ESO Customer Support needs improvement - 6 days with an unplayable main character - [Fixed!]

Locke_ESO · April 2014

The following is my communication with ESO English Support over the last 5 days concerning my main character being stuck with a permanent damage over time effect that repeatedly kills it unless I chain heal myself from the quest "A Walk in the Clouds" from The Rift zone. For those of you who don't know this DoT is supposed to replicate a freezing to death effect and the only way to stop it is to run between camp fire "safe zones" in the quest area. I know for certain it is this effect as whenever I go to a camp fire in the quest area the damage over time effect stops. The effect is most certainly supposed to end when the quest finishes or when you leave the quest area but for me it has not:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXbYBHTNYS0

I have tried absolutely everything possible that I can do to try and get rid of it. It persists across zones, through revisiting the area and through relogs. The quest has finished so it cannot be abandoned or restarted. The only way to get rid of it will be by an intervention on Zenimax's end. This however has been a problem.

Before I run through my communication with Zenimax's CS I just want to clarify what I want from this post. I am hoping that people will comment so that someone with influence in Zenimax see's this situation and I can finally get my character fixed and who knows maybe for them to do the decent thing and credit me some of the game time I have missed and refund the gold I have lost in repairs and gemstones due to this bug (2262g at this time). I also hope it may be a bit of a wake up call for them in terms of prioritizing their tickets for future customers and that they can work on some new processes.

I think the game has great potential but not with Customer Service as terribly inefficient as this. Certainly if this is not resolved soon there is 0% chance of them getting any more money from me even though I will be sad to leave such an enjoyable game. Please give this post the visibility it needs by commenting.

Day 1 -Saturday 19th April around 21:00 BST

This is the response I received after submitting my first ticket about this issue. I gave a fairly detailed description of what I thought was wrong and what the cause was:

Greetings *my name*,
Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Adventurers Support Guild.
The Fighters and Mage's guilds were both notified and a team of heros have been assembled to rescue you. They will transport you to a safe location after fighting their way through Oblivion in order to rescue you from the clutches of Molag Bal.
I hope that this will solve your query and you will continue to enjoy our game. If there is anything else we can do to assist you please do not hesitate to get in contact with us.
Farewell,
*ESO staff name*
Elder Scrolls Online Customer Support
Question Reference # 140419-092595
Status: Solved

All seems ok (apart from the spelling of "heroes" but I'm not a grammer/spelling policeman) and it sounds like this will be resolved fairly quickly as you would expect for an unplayable character issue. He's even listed the status as solved but maybe that's because it's been passed to someone who will immediately fix this issue.

Six hours later nothing has been done so I send them an e-mail with a video of the problem in the hope that it will make it clear how unplayable my character is:

Hi *ESO staff name*,

Thanks for your reply. Is there any sort of time frame available on when this might get looked at? It would be good to know if I should just give up any hope of getting to play that character today as 2 other players are waiting on me to continue the quests we are doing.

I have uploaded a video to show this issue in action:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wbag71m0K74

As you can no doubt see I really can't do anything with my main character until this is resolved. If there is anything that can be done to expedite getting this fixed it would be appreciated.

Kind regards,
*my name*

No reply of any kind to this email

Day 2 - Sunday 20th around 16:00 BST

I've waited most of the day to play with a friend as we have been leveling together through the VR zones. He's getting as impatient as me. This is a "stuck" issue on a character so should surely get a high priority so I ask for an update by raising a new ticket seeing as my e-mail from last night got ignored.

Greetings Adventurer *my name*!
Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Team.
We apologize that you had to contact us several times for the same issue while playing The Elder Scrolls Online. We can see that the issue is being taken care of in incident number 140420-062622 so in order to minimize any confusion we're going to close this specific incident.
Should you require any more assistance, please don't hesitate to contact our team.
Thank you for your continued interest and support!
Warm Regards,
*ESO staff name*
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

Greetings Adventurer *my name*!
Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Team.
I am sorry to hear about this. I can understand your frustration. I will summon our Guild of Technomancers so they can conjure a solution to your issue. Thank you for your patience.
Thank you for your continued interest and support!
Warm Regards,
*ESO staff name*
The Elder Scrolls Online Team
Question Reference # 140420-062622
Status: Unresolved

Ok at least we have progressed to having an "unresolved" ticket. Let's hope the "Guild of Technomancers" do a better job than the "team of heroes from the Fighter's and Mages guild" who must of all been killed by Daedra somewhere in Cold Harbour or maybe their quest npc never spawned to give them the message to come help me?

Day 3 - Monday April 21st

I'm getting pretty impatient at this point after waiting another entire day for this to be fixed so I raise another ticket at 00:30 on Monday (technically Tuesday 22nd) after another night with no possibility to play my main character asking that this case be immediately escalated to a GM for a fix.

Greetings *my name*!
Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Team.
We are sorry for the time it has taken to get back to you on this issue. I will now forward this ticket to the appropriate department and they will contact you as soon as possible. We apologize for the inconvenience this situation has created for you.
Thank you for your continued interest and support!
Warm Regards,
*ESO staff name*
The Elder Scrolls Online Team
Question Reference # 140421-053977
Status: Escalated

Ok the ticket is now listed as an "escalated" status and it sounds like a more sincere and to the point response (no more colourful teams of heroes or Technomancers). I'm starting to feel like I may finally be getting somewhere. Surely they have recognised this need to be fixed soon.

Day 4 - Tuesday April 22nd

I received this e-mail overnight:

Hail Adventurer *my name*,
Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Support Team. For a GM to assist you, if you could provide an approximate time of play so that we may attempt to clear any effects causing your character to have this issue. Sorry for the delay and we hope to have your issue resolved soon.
We appreciate your contacting us and helping to make Tamriel an amazing place.
May Stendarr's blessing be with you,
*ESO staff name*
The Elder Scrolls Online Support Team
Question Reference # 140421-053977
Status: Escalated

Excellent. I may finally get this resolved and be able to play again. I send a reply at just before 2pm (14:00).

Hi *ESO staff name*,
I will be available online from 6pm/18:00 BST (+3hours 10 minutes on the time of this email fyc).
Kind Regards,
*my name*

I log in just after 6pm and begin waiting for a GM to contact me. I'm not expecting it to be immediately but sometime in the next hour or two at the latest.

2 and a quarter hours later I'm losing patience (and hope)....

Hi there,
Is this likely to be able to be done tonight? I've been sitting around on various characters for over 2 hours waiting for someone to contact me.
Regards,
*my name*

No reply. Fine maybe they get a lot of these emails seeing as I have never received a response from a direct email. I wait another hour and a half before getting really impatient and creating a new ticket as that seems to be the only way to get a reply. I receive no response. 4 hours online should of been enough time to contact me if they were going to do it and I've long ago run out of things to do on my alts although trolling the hordes of bots in the Auridon delves with the DK chain ability amused me for 30 minutes.

I wait another half hour just sitting there looking at my dead character in the middle of Riften. Concerned passersby try to revive me, stand over my corpse like I may be some sort of quest giver or send me confused messages "wtf is wrong with your character?". Eventually I give up for the day.

Day 5 - Tuesday April 23rd

I check my e-mail first thing before work hoping to see an update and.... nothing. Deciding not to get angry and keep things civil (I'm feeling rather defeated at this point anyway) I send them a message entitled "Escalated Ticket # 140421-053977 - Setting a meeting time with a GM (please read)‏" in the hope that would grab someone's attention:

Hi there,

I would like to set up a meeting with a GM to finally resolve my ticket # 140421-053977. It has now been nearly 5 days without being able to do anything with my main character. I can be online between 17:00 and 22:00 BST on my account @MyAccount. Can you please confirm whether this will be possible and ideally a narrower time frame for a meeting. If you can give this I will sit there on my main account waiting for a message.

The current state of my character:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UXbYBHTNYS0

Thank you,
*my name*

I check my email when I get home from work. ESO English support have replied to my email from the previous day asking whether it would be "done tonight" and I get this completely unrelated email to my problem:

I am sorry to hear that you are having difficulties with your quest. With the new release there is the possibility that a couple of mudcrabs have gotten into our system. Thank you for bringing this quest to our attention.
Here are some troubleshooting tips that may help you as we work towards a more permanent solution. We recommend that you try the following:
• Typing /reloadui in your chatbox, for graphics or user-interface issues
• Typing /camp in your chatbox, which logs you out. Afterwards, exit out of the game and launcher, and wait 15 minutes before logging back in. You are performing a soft-reset which will clear out the cache and allow the game to load properly.
• You can venture off to complete other quests, allowing time to pass and the greater possibility being able to interact with the NPC
• It is also possible that you can return with a party and attempt the quest with a fresh start (after sharing the quest via group tab)
• As a last resort you can try abandoning the quest and re-acquire it
Any of these tips can also apply to other quests or problems that you may have in the future, too.
Thank you for your continued interest and support!

Warm Regards,
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

This is clearly just picking a random response from their canned scripts without any sort of thought about what the email is about. I doubt they even read it or looked over my ticket.

My interest in this game is still there but my support is rapidly disappearing if this is the sort of customer service that they think is acceptable.

Yes I appreciate they are likely getting hammered with bug and gold seller reports but leaving someones main character in an unplayable state for this long in a "pay to play" game is appalling.

I'm currently logged on in game on the death screen waiting for a GM that will likely never come. If I dont receive any further communication or some sort of intervention then I am 100% done with this game and this is coming from someone who booked a 6 month subscription on the second day and generally enjoys the game.

If you care about decent customer service and dont want to find yourself in this situation I'd invite you to comment so this stays on the front page.

Edit: Ok I am happy to report that I received a phone call from ESO support in the US. They fixed my character in about 5 minutes and credited my account 3 days game time and 10,000 gold.

Allchix · April 2014

Mhe, i hope you get your problem sorted soon.

When I read all these random bugs and unjustified bans I just hope that my char will stay 'clean' otherwise one is screwed. I already pee my pants a little everytime I try to log in, and that being even though I never did anything wrong.

rulien · April 2014

My GF was tossed into the sky for 2 days couldn't play then when we got someone the moved her and then was ban for 2 days after she was able to play she couldn't type trade group for 3 days and after the hotfix yesterday everything on her is now fixed but the 7 days we only got one email on the 2nd day from CS I put in 3 call backs and still havnt got an email or a call from them but its fixed now I hope it stays like that I hope you get a fix soon

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO · April 2014

Allchix wrote: »

I just hope that my char will stay 'clean'.
I already pee my pants a little every time I try to log in.

It's like walking on eggshells playing this game. Feels so fragile. As if the game will implode at any minute. Like the back-end of a busted housing market.

They've got a lot of work to do. They spent too much time working on certain aspects of this game, and nowhere near enough in other areas.

Locke_ESO · April 2014

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO wrote: »

It's like walking on eggshells playing this game. Feels so fragile. As if the game will implode at any minute. Like the back-end of a busted housing market.They've got a lot of work to do. They spent too much time working on certain aspects of this game, and nowhere near enough in other areas.

It feels to me like they just dont have good CS infrastructure in place. CS responses just dont seem to have any effect. I really cant understand sinking all this money into making a triple A MMO release and then not spending enough money on making sure it runs smoothly to retain their customers. This problem should in theory be easy to deal with.

melodeath · April 2014

i have the same issue mate, look at the topic "i keep dieing,rezzing,dieing" same deal and i'm also almost waiting for 5 day's now and the email that i got said that i had to quit the game for 15 minutes, but apparently they missed the part where i said i'm having it for 4 days now (meaning times of more than 5 hours "exit game")

this is just a disgrace

melodeath · April 2014

just bumping this so we might actually get some help with this

rulien · April 2014

bump

Archibald · April 2014

Hope you get this sorted soon.

Swampster · April 2014

I feel your pain, I have a problem that's been preventing me playing my main character for over 7 days now.. all I seem to get from customer services are random 'has it cured itself' type emails.. 'and if we don't hear from you we'll close this job down' from customer services.. then I hear nothing again.

timcooleyub17_ESO · April 2014

This kind of service is just horrible. I hope they give you game time to credit this poor service.

Even companies with bad reputations like Comcast give you credit or pro-rate your bill for poor service.

Locke_ESO · April 2014

timcooleyub17_ESO wrote: »

This kind of service is just horrible. I hope they give you game time to credit this poor service.

Even companies with bad reputations like Comcast give you credit or pro-rate your bill for poor service.

Honestly I'd accept just getting my character back to a playable state. The game time, 2000+ gold in repairs/gems/potions and amount of times I haven't been able to craft research or feed my horse is not something I think they will ever compensate me for.

I still haven't had anything back from my bank vault being wiped out 17 days ago.

crush83 · April 2014

The customer support is pretty lousy for the most part.

I think what they have is a queue, and if a message is in that queue, unhandled for x amount of time, then you get the canned reply that you recently received.

I had this happen to me when I was stuck in the sky. The other two times I was stuck in the sky, I had an actual response from a real person.

What I find strange is that when I was helped, they actually logged onto my account, or at least I got the message that my account had been logged onto from another location, and that I had been kicked.

This is by far the worst case I've heard. They need to get this sorted immediately. The fact that you are being so patient about it...I have to give you mad props for that. I'd be irate at this point. I probably would've canceled my subscription and let the whole world know why.

You have every reason to be extremely upset.

jkbennettb14a_ESO · April 2014

That sucks, hope everything gets worked out. Maybe if we name drop a little, @ZOS_GinaBruno‌ we can create some visibility?

*edit: yay spelling!

ZOS_GinaBruno · April 2014

@jp_antillb16_ESO‌, this certainly does look frustrating. We'll get your issue escalated so you can actually start playing again, and will also pass this along to the team so they can see what's going on with this quest.

Thanks for the ping, @jkbennettb14a_ESO‌

melodeath · April 2014

am i getting some aswell ?

Locke_ESO · April 2014

I tried messaging ZOS_AmeliaR after 3 nights of this but I guess it's not her problem or she gets a ton of stuff not related to her job so she just needs to ignore all of it. I also left my phone number requesting a call back about 2 days ago but that never happened either.

The only thing I haven't tried is placing an international phone call to their US help line but quite frankly sitting on hold for the reported hour and a half waiting time is not really an option.

I've also been online for another 3 and a half hours tonight without receiving any contact.

crush83 · April 2014

melodeath wrote: »

am i getting some aswell ?

You probably should drop a ticket number in here if you want it escalated too.

ZOS be careful. You might be setting a dangerous precedent by openly responding to these types of requests. Before long, you will have everyone pinging you for every ticket that isn't handled within 0.5s of being submitted.

melodeath · April 2014

its in the dieing,rezzing,dieing topic. i'm glad that this person is atleast getting help but at the same time irritated that a post just from today is getting looked at while my post from 4 days ago with 1k views and 52 replies is getting ignored.

Swampster · April 2014

crush83 wrote: »

ZOS be careful. You might be setting a dangerous precedent by openly responding to these types of requests. Before long, you will have everyone pinging you for every ticket that isn't handled within 0.5s of being submitted.

I'd be happy with 0.5 weeks at this moment in time...

Locke_ESO · April 2014

ZOS_GinaBruno wrote: »

@jp_antillb16_ESO‌, this certainly does look frustrating. We'll get your issue escalated so you can actually start playing again, and will also pass this along to the team so they can see what's going on with this quest.

Thanks for the ping, @jkbennettb14a_ESO‌

Thank you Gina. I normally wouldn't make a topic like this but I felt there was no further avenues open to resolve this issue. If you can please pass melodeath's name along also who is suffering from the same issue that would be super.

Chanz · April 2014

When they respond to us, they should keep the "molag bal" or "mudcrab" talk for something else. I would be somewhat irritated if they would respond to my tickets that way.

otomodachi · April 2014

Chanz wrote: »

When they respond to us, they should keep the "molag bal" or "mudcrab" talk for something else. I would be somewhat irritated if they would respond to my tickets that way.

LOL, totally. I appreciate what the INTENT is, but after my experience with CS the phrase "may the sand always warm your feet" has come, in my mind, to mean "ok, *** off now".

WitchAngel · April 2014

jp_antillb16_ESO wrote: »

michaelpatrickjonesnub18_ESO wrote: »

It's like walking on eggshells playing this game. Feels so fragile. As if the game will implode at any minute. Like the back-end of a busted housing market.They've got a lot of work to do. They spent too much time working on certain aspects of this game, and nowhere near enough in other areas.

It feels to me like they just dont have good CS infrastructure in place. CS responses just dont seem to have any effect. I really cant understand sinking all this money into making a triple A MMO release and then not spending enough money on making sure it runs smoothly to retain their customers. This problem should in theory be easy to deal with.

I would love to see their subscriber numbers, compared to how many bought the game. I think they are to set a record as for percentage of players dropping within the first month.

tjockis1981 · April 2014

Ohh boy... I feel for you.. Its always the same with these hot-shot mmo´s. They think they are invincible and made a masterpiece with enough other players that they dont care to loose some on the way. Hey, it costs money to have ppl helping players out... But man its awfull and feel like sw:tor allover again... I had same issues with thier "customer support" over there. Every respone from them was like "DUH? WTF?!" with no solution or any word about the issue in hand... Just some automated BS jibberish... Well GL and atleast you get another BUMP

AlchemyDevil · April 2014

I agree the CS for this game is the worst I have ever received. I hope your issue can be resolved quickly.

Locke_ESO · April 2014

So tonight's been "fun". I missed a phone call from a CS guy who was supposed to help me (

) but he followed up with an email saying that he is going to see to my ticket but is off work tomorrow so is there a time on Friday we can meet.

I sent an email to him detailing when I would be available but then I got one back pretty quickly saying:

Greetings *my name*,

I'm helping you with your ticket while *ESO Staff 1 name* is out of office. If you are able to log on in the next 7 hours, , please let me know a time and I can go to you in game and fix your character so you can play it again without ill effects.

If you are not available tonight, give me a time when you will be online and we'll get someone online to help you at whatever time is convenient for you!

Regards,
*ESO Staff 2 name*
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

Amazing I thought. Maybe I can get this sorted now after all (I should of known better):

Hi *ESO Staff 2 name*,

I will log into the game now.

Kind Regards,
*my name*

I then logged in at about 9:15pm and waited until 11:45pm. Somewhat frustrated I then sent:

Hi *ESO Staff 2 name*,

If possible I would like to meet at 01:00 BST as I am going offline for 1 hour 15 minutes now. I will log on at 01:00 and stay on until 01:30 in the hope of meeting with you to get this fixed.

Kind Regards,
*my name*

I figured an hour would be more than enough time for the message to get through to *ESO Staff 2 name*. Unfortunately this was not to be and after waiting from 1am to 1:30am I still hadn't got a reply so I raised a ticket including the name of the staff member and copy of the text to make sure they got the message. Typically when you raise a ticket it's replied to very fast but in this case I got nothing so they probably just closed it immediately.

30 minutes pass and still nothing. Last try... I send an email with a heading of "FAO - ESO Staff 2 name"

Hi ESO Staff 2 name,

Tried to contact you a few times. Not sure what is going on with communications.

This is the last try on my end to get a hold of you... going to be on for another 30 mins then giving up again

Regards,
*my name*

After another 30 minutes I gave up. There is something very wrong when a message is either being ignored or deleted especially when someone specifically emails you and says "I will help just send me a time!".

Frustrating doesn't really cover it. Just going to hope the guy who I missed the call from is as good as his word and actually gets my e-mail and meets me on Friday. I swear if I turn up and no-one contacts me again I am done with this game.

Altheina · April 2014

First of all, I really applaud OP's patience in trying to get his issue resolved. I don't know if I could be as patient to wait this long...

Secondly, I'm not trying to put down Zenimax but you need to improve your customer service escalation procedures and priorities and give genuine cases such as this more attention.

Hope OP's issue gets resolved soon.

SinisterJoint · April 2014

Their CS infrastructure is really bad. They should have dedicated departments for certain things. Also, having active, in game GM's will help alleviate A LOT of this nonsense.

Wasting so much man power sending emails when a couple gm's on, 2-3 shifts a day, will solve so much of this. It's almost like they aren't even trying at this point.

I've had the "cannot refine mats" bug since the latest patch and got 0 response at all, not even an auto generated one. Game has a lot of potential but cs is messin that up badly.

redsteven · April 2014

Wow, best of luck to you. Sorry to hear about all the *** you're dealing with.

SunfireKnight86 · April 2014

Man, and I thought some of my bugged quest/gear/pvp stuff was bad. I wish you luck man, I'm really sorry this happened. As has already been said, your patience is outstanding!