[Merged] Customer Support Ticket Response Times

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

Several events happened within a short period of time to cause a large backlog: approximately 1500 account bans at once, a renewed interest in Guild Wars (One) due to updates, and some very favorable reviews by a popular YouTube video creator coinciding with a poor launch of another game, which brought many new and returning players. Also, unfortunately, some misinformation that spamming tickets using throw-away email addresses would garner faster service; which only made things worse.

Thus, the backlog that the various CS Teams are still working through.

[Pedrobz.2908]

This is by far the worst CS i ever had.My son will lost his entire summer (90 days, 1/4 of a year) with his account blocked by a warning.But the most annoying problem is the no response.At least he can play in my acc.

To the people who didn't had they ticket solved in the first response, how long did u wait for the second?

[Adrop.1473]

@"Blocki.4931" said:https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/39093/customer-support-ticket-response-times-merged#latest

People waiting up to 3 weeks. It's still the same issue with an evergrowing backlog of work and tickets & people not being happy and creating even more, then creating tickets about "why did you close my other ticket", at least I can imagine a ton of people doing that.

But to answer your question:

I'd assume the huge majority of their staff is speaking English, so speaking English might be smarter. I've send my last ticket around the end of May I believe and I wrote it in German. It took 8 days for a response and another 3 to fix my issue after I was asked to update with additional information.

I wrote my ticket last week 12th July, still waiting for an answer... #6998337. Very frustrating.

[Tangram.1805]

My ticket has officially reached the one month status!

[metalTiffy.7106]

The problem is, in the news a month ago, @Gaile Gray.6029 wrote most tickets take 1-2 weeks.. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/42967/customer-support-update-6-8-2018#latestActually it took 3-4 or longer at the moment. Since the news it looks like it is getting worser instead of better?Im waiting for 10 days judt to get the Winauth removed from my Account 6996405If it would be "just" 1 or 2 weeks i would be nearly finished but looks like i will not be able to play a single day in my 3 weeks holidays and could not play the old zephirite stuff.

Im just worried, that people, that open a ticket today have to wait 5-6 weeks and next week the waiting time is getting even longer..

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

Regardless of the circumstances, I would hope that ANet would take 5 minutes each week to post the current status, even if it's just, "nothing has changed. We hired and are hiring more staff, training them, and working on the backlog."

In theory, it often takes 3 months to clear a 1-month backlog, after hiring enough staff (which can take ages all on its own). In practice, though, to us as customers, it just looks like this is the new normal. I'm sure that they are aware of how horrid this is for all of us (ANet & the community), that they are doing as best they can in trying times, and that they do have a plan to return to the old 1-3 day turn around.

I'm not asking for any promises; I would just like for them to take a little time to acknowledge the situation. I'm very sympathetic to how difficult this is for ANet (I have been in those shoes). I'd like to see some public sympathy for how difficult this is for players.

[Healix.5819]

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Several events happened within a short period of time to cause a large backlog:

+GDPR. They had to deal with the spam of information requests. (reddit)

[Illconceived Was Na.9781]

@Healix.5819 said:

@"Inculpatus cedo.9234" said:Several events happened within a short period of time to cause a large backlog:

+GDPR. They had to deal with the spam of information requests. (

reddit

)

Good point. I'm sure that generated a lot of hard-to-parse tickets.

[Adrop.1473]

@"Illconceived Was Na.9781" said:Regardless of the circumstances, I would hope that ANet would take 5 minutes each week to post the current status, even if it's just, "nothing has changed. We hired and are hiring more staff, training them, and working on the backlog."

In theory, it often takes 3 months to clear a 1-month backlog, after hiring enough staff (which can take ages all on its own). In practice, though, to us as customers, it just looks like this is the new normal. I'm sure that they are aware of how horrid this is for all of us (ANet & the community), that they are doing as best they can in trying times, and that they do have a plan to return to the old 1-3 day turn around.

I'm not asking for any promises; I would just like for them to take a little time to acknowledge the situation. I'm very sympathetic to how difficult this is for ANet (I have been in those shoes). I'd like to see some public sympathy for how difficult this is for players.

Yep, that's what I meant, a little update, even when nothing changed yet would be awesome. Its very frustrating to wait, without any information about anything. As long anyone of the GM's tell me: "Ok bad situation at the moment, wait 10 Years til you get an answer!", it's definitly better then waiting and checking every day, (I even look every hour, because I want to play GW2 again) wether there is an answer or not. I am getting furious, because noone tells me anything.

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

@metalTiffy.7106 said:The problem is, in the news a month ago, @Gaile Gray.6029 wrote most tickets take 1-2 weeks.. https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/42967/customer-support-update-6-8-2018#latestActually it took 3-4 or longer at the moment. Since the news it looks like it is getting worser instead of better?Im waiting for 10 days judt to get the Winauth removed from my Account 6996405If it would be "just" 1 or 2 weeks i would be nearly finished but looks like i will not be able to play a single day in my 3 weeks holidays and could not play the old zephirite stuff.

Im just worried, that people, that open a ticket today have to wait 5-6 weeks and next week the waiting time is getting even longer..

I don't think it's getting worse, but that sometimes one hand is not quite aware of what the other hand is involved in. Statements from those who actually work in CS mentioned much longer wait times back then, so maybe some information got mixed up by the time it got to the Community Team who posted.

[Adrop.1473]

Well, what I cannot believe is, that my ticket is about the smallest issue ever, cause it is happening all the time: I changed my phone number, and can't login now because of SMS authentication.I definitly deactivate this feature after they let me login again, just because of the extreme long waiting time, if I forget to change the number in gw2 again.It really annoys me, that they don't have a filter system, to sort these technical issues out and get fixed by another team, now it's like standing in the last place of a queue in a supermarket with one item, while in front of you are standing 3-4 other peeps with a huge amount of items.ANet does'nt even has a phone numer to call :anguished: ... we live in 2018...

[Inculpatus cedo.9234]

They do have a filter, and they do have different CS Teams for categories of issues. That's one reason players see 'Activity' on their tickets; the ticket is moved from the initial filter to a team that may be able to assist.

[Bloodstealer.5978]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:They do have a filter, and they do have different CS Teams for categories of issues. That's one reason players see 'Activity' on their tickets; the ticket is moved from the initial filter to a team that may be able to assist.

You forgot to mention they use incredibly slow moving snails to move the tickets around to the relevant teams these days..... :)

[metalTiffy.7106]

Same here. Winauth dont work after reinstallation. Definatly will never use something like this again.. Day 11 with no response. Cant eben login to support Page. Had to open it anonymous. Only had the forum in my cache so im still on here

[Adrop.1473]

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:They do have a filter, and they do have different CS Teams for categories of issues. That's one reason players see 'Activity' on their tickets; the ticket is moved from the initial filter to a team that may be able to assist.

Like "metalTiffy" also said, we had to open an anonymous ticket, which takes even longer (as they wrote) and we cannot check the 'Activity' on it. I got a link in my confirmation e-mail, which results in a 404 Bug report... Grrrrr

@Bloodstealer.5978 said:

@Inculpatus cedo.9234 said:They do have a filter, and they do have different CS Teams for categories of issues. That's one reason players see 'Activity' on their tickets; the ticket is moved from the initial filter to a team that may be able to assist.

You forgot to mention they use incredibly slow moving snails to move the tickets around to the relevant teams these days..... :)

And if they have a filter, it is even worse and weird, that they need such exceptional long. In my opinion, their Support team is not as big as it needs to be for such an internationally known famous online game. And ANet does'nt really seems like to change anything on that situation.I really don't want to miscall them, they might try to do something, but cannot really achieve the state it needs to be. But I like to have any Updates about it, because without these I FEEL like there is happening nothing, even though it might is...

[metalTiffy.7106]

At least they made a post a month ago that they are aware of it. It would be better if they do this weekly to update us.

Maybe because of the new hype of new players they arent staffed enough and the lots of free players also makes much more players. Maybe a splittet support for free and payd account would help at least the ones who pay the support :p

[Healix.5819]

@metalTiffy.7106 said:Same here. Winauth dont work after reinstallation. Definatly will never use something like this again.

When you first set up an authenticator, you're shown the secret key used to create an authenticator. As long as you have that key, you can recreate your authenticator whenever you want. In the future, simply write that key down and stick it somewhere.

@"Adrop.1473" said:In my opinion, their Support team is not as big as it needs to be for such an internationally known famous online game. And ANet does'nt really seems like to change anything on that situation.

They just hired more people a few weeks ago because of this backlog, and as of last week, the new hires "have started to kick in and we're melting the queues down much faster right now" (reddit)

[Adrop.1473]

@"Healix.5819" said:

They just hired more people a few weeks ago because of this backlog, and as of last week, the new hires "have started to kick in and we're melting the queues down much faster right now" (reddit)

And there is the question again: Is this statement guilty for all local languages or only for american/english tickets ..?And: they tell us, that they are faster now (since 6 days already), but why they don't tell us, how long the queue actually is at the moment? I want some numbers ...

[metalTiffy.7106]

@Healix.5819 said:

@metalTiffy.7106 said:Same here. Winauth dont work after reinstallation. Definatly will never use something like this again.

When you first set up an authenticator, you're shown the secret key used to create an authenticator. As long as you have that key, you can recreate your authenticator whenever you want. In the future, simply write that key down and stick it somewhere.

@"Adrop.1473" said:In my opinion, their Support team is not as big as it needs to be for such an internationally known famous online game. And ANet does'nt really seems like to change anything on that situation.

They just hired more people a few weeks ago because of this backlog, and as of last week, the new hires "have started to kick in and we're melting the queues down much faster right now" (

reddit

)

Nope didnt write it down. Pc was brand new. Didnt expect it to make problems in the first month..

Is this info with the new employees from anet? Because what i read in the post with all tickets they still need 25 days or more.Numbers would be awesome to give us a rough idea when we are in queue.

[Adrop.1473]

@metalTiffy.7106 said:Numbers would be awesome to give us a rough idea when we are in queue.Exactly.

[Zoop.1360]

13 days and still absolutely no word from support. Now my holiday is over and I haven't been able to play my game once during that time.Thanks ArenaNet!

[Einlanzer.1627]

I've never waited this long for a response, and I've posted a few times. Did this get overlooked?

[Dreadshow.9320]

Lol two weeks unless It's a login issue is pretty normal.

[Just a flesh wound.3589]

Apparently they’re swamped

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/42967/customer-support-update-6-8-2018

[metalTiffy.7106]

@Dreadshow.9320 said:Lol two weeks unless It's a login issue is pretty normal.

Even with login isseu it takes weeks. My ticket is already open for 15 daxs and i cant login. Even on the support page not. The forum is still cached so i can login ^^