PlayOnline's terrible customer support

[Allowei]

If you play FFXI you might want to check this out, it's an article I wrote about what happened while trying to do the character recovery. I'm sure there are other people out there who had similar experiences.

Full article here: PlayOnline’s so called “Customer Support” | chocolatelemon

Few excerpts in case you're interested, or don't wanna read the full article.

"Here’s the story, recently my boyfriend had to use their Character Recovery service, that rolls your character back if there is a problem in game. He logged on to find 8 million gil missing off his account."

"Resent information, called back a few days later, they lost the e-mail it had been sent from. Again, no contact."

"Gave them considerable time, called back again. Apparently the report had been sent back to the NA division but they couldn’t translate it properly so they just let it sit there for a week"

"Finally a month and a half later he got his conformation e-mail that said they had finished the recovery… and failed it. He called to find out why."

"The next day he received an official C&D to not call again. There was no punishment for the person who stole the gil."

Anyone else out there had a really bad experience with POL?

[Nattack]

with the LM-17 for credit card chargebacks, which was a bullshit move, I had used webchat support several times waiting up to 2 and a half hours (which isnt the highest) for some gd service.

but their phone support isnt half bad. i got in, guy was friendly, got the job done. and spoke with a north american accent, shockingly (not even the company I worked for did that)



but no, SE does not have the worst support line.

that awards reserved for HP (got a problem with out hardware with planned death? send us money for a new one)
and comcast (I dont know anything I'm just here to talk to you and make you feel better, please hold while i transfer you.)

[Jesifromgaruda]

Jesi's Guide to Avoiding SE's Customer Service:

1. Pay 10 dollars for a security token.

2. Don't unlink it because you are too lazy to spend 5 seconds typing it in.

The End.

Complaining about getting your stuff stolen from your account is so 2 months ago.

[Falisa]

I thought it was common knowledge that they have really terrible customer support. No shock here whatsoever.

[Allowei]

Jesi's Guide to Avoiding SE's Customer Service:

1. Pay 10 dollars for a security token.

2. Don't unlink it because you are too lazy to spend 5 seconds typing it in.

The End.

Complaining about getting your stuff stolen from your account is so 2 months ago.

Yeah I'm sure that extra $10 from every player would make them a nice amount of money. Not to mention that WotG was only around 600MB* for a full price expansion. Ripping people doesn't make up for bad service. I'm not saying it's a bad solution, it's just annoying they do these things.

[Jesifromgaruda]

SE knows they have terrible customer service.

Everyone bitches about them.

Plus the sheer number of people who have their stuff stolen by friends/family/RMT that were calling in trying to get their accounts rollback is staggering.

So SE said screw it, we'll make this in game item that is so rediculous no one can pass it up that comes with a security token to stop all of these things from happening.

But not to be mean, but it sounds like a personal friend of your BFs ripped him off and if you give your character info to anyone and they do this to you they can't do anything about it.

Plus if they rollbacked everyone w/o question you would just give your 8 mil to someone, scream rape, rollback your account and now you have 16 mil.

inb4 common argument, beating a dead horse, etc

[Mojo]

Final Fantasy XI has a playerbase of around 500,000 people. Out of those players, how many do you think call PlayOnline at least once a year with some kind of question or problem to report? Out of those, how many do you think are indirectly responsible for their problems due to some form of negligence or carelessness? It seems like another case of misguided entitlement to me, nobody but you is responsible for the safety and integrity of your character. Buy a security token and quit bitching about shit getting stolen.

[CrosisX]

I agree with what most are saying....buy a token and quit QQing about you shit being stolen

[Pyree]

Yeah I'm sure that extra $10 from every player would make them a nice amount of money. Not to mention that WotG was only around 600KB for a full price expansion. Ripping people doesn't make up for bad service. I'm not saying it's a bad solution, it's just annoying they do these things.

This post is misinforming on many accounts, and also completely off-topic.

First, the $10 from token sales probably made them little or no money directly. When you subtract the cost of materials, cost of development, and shipping, I would be surprised to see them turning any profit on the token sales. Where they would profit more would be if people use them and they aren't flooded with as many reports of stolen accounts. Fewer accounts to research means less time spent overall means money saved.

Also, WOTG is far larger than 600KB. Just go take a look at the size of your ROM5 folder, it's 490MB for me. That folder is exclusively WOTG content, although not all of it. Also keep in mind that WOTG is the expansion that is still in production. It is not finished yet, so why would you treat it like it is? That's like setting up a bank account and complaining a day later that you don't have the entire year's worth of interest.

But yes, SE has terrible customer support. That's not news.

[Nattack]

i reiterate, ffxi does not have the worst techs out there.

it is horrible, and among the worst, but there are far worse.

its like the difference between a bell pepper, a habanero pepper, and a naga jolokia.

theres a huge difference! at least you arent paying them for each time you call support

[Viena]

Jesi's Guide to Avoiding SE's Customer Service:

1. Pay 10 dollars for a security token.

I did step 1 almost 3 months ago now, but I have yet to see a token or an useful answer from SE's customer service.

[Mayareira]

Yeah, SE has a terrible customer service. In the past, I had to deal with them 3 times for somewhat minor issues like reactivating from a different region, etc.

Each time, I had to wait on phone for at least 40-50~ mins. Heck, 2-3 years ago I literally had to wait 2 hours on live chat and an hour on phone, which really, really sucked.

I am not blaming the representatives though, most of the time, at least EU ones were helpful enough. One guy even compained about his work conditions, told me that he was basically the only person in the office at that time(no fucking wonder, I could hear phones ringing in the backgroud) :D

So yeah, at this stage security token is your best bet. They haven't improved their customer service for 7 years and I don't think they ever will...at least until FF14. Hopefully they'll handle things better next time around. Online gaming is MUCH more popular and accessiblee now, console players won't have to deal with expensive add-ons, etc....so I'm expecting FF14 to have a much larger playerbase than FF11.

Their current support simply won't cut it.

[xopher]

I've never had a problem with S-E support. I've had items stolen and returned promptly, characters restored promptly, and even accidentally dropped my soboro and they returned it the next day.

[Miraun]

During the LM17 salvage bans, they continued to charge us all for the 14 days we weren't allowed to play.

[Kipling]

During the LM17 salvage bans, they continued to charge us all for the 14 days we weren't allowed to play.

This is done with any ban. When my original character got banned on the 8th of April I still had to pay for the rest of it.

[ryskar]

I had to webchat three times and call twice for my account to get unbanned for the credit card thing. I'm hoping this time it'll be a little smoother. We'll see.

At any rate, more time to play some other vidya games. No big deal.

[Allowei]

@xopher: Lucky! I'm glad you've had a good experience.

@Maya: That makes me feel a bit bad... I still can't get over the fact that one insulted our relationship though. That's not even professional. One guy was pretty nice, so props to him.

@LM17 comments: Holy crap you had to pay when they *banned* you? What the... =|

@Viena: Man... all I can do is say that really sucks ><; Hope it is just taking its time in the mail.

[Mayareira]

Well check and see if your girlfriend has nicer gear than before.

Yeah, this is fucking unnacceptable and does nothing but to aggravate the issue further. Terrible way of handling the situation.

At least you guys lost the gil only, should be somewhat less bothersome than items.

I did step 1 almost 3 months ago now, but I have yet to see a token or an useful answer from SE's customer service.

Looks like they simply ran out of stock(judging from the "pause" in sales). Your token should, and hopefully get dispatched in a week or so, when they start accepting orders again.

[xopher]

During the LM17 salvage bans, they continued to charge us all for the 14 days we weren't allowed to play.

for how many months?

[Mayareira]

During the LM17 salvage bans, they continued to charge us all for the 14 days we weren't allowed to play.

Unlike WoW, SE's billing system charges you at the beginning of the month, for the whole month(they don't issue refunds if you cancel/quit/get banned). Even if you re-activate your ID's on the last day of the month, you get charged for the whole month. Sucks, but that's how it works.