I've never ever dealt with a company that was so completely hit and miss with their customer support. Out of the times I've had to deal with ZOS CS I'd say around 40% of the time it's been good, with the issue resolved satisfactorily relatively quickly. The rest of the time it's absolutely terrible.

A few days ago I was leveling Clothing on one of my characters by deconstructing a bunch of stuff from my bank. This character didn't have any gear in his bag, and no gear that was in my bank was anything other than decon trash.

I finished deconstructing everything that was in my bank, and stepped away from the clothing station to notice that my character suddenly isn't wearing his helmet. I opened up his inventory and, sure enough, it's gone. It was never selected to be deconstructed because it's impossible to select equipped items for deconstruction. When I went to the clothing station he was wearing it, when I left the clothing station it was gone. Clearly a bug.

So I sent an in-game CS ticket (as well as submitting an in-game bug report) explaining the situation in detail, including the exact specs of the item destroyed.

2 days after submitting the ticket I got the first response:

ZOS wrote:

Greetings,

Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited support team. We are excited that you’re enjoying the game and reaching out to us for assistance. Online multi-player games are very complex and we understand that you might need a little extra help with your adventuring in Tamriel.

For most in-game issues such missing NPCs or quests not advancing correctly, you can resolve them yourself by logging out for five minutes then logging back in. This will load you into a new game instance and refresh your surroundings. Please make sure you’ve attempted that first!

If you have a question about gameplay such as how certain items or character abilities work, we encourage you to check our official forums which are a great resource for in-game mechanics: http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en

There are also many wonderful unofficial community wikis which have a lot of helpful information about the game:

http://www.uesp.net/wiki/Main_Page
http://elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/The_Elder_Scrolls_Wiki
http://elderscrollsonline.wiki.fextralife.com/

Please also be sure to visit our help portal where you can search for common issues and subscribe to individual articles for any updates about that information: https://help.elderscrollsonline.com.

If you are still experiencing issues after investigating the above suggestion, please feel free to respond back to this email so that our support team can give you further assistance.

Best Regards,
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Team

Perfectly unhelpful. I've been playing this game since launch, I'm very familiar with those resources, and if I had any issue that I wasn't 100% sure needed an actual person to look at in order to resolve it, I would have gone to those places first to see if I can fix it myself. But it's a canned response right? Automatically sent out to cut down on the number of CS tickets that actual people have to deal with right? Nope, this was sent 2 days after I submitted the ticket, so it clearly isn't an automated reply. Clearly someone had to look at my ticket, decide not to bother reading it (because if they had bothered to read it they would have known that the canned reply would be completely unhelpful), and send a copy-paste reply in the hopes that I would go away and stop bothering them.

Immediately after receiving that I got an automated survey email to see how they did with their customer service. You can imagine how I answered that.

So I replied to the useless CS response insisting that somebody actually read my ticket and replace the item destroyed by a bug. The next day I got this response:

ZOS wrote:

Greetings and Salutations!

Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Team.

My name is Mia and I would be more than happy to answer any questions that you might have, Ben! We are unable to restore items that have been deconstructed and your understanding on this is appreciated.

If you would like to see a change in the way the system works, please send us your idea by typing /feedback into your chatbox. If there is anything else that we can look into for you, please respond back to this message and let us know. Your understanding on this is appreciated and I hope that you have a wonderful rest of your day!
Thank you for your continued interest and support!

Wishing you safe travels,
Mia The Bosmer Alchemist,
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Team

Also perfectly unhelpful. And also someone who clearly didn't bother to read the ticket I submitted, beyond seeing the word "deconstructed" in it. If they had read the ticket they would have seen that I have no interest in changing the way the system works. In the original ticket I submitted I explicitly said that if I had accidentally selected the wrong item to deconstruct then I wouldn't ask for it to be replaced, and that I was only submitting a ticket because I didn't select the item (and in fact I couldn't have selected the item even if I had wanted to), and yet due to a bug it was deconstructed anyway. I don't want the system changed - I want the system to work the way it's supposed to!

Naturally, by this point I'm pissed off with them. So I replied again, once again pointing out that the loss of the helmet was due to a bug, and that as a result I expected it to be replaced. I also pointed out that since clearly nobody had bothered to actually read my ticket up to this point, I wanted this escalated to a manager.

Here's the reply to that (this time I only had to wait a few hours for the reply instead of a day or two):

ZOS wrote:

Greetings!

Brian here from The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Team.

I'm very sorry for the frustration caused by this issue and I thank you for your understanding. Normally issues like this arise when an add-on that auto deconstructs or auto-sells items when at a vendor is installed. Unfortunately as previously mentioned we are unable to restore items that have been deconstructed and your understanding on this is appreciated.

In the meantime, we’d also recommend you keep an eye on our official Facebook, Twitter, and website for upcoming news about The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited, including release-date info. You’ll find those pages here:

https://www.facebook.com/ElderScrollsOnline
http://twitter.com/TESOnline
http://elderscrollsonline.com

You may also want to check out our official ESOTU FAQ, found here: http://www.elderscrollsonline.com/en/support

May the Eight bring you fortune and glory.

Warm regards,
Brian
The Elder Scrolls Online: Tamriel Unlimited Support Team
https://help.elderscrollsonline.com

Once again, perfectly unhelpful. I'd like to know exactly how keeping an eye on the official FB, Twitter, and website for upcoming news, or how checking out the official FAQ could possibly be helpful or relevant to the ticket I submitted.

So again I had to reply that this wasn't acceptable, and that this has to be escalated. Finally I got a response that per my request this was being sent up for review.

tl;dr version: ZOS Customer Support is shockingly bad again. If I screw up and destroy something I wanted to keep, that's on me. If a bug beyond my control destroys something I wanted to keep, that's on you ZOS. It shouldn't be this damn hard to get ZOS to step up and make people whole when their bugs screw things up. I was once a customer service manager for about 5 years - this isn't how you do things, and this isn't how you train your staff to handle things.

@ZOS_GinaBruno @ZOS_JessicaFolsom is there anyone you can pass this feedback on to? Changes seriously need to be made in ZOS CS.