Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

[HairdewX]

Such as accounts being deleted after 3 months of inactivity?

Accounts being de-activated for less than 2-3 hours of use a week?

Having to buy a totally new copy of the game and expansions if you delete you POL account?

People not being able to cancel because they have forgotten their POL pw, and SE will not work with them to get a new one or retrieve it...

[ItazuraNhomango]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

This question is inflammatory, and really shouldn't be put to S-E. At least not in its current form.

For example, if you delete your account, why would you expect to get it back intact? You wouldn't expect deleting a file on YOUR computer to result in easy retrieval of the file 3 months later, why expect it from S-E? lol. That many people are able to reactivate after deletion is good sign S-E cared about its one time (and thus possibly future again) customers.

Maybe something like "In S-E's view, what are the past and current shortcomings of its customer service for FFXI, and how does S-E plan to address them?" would be better.

Move to strike!

* * *
/rant on

Not that S-E is reading these questions.

I don't care what they've claimed, there's simply no proof anyone relevant in S-E pay attention to this forum--there's no decision maker who reads this section. (Prove me wrong, S-E!)

At best, some low level employee browse this site, sends a weekly report or something, which may or may not be translated to Japanese, and then it disappears into the corporate black hole.

Months after supposedly promising they'd respond to our concerns (as hand picked by this site's moderators/admins), there is a grand total of ZERO feedback.

Hope is dead, on my end.

At least they seem to pay attention to JP players (nice, festive 5th anniversary activities planned for them)--here's hoping our fellow JP players share many of same concerns as we do, cause it sure doesn't look like the Dev's/producers/whatnot has a close eye on us non-JP players.

* * *

It's not that I believe S-E doesn't care out its non-Japanese customers, it's just that they not handling communication with us the way we want them to.

They do gather data on us, but it seems pretty obvious the dev side is completely oblivious to our need for their timely, issue specific responses. (Yes, we need to be babied. We're needy and whiny, but we are paying customers, and our demands are not unreasonable in our views.)

This leave their PR/customer service people to continue to spin tales and lie (ok, "misrepresent") to us about how much they understand their non-JP customers.

/rant off

[Feba]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Ok, first of all, WRONG FORUM for this.
Secondly;

Such as accounts being deleted after 3 months of inactivity?

Almost always, no, although SE clearly states that accounts will be deleted after 3 months of deactivation, so I don't see how this is 'horrible customer service' even if they DIDN'T keep it longer than they promise to.

Accounts being de-activated for less than 2-3 hours of use a week?

Of course not. This is not only incredibly untrue, but rather silly if you put a moment's thought into it.

Having to buy a totally new copy of the game and expansions if you delete you POL account?

Yes, what, are you expecting SE to hold on to something YOU DELETED even if you had NO REASON TO DELETE IT?

People not being able to cancel because they have forgotten their POL pw, and SE will not work with them to get a new one or retrieve it...

Yes. Would YOU want SE handing out your account information to random people calling them? Anyone can cancel their POL account by contacting their credit card company, it's not SE's place to decide who should access your account and who shouldn't.

And at Ita's rant, I thought it was pretty clear that the administrators for the site get to select posts and submit them to the dev team, not that SE reads them directly. I know for a bit there was an SE employee at Allakhazam, with disastrous results, mainly the BST "fix" that everyone seems to loathe.

[HairdewX]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

This question is inflammatory, and really shouldn't be put to S-E. At least not in its current form.

For example, if you delete your account, why would you expect to get it back intact? You wouldn't expect deleting a file on YOUR computer to result in easy retrieval of the file 3 months later, why expect it from S-E? lol. That many people are able to reactivate after deletion is good sign S-E cared about its one time (and thus possibly future again) customers.

Maybe something like "In S-E's view, what are the past and current shortcomings of its customer service for FFXI, and how does S-E plan to address them?" would be better.

Move to strike!

I'm not meanign this to be a flame thread, but the stories people are telling me are terrible and don't seem to make sense...

I have back-ups of information, so retrieving a deleted file wouldn't be hard. Hell, I have back-ups dating years and years ago.

Most other MMO's will keep your information longer than 3 months, especially since they know people tend to take breaks, but come back many times later on. Having to buy new copies of the game, having to make a new POL account is a deterrent for many returning players...

Of course not. This is not only incredibly untrue, but rather silly if you put a moment's thought into it.

That's what I have actually read in a few forums, so I didn't know if it was true or not.

Yes, what, are you expecting SE to hold on to something YOU DELETED even if you had NO REASON TO DELETE IT?

Sometimes people need take a break from a game... If I ever take a break (3 months isn't that long at all), and want to come back, if I had to buy a completely new copy of the game and reinstall with new registration codes and a new POL account, I would be less inclined to come back...

Yes. Would YOU want SE handing out your account information to random people calling them? Anyone can cancel their POL account by contacting their credit card company, it's not SE's place to decide who should access your account and who shouldn't.

First off, why should a person have to contact their credit card company to cancel an account? Second, if somone has the correct information, why should they NOT work with you? Hell, my BANK isn't even that strict...

[Feba]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Sometimes people need take a break from a game... If I ever take a break (3 months isn't that long at all), and want to come back, if I had to buy a completely new copy of the game and reinstall with new registration codes and a new POL account, I would be less inclined to come back...

There is NO REASON to EVER delete a POL account, except to keep yourself from coming back. It's your own damn fault.

First off, why should a person have to contact their credit card company to cancel an account? Second, if somone has the correct information, why should they NOT work with you?

Because it's a helluva lot easier to have the blame on a credit card company than on SE- because if the blame is on SE, people will bitch about not having their accounts restored, etc.

[Jei]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Such as accounts being deleted after 3 months of inactivity?
Accounts being de-activated for less than 2-3 hours of use a week?

Not true. Inactivity doesn't cause deletion. As long as you're paying for it.

If you *cancel* your account, SE only guarantees you 3 months that your character will be stored. But lots of characters still remain after years of cancellation

Having to buy a totally new copy of the game and expansions if you delete you POL account?

There are 2 parts of your account.

1. POL account is totally free. Give you access to playonline viewer. You have no reason to cancel this.
2. Content ID. This is the part you have to pay for monthly. It's tied to POL account, but it's activate/cancelled seperately from POL. So, when people take a break, they only need to cancel this thing. Not POL.

If you cancel your content ID, you can reactivate it at anytime you want.
POL, I don't know what'll happen if you cancel it. I never cancelled mine nor heard of anyone who do so.

This system is pretty meh. I don't really like it.
But think of it this way... POL account is like your login account to the game's website, totally free. You log into the website to manage your payment inside = content ID. So there's no real reason to delete your account from the website. And if you do so, you'll have to register a new one. No way around, sorry.

People not being able to cancel because they have forgotten their POL pw, and SE will not work with them to get a new one or retrieve it...

Not entirely true. While there are cases they may not help, just like any customer service that holds your personal information, they will ask you to provide them your information to verify that you are the real owner of the account. Once verified, they'll help.

Cases they might not help, like, if another person go in and change the account holder's name/address/payment method. Then the service will not be able to verify you.

I had some bad experience myself. But that's another point. Some silly things you know, like, I verify all my information correctly, including my address, credit card, names, etc etc. But because I moved to a new room in my own apartment before, my registered room number didn't match. And that alone made the rep not telling me anything about my account.

Pretty stupid, if you ask me.

But well, they'll help if you verify everything correctly. It's just, they're not very flexible. At all.

[Omniblast]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Ok, since we are discussing about cancellation here, what are the proper steps with screen shots on how to cancel an account without deleting it? meaning if I wanted to stop payment to SE, but keep my account for 3 months, how would I go about doing that?

Also when do they count when it starts? Let's say I cancel now, then I want to pay the game again, when can I re-initialize my account at the last moment without having my account information deleted and my character wiped?

I've never stopped paying SE ever since Oct 2003. Damn they made $558.57 from me! I could have bought myself a ps3! (ok not really, maybe a few months later...)

[Jei]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Go into Content ID and choose deactivate/cancel/whatever.

I still haven't figured out how to cancel POL after all these years.

[HairdewX]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Thanks Jei for the helpful info. I'm not planning on cancelling anytime soon, but it helps to know this information when that time eventually comes to take a break

There is NO REASON to EVER delete a POL account, except to keep yourself from coming back. It's your own damn fault.

It's quite confusing. I wasn't aware that POL accounts and content ID's were seperate. SE does not do a good job in making its users aware of this. Thanks for your help.

Because it's a helluva lot easier to have the blame on a credit card company than on SE- because if the blame is on SE, people will bitch about not having their accounts restored, etc.

I would have to strongly disagree on this point. Easier, yes, but not a good idea to have as well.

Cancelling ANY account through your credit card company can lead to accounts not being paid, causing them to go into collection and eventually having large negative effects on a person's credit score.

As a financially responsible person, there is no way I am going to cancel any account by stopping payments through my credit card company. If a company keeps charging me unwillingly and unnecessarily, well I guess that's why I pay my lawyer to do his job

[HairdewX]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Ok, since we are discussing about cancellation here, what are the proper steps with screen shots on how to cancel an account without deleting it? meaning if I wanted to stop payment to SE, but keep my account for 3 months, how would I go about doing that?

I would suppose you should cancel the Content ID to stop payments, but it looks like you would have to reactivate it within 3 months in order to prevent it from being deleted.

[NicasinXS]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Ok, since we are discussing about cancellation here, what are the proper steps with screen shots on how to cancel an account without deleting it? meaning if I wanted to stop payment to SE, but keep my account for 3 months, how would I go about doing that?
Also when do they count when it starts? Let's say I cancel now, then I want to pay the game again, when can I re-initialize my account at the last moment without having my account information deleted and my character wiped?
I've never stopped paying SE ever since Oct 2003. Damn they made $558.57 from me! I could have bought myself a ps3! (ok not really, maybe a few months later...)

There's a few ways to go about this. The way I prefer when I stop playing for whatever period of time is to call the customer service phone number listed at the playonline website and ask them to stop payment of the next scheduled payment from the credit card. The next time the credit card is scheduled to be charged it wont and I will have no access to the game from that point. I think you have to reactivate your content IDs when you return if you do so this way.
If a content ID is deactivated I think that will have the same affect im not sure but I think so. It's probably better just to call because you will still have access to your game until right when the next payment is scheduled if you want that. Last time I stopped playing was for about 5 months and everything was still there and fine when I started back up. No reason to delete anything unless you think you're quiting.

[Grizzlebeard]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

I'll be honest, my dealings with NA S-E Customer Support has left me wanting to pull the plug on everyone of those drooling idiots.

Brief background, my original account was NA version which I'd been playing since October 2003. I deleted my characters mid April 2006 and the account expired 30th April. I recently purchased the EU version of the game and made a new guy and started playing him from scratch, a mixture of fun and frustration, true S-E style. Anyway, some friends asked me why I hadn't tried to get my original guy back as the deletion period now lasts up to 12 months. Seemed like a good idea so I began my saga of stupidity with NA CS.

First guy I spoke to was really helpful, he said he could see my characters, my main and my mule, and that they could be restored. However, I needed an active account to do this. Fair enough, I told him I'd go and amend my billing details then call back. This is where I discovered that whilst I could log in on an NA account with my EU POL I couldn't amend billing details. I again rang back up and explained I had an active EU billing account and was it possible to use this with the NA characters. No go, basically I had to get NA POL to change the billing details and set up a payment method on the NA account. So, I eventually tracked down a set of NA POL disks and then log in and activate my NA account. I then go back on the phone to S-E CS and explain the account is activated and the content ID the main was on is also active and empty. Three weeks pass and I receive four seperate replies to four subsequent character restoration requests each telling me it is not possible to retrieve the character. So, after about $80 in international phone calls, a paid NA account for one month, dozens of account questions detailing my character's jobs, levels, etc. S-E finally turn round and tell me the fucknut who originally told me the character was there and could be restored had given me incorrect information and they apologised for any incovenience I may have encountered. "Is there anything else we can help you with today?"

At around that point a vein burst in the side of my head.

I appreciate this post probably comes across full of vitriol but S-E CS really need to get their act together because things like this really portray their company in a poor light.

[Feba]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Grizzlebeard, you live in europe. You should know by now that the entertainment industry gets nothing but pleasure from you (mainly, your suffering).

My advice? Buy a fortwo or a C1 and rub it in my face.

[Taskmage]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Thread moved. If I understand right, this is really a question you want to ask your peers and other players, not the SE devs.

Anyway, it looks to me like Feba and Jei adequately answered your questions, one somewhat more politely than the other. >.>

To Itazura, Feba is pretty much right about the nature of the forum. There are probably at least a couple community relations-type people that poke their head in here now and then, but mostly the developers get these questions by the mods and admins picking some to forward to them. Though, given the amount of time it's been since we sent them our first batch of questions, I wouldn't call your pessimism unwarranted either ...

[Feba]

Re: Are the SE customer sevice horror stories true?

Yeah, it's more fun to read posts when the person is being rude though.