Best/worst customer support

[Johnny Novgorod]

Let's do this while I'm in a good mood.

I bought a game with an expired online pass on Friday. Live-chatted with Sony customer support, sent pics (or it didn't happen), they told me they'd mail me a replacement online pass on Tuesday and lo and behold, I received it today. Not to flatter Sony too much - they won't do shit for you when it comes to policing multiplayer - but for once I'm 100% satisfied with customer support.

The only other satisfying interaction I've had has been with 2K Games support, over a glitched trophy in Bioshock: Infinite. Dude writing back told me exactly what to do and it sorted itself out in a cinch. By contrast Ubisoft likes to issue automated replies, like you're feeding keywords into an algorithm in exchange for generic copy/paste responses. When an Assassin's Creed trophy glitches on you, it's there to stay.

The worst of all has been Behavior Interactive. Contacted them back in the day over how broken and unplayable was their Shadow of Mordor port (ha ha, I bought a port, fuck me). Their response? "Eh, we don't do that game any more". Thanks QA.

What have been you best and/or worst experiences with customer support?

 

[Worgen]

EVGA has really good customer support. They sent me a number of vid cards when I was having issues with coil whine and then just bumped me up to the next level of card.

The worst one that comes to mind is logitech. They used to have fantastic customer support but the last time I contacted them I was on hold for an hour before it took the guy 30 min to run me though some crappy trouble shooting steps that had no chance of working since there was obviously a cut cable or something. Then he finally told me the item wasn't under warranty.

 

[WeepingAngels]

Best: Origin. Bought Lego Batman 2 and then for some reason they disabled my game. Contacted support, got the Lego game fixed and they gave me a free game, any game on Origin, I chose Kingdoms of Amalur. I think it was $60 at the time. I have never had trouble with EA support. Valve on the other hand...

Worst: Most recent. About a month ago I am Setsuna was patched and that patch broke the game on NVidia, non DX11 cards (or so the rumor goes). Since there has been no word about the game being fixed for DX10 users I asked for a refund. I explained in a message (that no one at Valve probably read) that they broke the game for me and with no promise of a fix, I wanted a refund. My refund was denied on the basis that I played more than 2 hours (I played 10 hours). Do circumstances matter Valve? An update permanently breaking a game is the same as a developer coming to your house and scratching up one your game discs.

I wonder how many people actually believed Valve when they talked of improving their customer service.

 

[Mcgeezaks]

Valve must be the worst, not the necessarily the support itself but the waiting times can be WEEKS.

 

[Silentpony_v1legacy]

Worst: Bioware. Black screen of death on Mass Effect 3. Turns out that ME3 wasn't designed to be played on the 360 and frequently encountered an error having something to do with your gamerID where the screen just goes black. Happened to me on launch day with my collector's edition. Customer support told me thanks for buying, there is no fix, no refunds. Took someone named Resante 200 days to create a fix, and even then Customer Support made it clear it was an unsupported fix and and patches that undo it aren't their fault. Haven't trusted a Bioware game since.

Best: I've never had a good experience with Customer Support. I know people who've worked the phone trees. They're designed to piss customers off so they never call. If you had a good experience, truly, the support people did their job wrong and probably got reprimanded for it.

 

[Bob_McMillan]

I dont have any best, considering I live in a country where refunds are a thing of myth.

The worst has to be Sony. I spent 4 hours with 3 different people after some dickwad stole my Playstation Store card code, and only on the last one (using the same answers I gave the last two) did they take me seriously. I got all the way to point where they asked me to send proof of purchase, and they rejected it because my receipt was written (archaic, I know, but I suspect my local game retailer does it on purpose). So yeah, fuck em.

 

[Elfgore]

EA with Origin was pretty solid. I bought the new Syndicate game and it would not download. Just brought up the error "cannot download". Hop on EA customer support at like midnight and this dude helps me for like half an hour. Eventually I get tired of it and just say it isn't worth it and I would like a refund. Dude gives me no hassle and within like a week I had my money back.

Now Steam on the other hand. Steam has currently at least two games I know of literally unplayable on the store that they continue to sell. One being The Sims: Medieval and Spore. I first encountered Spore's and was pretty salty. It took a week for an email to get back to me, of which it was automated, telling me to do the troubleshooting I already said didn't work and I'm SOL on the refund. This troubleshooting BTW required you to go all the way into your system registry I think to fix. I was furious. Steam support has and most likely always will be a steaming pile of shit.

 

[Dirty Hipsters]

Capcom is the worst.

I had an issue with the PC version of resident evil 5 multiplayer not working. Can't remember what the exact issue was, this was quite a while ago. Steam's customer support didn't do the support for this game, so they redirected me to Capcom's support page. I filled out all the information necessary, even attached some screenshots to show what wasn't working. Capcom never replied to me.

I ended up fixing the issue myself later with a mod I found online. Never ended up bothering to play the game though, was too deflated by the experience to care. Haven't bought another Capcom game since and probably never will.

 

[Zhukov]

EA/Origin actually have solid customer support in my experience. Had some issues with my account and got them sorted out with minimal difficulties. Decent wait times and reps seemed to know what they were doing. Kind of surprising given EA's reputation.

Don't have any nightmare stories that come to mind.

 

[sXeth]

Game-wise? The worst was probably Rockstar that I've actually dealt with. Never did get the pre-order bonus cash for GTA:O (Possibly because I put the code in before Online even launched). Not that the game lasted long with me anyways, and my magazine at the time supplied the copy for review.

Wildcard (Ark) is pretty obviously in way over their head, at best. 3 tickets I've ended up submitting haven't so much as garnered an automated reply. The reddit is basically a non-stop barrage of stuff that isn't fixed or addressed. They may be early access, but given their current ability to manage the tangled mess they've made, I could see their actual launch just being a disaster.


Elder Scrolls Online I had a speedy resolution with a similar finagle to GTA. I also seem to have apparently abnormal luck with Sony/PSN (Last time was refunding Just Cause 3 because of the wonky framerate problems).


Outside of gaming, Rogers Communications (a big cell/cable/net provider in Canada). Just constant barrages when I cancelled my cable (that I never watched). Later on cancelling my internet to switch to an unlimited provider and they just seemed befuddled as to why I wanted an unlimited package, trying to sell me on their super-pricey (And still capped!) packages. Topping off that one of the main catalysts for finally switching away was that they changed an 80gb a month service down to 60 without any notice to me and nailed me for overages on it.

 

[Reasonable Atheist]

Games for windows live, and i swear all of this is true, i have a witness.

I was at my friend cody's apartment and we were fooling around with dark souls. I wanted to boot up my character on his computer, so he logged out and I could not remember my username.

After a short search, I found games for windows live online support. I asked if they could tell me my username, because i remembered my password.

I was told that i would be transferred to someone named Jessica who would help me. Jessica enabled some kind of over web browser version of team viewer to control cody's computer and help us (for some reason). After messing about on the desktop and clicking the dark souls icon, Jessica was prompted for my username.

This entire time I am trying to explain that all i need is my username, or some kind of username recovery email or something. Jessica proceeds to tell me that I am having this problem because of a small security issue, and she can fix it for a nominal fee. I tell Jessica that is rediculous, and all I am asking for is my username.

Jessica hangs up on me.

I did not play dark souls at my friend's house.

Cody is debilitated by hysterical laughter for no less then 4 minutes. I stare agape at the screen.

Support received.

 

[pookie101]

im another with praise for EA's customer service.

i bought a sims 2 expansion pack that advertised an extra item in the pack.i couldnt get the code to work. contacted customer service who after a day told me it wasnt available in my country but here have a $20 game of my choice on us as compensation..

 

[FalloutJack]

Well, I don't usually get bad support for things. Generally, when I ask for something and I get a person to talk to, I can make some actual headway on my technical problems, fincancial problems, and attempts to gain some information.

Most trouble I've ever had is with Microsoft, though to be fair...I went to them because I'd discovered the email of someone who'd tried to hack my Paypal account and I wanted to inform them that this user was certainly using his account for illegal actions. I did report this fact, but it was definitely to some guy in India, no joke.

 

[Yoshi178]

never dealt with Sony Customer service. Xbox Support was a bit of a pain to find since Xbox doesn't have office's here in Australia. but xbox was pleasant enough to deal with once i got to them

Nintendo has an Australian headquarters over here though and even in the same city where i live which is super awesome. Nintendo Australia isn't best when it comes to updating us on game news but they're super helpful when it comes to tech support and fixing defective machines.

when my 3DS XL was having a screen problem with it they even fixed it for me completely free of charge even though it was a couple of days outside the Warranty expiry period and they even fixed a distorted speaker for me that they found at the same time as well. was like getting a brand new system when i got it back

 

[008Zulu_v1legacy]

Back when Activision was just Activision, they released a game called Star Trek Armada. It was a Star Trek RTS. Anyway, the game would frequently crash rendering it unplayable. Their customer support suggested I try the game in Safe Mode (some games had a Safe Mode way back when). The game worked, but anyone who has ever done anything in Safe Mode will say that while it might work, it looks ugly as hell. So when I told C.S this, they said the problem was fixed and ended the support.

Conversely, my best would have to be Warner Bros. I had both Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, but under the GFWL banner which is now defunct. I asked for some help on this, they said send in photos of the game's cd key. I did, and they sent me a Steam key for each game.

 

[Quellist]

Best: Eidos Interactive. Bought Thief 2 but the GUI wasn't working right, called up and was told it was because i hadn't updated my graphics drivers. As i was new to the PC this was quite scary so the guy took the time to walk me through the whole install process when the problem wasn't even with his product. Didn't hang up until i had Thief running fine and could confirm.

2nd best: Microsoft! My xbox 360 went RRoD about 2 1/2 years in. Called them and started the return process, within two weeks (way less than it was supposed to take) they sent me back a different xbox that was in a whole lot better condition than the one i sent them!

Worst: Talktalk. 6 months after I joined their broadband i started getting packet loss, which when playing a Doctor in an MMO (Anarchy Online) was pretty much destroying my ability to play. Regularly kept on hold for an hour+ shunted from one department to another, told to call back and talk to people who didn't exist just to get rid of me because they couldn't solve my problem (this over the course of several weeks) made to install useless software to fix my system until finally someone told me my local exchange had room for 50 users in my area and i happened (as i was the first adopter) to be #51 So essentially i kept getting kicked off or slowed down because They had taken on more people than they could cope with. Ok fine, get me out of this 1 year contract i asked. Sure they said, you wont have to pay the early severance fee because of this bad service. Oh yes i did and because i didn't get the name and employee number of the person that made this promise i couldn't prove it had ever been made. No wonder these guys get a wooden spoon for awful customer service year after year