thessalian (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
thessalian) wrote2006-07-24 11:16 am
thessalian) wrote2006-07-24 11:16 am
Entry tags:
- anime,
- entertainment,
- geek,
- jobs,
- mmorpg
Customer Service
Those of you who've chatted with me since Saturday night will know that on Saturday afternoon, ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
dodgyhoodoo came home from a lunch meet-up with weaselbitch (I'd have gone, but I haven't been bothering with lunch the last week and I was busy struggling with the Frankenbox) with a copy of Final Fantasy XI Online for my MMORPGing pleasure. I had actually decided not to buy it this month, as shelling out for a DVD drive, memory chip for the PSP and assorted other stuff had taken an unreasonable chunk of my bank account, but he got it for me anyway, stating that he hoped that it would make up for the abject frustration the Frankenbox and PSP had been causing me since Friday afternoon.
Not so much, no. I did the registration thing for PlayOnline while talking tododgyhoodoo about how to handle backgrounds and merits/flaws in Urban Chaote.* And, my attention thus diverted, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention when the PlayOnline registration screen said, "WRITE THIS USER ID DOWN!" And ... well, didn't. But I thought, "No big deal. Anyone with the sense the gods gave gophers would be sure to send someone's user ID in the confirmation email"...
To which the world basically turned around and replied, "Um ... what confirmation email?"
After some swearing and yet more time on Google, I discovered that some people (apparently Americans) were told by tech support that they actually had to buy a new copy of the game and reregister if they lost their ID. Those people were duly informed by their peers that no, you could get your user ID back if you called up the company and confirmed your details. Said peers were informed by still others that they themselves had experienced so much hassle just trying to get hold of tech support that they gave up and bought a new game anyway.
"Well, bugger that," I said, and proceeded to try to get hold of the PlayOnline Support Service. Except the answer to my question wasn't in the FAQ. I couldn't email the helpdesk because they have their own form into which you must enter your PlayOnline email address, which I assume correlates to your PlayOnline ID, which I didn't have. Live chat was dead. And, despite it being a game played by geeks and the antisocial, generally at odd hours of the morning or on the weekends, their phone line, based in England, was only open 9-6 on weekdays. Everyone I spoke to about this basically said, "You know, for a company that wants to take your money every month, they're doing a shitty job of making sure you can actually register to pay them money every month..."
Long story short: I called them this morning. After about five minutes on hold (not bad, considering), I got through to a very nice German-sounding gentleman who calmly took my details, apolgised when he got a bit of my registration key wrong (the perils of saying M and N on the phone; they both sound so similar at the best of times), gave me my PlayOnline ID, was patient while I read it back to confirm, thanked me for my patience, hoped I enjoyed my game and let me go on my merry way. Customer service is not dead.
So now, after a fairly good commute during which I got through two episodes of Lain painstakingly downloaded onto my PSP over the past couple of days, I am back at work. It's not overly insane, but there are a couple of things that didn't get done and should of, only one or two of which are my fault. The rest ... well, it strikes me as insane that Michael told me a month or so ago to move the subfolder in which we keep papers we're processing to a certain place, only to not be able to find them again when I'm not here. He insisted that two papers that were very clearly on the system ... well, weren't. He can't have been looking very hard. The rest of it's just stuff that never got done and needs progressing. Whoopee. So I'd best get back to it. At least there wasn't a lot of stuff that didn't get done on my part, so I don't think there'll be problems when Michael gets back in.
*(I still maintain that separating backgrounds from merits and flaws may make the character sheet resemble White Wolf, but lumping them all together makes it resemble Fading Suns or GURPS, and the division is still fairly useful because it sets apart innate things like luck, keen eyesight and danger sense from stuff that comes not from you but from the world around you, like finances, mentors and gear. Different things, different divisions. Plus having the divisions is easier when it comes to handwritten lists, which is a good thing considering most people's handwriting and the size of the average character sheet. But that's just me.)
dodgyhoodoo came home from a lunch meet-up with weaselbitch (I'd have gone, but I haven't been bothering with lunch the last week and I was busy struggling with the Frankenbox) with a copy of Final Fantasy XI Online for my MMORPGing pleasure. I had actually decided not to buy it this month, as shelling out for a DVD drive, memory chip for the PSP and assorted other stuff had taken an unreasonable chunk of my bank account, but he got it for me anyway, stating that he hoped that it would make up for the abject frustration the Frankenbox and PSP had been causing me since Friday afternoon.Not so much, no. I did the registration thing for PlayOnline while talking to
dodgyhoodoo about how to handle backgrounds and merits/flaws in Urban Chaote.* And, my attention thus diverted, I wasn't paying a whole lot of attention when the PlayOnline registration screen said, "WRITE THIS USER ID DOWN!" And ... well, didn't. But I thought, "No big deal. Anyone with the sense the gods gave gophers would be sure to send someone's user ID in the confirmation email"...To which the world basically turned around and replied, "Um ... what confirmation email?"
After some swearing and yet more time on Google, I discovered that some people (apparently Americans) were told by tech support that they actually had to buy a new copy of the game and reregister if they lost their ID. Those people were duly informed by their peers that no, you could get your user ID back if you called up the company and confirmed your details. Said peers were informed by still others that they themselves had experienced so much hassle just trying to get hold of tech support that they gave up and bought a new game anyway.
"Well, bugger that," I said, and proceeded to try to get hold of the PlayOnline Support Service. Except the answer to my question wasn't in the FAQ. I couldn't email the helpdesk because they have their own form into which you must enter your PlayOnline email address, which I assume correlates to your PlayOnline ID, which I didn't have. Live chat was dead. And, despite it being a game played by geeks and the antisocial, generally at odd hours of the morning or on the weekends, their phone line, based in England, was only open 9-6 on weekdays. Everyone I spoke to about this basically said, "You know, for a company that wants to take your money every month, they're doing a shitty job of making sure you can actually register to pay them money every month..."
Long story short: I called them this morning. After about five minutes on hold (not bad, considering), I got through to a very nice German-sounding gentleman who calmly took my details, apolgised when he got a bit of my registration key wrong (the perils of saying M and N on the phone; they both sound so similar at the best of times), gave me my PlayOnline ID, was patient while I read it back to confirm, thanked me for my patience, hoped I enjoyed my game and let me go on my merry way. Customer service is not dead.
So now, after a fairly good commute during which I got through two episodes of Lain painstakingly downloaded onto my PSP over the past couple of days, I am back at work. It's not overly insane, but there are a couple of things that didn't get done and should of, only one or two of which are my fault. The rest ... well, it strikes me as insane that Michael told me a month or so ago to move the subfolder in which we keep papers we're processing to a certain place, only to not be able to find them again when I'm not here. He insisted that two papers that were very clearly on the system ... well, weren't. He can't have been looking very hard. The rest of it's just stuff that never got done and needs progressing. Whoopee. So I'd best get back to it. At least there wasn't a lot of stuff that didn't get done on my part, so I don't think there'll be problems when Michael gets back in.
*(I still maintain that separating backgrounds from merits and flaws may make the character sheet resemble White Wolf, but lumping them all together makes it resemble Fading Suns or GURPS, and the division is still fairly useful because it sets apart innate things like luck, keen eyesight and danger sense from stuff that comes not from you but from the world around you, like finances, mentors and gear. Different things, different divisions. Plus having the divisions is easier when it comes to handwritten lists, which is a good thing considering most people's handwriting and the size of the average character sheet. But that's just me.)