Deleted a character that had bought items on it... RESOLVED

I just started playing GW2 again after a couple years and i deleted a character so i can make a new one. The character I deleted had my unlimited mining pick, unlimited logging item, unlimited foraging item on it. Forgot the terms of them but they dont run out and they have special animations when you mine, forage and log. They cost me about $40-50 for them. Im really bummed out and i asked support if they can give me the items back or something. They havent responded yet and its been 3 days. I cant afford to buy them again so i really hope they give me them back or something equivalent etc.

Support is massively backed up, so right now, 3 days is pretty much nothing. I'd expect a reply in a couple of weeks. If they can verify you've bought them and they've been deleted, they probably will replace them.

@Vayne.8563 said:Support is massively backed up, so right now, 3 days is pretty much nothing. I'd expect a reply in a couple of weeks. If they can verify you've bought them and they've been deleted, they probably will replace them.

Exactly so. Wait times for non-urgent issues (such as this one) are 3-4 weeks. And yes, they will replace items lost this way, if they can verify the purchase and that it's no longer on the account. (There can be exceptions for a variety of reasons.)

Good luck.

@Vayne.8563 said:Support is massively backed up, so right now, 3 days is pretty much nothing. I'd expect a reply in a couple of weeks. If they can verify you've bought them and they've been deleted, they probably will replace them.

3 weeks for support? WOW. I have never seen that in any game ever. That is pathetic. There is no legit excuse for that. They need to hire more people.

@mykemyk.7456 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Support is massively backed up, so right now, 3 days is pretty much nothing. I'd expect a reply in a couple of weeks. If they can verify you've bought them and they've been deleted, they probably will replace them.

They did hire more people. It takes time for new people to come fully up to speed, especially on something as touchy as customer support.

(The reasons for the backlog are varied, and include a pile of tickets created when they suspended a bunch of people for cheating, and also a sudden influx of new players following the less than totally stellar release of another MMORPG whose name I won't mention.)

The support is randomly fast these days. I had a ticket wait one month before being answered, then a few days after I had another one that had an answer within 2 hours.

If this can reassure you, I see no reason to why they wouldn't want to replace your items. If the purchase is old, it might take them a bit of time before finding the purchase history, but I'm sure they won't pose any problem once they've found it. But do be careful before deleting a character, personnally I always check all of their bags and equipment before doing anything.

See the very bottom of this page for the list of unlimitted gathering tools: https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Gathering_toolIf you can find the one you had and give them the name of it, it might make their research easyer, though that's just a supposition.

I’m sure getting inundated with requests to resolve issues caused by players doesn’t help either.

@mykemyk.7456 said:

@Vayne.8563 said:Support is massively backed up, so right now, 3 days is pretty much nothing. I'd expect a reply in a couple of weeks. If they can verify you've bought them and they've been deleted, they probably will replace them.

It's definitely not acceptable, but then, kitten happens. I ran a service department in the past and we got snowed under from time to time and our turnaround time went from 3 days to 2 weeks. Hiring more people in that case never sped up the backlog, no matter how many people I hired, because the process of hiring and training people slowed down the process of looking at service tickets. Sometimes, in real life, you can't help it.

This happened in the middle of an expansion cycle in a six year old game. Nothing could have prepared them to be prepared for that sort of thing.

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:I'm sorry to hear about that error, and I know the CS Team will do their best to help you. However, it will take a while, because we need to prioritize key issues -- such as retrieving a hacked account or helping someone get into their account -- versus this sort of assistance. That's not to say that your issue is not important, but simply that it isn't urgent which I'm sure you'll agree is true. The team will look into this as soon as they can, and thanks for your patience!

See but my purchase cost me $50 why isn't that as important as others? It's not like im asking for help with a quest or something. I asked a question 1 day prior to this ticket about purchasing something and they responded in under 12 hours. TWICE. Because of course they want my money. But now that it doesnt involve them getting any money it'll take 3 weeks. Disappointed and leaves a sour taste in my mouth since i decided to return. Makes me want to just go spend my time on ESO or something else.

@mykemyk.7456 said:See but my purchase cost me $50 why isn't that as important as others? It's not like im asking for help with a quest or something. I asked a question 1 day prior to this ticket about purchasing something and they responded in under 12 hours. TWICE. Because of course they want my money. But now that it doesnt involve them getting any money it'll take 3 weeks. Disappointed and leaves a sour taste in my mouth since i decided to return. Makes me want to just go spend my time on ESO or something else.

Would it be better for you if you don't get the items back at all? the mistake was yours and at least you have a high chance that they will return the stuff to you so at least try to be patient, maybe you'll get an answer sooner than around 3 weeks

Why is it not as important? Because it was user error and it's non-critical to your gameplay. I mean this in the nicest way possible, but they don't have to return it at all. You willfully deleted them, and now are asking for support. They also are not necessary for play, as you can just buy the incredibly cheap tools available to everyone.

@mykemyk.7456 said:

@Gaile Gray.6029 said:I'm sorry to hear about that error, and I know the CS Team will do their best to help you. However, it will take a while, because we need to prioritize key issues -- such as retrieving a hacked account or helping someone get into their account -- versus this sort of assistance. That's not to say that your issue is not important, but simply that it isn't

urgent

which I'm sure you'll agree is true. The team will look into this as soon as they can, and thanks for your patience!

Because those other people cannot play AT ALL. They are trying to resolve "locked out of my account because I goldfished my password" or "my account was hacked please help me". You can still play. It will cost you in-game coin if you want to gather resources in the meantime, but you can play. That's why their tickets are more urgent(1) than yours.

(1) There's a very important difference between important and urgent that I think you have overlooked. @Gaile Gray.6029 did not say that your issue is not important (very much the opposite), but rather that those other things are more urgent. If your problem is resolved tomorrow instead of today because the CS team helped someone get their account back from a hacker before the hacker could do more damage, isn't that a good thing, overall?

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@mykemyk.7456 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Support is massively backed up, so right now, 3 days is pretty much nothing. I'd expect a reply in a couple of weeks. If they can verify you've bought them and they've been deleted, they probably will replace them.

I am pretty sure you are over-estimating these numbers.

• First, the player from Bless won't flood the support agents with tickets that aNet support is "suddenly" becoming 750% slower (3 weeks minus weekends = 15 days, their policy was 24-72 hours, so I take the middle, 48 hours). That's a hyperbole statement and a cheap scapegoat.
• Second, this has happened before (since October), I told you my stories of 75% unresponded support tickets that were closed by Zendesk software themselves after 3 months of nothing. And yes, there were follow-ups and I even tried in both German and English. (I even told so on the boards and Gaile apologied for that, so she knew and it was an actual problem, not just be me being picky)
• Third, customer support is mostly computer-aided. It's not that these guys would have to go trough huge manuals every case. They come up with the same, since 2012 existing pre-written text brackets with a touch of individualism. That's not a big deal. For everything tech-related, they need to ask the responsible guys anyways, as in: What could we do with problem X? The one and only response I've received from the support was about ping issues and they basically asked me in a pre-written text to download their tool (a bunch of Windows command line tools put together) and post the results. That is really nothing you need to train people for. After that, they came up with default stuff that every computer user could've Google themselves (and in fact I believe they just Googled, too instead of getting game-specific solutions).

That however means that the staff can focus on the hacked people. But do you really think it takes them several full-time employees to do so? How many people are hacked every day? And they often respond only once or twice a day, since they do not sit in front of their screen waiting for PLING - CUSTOMER SUPPORT ANSWERED. So you have a lot of time "in-between" these cases individually.

• Ban-related tickets would be something I'd not care about at all. The false positives could and would try on the forums, but if you think your anti-cheat system is doing well-enough to get unleashed on your customers, it better works as supposed.

I am pretty sure the ifnlux of GW2 are not nearly as high as you think - and very much likely very temporarily - it'd affect the support so hard, especially since it's happened since roughly 1 year now. And those that try this 6-year old game just because a competitor on the market failed its start won't either stay long (they would've tried this game in the past) and surely only a tiny fraction of them is going to add load to the support staff.

Excelsior.

@Zedek.8932 said:

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@mykemyk.7456 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Support is massively backed up, so right now, 3 days is pretty much nothing. I'd expect a reply in a couple of weeks. If they can verify you've bought them and they've been deleted, they probably will replace them.

I mentioned no numbers, and note that word "include", rather than "were limited to". I didn't say those were the totality of the complete explanation, but they would certainly contribute to it. Shrug. Whatever. Some combination of circumstances (most likely including a jump in the rate of creation of new tickets) caused a jump in the time taken to process new tickets, and the OP in this thread had the misfortune to get caught in the aftermath.

Another item that I didn't mention was the advice being peddled in various places that to get your request processed sooner, you should create multiple tickets. This is clearly the wrong approach, as it increases the workload (measured in the total number of new tickets) and therefore the backlog without actually adding more "real" work to do (as measured by the number of unique issues).

@mykemyk.7456 said:

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:I'm sorry to hear about that error, and I know the CS Team will do their best to help you. However, it will take a while, because we need to prioritize key issues -- such as retrieving a hacked account or helping someone get into their account -- versus this sort of assistance. That's not to say that your issue is not important, but simply that it isn't

urgent

which I'm sure you'll agree is true. The team will look into this as soon as they can, and thanks for your patience!

Reminds me of what happened last week. I work as a nurse. A patient who was in a critical condition had a relative that called our attention. I ran into a mother of a nearby patient's room and asked for me to raise the temperature of the room. When we arrived at the critical patient's room, we ended up needing to code(cpr and all that stuff). After all that has settled down mother went to the station again was shouting at me that it's "20 min" already and haven't done simple request.

You see where I was going with this comparison? I understand you are also a paying customer and we all have needs to be attended but please understand that your request maybe in a lower priority as it's really not game breaking or preventing access with your account or something similar along the lines.

This can happen to any game or service IRL.

I had a problem previously with the account sms authenticator and the team resolved it within a week so just be a bit patient maybe it won't take 3 weeks.

EDIT: at least you can still use alternative gathering tools(although limited) while waiting.

@aceofbass.2163 said:

@mykemyk.7456 said:

@"Gaile Gray.6029" said:I'm sorry to hear about that error, and I know the CS Team will do their best to help you. However, it will take a while, because we need to prioritize key issues -- such as retrieving a hacked account or helping someone get into their account -- versus this sort of assistance. That's not to say that your issue is not important, but simply that it isn't

urgent

which I'm sure you'll agree is true. The team will look into this as soon as they can, and thanks for your patience!

Yet they respond right away when you are asking to purchase something. Like i said they responded TWICE within 12 hours 1 day prior. You people really shouldn't be defending them and making excuses for them. You arent getting brownie points or anything from them. Honestly this is not good for any of us. Like i said no other game has this long of a wait for support. This isnt a new game its been out for 6 years. They shouldnt be surprised at how many support they need. Not like any of you care nor should you, but i think im just going to play ESO instead. My choice was between the two anyways.

@Zedek.8932 said:

@Steve The Cynic.3217 said:

@mykemyk.7456 said:

@"Vayne.8563" said:Support is massively backed up, so right now, 3 days is pretty much nothing. I'd expect a reply in a couple of weeks. If they can verify you've bought them and they've been deleted, they probably will replace them.

• First, the player from Bless won't flood the support agents with tickets that aNet support is "suddenly" becoming
  750%
  slower (3 weeks minus weekends = 15 days, their policy was 24-72 hours, so I take the middle, 48 hours). That's a hyperbole statement and a cheap scapegoat.
• Second, this has happened before (since October), I told you my stories of 75% unresponded support tickets that were closed by Zendesk software themselves after 3 months of nothing. And yes, there were follow-ups and I even tried in both German and English. (I even told so on the boards and Gaile apologied for that, so she knew and it was an actual problem, not just be me being picky)
• Third, customer support is mostly computer-aided. It's not that these guys would have to go trough huge manuals every case. They come up with the same, since 2012 existing pre-written text brackets with a touch of individualism. That's not a big deal. For everything tech-related, they need to ask the responsible guys anyways, as in: What could we do with problem X? The one and only response I've received from the support was about ping issues and they basically asked me in a pre-written text to download their tool (a bunch of Windows command line tools put together) and post the results. That is really nothing you need to train people for. After that, they came up with default stuff that every computer user could've Google themselves (and in fact I believe they just Googled, too instead of getting game-specific solutions).

• Ban-related tickets would be something I'd not care about at all. The false positives could and would try on the forums, but if you think your anti-cheat system is doing well-enough to get unleashed on your customers, it better works as supposed.

It's as high as I think. You may not have been standing for days and days and days in starter zones helping new people, but I was. All day for a couple of weeks. You can say it's not as high as I think. It was high enough for Anet to comment about it and to run a sale on the game. But it wasn't the new people that were the thing that slowed it up. It was a lot of publicity that brought returning players back as well. People who lost their passwords, people who got hacked, people who had old phone numbers on their authenticators, etc.

Your comments make no sense, because we had complaints like this when PoF launched and those complaints went away for a good long time, during which there were posts of people complimenting support on reddit, fairly regularly. I've had support act pretty fast in my case.

But determining account ownership is NOT automated, it's more time intensive, and requires a higher level of customer service rep. so yeah, that's that hold up. You don't have to like it, you don't have to believe it, but if your only evidence is your opinion, I'll go with my personal, anecdotal experience in game.

@ the OP:

I hope that support can get your items back to you in short order, and yes, until then, you can use the generic gathering tools, but, and I say this without trying to sound like a troll, it's very possible that they will not replace them. In the past, when I asked about replacing something I had purchased and subsequently deleted, I was told (in so many words) that I should have been paying attention when I deleted the character, and that they cannot replace items. Regardless of your eventual outcome, you can check the status of your ticket by responding as per the instructions in the latest email you received confirming their receipt of your complaint. Type a short "Hey, have you heard anything yet?" in the space provided when you reply.

Good luck to you!

@mykemyk.7456 said:I just started playing GW2 again after a couple years and i deleted a character so i can make a new one. The character I deleted had my unlimited mining pick, unlimited logging item, unlimited foraging item on it. Forgot the terms of them but they dont run out and they have special animations when you mine, forage and log. They cost me about $40-50 for them. Im really bummed out and i asked support if they can give me the items back or something. They havent responded yet and its been 3 days. I cant afford to buy them again so i really hope they give me them back or something equivalent etc.

The time they take to respond & do what you ask depend of the thing you ask, in my case it was getting an item back (an item droppable) that i couldn't get anymore due to a bug, they took 3 days to give it back to me and to answer me, you are asking to get back items you bought in the shop, and not only one but couple of them, they need to read, check if you really had it, and on the whole account if it isn't in any inventory or something else, then they have to answer you and send it back to you, just imagine there are 1000 people in the same case and and another thousand of problems that every single employee has to deal with ? wouldn't you get busy ?You just need to wait, the others said 3 weeks, i would say about week.Having back your item is what you ask, you'll get it and don't complain for the time it takes.

There is a very thin line between complaining and insulting. You were right this is clearly anet's fault and you have all right to complain but you couldn't keep it that way and crossed the line. I do hope they will give you back items you want whether you are here or not but i won't symphatize you and probably you're not gonna need it.

Good luck and Have fun.

Should you decide to ever return, the 'Legal Documentation' link below will enable you to read not only the EULA, but the Forum CoC, as well.

Good luck.

They finally responded to my ticket yesterday after almost 3 weeks. They responded with something that i didnt even ask for like they didnt understand my issue even though i was quite specific and clear about my issue. So i just repeated my issue again and they magically understood this time, just more wasted time. Their response to me is i either have to buy another character slot, or delete one of my characters in order for them to restore the character that had the items on it when it was deleted. I told them both options are not good and asked why they cant give me a temporary character slot while they restore the character and then deleted it after i get the items... OR just give me the items back without all of this would be the best option. If they can restore a character they can restore an item.

I mean.. What the hell did you expect lol Just delete one then and comply, don't make it more difficult

What i expected is what literally every other game does for an issue like this. They just restore the items for you. They dont make you delete a character or buy another character slot just so they can restore the deleted unwanted character that had the items on it that are the ones that are wanting to be restored...Itsjust so unnecessary and cost me a character that i didnt want to delete.