Warning: COD mail cannot be trusted since update 29 (ZOS says fixed now)

DragonRacer

EDIT: This was first discovered/posted here regarding PS4 NA, but since then we have had XBox EU and PC NA confirm this terrible glitch is happening to them as well.)


I have submitted a support ticket to ZOS on this, but post now to warn all this could affect.

COD mail CANNOT be trusted since Update 29.

I am the GM of The PTK's on PS4 NA. We hold a weekly Friday night auction in guild chat to serve as a guild trader fundraiser. I have conducted this fundraiser nearly every single week for the past 4-5 years, so I am clearly experienced in how to run an auction and how COD works.

I keep a spreadsheet on those nights and tally each winning lot. Formulas tell me how much to send each seller for their sold portion and how much overall the guild made to deposit into the bank. This has worked flawlessly for years and remains unchanged.

Sold lots are sent in two ways - the highest rank of officers are trust sent, so I send their won auction lot items and put in subject the gold owed. I mark the amount and their name on my sheet, then remove their name once they have sent me that gold. I can easily track trust sent mail that way, but sparingly because to do so for the entire guild would be A Bit Much.

For the majority of the guild, I send the winner their won items with the winning COD attached. I mark the amount in my sheet but not who, because in the past COD was a guaranteed thing - you send it and one of two things happens: 1) you get the mail with your gold attached or 2) they don't claim it and the item returns to you with their name on it, after which words and consequences can occur.

Last night, however, was a world of errors and our first auction since Tuesday's update. It started with what seemed to be phantom mail notifications - mail saying you have 1, 2, 3, 4 new mails, but you go to mail and nothing new is there. Two other guildmates experienced the same thing. Another received a trust sent winning auction mail from me and said 5 items were missing... but later, all items did appear in their inventory. I pull attachments off a seller's mail (sent before the update) and received some bizarre UI error box on my screen. Once I finally got past it, only one of the seller's six items showed in my inventory. Logging out and back in fixed it so all 6 were now in my inventory.

But the oddest part was the CODs. I had two separate guildmates whisper me asking why I had returned their COD money mail. I was extremely confused because I had not "returned to sender" any mail. I go into mail between every few lots, grab the COD or trust sent funds, mark trust sents as paid, delete mail to keep inbox open, and move on with auction.

I started with X amount of personal gold on my character. At end of night, I paid my sellers their portion and deposited the total guild fundraiser portion into the guild bank. This left my personal funds almost 1 million short of where I had started. Seemed a bit unusual, but I figured I'd get the remaining COD mails overnight and be whole by morning.

I get up this morning to no more COD mails. Still 1 million short personally. Triple checked my spreadsheet and formulas - no errors. Then a third guildmate messaged me asking why I had returned their auction gold.

The only conclusion I can draw is that some CODs are literally not making it back to the sender - they are either disappearing into a black hole or being auto-returned to the recipient, so that they get both the items and their own gold back. I am extremely fortunate in that I have a very trustworthy guild, so I posted in our Discord what happened and those who had gotten a returned mail of money sent me that money back... which added up to my missing 1 million gold.

DO NOT TRUST COD MAIL POST-UPDATE 29. I see no one talking about this, but this is an absolute issue. After I described my experience to the guild, another person told me they had COD'd something to someone, got a mail notification but never received the mail, and never got their money. They put in a support ticket to ZOS, who was able to confirm the COD money never hit their inbox and refunded them the gold they were owed.

Ironically enough, trust sends are the only real trusted way to send items/gold exchanges right now on PS4 NA. Sending COD is risking never seeing that money come back to you as it should.

You have been warned. Would be nice if ZOS can comment on this.

spartaxoxo

I can confirm this to be true. I have someone in my trade guild who entered into a trade arrangement with me. I won't bore you with the details, but the end result is that I occasionally receive mails that are COD from this person containing small quantities of housing mats.

Today I received a shipment of ochre as per usual. And I took the ochre for the agreed upon price. Then I got a mail returned notice and the coin I had just sent him back. Confused, I messaged him asking why he returned the coin. He had not. I resolved it by trust sending some coin. But it's very annoying.

PS4 NA

FluffWit

Got very confused this morning clearing my mail when I saw the 50k I paid someone for something bounce back. Had it happen at least two other times too.

Y'all need to get this fixed ASAP, you're going to get flooded with tickets.

trackdemon5512

Confirmed. Earlier today I received a mail with a 200k COD. I paid said COD l, took my item and used it. A few minutes later I received my COD back. 200k gold returned to me with a look as if the mail was declined. Not sure what exactly is going on but afterwards I went to direct trades only. No need to screw people over.

FluffWit

I'm very honest so I try and make sure people get paid too.

My concern is how are they going to fix this? Are they going to take another 200k off you and 50k off me since we got the COD money back?

Or are they gonna give the guy who lost the 200k on the COD his money so he ends up getting paid twice? Theres really potential for people to use this to do shady stuff like mailing their buddy stuff just so they can send a ticket demanding gold.

Like I said it needs to be fixed ASAP.

DragonRacer

Well, glad I am not losing my mind, then. But also incredibly not glad that we cannot trust COD.

FluffWit

Just had another 24 grand bounce back to me.

In the last 2 days I've used COD maybe 6 times. At least 3 the gold has bounced back to the sender. It seems to take 12-18 hours for the gold to bounce back, I'm guessing it's kinda getting lost in the system them returned as undeliverable.

We now have people pretty much scamming in zone chat- WTB spamming with very reasonable prices because they know theres a very good chance they'll end up getting whatever they buy for free.

trackdemon5512

I would like to add to this that there is a display glitch that comes about from opening certain mails with attachments like Rewards of the Worth. Unlike the above mentioned glitch it will prevent you from seeing anything you loot unless your reload the UI manually via command.

virtus753

The COD bug is happening on PC-NA too. I had a guildmember report it to me today.

tsaescishoeshiner

I've definitely had it on PC-NA. About a week ago, I had a mail notification with no new mail for a day til it went away.

Someone I sent a CoD mail to told me they got some kind of mail sent error when they sent the CoD payment money but they had been able to accept the item anyway. Luckily, they sent me gold in a separate mail because they saw something was up, but people shouldn't be able to get items from CoD and have their payment returned.

Slyclone

Unacceptable.

Auberon1983

Yes, happening here too. PS4/NA. Reloadui and porting around does not fix. Recipient also has not received the item yet.

markulrich1966

video (xbox EU):

350k furnishing plan taken from mail not visibe in inventory - luckily a re-login fixed it.

But something actually certainly is wrong, also saw discussions in zonechat today.

https://youtu.be/AUT1s6KmrrA?t=22

FluffWit

Auberon1983 wrote: »

Yes, happening here too. PS4/NA. Reloadui and porting around does not fix. Recipient also has not received the item yet.

Like I said I've seen it take like 18 hours to bounce the gold back.

So if you don't get the gold right away and they say they accepted don't just assume the gold bounced straight back to them. It's probably still floating around in the system.

Starlight_Whisper

Yeah... Can confirm same thing is happening pc na it seems. I cod something and never got gold

Mayrael

@ZOS_GinaBruno

This really needs hotfix ASAP.

Caligamy_ESO

Wow.. okay I thought it was just me or a fluke or something but the same thing happened here. I bought some items from someone in the zone chat, got their COD mail and accepted the payment. A couple of minutes later I noticed I had a mail so I looked and it said returned to sender, with the gold I had paid for the items which were still in my inventory.

I tried to contact the person who sold me the items but it kept saying character name doesn't exist, so I looked at their @name and that didn't seem to be recognized as an existing account either.

DragonRacer

A separate issue but to add to the confusion - the bizarre error message screen when taking some mail attachments. The first time it happened to me was taking attachments off a mail that had been sent to me prior to the update, so I assumed the problem was related to that in-between kinda timeframe.

Not the case.

A friend mailed me a bunch of blue furniture plans to stick in the guild bank for our next auction. Every. Single. One. Of the not-small number of mails went through this error. I'll try and post a screenshot up, but you take attachments (normal mail, no COD on it) and some error box pops up with scripting language gobbledy-***. I have to hit X to dismiss several times before the box finally goes away. After which, you see the first attachment in your inventory, but none of the others (though your inventory space number shows the right amount).

The ONLY way to then make those phantom items in your inventory that are there but can't be seen is to re-log. You can't force them to show with a reloadui command in the chat box. You can't force them to show by changing maps, like leaving/re-entering a house you own or an Outlaw Refuge (I tried both). You literally have to log out of your character, then back in to your character and now, magically, you can see all 6 attachments you took instead of just one.

DragonRacer

Another thing that is making this glitch absolutely AWFUL @ZOS_GinaBruno is that I am hearing on some Discords that some folks have seen others trying to take advantage of this glitch in zone chat by offering to buy items at reasonable-sounding prices, in the hopes that when they take the attachments on the COD mail that they also might get their COD money back. It's a gamble, but they have a high chance of winning because of the CODs I sent out on auction night, it seems that at least 25 to almost 50% of them experienced this glitch.

It's not a small number of incidents. It's... well, not to overuse a current term, but it's a pandemic of it.

I shudder to think how many people are about to be fleeced even worse by the "I buy all, COD all" low-ballers in zone chat who want to get all your corn flower for 50g and rosin for 3k and things like that. Now besides some poor saps CODing their craft bag to these folks hoping for quick cash... now they stand a good chance of losing both their items AND their gold if and when the COD glitch hits them and the low-ballers get their COD money auto-returned to them.

It's also causing confusion and mistrust in the community. I saw yesterday someone in another guild say that a seller told them they never got the gold and that guildmate thought the person was scamming them. And before what I experienced on auction night, I would've likely thought the same. I had to explain that most likely the person wasn't scamming them and never got their money because of this bug.

I realize this doesn't break the entire game from functioning, but this has GOT to be up there on the list of very, very bad crisis-level bugs. Like, higher even than the blank roster bug that doesn't allow GMs to clear inactives because you have no idea when someone logged in last, which is also an awful bug but at least doesn't affect people's virtual money.

DragonRacer

Also, just FYI that now it looks like support will NOT help you get the COD money you were owed and never received. This is the excuse I just got on my support ticket:



I am very grateful to my honest guildmates who sent me what I was owed so that I wouldn't be out 1 million gold with zero recourse to retrieve it thanks to this bug.

linuxlady

Someone with the last name dejoy hired to handle the in game mail i guess?

DMuehlhausen

I can confirm this as well.

Bought 3 motifs of somebody for 100k. Grabbed the mail, paid the gold. Got up and left for a couple hours. Came back and 31 minutes prior I received a mail with 100k gold saying it was returned by sender.

BlueRaven

Unbelievable.

Zos is a major company and this game is not empty of players, yet I often get the feeling there is about five full time staff working on this game.

markulrich1966

also got this error yesterday deleting a mail, I think the first time ever.

No idea why, but something is wrong obviously.

DragonRacer

markulrich1966 wrote: »

also got this error yesterday deleting a mail, I think the first time ever.

No idea why, but something is wrong obviously.

That's the error screen I am intermittently getting when pulling attachments from some non-COD mails. I have found no rhyme or reason as to which mails that happens to and which it doesn't. When that happens, you have to fully log out of your character and back in again to make all attachments show in your inventory.

Onigar

I now understand what i saw in guild chat about a COD mail scam where some players were mailing others and asking to buy things COD. I assume with the intention of paying the COD and then waiting for their mail containing the COD payment to be returned to them.

I wil certainly not be using COD until this is fixed.

DragonRacer

I would not generally bump threads, but this is a pretty bad bug that people need to be aware of and that hopefully ZOS acknowledges at some point.

And hopefully better than the absolutely abysmal and somewhat insulting response I ultimately received from customer support.

Pauwer

Ok, that response you got from the customer service is pretty bad tbh. Yeah, i feel sorry for you for that reply, honestly. I have never myself used the cod system, but this definitely sounds like a real issue that needs fixing asap.

Oreyn_Bearclaw

That response from ZOS was outrageous. This needs pinned to the top of the forums if todays patch didnt fix it, and to be candid, they should just disable COD in the meantime across all servers/platforms.

There are very few bugs that are legitimately game-breaking, but this absolutely rises to that level.

Varana

Can we get at least an acknowledgment for this?

DragonRacer

I had a post previously in here that is here no more, so the thread has definitely been seen.

Not really the acknowledgment I had hoped for, but it is what it is, I guess.