun against a wall, you can (and should) get banned. There is a blue post on wow us classic forums that has been circulating on classic reddit aswell that confirms that you can get banned for continuous AFKing in BGs. I can't link the thread with this new account, but google "Account suspended by player report? wow us classic" and you should find it.

Also, I've seen some people claim on this thread that not playing in BGs is not against TOS, and this is untrue. Here is a quote of classic TOS, pay attention to the bolded part: "Harassment, “griefing,” abusive behavior or chat, conduct intended to unreasonably undermine or disrupt the Game experiences of others, deliberate inactivity or disconnecting, and/or any other activity which violates Blizzard’s Code of Conduct or In-Game Policies."

Also, I've heard from multiple people that got banned that even when their ban is for botting/3rd party software, once they managed to reach a GM and ask about their ban the GM confirmed that they are actually not banned for botting or third party software but continuois AFKing/disruptive gameplay.

TLDR: Only queue up for BGs if you intend to play in them. If you continuously keep afking in BGs, you will get banned.

[Stormwolf64]

Same thing happened to me the day before WoD launched. Ban out of nowhere for the same reason, weird thing is that all I had been doing for a couple weeks before was grinding archeology achievements. CS was just as useless as well, won't tell you what they think you did or present any actual evidence. I suspect the entire thing is just automated and if you somehow trip the bot-detecting program (I forget its name) you are immediately banned without an actual human ever looking at it.

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lol poor wittle incel is still using "beta"

Or... they might just not want to make it appear that their system is flawed with false positives. It would open a can of worms for them if it appears to happen relatively often.

[Twoddle]

Weird that they never banned me for the same thing OP is allegedly guilty of. I'm afk in AV all the time but I will at least make an effort from the start when the gates open.

Once I realise the game's going nowhere I'll go stand behind a tree and leave the bot pressing jump every 3 minutes while I alt tab out and play a few hands of bridge or make dinner.

[Jurwi]

If only more people chased their dream by AFKing and making others do the work.

[DeusX]

The first tickets you send will get useless template replies from first line support, telling you lies that they reviewed your case and found you guilty for "reason" they can't tell. Basically the first line support only look at your account and see what you see, that it's suspended and tell you back that they reviewed it...
So ye, getting them to actually review it is the real trick, it requires many tickets. Some say getting phone support is another quicker way as well.

Heh, you are right.
What I did yesterday:
- got in line for phone support, I got called by CS quite quickly after I gave them my phone number (we don't call them, they call us, I didn't know that)
- got told by the nice lady from UK (I play in EU) that she'll have a look on my appeal, but offline, she can't do it during the phone call
- not much later I got exactly a reply saying they have "consistent evidence" of the cheat program and that the suspension is staying.

Checked Reddit and seen that the replay I got is just a template response, so I don't believe they checked more than what whatever log generate by the anti-cheat SW, which I believe flagged me by mistake, as some automated tools can sometimes do.

I have reopened my ticket and hope a real person (maybe a supervisor) does a real job of looking into the in-game activity logs, else I am screwed.

6 months suspension really puts me out.
Rerolling a new account just to push with the guild in Ny'alotha seems a bit overkill. The guild is nice and they all said they'll boost me in HC and M+, but still a long way to go. Gold is not an issue to borrow like 200k from one of my millionaire friends. But the road to lvl 80 neck, to rank 3 essences, to lvl 11 cloak looks so damn daunting, I don't think I have it in me. I am 30+ with job and family, I can't spend all my free time spamming IE, reps and old zones. I think this might be the end of WoW for me, taken to the garbage bin by some shit blizz script. Pfff. All the effort invested in something completely out of my control makes me reevaluate how I choose to spend my time left in this world, maybe it's a good signal in the end.

[Necromantic]

So here`s an update, since i see alot of trolls and different opinions going on in this thread.

Yes, i am just a bloke on the internet who could be lying, it`s the internet, believe me, or dont, up to you.
I spoke to a different GM about my appeal, where i went as far as admitting that YES i do slightly AFK in AV sometimes when it`s a bad game and we are just getting farmed and whatnot, the GM`s response to this was that this was "considered cheating and the suspension will remain for the full duration of 181 days"

Isnt 6 months a little harsh for being a lazy slacker some times? I mean, they banned me on a hunch from getting some reports from other players in AV, but i know for a fact that they cant have found any clue anywhere NEAR my account that i have been using any third party software, so it seems excessive, yet blizzard refuses any attempt i make at actually clearing this up.

It is harsh but again, it's an entry level, minimum wage job. My friend who worked as a GM said they would often laugh at people making appeals. Making comments like "lol this guy is begging me to lift the ban". They're safe from accountability due to the vagueness of the code of conduct. I get why the company went this way, it saves a lot of money but what do you expect to happen when you give a high school dropout power and authority over veteran gamers?

OP references the guy from linus tech tips luke, which youtube alsho showed me. They were very rude to him and he has a podcast on one of hte largest youtube channels in existence. And they claim it was for 3rd party software. He posts all his screen shots. Blizzard could ruin him if they wanted, but of course they're gonna look into it even if they never publicly say anything. And I'd bet a lot of money he wasn't cheating beyond maybe afking in AV without any 3rd party software.

I have had my own interactions with blizz customer service.

Of course they're rude, do you have any doubt? Have you ever spoken to them about something blizzard clearly messed up? lol

They turn hostile on you so fast. In most industries you'd have to say some pretty agressive things to get customer service reps to react that way. IDK if they just don't put enough value into the surveys which keep most customer service reps very in line. Or they just don't do a good job hiring "bubbly" or stoic people who do their job well

Either way, their custoemr service is a joke. Would get better if they handed it off to Indians for 4 dollars an hour

Correct, they could and likely did tarnish his reputation just because some high school dropout didn't REALLY want to investigate the matter. Even though I knew I was shouting into the wind, I went back/forth with the supervisor once, explaining that wrongfully infracting people creates a false stigma.

The first tickets you send will get useless template replies from first line support, telling you lies that they reviewed your case and found you guilty for "reason" they can't tell. Basically the first line support only look at your account and see what you see, that it's suspended and tell you back that they reviewed it...
So ye, getting them to actually review it is the real trick, it requires many tickets. Some say getting phone support is another quicker way as well.

I can confirm this. My GM friend said this is done to fend off the majority of tickets. Most people are naive and will see these copy/pasted replies and think "wow, I really must have done something wrong" and leave it alone. They won't question "what exactly was it that I supposedly did?" When you continue to question, that's when it goes from the robot to the high school dropout.

[Zalamander]

I finally had some progress by a nice coincident on the classic reddit.

It's now 100% confirmed that the anti cheat system in WoW does false flagging automated 6 month bans.
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/...tive_and_gets/

This shed a lot of light on my situation, since I was running a very similar video processing tool in the background as my ban happened that day.

Even tho the anti hack/cheat department at blizzard investigated my case again just before I found this out my self tho, they just looked at the flag and told me I was a lying cheater and should be banned... again.
They pretty much fail at their job if they don't compare what I was actually doing in game with the time and date this false flag happened. It would have been very obvious that it was a false flag if they had even cared to check.

[Necromantic]

I finally had some progress by a nice coincident on the classic reddit.

It's now 100% confirmed that the anti cheat system in WoW does false flagging automated 6 month bans.
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/...tive_and_gets/

This shed a lot of light on my situation, since I was running a very similar video processing tool in the background as my ban happened that day.

Even tho the anti hack/cheat department at blizzard investigated my case again just before I found this out my self tho, they just looked at the flag and told me I was a lying cheater and should be banned... again.
They pretty much fail at their job if they don't compare what I was actually doing in game with the time and date this false flag happened. It would have been very obvious that it was a false flag if they had even cared to check.

What do you expect from a job that doesn't even require a high school diploma?

[arkanon]

I finally had some progress by a nice coincident on the classic reddit.

It's now 100% confirmed that the anti cheat system in WoW does false flagging automated 6 month bans.
https://www.reddit.com/r/classicwow/...tive_and_gets/

This shed a lot of light on my situation, since I was running a very similar video processing tool in the background as my ban happened that day.

Even tho the anti hack/cheat department at blizzard investigated my case again just before I found this out my self tho, they just looked at the flag and told me I was a lying cheater and should be banned... again.
They pretty much fail at their job if they don't compare what I was actually doing in game with the time and date this false flag happened. It would have been very obvious that it was a false flag if they had even cared to check.

This SHOULDNT be news to anyone, however, sadly we live in a world where people take their fanboi status to extremes where they will deny even hard evidence like this. There are still some who will hand on heart argue that this system is not automated.

[Necromantic]

This SHOULDNT be news to anyone, however, sadly we live in a world where people take their fanboi status to extremes where they will deny even hard evidence like this. There are still some who will hand on heart argue that this system is not automated.

The customer support section of the official forums is full of these strange individuals. White knighting Blizzard and upvoting their comments with their own alts. It's funny arguing with them because their comments can be summed up as "oh no no no, you're just wrong" regardless of what hard evidence you produce.

[Seranthor]

And then there are some of us that DO believe the system IS (at least partially) automated, and that it DOES from time to time kick out a false positive (because lets face it no system is perfect)... Problem is I also believe that the (this part is important) vast majority of those that come to the forums or other locations and piss and moan about being punished 'unfairly' are lying out their ass and absolutely deserve the punishment they got.

[Necromantic]

And then there are some of us that DO believe the system IS (at least partially) automated, and that it DOES from time to time kick out a false positive (because lets face it no system is perfect)... Problem is I also believe that the (this part is important) vast majority of those that come to the forums or other locations and piss and moan about being punished 'unfairly' are lying out their ass and absolutely deserve the punishment they got.

Oh, absolutely. There are plenty who cry "foul!" knowing good and well what they did. It's the fact that the system is so flawed which makes it difficult to know if the person is a liar or not. I've seen plenty of false positive posts consisting of proof but it's the troll inside of some people that love to jump on the "u deserved it" bandwagon.

Slippery slope

[TheVaryag]

Call this a whine post or what will you, but i`d like to know people thoughts on this.

So recently i decided that i would actually make an effort to get PvP gear on my paladin, since the golden armor set has been dream of mine since i started 14-15 years ago. After already putting in many, many hours, i was to hit rank 8 last wednesday, and then i log in, only to find my account had been suspended for 6 months.
Curious as to why, i reached out to blizzard, only to get slapped with the "We have gathered evidence that you have been using third party software or similar programs"
At this point i was mad, very mad, since personally i have hated people who use bots with a passion as long as i`ve played this game, then the guy i chatted with said "If you want to, you can appeal your ban at <insert whatever link he sent me>" to which i responded i would very much like to appeal my ban, this is complete and utter BS, to which he replies instantly that "Your appeal has been declined, your account will be playable again when the suspension is lifted"

I thought this was weird, so i still clicked the link, wrote down my thoughts and arguments, and sent them an appeal, to which i got the same response just a couple hours later. Also, like with anyone, they refuse to tell what this so called evidence they have gathered actually is, and from what i`ve heard from others in similar predicaments, they dont really have any, it`s just that when trolls and random a-holes send in reports on you, they just do it on a hunch..

Luke from Linustechtips was in the exact same situation, banned for the same amount of time, for the same reason, but him being famous in the PC world, and being able to throw blizzard some bad PR, they even called him up, and unbanned him..

Is this the customer service people want? Is there even a point to actually getting into contact with a GM or similar? Thoughts?

Welcome to my world, more in red text below. But basically, I've been banned as well but permanently and all Customer Support had told me was "We have evidence of our own, It's conclusive, goodbye" and after the supposed maximum of 2x appeals that were denied I had nothing else to do... ofc I didnt give up, I have a 15 year old account with so many characters, items you cant get anymore and memories that I will never ever give up.

And so even after over 500+ emails, 300+ tickets, 50+ web live chats and 2 phone calls they're still denying me service, actually actively banning my Battle.net accounts In order to discourage me from seeking help from them and do so on games I don't even play which is hilarious. I keep emailing them as that doesn't seem to be a banable offence In their eyes and still they keep silent. Can only hope now you keep emailing them at cs@blizzard.com and they'll respond to you with kind, all we can hope for now.

It shoudn't be possible for them to do this, but in reality they can just ban you at any time and don't even have to tell you why or further communicate with you It's their game, their rules and god knows I've tried for the past almost 5 years to talk to them, Id' be ready to pay big bucks for It too but they'd rather randomly ban loyal players for obscure reasons when they REALLY cant afford to loose players of any kind these days.

[chrisisvacant]

It is harsh but again, it's an entry level, minimum wage job. My friend who worked as a GM said they would often laugh at people making appeals. Making comments like "lol this guy is begging me to lift the ban". They're safe from accountability due to the vagueness of the code of conduct. I get why the company went this way, it saves a lot of money but what do you expect to happen when you give a high school dropout power and authority over veteran gamers?



Correct, they could and likely did tarnish his reputation just because some high school dropout didn't REALLY want to investigate the matter. Even though I knew I was shouting into the wind, I went back/forth with the supervisor once, explaining that wrongfully infracting people creates a false stigma.



I can confirm this. My GM friend said this is done to fend off the majority of tickets. Most people are naive and will see these copy/pasted replies and think "wow, I really must have done something wrong" and leave it alone. They won't question "what exactly was it that I supposedly did?" When you continue to question, that's when it goes from the robot to the high school dropout.

BTW, it isn't minimum wage.

[Ielenia]

For those of you complaining that Blizzard doesn't reveal their evidence when banning you, and often say that this means they don't have any, you're all forgetting, or ignoring, two important facts:
• One, the evidence would likely require knowledge of coding and program design that the average person would understand little to nothing about the evidence.
• Two, revealing evidence means revealing to the hackers that created those cheats exactly how they were detected, helping them create harder-to-detect cheats.

[WintersLegion]

Welcome to my world, more in red text below. But basically, I've been banned as well but permanently and all Customer Support had told me was "We have evidence of our own, It's conclusive, goodbye" and after the supposed maximum of 2x appeals that were denied I had nothing else to do... ofc I didnt give up, I have a 15 year old account with so many characters, items you cant get anymore and memories that I will never ever give up.

And so even after over 500+ emails, 300+ tickets, 50+ web live chats and 2 phone calls they're still denying me service, actually actively banning my Battle.net accounts In order to discourage me from seeking help from them and do so on games I don't even play which is hilarious. I keep emailing them as that doesn't seem to be a banable offence In their eyes and still they keep silent. Can only hope now you keep emailing them at cs@blizzard.com and they'll respond to you with kind, all we can hope for now.

It shoudn't be possible for them to do this, but in reality they can just ban you at any time and don't even have to tell you why or further communicate with you It's their game, their rules and god knows I've tried for the past almost 5 years to talk to them, Id' be ready to pay big bucks for It too but they'd rather randomly ban loyal players for obscure reasons when they REALLY cant afford to loose players of any kind these days.

You haven't even kept your story straight here on MMO-Champ from your own posted threads about it

This one was posted 2015-08-05, 01:07 AM

I have a younger brother, 16 years old who played wow with me for a few years now, we share the account, he has his chars, I have mine... we both RP as well. Now, since about half through January 2015, he's been "Harassing" this person that he took a liking to but she rejected him over and over, but he persisted still. I even got warnings to my email, as the account's email was mine. So I screamed down at him about It, as It's a serious deal... however..Him being a stubborn and very attatched young dude, he kept at It. Mostly cause he accepted the risks of my account getting banned, It wasn't his right.. what was there to risk? >.< So within one month, half way through February 2015 he got his last warning, 5th warning (Or sixth? 5th I think). And I yelled SO much at him then... I was giving him a chance to control himself, but I should've taken access away from him really - because two or so months later, I get banned. (That's like 2-3 weeks ago now, 13th April or something). Reason? Harassment... apparently he spammed in trade, or did something else.. It was never specified as per usual.

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...y-account-back

This one you posted at 2015-08-09, 05:41 AM

From January 2015 to April 2015 I was away from the country, from the czech republic, working. I left my computer behind, with NO access to my WoW account or even the battle.net account. What I did not know was that my brother somehow had my password all along... so whenever I was away for weeks, (Or this rare time, 4 months) he was able to play on my chars and play without much restriction sadly.

Me working most days I didn't notice any such things, until I -noticed- the like 4 warning messages on my Battle.net account, when I decided to borrow a friend's laptop and check my email. I called up my family immediatly, 4 warnings are no joke and I've played WoW for 10 years back then, now almost 11 years. I called up our mother who told me my brother was indeed playing on my account, on my chair, on my PC, on wow... that's when I knew he had my password somehow. A week later I came back and smack talked him (Not smacked him just talked lol), since the call he wasn't on the PC at all. From then he admited he liked wow and he stole my password a year and a half ago, now 2 years ago to sometimes play on my chars, and me working most days I barely remember where I'd leave my chars off so It didn't cross my mind, right? Make sense.

Now It's the beginning of April, two weeks later I get an email about ACCOUNT CLOSURE, reason? Harassment... he was harassing a girl that "Dumped" him months and months ago, he was technically "Stalking" her Ingame, that's why he wanted to play so much... well he learnt his damn lesson now... he's 16 I remind you, young and idiotic, he loved this "Girl" or even Catfish, I didn't have the heart to give him that possibility. So after the ban came In, I obviously made an appeal, It got the standard answer "We checked, you're banned, bye" second ban appeal... was much quicker, within 2 minutes the same automated answer "You're banned, bye" and that's when I found Blizz services barbaric, that second GM barely investigated anything within 2 minutes...

I work in a hotel, I value my customer, your hotel IS the customer, without them - no hotel.

So I kept making ticket after ticket, explaining my situation in a calm, rational and logical fashion, explaining my situation. At first I tried to say "I did It, Im sorry.. won't happen again" obviously I wanted to not put the blame on my teen brother... cause.. family. He confessed It all after the account got banned. He even wrote an apologetic letter to the abused girl and she forgave him for It all.

Well 4 months later... I don't bloody care, It's his fault, he stole my account in some technical term, he abused my account, I gave him NO PRIOR INFORMATION ABOUT MY ACCOUNT... he somehow saw me type down the password very long ago and kept It for himself. Watched me how i logged in and played so he could copy me later.

When I was away for work for those 4 months, I COULD NOT PREVENT HIM FROM DOING ANYTHING... he was the purpotraitor of all this, he did It... and Blizzard, still won't unban me.

Better yet... after 160+ tickets, 20+ emails, 10+ live chats, 2+ phone calls... they reply to me today with this:

https://www.mmo-champion.com/threads...y-account-back

[Seranthor]

.

Anyone that paid attention to your 'saga' realised very quickly that your story changed as fast as a slot machine window. If your 15 year old account was that damn important to you then you probably should have thought about that when you started stalking that other player. (I fully encourage folks to check your history and make their own conclusion about the veracity of your story).