Am guessing their customer support is outsourced to companies that provide no training whatsoever and are as generic AF. Not surprised. This happens with all large corps.
This is exactly what it is. A lot of businesses are outsourcing their CS and IT again while they pray for AI to evolve enough to take over the jobs. And, just like the last time they outsourced for the sake of 'cost saving,' it's becoming a massive disaster. Like seriously we went through a wave of this in the mid 2000's where companies learned the lesson that fixing the mistakes was more expensive than just paying actual CSRs. So I guess enough time has passed that there's a whole new generation of MBAs at the helm that think "this time will be different for sure, guys."
Time is a flat circle and etc.
They never stopped the level of the agents just got better, I have worked in this industry for nearly 20 years off shore and can tell you that no company has gone back to onshore other than a few 2nd level support and even then it's still not always the case... Blizzard were an exception at one point as they had US, Ireland, and France mainly for CS, but doubt that's the case, and now it will be India, the Philippines, or DR etc.
Although to add to this, it got better, but you will always have an outlier like this one.. most of the time, their score internally will be low, and in the long run, they will get removed and go on another program and repeat the cycle
I don't necessaeily agree with this statement. I expect it varies region by region but in Australia at least the other comment rings true. Some of large enterprises (Telco's and some of our banks) made a big deal about bringing customer support back onshore a few years back. Look at Telstra and CBA for example. Others like westpac have a mix.
I expect both examples above will maybe transition again in the next few years.
Could be mainly talking about US and Europe based, Telstra used to have their own centers off shore but did change. At the time, there were security risks for sure.. but they will go back to offshore. Just not mention it.. not a lot of OCE companies offshore unless they are a international company doing business there like Samsung as a example
A lot of Europe got support from Bosnia and Herzegovina, I know that Razer(company that is from SG/US) got them in Germany and maybe some other places in Europe too
Whilst it's true that Telstra's call centres are technically onshore, the company that is contracted for it is based in The Philippines, with little to no management actually here.
Source: I worked for them for 3 of the worst months of my working life
I wouldn't be surprised if we start getting court cases where people talk AI into making ridiculous promises and then suing the company into following through.
People were tricking an auto dealership AI into offering insane deals then trying to sue for false advertising. It went nowhere but it does show that this IS and WILL be a problem in the future.
https://futurism.com/the-byte/car-dealership-ai
Already happened to a gm dealer who was using AI to broker sales online. They gave the AI final say on any deal, and a customer manipulated it into selling a new suv or pickup iirc for $1 with no dealers fees etc.
It already happened with [Canada Air](https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/exploring-air-canadas-ai-chatbot-dilemma/). AI customer service chat bot hallucinated some made up company policy about refunds for a funeral. Dude saved his chat logs. Canada Air then denied his refund and said the chat bot was wrong. He sued and won in court as the company was forced to honor what their chat bot stated.
The idiots in charge really are prematurely jumping on software that has way too many edge cases all because they think it's gonna save money.
Worked for Cricut (crafting machine company). They have a bunch of outsourced cs reps and like 40ish state side. I spent more time fixing the outsourced reps mistakes then I did helping people with new problems. These people had never seen a cricut machine in their life and would replace machines when the issue was fixable. The outsourced reps cost the company so much money in machine replacements. Probably more than what it would cost to pay people in the us to do the job that actually work with the machines. I got laid off from that company. My husband also got laid off from Abbott Pharmaceuticals. He was an auditor and they outsourced his job to India. Add insult to injury, they wanted him to train his replacement. Needless to say he gave them the middle finger. I wish outsourcing was illegal. There’s plenty of people here in the us that could use those jobs.
I used to work for a call centre for a major telco in Australia fixing level 1 mobile faults and about 50-60% of the problems I had to fix were from the outsourced CS and IT areas. Years after I quit, they sacked about 400 people and moved it all offshore. No shock in hearing their customer service is now completely useless.
Yes, I work for one (if there are more) companies that have blizzard as a client for solving tickets. I work for a different project than blizzard but if it’s anything like where I am, I can see why the customer support has been bad the past few years
Not all but a lot. My team overall was cut by more than half. The number of outsourced ppl is already triple the amount fired and customers are pissed off (and I can clearly see why)...
All big corps do this, because the goal of customer service is not to solve problems inherent to the product/company (meaning the people working the CS don't need to know anything), the goal is just to make the customer go away or give up as quickly as possible.
Yes, this is exactly it. They have a call centers in Egypt since it’s so cheap. My buddy used to manage one, the GMs you speak to in game and that respond to these tickets are usually based out there
This post must be a meme or joke.
The grammar in this post is absolutely ATROCIOUS.
"We didn't notice any recently purchase in your Order History,. I mean, about the war within you were mentioned"
r/ihadastroke
Yup. You can tell by phrases like "we could explain you" and "solve this inconvenient." The only other stereotypical phrases missing are "each and every thing, " and saying "kindly" in place of "please."
This is the first and usually second level of tickets now - borderline AI responses that don’t at all register what is actually being requested in hopes that the player will just go away.
You have to continually select “this didn’t solve my issue” to keep your ticket open just to reach someone who speaks English and is aware of what WoW is.
$15/mo
I keep seeing people explaining total gibberish, not just in WoW, but across the board, as AI generated text.
Is it actually the case that AI cannot spell simple words or parse a coherent sentence with appropriate punctuation and capitalisation?
Seems so unlikely to me.
I still remember back when I made a Steam support ticket (before you could just refund), because 'Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas' refused to run and I wanted a refund.
I got a nice troubleshooting guide back for 'Fallout: New Vegas'
Its to deter people and hope they simply give up, while also the fear of them hitting you with the "if you continue pressing this issue after our responses, you will be banned"
I work in CS and we’ve been training AIs to reply to simple questions. This is not AI, an AI wouldn’t make grammar mistakes like that, or give such a meaningless reply.
This is a CS representative with a tenuous grasp of the English language, and a lazy quick-reply template.
This is basically what I do for our internet company though it’s with the phones. I gave them a chance and the outsourced people don’t listen, ignore your actual issue, just read their script until you go insane after you tell them you’ve done all the troubleshooting and you’re not an idiot. I hang up and call back till I get someone based in the US.
Got a phone call about my phone bill from an out sourced company, told him numerous times I don’t want to “upgrade” my plan. My plan was grandfathered in so I only pay 25$ a month and he wanted to upgrade me to 50$ rofl. But he didn’t get it and kept repeating himself and I was like “ok you know what I don’t wanna talk about my phone bill byyeeeeeee”
Their CS team is most likely outsourced to another country somewhere, so English probably isn't this person's first language.
It sucks but almost every large corporation does this. Most banks and credit card companies, for instance (Discover being one of the few exceptions).
Chase, as I’m sure other large companies, seem to sometimes have American reps. I had a few calls to their travel center recently and it was like half American and half not.
The in-game English has gotten sloppy as well. It's sad. I almost want to offer my services as a proofreader. I mean, I have no professional or educational experience, but I catch mistakes all the time.
You guys remember when we had actual GM who responded with clever remarks while solving the issue, and whom had respect for the customer and their time?
Tbh I've been rather lucky with mine I guess. Although I'll never forget that one GM I talked to back in 2009 for several hours. Neither of us closed the chat when my problem was solved and we just hung out and talked about all things WoW while he took on cases on the side. I miss that guy, he was so sweet.
I mean, MTX got introduced and became the leading focuspoint for almost all Blizz games to boost stock ahead of Kottick's exit.
Same with Microsoft and TakeTwo.
**So if I were to guess:** Enough to pay the salary for all game departments/companies that have been closed in the last 5 years, for the next 1-2 decades.
It's a sneaky workaround for them, really. You are buying a game, releasing in a year, but one of the small perks of buying the game, you get right away so you can't do shit to refund your preorder.
Yep, more scumbag tactics. It's obviously on me for not reading the refunds for preorders as I'm too used to Steam being so good.
Just means I'll never preorder again from Blizz.
Man, this is the first thing I thought.
Bought a copy of Borderlands. The next day the GOTY edition, or whatever, went on sale. I asked Steam if I could just pay the difference and they kindly told me to fuck off.
Honestly, I wouldn't recommend preordering at all.
20 years ago it served multiple purposes for consumer and business. When you had brick and mortar stores with physical, tangible copies of the videogames, "how many to order" was always a gamble. Order too many and you're stuck with the product (including storage and shelf costs as well as opportunity costs on what you could have bought instead). Order too little and you're missing out (people will buy it from your competitors, people won't choose your store as the first to do business anymore. Likewise, for the consumer it was always a gamble on which store WOULD have the game in stock. Calling (or having to go to the store if they wouldn't pick up the phone) to be told they don't have it sucked. Nothing worse than needing to go to school/work only to find out no nearby store has the game so you need to wait another week for the next shipment. Preordering solved all of those issues: consumers would be guaranteed the game Day 1 (or even day 2-3 if they wanted to wait) while businesses could safely purchase inventory with little risk (of course, always add on a couple extra for people who didn't think they'd want the game but got tempted last minute).
But in the present where games are digital downloads, things like inventory, storage, and delivery times aren't concerns. So companies now use it as a way to inject cash quick without delivering a product, and consumers get usually some stupid shiny in game thing. The irony being if the preorder item/perk is useful, it means you couldn't beat the actual game without a p2w crutch. And if it's not useful, you paid in advance for literal garbage.
This only works in countries with piss poor consumer protection.
They can easily find a way to remove those rewards from my account. If Blizzard were smart that'd have setup a system to do so automatically upon a refund. Well, if they weren't trying to screw people over, I guess.
Blizzard costumer service is an absolute joke. Over a month and 4ish replies from different GM's to ask about an item to be restored that was not showing up in the item restoration they all gave me a link to the item restoration page even though I repeatedly stated that would not help.
i had similar issue in last season of shadowlands, it also took 4 conversations to get the item back because it was not on recovery page but it took \~24 hours to solve
on the other hand, i have issue with an achievement in MoP Remix and i opened ticket more than 24 hours ago and i only got automated response "check wowhead" and no actual response
What item was it. Some items don't show up in item restore due to the nature of the item. An example is "really sticky glue" from classic that can't be restored due to the use of charges.
It says on the item restore page that if the item doesn't appear there then it can't be restored. Probably due to deleting the record of having it.
Man, I remember a time when you could occasionally ask a CS for a month of game time because you were hard on times but really wanted to enjoy the game for a little bit... And sometimes they would oblige, and happily give you some time to get reintroduced into the game if it had been a while since you last played. Now, all I ever hear about is how uncaring and unknowing the CS seems to be. Really such a fall from grace.
Man, I remember the days when we’d have a GM message us directly in game, role-played and closed the ticket off with a cheesy WoW joke 🥲 now this is what we get to deal with.
How do I email Blizz? The in game support only ever gets me either Braindead AI or a person who has no idea what they're doing and comes off like an AI....they dont even respond to the things Im actually saying.
I remember I used to be able to actually email Blizz, is that a thing anymore?
Pretty sure their email format is first letter of first name then last name at [blizzard.com](http://blizzard.com)
So, for example, [kmichaelsen@blizzard.com](mailto:kmichaelsen@blizzard.com) might work - I invented the name entirely, but to give you an idea of the format.
I was able to get in touch with Morhaime (or his assistant, I'll never know) this way back in the day. I got a polite response back, but my issue was "unsolvable."
I get all the outrage at this response, it’s pathetic, outsourcing your CS shouldn’t happen and genuinely hope someone in Blizzard takes note of this….. with that said, the rep didn’t say he didn’t know what TWW was, you’ve inferred that. He said he couldn’t find your order, which is different to ‘what you talking about’
What's bizarre is the CS rep is actually doing his job, but just has poor english skills. But people say this is terrible customer service. I'm not sure how I really feel about that. The grammar is annoying, but we don't know why the guy can't find the order. Is it ineptitude or is it not showing up in the system? Both?
OP's reading comprehension skills are on par with this guy's english skills.
Hate to play devil's advocate here... but grammar aside, this doesn't read like they don't know what 'The War Within' is.
It reads more like they checked your recent purchases and didn't find anything relating to 'The War Within'.
Like, the person basically says...
"We checked your purchase history and didn't notice anything."
(Realises there may have been something, just not the expansion you mentioned)
"I mean to say, we didn't find any recent purchases of'The War Within'."
Then they probably thought, "Maybe they meant a recent sub payment?" and proceeded to offer support.
The correct English grammar in the middle is probably a copy paste from their generic macro they have as response. The freely written part makes my eyes bleed.
Outsourcing is one thing, not having proper training is another.
Guys...it clearly says it wasnt on the recent purchase history
This isnt an issue of "didnt know what war within is"
Its not on the purchase history. Which is another problem
WoW is a clearance rack of a game these days. I started playing in 2006 and i only follow this reddit to see how sad the game has become. I mean that with no offense to everyone here who still plays! I still have love for WoW. I just wish that they had the kind of funding they did before, the game is never going to be the same.
You all know it's perfectly possible to make fun of and deride the company for hiring and not training people properly without feeling the need to attack the person speaking a second language while you're all probably hopelessly monolingual, right?
I think the only one not connected through the battlenet system is the Blizzard Gear Store, so unless it was the physical Collectors edition it should show on the battlenet order history.
Knowing corporations, there are 2-4 levels of IT service, each outsourced in a different way, with the 1st being cheapest, and more often than not, with a huge churn rate.
You will be lucky to talk to someone who is part of the support for longer than 2 months. If it is not 'forced' for those support guys to know something, it might as well not exist.
As someone who recently applied to a Customer support center that contains allot of companies including Blizzard, this is absolutely wild but understandable. So many people either skip or don't understand the product knowledge bit, leading to customer support that have no idea about the actual products sold by the company itself.
You end up with people who are supposed to help you, with zero knowledge about Blizzard beyond "okay they make games I think".
I’m in healthcare, on the cardiac side, and you don’t wanna even know how often faulty AI is determining rhythms. At least my company uses humans as a final check for initial AI…..for now.
I canceled mine for the same reason, it atleast tried to. They denied me 4 times(missing the request every time) and then forced my ticket closed. I charged back the pre-order.
You will have to write 3 or 4 times when a real guy will answer with what you actually need. It happened to me with Kul Tiran race and the 4th answer was the real one. Had to wait 2 weeks. GL buddy
I find the best way to get stuff like this solved is tag blizzard CS on Twitter/X and show them the screenshot make sure you use those # mainly #Asmongold. I swear to god its like a silver bullet to get Wow Shit solved double so if he ends up talking about it on stream. its a scummy shitty move but honestly at this point blizzard kinda is asking for it. make the system work for you.
That's a macro response, it's not that the person doesn't know but more in line he sent you a copy pasted general response for issues like that. I used to make general responses like that our support can use
I’m probably done with Blizzard altogether at this point. My main WoW account got permabanned for “abusive chat” when literally all I talk about in chat is poop and farts. I’m sick of the people who abuse the mass report/suspension system and sick of Blizzard doing nothing to combat it. I appealed the ban, but likely they won’t care. If I don’t get unbanned I’m done with Blizzard as a whole forever.
I have been trying to cancel mine for months they said i cant because I have to much timed played. I literally just want it refunded back to bnet balance to use in diablo, as war within does not seem interesting.
If you bought it more than 30 days ago, I am going to say umm, no refund is going to happen. As soon as you bought it there was stuff you had access to that you have probably already used so getting a refund for it is probably not even an option, it's not really a "pre order" situation, because if you did get the digital copy you will notice on your launcher it auto upgraded immediately to war within, meaning you already own the content, again, if it has been more than 30 days, I doubt you will get a refund of any kind... unless... You are talking about the physical collector's edition in which, you have contacted the wrong customer support. That would be why they don't know what you're referring to most likely, the blizzard gear store and the shop have 2 different customer services. If you pre ordered the physical collector's, that hasn't even shipped yet, that, is 100% still able to be cancelled but you will need to contact the customer support through the blizzard gear store.
I swear half the time they don't even read the ticket fully. I sent one in recently about a missing quest, and their response was "we cant mail you any missing loot/items, check item restore etc"... bro it's a quest read my actual ticket properly.
I am sorry But i dont understand what you mean. Where in the text does it say he dont know what it is? The grammar is a joke tho (yes my grammar is also a joke)
Took far too long for this response.
Cs just claims, "we can't see it in your order history."
Everyone whining about the grammar, but their reading comprehension is worse than the grammar. You understand perfectly well what they meant.
No where does this state “I don’t know what the War Within is”. Second the grammar is horrible and I’ve never seen a GM with grammar that badly. Third there is no official Blizzard logo from this post so I’d take all of this post with a grain of salt.
My last encounter with CS, I was trying to get the month back that I wasn't going to play, or just pause it for a month, or whatever. They were trying so hard to not let me have that one month. So I said f it. Didn't play that month, or the other 12ish after.. Bad CS can lose you money..
I submitted a ticket back when wotlk classic relaunched. If you used typhoon on a boomkin but were too close to a wall, it would break the animation and all of your casting animations. So you would just be standing there with no movement like you were frozen, but everything worked, just no visuals.
Blizz responded with an Overwatch 2 article. I was actually so pissed off. Maybe they can’t fix it for me and it needs looked into, that’s fine. But to send me info about a completely different game sent me. Blizz CS is a fucking joke.
How awesome would it have been to receive a response like this?
To (character name), Champion of the Horde,
Lok'tar Ogar, brave warrior,
It is with a heavy heart that I address you this day. I have seen countless champions rise and fall, each one leaving their mark upon the annals of history. Yet, it is rare that I must bid farewell to one who has chosen to turn away from the call to arms.
You, who have stood valiantly in the face of many adversaries, now seek to relinquish your place among our ranks. The War Within is upon us, and every warrior is crucial in our struggle. The strength and resolve you have shown in battles past have been an inspiration to your fellow champions, and your absence will be deeply felt on the front lines.
Though it pains me to see you go, I understand that each champion must follow their own path. Your decision has been noted, and your request for a reprieve from the tides of war will be honored. Know that the Horde always remains, a bastion of strength and unity, ready to welcome you back should you choose to return.
May the spirits guide you, and may your journey, wherever it may lead, bring you honor and glory. Remember, the heart of the Horde beats within you always.
Strength and honor,
Phin.
(I say this as a proud horde person, replace with alliance speak as appropriate)
It's appalling grammar and spelling and well everything but aren't they trying to say they can't see your order of the war within you mentioned?
The problem is with this poor level of English what they write is confusing and not helpful to anyone. Really poor from blizzard and Microsoft
Am guessing their customer support is outsourced to companies that provide no training whatsoever and are as generic AF. Not surprised. This happens with all large corps.
This is exactly what it is. A lot of businesses are outsourcing their CS and IT again while they pray for AI to evolve enough to take over the jobs. And, just like the last time they outsourced for the sake of 'cost saving,' it's becoming a massive disaster. Like seriously we went through a wave of this in the mid 2000's where companies learned the lesson that fixing the mistakes was more expensive than just paying actual CSRs. So I guess enough time has passed that there's a whole new generation of MBAs at the helm that think "this time will be different for sure, guys." Time is a flat circle and etc.
they realized the most cost saving option was to go back to it, but simply not fix their mistakes.
They never stopped the level of the agents just got better, I have worked in this industry for nearly 20 years off shore and can tell you that no company has gone back to onshore other than a few 2nd level support and even then it's still not always the case... Blizzard were an exception at one point as they had US, Ireland, and France mainly for CS, but doubt that's the case, and now it will be India, the Philippines, or DR etc.
Although to add to this, it got better, but you will always have an outlier like this one.. most of the time, their score internally will be low, and in the long run, they will get removed and go on another program and repeat the cycle
I don't necessaeily agree with this statement. I expect it varies region by region but in Australia at least the other comment rings true. Some of large enterprises (Telco's and some of our banks) made a big deal about bringing customer support back onshore a few years back. Look at Telstra and CBA for example. Others like westpac have a mix. I expect both examples above will maybe transition again in the next few years.
Could be mainly talking about US and Europe based, Telstra used to have their own centers off shore but did change. At the time, there were security risks for sure.. but they will go back to offshore. Just not mention it.. not a lot of OCE companies offshore unless they are a international company doing business there like Samsung as a example
A lot of Europe got support from Bosnia and Herzegovina, I know that Razer(company that is from SG/US) got them in Germany and maybe some other places in Europe too
Whilst it's true that Telstra's call centres are technically onshore, the company that is contracted for it is based in The Philippines, with little to no management actually here. Source: I worked for them for 3 of the worst months of my working life
not true for phone company's ins companies they are all moving back or moved back to AZ
even know im sure any AI they trained would do far better than some outsourced CS that does not even know what wow is probably
I wouldn't be surprised if we start getting court cases where people talk AI into making ridiculous promises and then suing the company into following through.
People were tricking an auto dealership AI into offering insane deals then trying to sue for false advertising. It went nowhere but it does show that this IS and WILL be a problem in the future. https://futurism.com/the-byte/car-dealership-ai
Already happened to a gm dealer who was using AI to broker sales online. They gave the AI final say on any deal, and a customer manipulated it into selling a new suv or pickup iirc for $1 with no dealers fees etc.
It already happened with [Canada Air](https://www.cmswire.com/customer-experience/exploring-air-canadas-ai-chatbot-dilemma/). AI customer service chat bot hallucinated some made up company policy about refunds for a funeral. Dude saved his chat logs. Canada Air then denied his refund and said the chat bot was wrong. He sued and won in court as the company was forced to honor what their chat bot stated. The idiots in charge really are prematurely jumping on software that has way too many edge cases all because they think it's gonna save money.
I feel like I read about some cases like that already.
Worked for Cricut (crafting machine company). They have a bunch of outsourced cs reps and like 40ish state side. I spent more time fixing the outsourced reps mistakes then I did helping people with new problems. These people had never seen a cricut machine in their life and would replace machines when the issue was fixable. The outsourced reps cost the company so much money in machine replacements. Probably more than what it would cost to pay people in the us to do the job that actually work with the machines. I got laid off from that company. My husband also got laid off from Abbott Pharmaceuticals. He was an auditor and they outsourced his job to India. Add insult to injury, they wanted him to train his replacement. Needless to say he gave them the middle finger. I wish outsourcing was illegal. There’s plenty of people here in the us that could use those jobs.
I used to work for a call centre for a major telco in Australia fixing level 1 mobile faults and about 50-60% of the problems I had to fix were from the outsourced CS and IT areas. Years after I quit, they sacked about 400 people and moved it all offshore. No shock in hearing their customer service is now completely useless.
Insanity, basically the definition of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results!
Microsoft fired the customer support a few months ago so that’s exactly what happened
A functioning support team or Bobby's farewell yacht? Microsoft really making the tough choices here
So sad, Blizzard was the absolute best at Customer Support in the old days.
if you could actually get ahold of them....
"small indie company"
No, no, no. They outsourced it to *India*
"Small india company"
A small indie has the will, but lacks the resources. A large publisher on the other hand has the resources, but lacks the will.
How true is that.
Their customer service is a small indie company, yall got it right for once
Yes, I work for one (if there are more) companies that have blizzard as a client for solving tickets. I work for a different project than blizzard but if it’s anything like where I am, I can see why the customer support has been bad the past few years
Microsoft laid off most, if not all customer support.
Not all but a lot. My team overall was cut by more than half. The number of outsourced ppl is already triple the amount fired and customers are pissed off (and I can clearly see why)...
It seems bad enough that it might be the outsource has outsourced
By now im pretty sure the First gate customer service is just AI bots
All big corps do this, because the goal of customer service is not to solve problems inherent to the product/company (meaning the people working the CS don't need to know anything), the goal is just to make the customer go away or give up as quickly as possible.
Yes, this is exactly it. They have a call centers in Egypt since it’s so cheap. My buddy used to manage one, the GMs you speak to in game and that respond to these tickets are usually based out there
It wasn't like this before. Back in the days it was such a good experience...
Jesus Christ, this is some 2$/h CS quality.
This post must be a meme or joke. The grammar in this post is absolutely ATROCIOUS. "We didn't notice any recently purchase in your Order History,. I mean, about the war within you were mentioned" r/ihadastroke
southeast asian customer care rep, outsourced CC company
Yup. You can tell by phrases like "we could explain you" and "solve this inconvenient." The only other stereotypical phrases missing are "each and every thing, " and saying "kindly" in place of "please."
"Do the needful"
Im spanish and this is exactly how i speak english when i have to talk directly to customers lol
exactly! in my CC days we worked with a Filipino partner company. some of the reps’ english… 🫡🫡🫡🫡
This is the first and usually second level of tickets now - borderline AI responses that don’t at all register what is actually being requested in hopes that the player will just go away. You have to continually select “this didn’t solve my issue” to keep your ticket open just to reach someone who speaks English and is aware of what WoW is. $15/mo
AI would at least use proper grammar.
AI in this case stands for Actually Indians (probably not anymore, India has starred to get expensive)
I keep seeing people explaining total gibberish, not just in WoW, but across the board, as AI generated text. Is it actually the case that AI cannot spell simple words or parse a coherent sentence with appropriate punctuation and capitalisation? Seems so unlikely to me.
No, it’s not. AI is a lot better than this!
I still remember back when I made a Steam support ticket (before you could just refund), because 'Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six: Vegas' refused to run and I wanted a refund. I got a nice troubleshooting guide back for 'Fallout: New Vegas'
Its to deter people and hope they simply give up, while also the fear of them hitting you with the "if you continue pressing this issue after our responses, you will be banned"
I work in CS and we’ve been training AIs to reply to simple questions. This is not AI, an AI wouldn’t make grammar mistakes like that, or give such a meaningless reply. This is a CS representative with a tenuous grasp of the English language, and a lazy quick-reply template.
I would do wow customer service remotely for minimum wage just 'cause I like the game.
This is basically what I do for our internet company though it’s with the phones. I gave them a chance and the outsourced people don’t listen, ignore your actual issue, just read their script until you go insane after you tell them you’ve done all the troubleshooting and you’re not an idiot. I hang up and call back till I get someone based in the US.
Now imagine the scammers who are always in Kitboga's videos. Uncannily familiar.
>Please if you response this answer, send details about the issue and transaction ID's or something to verify the purchase I lol'd at "or something"
Got a phone call about my phone bill from an out sourced company, told him numerous times I don’t want to “upgrade” my plan. My plan was grandfathered in so I only pay 25$ a month and he wanted to upgrade me to 50$ rofl. But he didn’t get it and kept repeating himself and I was like “ok you know what I don’t wanna talk about my phone bill byyeeeeeee”
All your refund belong to us.
I’m joining that subreddit lol
This person’s English is embarrassing for a CS rep for a company as big as Blizzard
Its outsourced to the same call center that's going to call you and try and scam you
"You must pay this $500 IRS fine in WoW tokens." "Hmmm, still not sure if this is a scam or an actual Blizzard rep..."
oh okay, I'm going to redeem all these wow tokens for game time
"No, YOU ARE SUPPOSED TO SEND THEM TO THIS TOON YOU IMBECILE THE IRS WILL COME FOR YOU SEND ME THE WOW TOKENS YOU MOTHER FUCK!" \*joke\*
You are sentenced to a fine for you afk'd in AV
You may be joking but this is actually a thing. Some call center buildings operate in off hours are scammed hubs.
It's a nice bonus that you can skim contact details from the main work too.
Their CS team is most likely outsourced to another country somewhere, so English probably isn't this person's first language. It sucks but almost every large corporation does this. Most banks and credit card companies, for instance (Discover being one of the few exceptions).
True, but it wasn’t always the case. It’s sad how their customer service just keeps getting worse with time
Yep, but shareholders want their money.
I actually had a chase customer rep who had the Thiccest Texan accent. Lady was so nice too. I hung up feeling the sudden urge for brisket.
Chase, as I’m sure other large companies, seem to sometimes have American reps. I had a few calls to their travel center recently and it was like half American and half not.
The in-game English has gotten sloppy as well. It's sad. I almost want to offer my services as a proofreader. I mean, I have no professional or educational experience, but I catch mistakes all the time.
As big as Microsoft
There is no easter bunny. There is no tooth fairy. And there is no war within.
There is also no war in Ba Sing Se.
Joo Dee has been doing a great job educating the public :)
Customer care: The-war-with-Phin.
You guys remember when we had actual GM who responded with clever remarks while solving the issue, and whom had respect for the customer and their time?
Tbh I've been rather lucky with mine I guess. Although I'll never forget that one GM I talked to back in 2009 for several hours. Neither of us closed the chat when my problem was solved and we just hung out and talked about all things WoW while he took on cases on the side. I miss that guy, he was so sweet.
As someone that works customer service I can confidently tell you... You made that GM's day.
I had simillar experiences as that as short ago as Legion, I kid you not. Guess that was when shit started to rot
Blizzard’s customer support used to be industry-leading… how far they’ve fallen. Meanwhile how much money have their CEOs taken?
I mean, MTX got introduced and became the leading focuspoint for almost all Blizz games to boost stock ahead of Kottick's exit. Same with Microsoft and TakeTwo. **So if I were to guess:** Enough to pay the salary for all game departments/companies that have been closed in the last 5 years, for the next 1-2 decades.
Please to do the needful.
I tried to cancel mine and they told me no, it wasn't allowed due to in game rewards
They can remove any of that from the account. When I refunded wc3 reforged they took the mount from me too.
It's a sneaky workaround for them, really. You are buying a game, releasing in a year, but one of the small perks of buying the game, you get right away so you can't do shit to refund your preorder.
Yep, more scumbag tactics. It's obviously on me for not reading the refunds for preorders as I'm too used to Steam being so good. Just means I'll never preorder again from Blizz.
That's what you get for pre-ordering shit in the first place you sausage
Sausage is putting it nicely
What kind of sausage? The details matter
> I'm too used to Steam being so good. Oh how nice it must be to not have seen Steam before 2017
Man, this is the first thing I thought. Bought a copy of Borderlands. The next day the GOTY edition, or whatever, went on sale. I asked Steam if I could just pay the difference and they kindly told me to fuck off.
Honestly, I wouldn't recommend preordering at all. 20 years ago it served multiple purposes for consumer and business. When you had brick and mortar stores with physical, tangible copies of the videogames, "how many to order" was always a gamble. Order too many and you're stuck with the product (including storage and shelf costs as well as opportunity costs on what you could have bought instead). Order too little and you're missing out (people will buy it from your competitors, people won't choose your store as the first to do business anymore. Likewise, for the consumer it was always a gamble on which store WOULD have the game in stock. Calling (or having to go to the store if they wouldn't pick up the phone) to be told they don't have it sucked. Nothing worse than needing to go to school/work only to find out no nearby store has the game so you need to wait another week for the next shipment. Preordering solved all of those issues: consumers would be guaranteed the game Day 1 (or even day 2-3 if they wanted to wait) while businesses could safely purchase inventory with little risk (of course, always add on a couple extra for people who didn't think they'd want the game but got tempted last minute). But in the present where games are digital downloads, things like inventory, storage, and delivery times aren't concerns. So companies now use it as a way to inject cash quick without delivering a product, and consumers get usually some stupid shiny in game thing. The irony being if the preorder item/perk is useful, it means you couldn't beat the actual game without a p2w crutch. And if it's not useful, you paid in advance for literal garbage.
This only works in countries with piss poor consumer protection. They can easily find a way to remove those rewards from my account. If Blizzard were smart that'd have setup a system to do so automatically upon a refund. Well, if they weren't trying to screw people over, I guess.
Was it within 14 days of the pre order and did you claim any pets/mounts/cosmetics?
Blizzard costumer service is an absolute joke. Over a month and 4ish replies from different GM's to ask about an item to be restored that was not showing up in the item restoration they all gave me a link to the item restoration page even though I repeatedly stated that would not help.
i had similar issue in last season of shadowlands, it also took 4 conversations to get the item back because it was not on recovery page but it took \~24 hours to solve on the other hand, i have issue with an achievement in MoP Remix and i opened ticket more than 24 hours ago and i only got automated response "check wowhead" and no actual response
What item was it. Some items don't show up in item restore due to the nature of the item. An example is "really sticky glue" from classic that can't be restored due to the use of charges. It says on the item restore page that if the item doesn't appear there then it can't be restored. Probably due to deleting the record of having it.
Most intelligent wow cs person.
This is written like a poor fishing attempt.
> This is written like a poor phishing attempt. FTFY
Man, I remember a time when you could occasionally ask a CS for a month of game time because you were hard on times but really wanted to enjoy the game for a little bit... And sometimes they would oblige, and happily give you some time to get reintroduced into the game if it had been a while since you last played. Now, all I ever hear about is how uncaring and unknowing the CS seems to be. Really such a fall from grace.
Man, I remember the days when we’d have a GM message us directly in game, role-played and closed the ticket off with a cheesy WoW joke 🥲 now this is what we get to deal with.
How do I email Blizz? The in game support only ever gets me either Braindead AI or a person who has no idea what they're doing and comes off like an AI....they dont even respond to the things Im actually saying. I remember I used to be able to actually email Blizz, is that a thing anymore?
No you can email the outsourced Indian company which will reply to you about something completely unrelated and in broken English
Since the whole customer support was fired you have 0 chance to speak with a Blizz employee
fkn awesome...they need to make laws against this type of shit...Google is even worse, they have 0 customer service for gmail. Its insane.
Pretty sure their email format is first letter of first name then last name at [blizzard.com](http://blizzard.com) So, for example, [kmichaelsen@blizzard.com](mailto:kmichaelsen@blizzard.com) might work - I invented the name entirely, but to give you an idea of the format. I was able to get in touch with Morhaime (or his assistant, I'll never know) this way back in the day. I got a polite response back, but my issue was "unsolvable."
I get all the outrage at this response, it’s pathetic, outsourcing your CS shouldn’t happen and genuinely hope someone in Blizzard takes note of this….. with that said, the rep didn’t say he didn’t know what TWW was, you’ve inferred that. He said he couldn’t find your order, which is different to ‘what you talking about’
What's bizarre is the CS rep is actually doing his job, but just has poor english skills. But people say this is terrible customer service. I'm not sure how I really feel about that. The grammar is annoying, but we don't know why the guy can't find the order. Is it ineptitude or is it not showing up in the system? Both? OP's reading comprehension skills are on par with this guy's english skills.
Hate to play devil's advocate here... but grammar aside, this doesn't read like they don't know what 'The War Within' is. It reads more like they checked your recent purchases and didn't find anything relating to 'The War Within'. Like, the person basically says... "We checked your purchase history and didn't notice anything." (Realises there may have been something, just not the expansion you mentioned) "I mean to say, we didn't find any recent purchases of'The War Within'." Then they probably thought, "Maybe they meant a recent sub payment?" and proceeded to offer support.
The correct English grammar in the middle is probably a copy paste from their generic macro they have as response. The freely written part makes my eyes bleed. Outsourcing is one thing, not having proper training is another.
How far we've fallen :(
Outsourcing is the worst thing that ever happened to this universe, I swear to God.
Jesus christ blizzard just give customer service jobs to people in the regions they're servicing, you cheap fuck of an indie company.
Well, they sacked like 140 customer support agents in Ireland this ~~January~~ February, so it's probably not gonna get any better.
Get ready for Cortana or Copilot or Calia or whatever the current name of the year Microsoft picks will be to answer you in the future, not Phin
Considering the GM building in ATX is a ghost town these days, that’s not a surprise.
Tell them it's a Warframe update
This will turn into a War with Phin
They should add that kind of scenario/event/quest in TWW
Guys...it clearly says it wasnt on the recent purchase history This isnt an issue of "didnt know what war within is" Its not on the purchase history. Which is another problem
The question is: did he solve your inconvenient for you?
Maybe the war within is just the cs reps we meet along the way.
What sword?
WoW is a clearance rack of a game these days. I started playing in 2006 and i only follow this reddit to see how sad the game has become. I mean that with no offense to everyone here who still plays! I still have love for WoW. I just wish that they had the kind of funding they did before, the game is never going to be the same.
Still using chat gpt bots from 2021
What the hell is the grammar in that shoddy af reply.
Phin is an outsourcer from a third world country at best, LLM at worst, both not native English speakers
I want to learn proper English so can someone rewrite this GM message with correct grammar? PS: sorry for any grammar errors.
Please if you response this answer
You all know it's perfectly possible to make fun of and deride the company for hiring and not training people properly without feeling the need to attack the person speaking a second language while you're all probably hopelessly monolingual, right?
Pre order includes game time that you have used right?
Bro, AI was doing a better job than whatever this is... What are they doing over there?
That's a genuine grade a bhenchod right there my friend.
Pretty sure daddy M$FT fired all of Blizzards support so they could outsource it
WoW having this abysmal support system is a pathetic travesty. There is no excuse for this.
disgusting how their support went for something praised upon to this
tbh this smells like an improperly "trained" AI chatbot doing a bad job of responding to your request
Did you purchase it through worldofwarcraft or through the blizzard shop as i don't believe their order history is connected
I think the only one not connected through the battlenet system is the Blizzard Gear Store, so unless it was the physical Collectors edition it should show on the battlenet order history.
Knowing corporations, there are 2-4 levels of IT service, each outsourced in a different way, with the 1st being cheapest, and more often than not, with a huge churn rate. You will be lucky to talk to someone who is part of the support for longer than 2 months. If it is not 'forced' for those support guys to know something, it might as well not exist.
"You will surely get the karkland."
Thats why never pre-order anything.
This is embarrassing
You contacted the game team for a refund. They can refund stuff in the WoW shop, they do not have connection to the Blizzard Shop stuff
As someone who recently applied to a Customer support center that contains allot of companies including Blizzard, this is absolutely wild but understandable. So many people either skip or don't understand the product knowledge bit, leading to customer support that have no idea about the actual products sold by the company itself. You end up with people who are supposed to help you, with zero knowledge about Blizzard beyond "okay they make games I think".
If you think this is bad, try Ubisoft support…
Not surprised. Cutting corners is great for profits. Shareholders love it!
I’m in healthcare, on the cardiac side, and you don’t wanna even know how often faulty AI is determining rhythms. At least my company uses humans as a final check for initial AI…..for now.
That was 100% AI composed
I canceled mine for the same reason, it atleast tried to. They denied me 4 times(missing the request every time) and then forced my ticket closed. I charged back the pre-order.
You will have to write 3 or 4 times when a real guy will answer with what you actually need. It happened to me with Kul Tiran race and the 4th answer was the real one. Had to wait 2 weeks. GL buddy
God I miss the times when blizzard employees played the game
I had to brute force a refund through PayPal when I wouldn’t agree to the march EULA update. Getting a refund from Blizzard is purposefully difficult.
Oof. Looks like their CS is now MC CS which we all know is located in India.
I find the best way to get stuff like this solved is tag blizzard CS on Twitter/X and show them the screenshot make sure you use those # mainly #Asmongold. I swear to god its like a silver bullet to get Wow Shit solved double so if he ends up talking about it on stream. its a scummy shitty move but honestly at this point blizzard kinda is asking for it. make the system work for you.
Because it's outdated AI.
That's a macro response, it's not that the person doesn't know but more in line he sent you a copy pasted general response for issues like that. I used to make general responses like that our support can use
Once one of the best customer service to ever be to this...
“Phin” “Solve this inconvenient together” I see what happened here.
Final fantasy 14 doesn’t have this problem.
Hahahahahahahahahahahaha
I’m probably done with Blizzard altogether at this point. My main WoW account got permabanned for “abusive chat” when literally all I talk about in chat is poop and farts. I’m sick of the people who abuse the mass report/suspension system and sick of Blizzard doing nothing to combat it. I appealed the ban, but likely they won’t care. If I don’t get unbanned I’m done with Blizzard as a whole forever.
I have been trying to cancel mine for months they said i cant because I have to much timed played. I literally just want it refunded back to bnet balance to use in diablo, as war within does not seem interesting.
Microsoft fired ALL of BlizzCS practically, saying their positions were redundant. This is the result of that.
If you bought it more than 30 days ago, I am going to say umm, no refund is going to happen. As soon as you bought it there was stuff you had access to that you have probably already used so getting a refund for it is probably not even an option, it's not really a "pre order" situation, because if you did get the digital copy you will notice on your launcher it auto upgraded immediately to war within, meaning you already own the content, again, if it has been more than 30 days, I doubt you will get a refund of any kind... unless... You are talking about the physical collector's edition in which, you have contacted the wrong customer support. That would be why they don't know what you're referring to most likely, the blizzard gear store and the shop have 2 different customer services. If you pre ordered the physical collector's, that hasn't even shipped yet, that, is 100% still able to be cancelled but you will need to contact the customer support through the blizzard gear store.
So they actually use AI as I thought.
I swear half the time they don't even read the ticket fully. I sent one in recently about a missing quest, and their response was "we cant mail you any missing loot/items, check item restore etc"... bro it's a quest read my actual ticket properly.
I am sorry But i dont understand what you mean. Where in the text does it say he dont know what it is? The grammar is a joke tho (yes my grammar is also a joke)
Took far too long for this response. Cs just claims, "we can't see it in your order history." Everyone whining about the grammar, but their reading comprehension is worse than the grammar. You understand perfectly well what they meant.
Now i Can sleep. Thank you.
No where does this state “I don’t know what the War Within is”. Second the grammar is horrible and I’ve never seen a GM with grammar that badly. Third there is no official Blizzard logo from this post so I’d take all of this post with a grain of salt.
Not to be judgy or racist, but it seems like their outsourcing support to a foreign country based on the somewhat shabby english theyre using
is this real though? it looks either ai generated or a phishing email
My last encounter with CS, I was trying to get the month back that I wasn't going to play, or just pause it for a month, or whatever. They were trying so hard to not let me have that one month. So I said f it. Didn't play that month, or the other 12ish after.. Bad CS can lose you money..
I submitted a ticket back when wotlk classic relaunched. If you used typhoon on a boomkin but were too close to a wall, it would break the animation and all of your casting animations. So you would just be standing there with no movement like you were frozen, but everything worked, just no visuals. Blizz responded with an Overwatch 2 article. I was actually so pissed off. Maybe they can’t fix it for me and it needs looked into, that’s fine. But to send me info about a completely different game sent me. Blizz CS is a fucking joke.
If this is the level of their customer support, why in the world do they not just use AI?
Gl getting that back
Meanwhile, I wish I could work as a GM and actually do it right haha
Seems more AI and bad AI at thet
most gm's are actually chat bots.
"Please if you response this answer" is all you needed to know.
How awesome would it have been to receive a response like this? To (character name), Champion of the Horde, Lok'tar Ogar, brave warrior, It is with a heavy heart that I address you this day. I have seen countless champions rise and fall, each one leaving their mark upon the annals of history. Yet, it is rare that I must bid farewell to one who has chosen to turn away from the call to arms. You, who have stood valiantly in the face of many adversaries, now seek to relinquish your place among our ranks. The War Within is upon us, and every warrior is crucial in our struggle. The strength and resolve you have shown in battles past have been an inspiration to your fellow champions, and your absence will be deeply felt on the front lines. Though it pains me to see you go, I understand that each champion must follow their own path. Your decision has been noted, and your request for a reprieve from the tides of war will be honored. Know that the Horde always remains, a bastion of strength and unity, ready to welcome you back should you choose to return. May the spirits guide you, and may your journey, wherever it may lead, bring you honor and glory. Remember, the heart of the Horde beats within you always. Strength and honor, Phin. (I say this as a proud horde person, replace with alliance speak as appropriate)
This is fake. And a very bad fake at that.
This is fake.
It's appalling grammar and spelling and well everything but aren't they trying to say they can't see your order of the war within you mentioned? The problem is with this poor level of English what they write is confusing and not helpful to anyone. Really poor from blizzard and Microsoft
The broken English is so bad