Customer Service - bitter experience

Elana

About a week, maybe a little more than that, a friend of mine from the game whispered me to say goodbye. He told me his account had been hacked so he's leaving the game. When I asked him if ZOS couldn't help, he said no. I was suprised and doubtful but didn't press the matter. Sadly, a few days ago, my doubt was dispersed by ZOS themselves.

Few days ago, my husband made a character on his account, looking almost like his main character, to see if he can improve their looks before using the appearance change token. In the evening, after he came back from work, he wanted to delete the new character but in his tiredness he missclicked and deleted his main instead. The fact that the deletion confirmation does not ask you to type in the name of the toon you want to delete just the word itself does not prevent you from mistake like this.

He instantly contacted the Support and was informed that they cannot bring back characters to accounts who already have 8 or more of them due to buying additional slots. He had 11 at the time, so he needed to delete 4 to get below the limit. It was impossible to do so straight away, due to deletion limit. He asked them to help with that, to grant him two additional deletes so he can do it and get his main back. They refused. So two days later, when he managed to finally remove enough alts, he mailed ZOS again only to be informed they cannot bring the character back. As you can imagine, he wrote again, explaining that this was the character with all his achievements, motifs, research, designs, ap... and so on and that it really matters to him, just to receive a generic answer to be more careful in the future. "Sorry for the inconvenience".

I still feel abashed and chagrined by how indifferent ZOS turned out to be.

I do not believe there is no trace left of the deleted toon. Even if it is impossible to bring it back by some automated process, it surely would be possible manually with a little work from gamemaster/admin/support person.
Neither my husband nor I can help feeling that if only they did not make us wait two more days, but allowed him two additional deletes, or even deleted two indicated chars themselves, it could have been avoided.

My husband's main was far from being a master crafter or from having BiS gear but still there was a lot of time, work and love put into the character. All the quests, skill points, achievements...

Needless to say, he left the game. I've began "reconstructing" the character for him but I feel intimidated and daunted by the amount of work it will take on my own, not to mention I feel very torn between love for TES and reluctance to support ZOS any longer.

I'm writing this post as a way to vent my frustration and to express how disappointed I am. Also, as a warning for everyone: double and triple-check before you make an irreversible decision in ESO and do not make them when tired...
Yes, the initial fault was my husband's, a genuine mistake and a lesson we both took to heart, but bringing deleted characters/items back to unfortunate players is a day-to-day work for every game developer/publisher, I would think.

- @Lijka

Catnight

Elana wrote: »

Yes, the initial fault was my husband's, a genuine mistake and a lesson we both took to heart, but bringing deleted characters/items back to unfortunate players is a day-to-day work for every game developer/publisher, I would think.

In some MMOs, if your character is deleted, all the data is deleted completely. Here it seems completely random when a char can be restored or not. Maybe because the base char limit was exceeded (altrough I wonder why extra slots don't count to the limit), the system deleted it completely.
They should make it that deleting a chara completely should take a certain amount of time until its deleted, depending on the char level.

Sigtric

From what I know of this, if you made a new character with the same exact name as the deleted one, your chances are very slim that the data remains. He should keep up pressure on support though because they most certainly can try to restore a deleted toon.

Elana

Sigtric wrote: »

From what I know of this, if you made a new character with the same exact name as the deleted one, your chances are very slim that the data remains. He should keep up pressure on support though because they most certainly can try to restore a deleted toon.

He didn't. We were very careful of that. In fact, we didn't do anything with the account except pulling stuff out of the bank, since the Support did warn us that items in bank may be lost.

Catnight wrote: »

In some MMOs, if your character is deleted, all the data is deleted completely. Here it seems completely random when a char can be restored or not. Maybe because the base char limit was exceeded (altrough I wonder why extra slots don't count to the limit), the system deleted it completely.
They should make it that deleting a chara completely should take a certain amount of time until its deleted, depending on the char level.

On the other hand, there are MMOs that allow you to recover your deleted chars on your own. Anyway, whatever the procedure in ESO is, it seems very convoluted. I mean the possibility of loosing banked items and limit of 7 chars, despite being able to buy additional slots is suprising to say the least.

I'm no programmer but I think the first step to improving the system would be to change required confirmation into typing the character's name. It wouldn't solve all the problems but some mistakes like my husband's would have been avoided.

JasonSilverSpring

I would ask for the ticket to be escalated to a higher tier of support. Be very polite and ask for it to be escalated.

I do like the suggestion of having to type the character name to confirm deletion.

Turelus

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

I would ask for the ticket to be escalated to a higher tier of support. Be very polite and ask for it to be escalated.

I do like the suggestion of having to type the character name to confirm deletion.

Agreed with this.

Try asking for an escalation or posting in the issues forums here with the ticket number to see if a ZOS employee can take a look for you.

Character name deletion might be a small little change worth them doing. Hopefully a Dev sees this and picks up on it.

Enodoc

Turelus wrote: »

JasonSilverSpring wrote: »

I would ask for the ticket to be escalated to a higher tier of support. Be very polite and ask for it to be escalated.

I do like the suggestion of having to type the character name to confirm deletion.

Agreed with this.

Try asking for an escalation or posting in the issues forums here with the ticket number to see if a ZOS employee can take a look for you.

Character name deletion might be a small little change worth them doing. Hopefully a Dev sees this and picks up on it.

Also agreed. ZOS have definitely restored deleted characters before so I'm not even sure what they're complaining about now. We can try asking @ZOS_DaryaK to see if the ticket can be escalated in the right direction.

CaptainBeerDude

Maybe you could ask for extenuating circumstances requiring further support. Maybe they might help out with xp pots and loading the toon with some motifs.

Elana

I am pleased to say, that after we indeed escalate the ticket, we got much more understanding response. My husband did not get the character back but he did get reimbursement in form of gold and crowns. It will not replace all the time and effort put in the character but it is enough to keep our faith in ZOS and keep playing the game.

We've certainly learned our lesson and the manager who responded promised to pass the feedback about deletion system higher up, as well as asked my husband to send an e-mail about it as well, so we're optimistic about that.

Thank you for your responses and interest.

- Lijka

JasonSilverSpring

Elana wrote: »

I am pleased to say, that after we indeed escalate the ticket, we got much more understanding response. My husband did not get the character back but he did get reimbursement in form of gold and crowns. It will not replace all the time and effort put in the character but it is enough to keep our faith in ZOS and keep playing the game.

We've certainly learned our lesson and the manager who responded promised to pass the feedback about deletion system higher up, as well as asked my husband to send an e-mail about it as well, so we're optimistic about that.

Thank you for your responses and interest.

- Lijka

Thank you for posting the follow up. Customer Service can be a brutal job; I have been there. But, I firmly believe ZOS cares about customer satisfaction. It just sometimes takes escalation to get to someone that really is willing (and empowered) to help.

Glad you both are staying in the game.

xRIVALENx

ZOS should have a backup of their database with character information. Even if the character is deleted from the live environment they should be able to restore unless they have some very poor database administration going on. Make sure your ticket gets escalated.

Caligulove

Poor database administration, and poor administration in general, is commonplace. I work in the insurance industry, helping brokers and insurers with their computer issues. You'd be shocked at the sorry state of the systems of massive insurance companies, and the people who run them.