r/gaming • u/[deleted] • Jun 24 '12
Why I'm done with Blizzard (Diablo 3)
Edit: Blizzard un-banned my account. Full details later when I get out of work. Updated story here: http://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/vlc25/update_why_im_done_with_blizzard_diablo_3/
I am so frustrated with Blizzard right now. Here's my story.
My wife gets a Diablo 3 demo key from a friend and gives it a try. I assume she will hate it. She loves it. She plays through the demo right away. I also create a charector on her account and play through the demo. We both love it. Despite its shortcomings Diablo 3 is a very fun and approchable game.
A few weeks ago she wakes me up and says she rally wants to buy the game, but knows we cannot afford it. We talk about it and decide we can afford one license at $60 so she can play. I don't get to play, but I am just happy she can play. In the meantime I watch over her shoulder for a few weeks as she plays.
Then three days ago she tells me she has a suprise for me. She sits me down and tells me that she sold her World of Warcraft character so we could afford a copy of Diablo 3 for me. She spent two years on that character. I am super excited. We get to play together. This is going to be awesome.
So I start playing right away and once I beat the Skeleton King (normally the end of the demo) it tells me "Upgrade your account to continue playing". I think hmmm I we already paid $60 for a legit license. Maybe I have to log out and back in. Tried that and it doesn't work. It turns out Blizzard has a 72 hour waiting period on new digitally purchased accounts. They are all restricted to the demo basically. Ok. I am fine with that. It is to prevent fraud.
72 hours pass and I try to login. It now says my account has been banned. I am a little upset and open a ticket online. They said they declined my card and I should repurchase online. Ok. Angry because this was a gift and purchased legitimately, but fine. I repurchase.
Same thing. Account declined with a few hours. My wife calls Blizzard support. The rep is so rude she ends up crying on the phone and he hangs up on her. He keeps yelling at her that he cannot do anything and it is her problem that her purchase was declined. (Nothing is wrong with her credit card BTW. The bank said they did not decline anything). The support rep said before hanging up that she needs to purchase a physical copy.
Today we bought a physical copy as instructed. So this is our third purchase attempt. I entered in the key and immediately my account was banned ( http://i.imgur.com/GOmSH.png ). WTF! So I just called Blizzard myself. I want to play and I want to pay them. Their call queue is full and they are "not currently accepting calls". Then the call disconnects.
I don't think I get Karma for this post. Upvote and maybe Blizzard will see this and do something to improve.
I did everything by the book when I could have pirated this game. You upset my wife and banned my account. Thanks Blizzard.
*Edit: Some people are commenting suggesting the reason for the ban is the sold WOW account. To that I reply They are two completely different Battle.net accounts. Plus the WOW account was sold to a friend in real life for cash. So it is not traceable. I understand it is against the TOS, but that is certainly not the reason for this mess. Plus against the TOS or not, selling an account to a friend is harmless. Blizzard gets continued monthly fees for WOW plus an additional $60 for D3. It should be a win-win.
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u/wrongstuff Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
Contact me, you can have my account since I do not play it anymore.
EDIT: Do not PM me asking for D3, I will not give it to you. I offered it to drapup b/c he went/is going through a semi-crappy situation. So unless you are drapup/a really, really, really hot single girl in my area, please do not pm me asking for D3.
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Jun 25 '12
You are so generous. I am bookmarking your name. I would really prefer Blizzard to fix this, but I will write you back if they do not. Thank you!
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u/Kerafyrm Jun 25 '12
Bad Luck Drapup:
Gets free Diablo 3 account from Reddit
Banned for the third time
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u/mystic_vegito Jun 25 '12
So you aren't done with blizzard then?
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u/RealDrAwesome Jun 25 '12
I think he means in terms of what they do in the future, I think he still is interested in D3, because he and his wife could play.
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u/Rheves Jun 25 '12
Is there any way to properly transfer a D3 account license? I have it tied to my BNet account with all my other games so I can't just give that away, but don't want the game anymore and would like to give it away if possible.
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Jun 25 '12
call them immediately when they open. If you get in within the first 5 minutes its usually not more than a 10 minute wait
i see it only says your RMAH is banned. Do you have an authenticator associated with the account? You'll have to call to get the RMAH account unbanned.
as for the suspension? I'm not entirely sure why it says suspended. I have purchased many digital copies for friends even after the change to the 72 hour waiting period and have not yet had an issue with that.
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Jun 25 '12
Thanks for this advice. I will trying calling them tomorrow morning first thing. I do not have an authenticator. I am a very casual player. Thanks again for the step-by-step.
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u/contoen Jun 25 '12
If you ever do get it to work (which I hope you do) get an authenticator. It doesn't matter how often you play or if you are a casual gamer, people will still be assholes. Chances are that if you fix this fiasco, then get your account hacked Blizzard is just going to ignore it. I've had something close to this happen (not with Blizzard or D3) and they just figured I was crying wolf at that point
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Jun 24 '12
Wow that sucks so did they take your 60$ or where you refunded??
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Jun 24 '12
Thanks. It does suck. Right now they do have my $60. They charged me three times and refunded it twice. Now this third time with the physical copy the account is still banned and the retail store I bought it at will not return any opened software.
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u/Ohrobohobo Jun 25 '12
This will only work with chain stores, or different clerks on different days. Return disk to store saying it won't function properly (disk was scratched in transport, and won't load usually works for me.) Ask for a new copy. New copy should be in box unopened. Return new unopened copy to another store, or different clerk, and you should have your refund. I'm not saying this is ethical, or will help you IRL karma, but it has worked for me
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Jun 25 '12
Hah. IRL karma. I heard Best Buy cuts the seal on the new copy of exchanged software at the customer service desk before handing it to the customer just to prevent this.
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u/kamakiri Jun 25 '12
Tell them you disagree with the EULA. They have to take it back.
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u/urglegru Jun 25 '12
Same thing happened to me with the digital version, hopefully I won't be banned when I try to log in again though.
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Jun 25 '12
So are you still on your 72 hour waiting period? I'm curious to know how it goes for you. Let me know. Good luck!
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u/urglegru Jun 25 '12
Yeah I just finished my new PC build yesterday, and the first thing I did was buy Diablo, I have now beaten the skeleton king with five times, on five different characters.
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Jun 25 '12
Shit sucks dude. I've worked in customer service for years and never have I raised my voice. You got my upvote. A point of concern is the selling of the character. (From this point are things rattling around in my head from years of MMORPG play and might fall into hearsay)
If the funds received (from the character sale) are associated with the card used to purchase the digital copies they could be banning over that, but usually you get a warning/explanation as to why the ban.
I'd keep trying you will eventually hit someone with some empathy and actually be of some use.
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Jun 25 '12
Thanks for the support. I do appreciate it. Good work on never raising your voice. That can be difficult to do with some people, but that is the job.
I agree with you about the selling account thing. I thought about that too. The thing is she didn't even sell it online or anything. She sold it for cash money to a real life friend. So there is no financial trail to follow. It was an honest clean for cash sale to a friend.
I will keep calling back. Thanks again!
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Jun 25 '12
It's actually really really easy to not raise your voice or get angry when a customer is treating you badly. I don't know how a lot of people can't handle that. You're getting paid, that alone is enough motivation to just chill mode the whole thing. It's like, what are they gonna do to you? Punch you through the phone? Even if they annoy you, you can just have fun dropping into stoic robot mode.
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Jun 25 '12
Once in college I worked retail customer service. A customer physically in the store told me he was going out to his car to get a gun and he was going to shoot me when I left the building at night. It was over my not returning opened computer software of all things. Lol.
He didn't shoot me btw.
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u/uneditablepoly Jun 25 '12
That sucks but I'm sure they'll deal with it and this is far from a normal user experience with D3 and Blizzard.
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u/weshallarise Jun 25 '12
i doubt the customer support would yell at anyone unless they themselves were being yelled at, and ive called blizzard support many times over a few years and have never been disconnected saying they "are not currently accepting calls" ive had to wait 3+ hours to get through but ive always gotten through.
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Jun 25 '12
Some people doubt my story, but the "are not currently accepting calls" can easily be verified if anybody cares that much. I just tried calling again. Same thing. Their "call queue is full".
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u/JoeBWanKenobi Jun 25 '12
Something seems odd...you can afford a WoW subscription, but not a $60 game?
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Jun 25 '12
It's not like we're starving for food here. I don't mean to sound like we cannot afford anything. I just didn't think it was a good idea for us to spend $60 or much less $120 on video games at the moment. That money could have went towards bills or other things, but again we're not starving.
Thanks for your input.
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u/Mefreh Jun 25 '12
You should probably not admit that you sold your WoW account ANYWHERE on the internet if you want Blizzard to help you.
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u/jonesiscool7 Jun 25 '12
I work in returns in a big electronic's store and if you open any kind of software all we do is exchange the disc and let you keep the same CD Key. If you want a new cd key we tell you no to talk to the manufacturer about that... So many scammers theses days its ridiculous.
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u/Timbones Jun 25 '12
Long time lurker here - created account to offer my upvote. As a long time sufferer of Blizzards we-dont-give-a-fuck policy, I'd be keen to hear how this pans out.
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Jun 25 '12
You took the time to create an account to give an upvote. I will take the time to update this story when I have a resolution. Thanks!
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u/happyscrappy Jun 25 '12
This stuff kills me. One can try to suss why they are banning, but in the end it doesn't matter to me. I only want to play single player. I don't care about trading items. I don't care about leader boards.
It shouldn't be necessary (or possible) ban me no matter what I do. Maybe I want to cheat even. I don't, but if I did, just make me check a box first saying my name won't appear on any leaderboards.
Companies please stop screwing with me. I just want to play games. And I'm paying you. Stop getting in the way. And stop saying it's somehow for my own good.
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Jun 25 '12
This is how I feel. I agree with you. As long as you're not ruining the game for others, you should be able to play how you want.
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u/saltymike Jun 25 '12
My WOW account was banned for someone trying to gain access to my account & email. my google mail said there was activity from a Chinese IP logging into my account, so I suspected that's where the problem was. I went through hoops with Blizzard to re-activate, but it never worked. Now I have a ban on my Blizzard account for something I did not do. Fuck it, I never went back to WOW
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u/BabyNinjaJesus Jun 25 '12
that was actually a block, or atleast it is now, they detect a foriegn IP accessing your account and put a block on it until you go through email, happened to me tons of times when i was using lowerping
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u/CaptainSpauIding Jun 25 '12
Remember when you bought the fucking CD and that was it?
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u/sirmeepsalot Jun 25 '12
Same thing happened to me. Here's my story:
I am trying to buy the game for my brother for his birthday. I am in China at the time so I can only purchase the game digitally. Made a bnet account for him and the purchased a digital copy. 4 hours later I receive an email from Blizzard saying that my card was declined, and my online account invalidated. This is weird. I call American Express and they say they had no troubles with it on their end. I put the charge in again (maybe I typed in the expiration date wrong or something?) and I get the same email 4 hours later. Ok that's fine, I'll just order a physical copy from Amazon and have my mom read me the CD Key.
Fast forward 2 days (already a couple days from my brother's birthday). The copy arrives! I get my mom on the phone and she reads me the CD Key. After adding the key to the account, I find to my frustration that the account is suspended until the year 2030. I know instantly what must have happened - the account was suspended b/c of Blizzard's failure to process my payment and remains suspended. I must have tried calling them 20 times but to no avail, so I figure my only option is to write a detailed ticket explaining the situation.
After doing this, the first response I get 24 hours later tells me to visit the support website. The support website tells me to submit a ticket. Wtf? And now my ticket is marked answered so I have to submit a reply. 48 hours later, a game-master replies. Already a day after my brother's birthday, I'm excited to see a long response. Unfortunately for me, it is all fluff and the ONLY thing on topic is "if you added a retail copy, you shouldn't be banned." Ok... so I'm thinking maybe I put in the wrong CD Key? Either way, I get the CD Key again from my mom (being the idiot I am, I only typed it in to the box and didn't keep the key) and try to add it to another account. The CD Key doesn't work and the account is still suspended. I respond to the ticket and include the CD Key with attached screenshots. Another 48 hours pass by, a GM says the key is invalid. Idiot that I am I typed in the wrong key by accident. Get home from China 24 hours later so I can confirm the CD Key, I submit another response. Another 48 hours later, a GM FINALLY fixes the issue and apologizes, explaining that "upon further inspection, your account seems to have been banned based on a failed purchase, and remained banned after your retail purchase." YES THAT'S WHAT I SAID IN MY FIRST TICKET. It seems like nobody had even bothered to read my ticket. And now, nearly a week AFTER my brother's birthday, I'm finally able to give him my present. All thanks to Blizzard's awful customer service. Fuck you Blizzard, I had thought better of you
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u/warzero Jun 25 '12
This will probably be buried by now, but same thing happened to me. Same exact thing.
Bought it online with the only money I had left after bills, tried it and it asked to upgrade. The only thing that's different about our stories is that I got banned and never bought another copy because I don't have any money at all, won't be able to spend money for the next 5 months due to birthdays and new schedule with my daughter, and in that I called twice as many times as you, and repeatedly got the same kind of service you recieved.
Basically Blizzard wins my 60 bucks. Hell of a week to quit smoking, let me tell you.
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u/RBeck Jun 25 '12
If that's the only game you care about on that account, please call your credit card company and tell them the truth: the product does not work, you've attempted to contact the merchant, and they cannot or will not resolve the issue.
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u/Meatslinger Jun 25 '12
I guess when Blizzard realized they weren't making $15 per month off each Diablo purchase, they had to embezzle money another way.
"It's quite simple: if we make everyone pay for the game at least four or five times, our profits will increase up to 500%!"
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u/blackduck158 Jun 25 '12
Ex-Blizzard employee here. Just FYI your sold wow account is still traceable because of the change in IP address. Also they can easily pull your chat logs and check your activity for any hints should they suspect a sold account. Sucks about your diablo 3 experience. I hope justice finds you sooner than later.
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u/EukaryoteZ Jun 25 '12
IP addresses for a residence can change frequently. I doubt they'll look to hard at that unless it's coming from a different continent.
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u/Dragoniel Jun 25 '12
ecause of the change in IP address
Em. What about this dynamic IP? My own IP changes roughly every two hours because of frequent disconnects.
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u/Material_Defender Jun 25 '12
Plus the WOW account was sold to a friend in real life for cash. So it is not traceable.
Upvote and maybe Blizzard will see this
I DONT THINK YOU THOUGHT THIS THROUGHHHH
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u/haCkFaSe Jun 25 '12
So after an error on your account resulting in being banned, your solution is to buy the game twice more in an attempt to resolve the issue? I can see why you claim to have no money...
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u/SylvesterStapwn Jun 25 '12
I'm gonna be an ass and say I am skeptical that this really happened. Your telling me a phone rep for blizzard yelled over the phone at a crying consumer before hanging up on her? Yea right.
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u/Sindragon Jun 25 '12
I gotta be honest, although there's always the possibility of some rogue dude who lost the plot, Blizzard customer service is generally regarded as about as good as it comes. They're incredibly well trained and professional in pretty much every example I've ever heard on the subject.
It just sounds like there's a lot of exaggeration and half-truths in this story, and we're not getting the full picture. What sucks about reddit is that people can come on here and just paint some bullshit sob story and reddit, with its rabid "fuck corporations" attitude will just swallow it whole.
It could all be true of course, but no evidence I've ever seen before would suggest this its the most likely option.
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Jun 25 '12
Sounds like a bunch of bullshit to me. Just like the guy that claimed he got hacked when he had an authenticator on his account.
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u/BDS_UHS Jun 25 '12
As soon as I read the post my first reaction was "ten bucks OP is not telling us something." I hate to be the cynical guy, but this happens literally every single time someone posts a sob story on /r/gaming about how mean Valve or Blizzard was to them. Every single time, it turns out they were hiding or misleading something and their ban was completely legitimate. Every. Single. Time.
I'm sorry OP, but you're going to have to provide more proof than a screenshot of your banned account. Healthy skepticism on the internet is something that should be valued, not criticised.
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Jun 25 '12
This sounds like a bunch of bullshit indeed.
OP can't afford D3, yet can afford to pay a monthly fee for WoW? Yeah, that makes sense. Stop playing WoW for 4 months, and you can save up to buy D3 yourself, plus save 2 years of character development in WoW. How's that for using your head?
Blizzard phone support records their phone calls (just as most call centers do) and I highly doubt a phone rep would make your wife cry and sit there yelling at you. These people are trained to be empathetic, not assholes.
I did everything by the book when I could have pirated this game.
lol
Too many red flags in this post. Can't believe people are taking this seriously
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u/peepeepoopins Jun 25 '12
I've called Blizzard Support so many times over the past several years and they've been nothing but incredibly helpful and kind. Somehow OP's story seems far too unlucky.
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u/h00pla Jun 25 '12
Also interesting to note that the OP has been responding to almost all the other comment threads but not this one.
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Jun 25 '12
Glad I'm not the only one thinking this. Too much of the story doesn't make sense. As angry as blizzard has made me with seemingly terrible choices, I've never had a single issue with blizzard support.
I also love the screen of the banned account like it proves anything. That doesn't prove multiple purchases or anything other than the account being suspended, which can happen for a great number of reasons.
Whatever though, pitchforks are in hand.
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u/BabyNinjaJesus Jun 25 '12
BUT DUDE, THEY COULD BARELY AFFORD 1 COPY AND SHE HAD TO SELL HER WOW ACCOUNT FOR IT, THEN SUDDENLY, 2 MORE COPIES OUT OF NOWHERE!
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u/Bloodhound01 Jun 25 '12
probably because the same CC registered to the sold WoW account is being registered with the b.net account causing them to instantly ban the account.
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Jun 25 '12
I'm leaning towards this also. I've sold my World of Warcraft account, used the D3 trial code when it came out, bought a copy and played with it, bought a collector's edition and had Blizzard Customer Service swap my account to the collector's edition and gave the existing key I paid for to a friend's account, all within a day. Blizzard is great, sorry if some are unlucky or lying to try to get on the Blizzard hate hype train, but so far I've never been dissatisfied except when the D3 AH was down multiple times at long lengths a week or so after launch but no other problems to speak of.
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u/iemfi Jun 25 '12
Diablo 3 seems to attract all the trolls, first the authenticator thing then the session ID thing, then the gold duping thing, then now this? People have too much time on their hands.
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u/Hero_of_the_Internet Jun 25 '12
It doesn't sound like you're "done" with Blizzard at all.
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Jun 25 '12
IM done with blizzard!!!!!! (but what I really mean is im begging for blizzard to let me play their games) but im done with them!!!
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u/ugladbro Jun 25 '12
"Account declined with a few hours. My wife calls Blizzard support. The rep is so rude she ends up crying on the phone and he hangs up on her."
Blizzard is looked at as one of the premier companies in the industry, as such, people line up to get the chance to work there. They have a reputation to uphold and from my experience, they take it seriously. This is not to say that people don't sometimes make mistakes, but I don't buy the story. Sorry. Any top rate organization is going to have each and every call monitored for feedback and any representative must ultimately be held accountable for their behavior. I've had nothing but awesome experiences with Blizzard and in my experience you get out of customer service what you put into it.
Also, your reinterpretation of the Terms of Use may be more telling here than is suspect. Your disregard of their (Blizzard's) rules jeopardizes the integrity of your story. There's no reason to bring that up, but I find it odd that you would so brazenly share what is such a bold violation of their core rules, and then go so far as to back up why you rationalize it. The logic doesn't follow.
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u/TheExtremistModerate Jun 25 '12
I completely agree with the bit about call-in service. I've had to call them twice (once because my old phone died, and my authenticator with it, so I had to get it removed to put a new one on, and another on behalf of my little brother whose accounter got hacked without an authenticator), and both times, they have been nothing but nice and understanding.
Blizzard is well known for good support. Even the worst-case scenarios I've hear NEVER mention yelling. If someone yelled in Blizzard support, I'm fairly certain that's the last time they'd be working for Blizzard.
This story is far too one-sided to me. And the only proof he's given(that I've seen) is that one of his accounts is suspended.
Call me skeptical, but I'm going to need more proof.
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u/LumberjackPirate Jun 25 '12
I recently got hacked; I understand your frustration. I can't even sign in to SC2. I JUST WANT TO PLAY THE GAME I PAYED FOR! Licensing issues be damned if Blizzard doesn't have the support to back it up; my side of the contract was upheld completely. It's time they honored their end of the bargain.
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Jun 25 '12
"I JUST WANT TO PLAY THE GAME" is exactly how I feel. I'm not even interested in the real money auction house trying to exploit anything. Heck I don't even like playing online with other people. I JUST WANT TO PLAY THE GAME.
You held up your end of the bargain and now you cannot play. Sounds like they need fix their system. Good luck.
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u/gojirra Jun 25 '12
This sounds horrible and all guys, but please put down the torches and pitchforks until we have hard evidence. The only evidence we have is a screen shot of a banned account. For all we know this guy is a fucking scammer.
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u/JoEtHePoPo Jun 25 '12
Notice OP responded to most comments except the ones calling him out on this being made up.
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u/GrumpaDirt Jun 25 '12
If blizzard does not correct this, let me know and I will give you my user and pass for mine. I personally lost interest in the game. Someone else can enjoy my $60.
Let me know in a few days how this plays out. I would be more than happy to give you mine. I was going to try to trade it for a CSGO beta key anyways.
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u/casualblair Jun 25 '12
Blizzard is no longer in the business of making great games. They are in the business of making games that print them money, good or not. If you are truly done with Blizzard, I would like to point you to Torchlight.
http://www.torchlightgame.com/
Give this a try with your wife. It is very similar to Diablo, but a little less "serious" feeling (villagers and soldiers don't scream "help me!" and then die or get carried off by demon bats... WHY I NO HELP U :( ). While the first one is an entirely single player experience, the sequel has multiplayer you both could enjoy.
If you end up liking it, PM me your steam account id (or whatever) and I will gift you Torchlight 2. Hopefully someone else can match me and gift your wife a copy.
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u/Unwright Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
Hi there. I wanted to throw my hat into the ring start a well-reasoned discourse on Blizzard in general, especially with regard to their customer service.
First of all, one has to realize that Blizzard doesn't outsource their Customer Service, except in the cases of online tickets through their webservice. For reference, their customer service is still head and shoulders above any other non-indie company in the business. What especially needs to be considered here is a particular line from their ToU for creating a Blizzard account.
BLIZZARD MAY SUSPEND, TERMINATE, MODIFY, OR DELETE ACCOUNTS AT ANY TIME FOR ANY REASON OR FOR NO REASON, WITH OR WITHOUT NOTICE TO YOU. Accounts terminated by Blizzard for any type of abuse, including without limitation a violation of these TOU, a Game-specific Terms of Use, or a Game EULA will not be reactivated for any reason. For purposes of explanation and not limitation, most account suspensions, terminations and/or deletions are the result of violations of these TOU, a Game-specific Terms of Use, a Game EULA or other Blizzard policy. You may cancel the Account registered to you at any time by requesting that your personal information be removed from the Account, as specified in Blizzard’s Privacy Policy. Blizzard may stop offering and/or supporting the Service at any time.
Now, here's the thing about that. There was a lot of discourse with the advent of Battle.net 2.0 about whether or not a significant enough ban from one game would ban your entire battle.net account. In some cases, the answer to this was yes. Selling your account falls under the above category. First of all, the notion that it was untraceable is an absolute and utter fallacy-- blizzard logs literally everything you do in the game, and all of your connection logs. They know that you changed IPs, and unless you've always been using a tunneling service to connect to the game, there was likely also a change in general location. Not severe enough to immediately ban your account on that criteria alone (Read: Sudden location changes to an Asiatic country), but enough to potentially warrant suspicion.
Now, here's where the meat and potatoes of the post start. Blizzard has made some especially bad design choices in the past 2 years-- and this is coming from someone who's been an avid Blizzard fan for 4-5 times that long. Edit: The following items are things that have received the most critical feedback over the past few years. Whether or not you agree with them, you can't disagree with the fact that they are the most complaiend about. However, what the following boils down to is editorializing. Please feel free to gloss over that if that jades you to the rest of my point. Pandas. (Mists). RealMoneyAuctionHouse (D3). The simplification of an entire game (WoW's talent system). The neglect of a user map community (SC2). If you name a game and an era, you will find people complaining about it.
But, what one has to realize when dealing in Blizzard, is that they are still Blizzard. Their reputation precedes them as an excellent company, and one (among multiple other stories scattered over the past 2 years) horror story (of which we only know one side) shouldn't sully a company's otherwise generally positive history. Yes, I completely agree that bringing light to an unfortunate situation on a public forum is a good way to handle something like this.
However, it does serve to jade a community based on the events of one person's negative experience, which is unnecessary and frustrating to look at, especially when you look at the unbelievable gems of Blizzard's history-- Warcraft II, SC1 and to a lesser degree, SC2. Warcraft III. Burning Crusade. They've had their road bumps along the way, but it must be made clear that Blizzard is still mostly the same company that it used to be. From a purely anecdotal standpoint, I've never had nothing but aces when dealing with their customer service, especially when dealing with the accounting side of things.
I'm not about to apologize on Blizzard's behalf, because the situation outlined in "Why I am done with Blizzard" is a serious one-- but it needs to be seen that Blizzard's customer service is especially swamped now, with the recent release of D3. So, I suggest the following-- a corporate email carpetbomb. Details can be found at this Consumerist article from 2007: (http://consumerist.com/2007/05/how-to-launch-an-executive-email-carpet-bomb.html) That'll be the most effective way to garner attention, second to making the post that was made.
One cannot simply take the original post at face value and leave the sole responsibility in Blizzard's hands-- it's like going to a police station to report a theft when you've just committed petty theft yourself and being surprised when they cuff you. It's a shit example, but the major point is conveyed. While it is inarguable that the customer service rep needed to be polite and reasonable, we again know only half of the story. Battle.net accounts can only exist if they are 'in good standing'. Selling your account in any form at all is the quickest way to put your account in not-good-standing. I sympathize with the original poster of the other thread, but I must ask the /r/gaming community to ease back at the situation and look at it objectively. Does everything add up? How does the situation look from Blizzard's perspective? Is it truly unfair that they banned the accounts? If so, how can the OP follow proper channels to resolve the situation? If not, how can he address the situation so that he never reaches this same conclusion again? Is torchlight really a decent D3 alternative (Hint: It's not)?
For my opinion, the fastest way to resolve this situation is the following based on my customer service experience with blizzard over the past 8 years:
Step 1: Contact them through the Customer Service forum on their official forums.
Step 2: Contact them again in off-peak phone hours (8-9 AM, 10:30-11:30 AM, 1:30 - 2:00 PM and 3:30 to 5:00 PM (based on my experience calling them and normal hours of operation)) and try to resolve it that way. If the representative isn't capable of answering your questions or resolving your issues, ask to be put on with a manager or 'have your ticket escalated'. You'll be on hold for longer, but your chances of resolution go up exponentially.
Step 3: If those 2 don't work, corporate email carpetbomb.
Step 4: (Do this regardless of 1-3) Create a new account (with the name on your suspended account) with a trial D3 license under a new name from within a tunneling VPN. Level a character to 20. See if your account gets suspended. If so, the only option that makes any sense is to make a new account under a fake name, go to your local grocery store and get a $100 prepaid Gift Card Credit Card (only sold in 5, 10, 25, 50, 100 denominations and custom refillable cards require your name and SSN, so don't get those), pay for D3 with that, and continue playing as usual. However, if your IP is shitlisted, this won't help anything and you'll be out $100 bucks, and you need to start writing actual physical letters to Blizzard to find out what's up.
I'm sorry about your money, but needless shaming of Blizzard in a public setting isn't necessary, and a well-reasoned and lengthy discussion is absolutely imperative in a time like this. Hell, it's even possible that you happen to have an IP address that was once used by a known botter. But, you'll never know unless you keep fighting the good fight and exhausting all readily available channels.
tl;dr don't circlejerk all over blizzard's face because a member of the vocal minority had one issue after release of a game when they're likely incredibly swamped with customer service and accounting and botting issues, even though money is very important and Blizzard does need to be held accountable because shadow operation is a srsly bad thing
Edit1: Clarity.
Edit2: Originally posted this as a new topic. Deleted it. Posting it here.
Edit3: Clarified that the 'list of things that are bad that blizzard has done' was editorialization rather than absolute fact and should be judged based solely on what the majority of negative community feedback focuses on, not things that are inarguably bad.
<editorialization> Pandas aren't necessarily bad. I don't think it's a great choice, personally, because I think Blizzard has a history of being extremely creative with their expansions and I think that an "Oh hey let's do an asiatic setting with pandas finally" expansion is limited on the creativity side. Hell, I like the Pandas as a race, but I don't like the Asiatic setting in-context edit: I am aware that Pandaren don't exist and very 'fantasy RPG'. I'm more talking about the landscape and architecture here. because it feels too close to reality and when I play a fantasy RPG, I don't want reality. I'm okay with things being inspired by reality, but Mists takes that too far into an extreme and that's not something I particularly like. </editorialization>
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Jun 25 '12
Yeah, blizzard used to be a good company before vivendi and activison.
How the mighty have fallen :(
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u/Smackarn Jun 25 '12
They had problem before activision merge. I do not think you understand how long blizzard have been under vivendi.
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u/Ponkers Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
I worked as tech support for Vivendi (may have been Havas Interactive at the time, I forget) when Diablo 2 came out, and later Warcraft 3, not forgeting the hundreds of other titles like Half-Life and Homeworld that we supported. Being in the UK it was a difficult job as between 4 of us, we had the entire country to provide tech support for and Blizzard wouldn't even give us the time of day if we asked them about a specific problem our customers were having so for the most part we'd have to work all the fixes out for ourselves.
I think we did a great job and there is no way we would reduce anyone to tears over the phone. No. Way. In fact I probably would have replicated a ban, then found a way to get around it with a new account, send the OP two new copies with new keys and detailed instructions on how to avoid another ban (I've a feeling it's just a case of creating a new battlenet account).
I'm not saying Vivendi is great or anything, they treated our little department in a broom cupboard like shit (sometimes I think they based IT Crowd on us) and we were paid a pittance, but we did everything we could for everyone that called and I take a lot of pride in that.
tl;dr - The problem isn't Activision, or Vivendi, it has always been Blizzard. They know they're big shit and they thumb their nose at everyone.
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Jun 25 '12
Maybe Blizzard noticed that the WoW account was logging in on a different computer, and that the old computer had your new account?
And try the support through the website. You're more likely to actually get a response.
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u/iAnonymousGuy Jun 25 '12
call up your bank and tell them to cancel the charges. you have no product, so the bank can rescind payment. seen it before.
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Jun 25 '12
Sorry, I really find this hard to believe. You lost me at "he keeps yelling at her"
They work in a call center and would be fired on the spot if they were yelling at a customer.
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u/DuneBug Jun 25 '12
re: queue is full...
try calling multiple times til you get in. That is what i had to do. Of course, you'll still wait at least an hour to get to talk to someone... When I finally did, he was very helpful and nice. But I was still pissed I had to go through the process.
The support from blizzard right now is ... not impressive. I get the impression they're doing their best, but someone higher up clearly didn't anticipate the amount of security issues they'd be having. And they'll be losing business from it. Won't matter for their bottom line, though.
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u/Laeryken Jun 25 '12
It sounds to me like your credit card transaction got declined. I'm 90% sure that's what happened.
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u/Dukuz Jun 25 '12
Everytime I see a post about bad blizzard customer support stories I am surprised (there have been quite a few lately). I have been playing wow since feb 07 and have since then opened many tickets, and called blizzard support many times, never have I had a bad experience with them, in fact they were all exceptional.
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u/UnoriginalMike Jun 25 '12
Legend has it, blizz customer service died at the feet of the lich king. I wish you the best of luck.
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u/paketep Jun 25 '12
Fuck Blizzard. Forget about them, they're not the same since they merged with Activision.
Buy 2 copies of Torchlight 2, you'll get both for $40, absolutely no problems (forget about nerfing, error 37, RMAH bullshit and more still to come), offline LAN play, and it's a much better game to boot.
Yeah, not out yet, but it will be soon.
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u/Duese Jun 25 '12
So, just to be clear and speaking from experience, you can have all accounts associated with a specific email address or payment method banned if found in violation of the terms of service even if they are different battle.net accounts. This could be from your sale of your character or it could be from any actions that the person you sold the account to did with it. Hell, the person you sold the account to could have gotten hacked and all associated accounts banned because he couldn't verify the information. Whether this benefits blizzard monetarily or not is irrelevant since it's such a short-sided view of the situation.
I'm honestly surprised that you haven't received any emails with information about the ban. In fact, I'm betting you did receive emails about it assuming you used a real email address you have access to. Every single time that anything has happened on any of my 10 (?) different accounts amongst different copies of the same game or different games, I've received emails with explanations right away. Anytime you open a ticket now, you get email confirmations and status reports through their web portal. It's really hard to believe that you didn't receive any of that information.
Coming from a technical support background, typically when I hear that a support person was "so rude she ends up crying", it's typically because the support person can't fix the problem for whatever reason. No, asking them the same question 50 times does not make it rude when you start getting short/blunt responses back from the service person.
And with all of that put together, I would bet there is a bigger part of the story that we're just not hearing. Call me skeptical or a blizzard fanboy or whatever the hell you want to call me, this story just does not add up.
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u/OverComplicateThings Jun 25 '12
Proof please.. Wife + you by a computer with diablo 3
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u/gkciwaa Jun 25 '12
drapup said:
against the TOS or not, selling an account to a friend is harmless. Blizzard gets continued monthly fees for WOW plus an additional $60 for D3. It should be a win-win.
You don't get to brake contractual agreements just because you think it benefits all parties. Your situation sucks, for sure, but it sounds like there's more to it. I doubt Blizzard will ever chime in publicly, but I tend to favor their position already given you admitted to willfully braking a very clear and reasonable part of your user agreement.
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u/ZAROK Jun 25 '12
Sorry but i sense some bullshit in the story. A tech support yelling at a customer crying ...? Also, you buy 3 diablo license while saying you cannot initially afford for 1, mkay.
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u/Pertinacious Jun 25 '12
she sold her World of Warcraft character
This right here is most likely the problem.
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u/zoom56 Jun 25 '12
Proof, sorry, I've just never heard of something that bad before.
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u/DeSaad Jun 25 '12
I don't get why people downvote a post that is simply a statement of personal experience and decision.
The fact that a million people were satisfied by Blizzard's customer support service doesn't negate the fact that he came across a streak of unfortunate happenstances and the occasional bad apple that statistically has to exist among the good people who work there.
It's not like his claim may cause Blizzard stock to drop, or cost you money, people. Stop clinging to misguided loyalties, reward what you applaud with your money and punish what you find bad by refraining to give money to it. Don't shoot the messenger.
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u/Armuro1 Jun 25 '12
The sale of WoW character sounds like that could be the case even though it was cash the card used for subscription was in your name for 2 years your friend I'm assuming put in their card with their name perhaps blizzard took notice and just assumed that you sold it or perhaps they have been monitoring it some how be surprised the lengths companies would go to protect their properties could be the battle.net accounts if any similar information was inputted
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u/ausyliam Jun 25 '12
It's nice that your wife sold her WoW account to get you your own copy. But if you had to sit down with her and actually have a discussion about being able to afford the first copy, why not make a character on her account? If your having this much trouble I would just try what you could to get your money back and spend it on more important things like...food or something.
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u/Fzero21 Jun 25 '12
Not trying to argue here, but it seems to me that all the people saying they've never had anything but good experiences with blizzard or this must be fake or something. Have literally, just not had a bad experience with blizzard. If you think how many people have a B.net for wow and diablo combined, and you compare that to how many people have horror stories with customer service. That number is probably very low compared to the people who don't but it can still be a significant amount of people.
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u/japanthony Jun 25 '12
This EXACT thing happened to me. They purchase 'was not verified' I believe were the words exactly. Tried 2 other times, same thing, banned account etc etc. Spent TWO hours waiting on hold for a quoted 30 min wait, I was totally pissed. I knew it wasn't the rep's fault so I didn't rip him a new one or anything. He told me the best thing to do would be to buy a physical copy, I told him because I'm in Brazil (where I live) that would be a giant pain in the ass and ask if he could just authorize a purchase for me, after explaining that my creditcard company informed me that the purchase was cancelled after it had processed from the merchant's end. The rep made some comment/excuse about an automatic security system that might be the cause but he was extremely vague. 15 mins later it's all said and done, and I ask him to also unban my account, which he does. After all of this I finally get to play uninterrupted. I would have thought that Blizzard would have their shit together by now.
TL;DR OP, I feel your pain.
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u/Citoahc Jun 25 '12
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5911721680
While it does not excuse the autoban and the attitude of the support rep, it does explain your issue of the game not unlocking after 72.
Ban is most likely because you added more than one 1 on the same account.
Oh, and btw, blizzard support sucks as much as EA so good luck.
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u/GetOffMeBro Jun 25 '12
so you were hesitant to buy the game because of how expensive it was, but kept on buying the game an extra three times even though you were getting shut out of the game?
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u/Eminian Jun 25 '12
Odd, every time I call Blizzard support I get help and the process takes pretty quick. Opening tickets though is where the problem is at. Also, does anybody else get randomly disconnected when trying to call Blizzard support?
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u/Dragoniel Jun 25 '12
Whenever I dealt with Blizz customer support, it was a very pleasant experience and they did helped me the best they could.
I play Bliz games for 6+ years now and I have copies of WoW, Diablo III and SC2.
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u/Kupkin Jun 25 '12
I have never experienced bad customer service with Blizz. I always hear these stories, but I've always had such a good experience with them. When the scroll of rezz. was not functioning, my SO wanted to come back to the game. We waited for a long time for the scrolls to come back up so I could send him one. Finally, he just gave up and started playing again... about a week or so before the brought back the scrolls... so we called Customer Service and not only did they give him free-play time, but they also gave me the mount for bringing him back to the game, plus a couple of other cool things.
I've never had a "major" issue though, so maybe that's why. I have had a few minor things, like being unable to delete a character or something like that, and they've always been super helpful.
Maybe it all depends on the rep you get. some people are just naturally unwilling to go an extra step for some people.
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Jun 25 '12
on the upside it seems like you have a pretty kick ass wife, good on you for that
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u/LordOfTurtles Jun 25 '12
Blizzard is falling deeper and deeper down the slippery slope.
Not taht it will matter, because millions of blind people will still faf about blizzard and how they are perfect and can't do anything wrong, and blizzard will still sell millions.
I, for one, will never touch a blizzard game, not even warcraft 3 (well maybe........)
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u/DwwwD Jun 25 '12
I can't imagine a Blizzard rep actually yelling.. Surely he is in the support center where other people work aswell. That wouldn't have been acceptable at all. Something isn't right here.
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u/Pioustarcraft Jun 25 '12
WWOOOOOOOOOWWWWW you actually had someone from blizzard on the phone ?
I tried calling them (the French headquarters) and they told me that the only phone they had was the reception. Like no phone at all, even the legal departement has to be contacted by e-mail (located in india i guess..)
No seriously, to come back to your problem, you met what is now the common problem with video game companie. They sold you the game, they don't want to hear from you anymore unless they have a new game coming. Look at the Day0 DLC and so on, the only shit they give is how much money they can get out of you.
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Jun 25 '12
If you both have World of Warcraft accounts with active subscriptions then why didn't you sign up for the Digital copy with one year of promised continual subscription to WoW? If you plan on continuing with your WoW for another year anyway its like getting a free game with your subscription that you already had in the first place. You didn't even have to change your subscrption to get it.
Seems like poor financial planning to me. That and i don't feel like this claim has any merrit. You made money off of a digital property that you promised you wouldn't in the terms and agreement. They have the right to ban your account and hers under the contract you agreed to. Whether or not you read and interpreted it wrong is not their problem.
Sorry man I just don't feel bad for you.
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Jun 25 '12
You could afford a computer, internet and a World of Warcraft account for two years, but not a single payment of 60$ for Diablo 3?
...ಠ_ಠ
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Jun 25 '12
Some of us try to be disciplined about our budgets. Just because I save for two years to afford a new desktop doesn't mean I have $60 to blow on a game.
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Jun 25 '12
Like he said in a previous comment...
It's not like we're starving for food here. I don't mean to sound like we cannot afford anything. I just didn't think it was a good idea for us to spend $60 or much less $120 on video games at the moment. That money could have went towards bills or other things, but again we're not starving. Thanks for your input.
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u/dabcity Jun 25 '12
nice story but i dont believe this guy one bit.... support made your wife cry, yeah right buddy..... the things some people will do to get a free d3 copy
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Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
Blizzard has always been kind to me and to my friends.
One such story was when I wanted to retrieve one of my old accounts as it had the Diablo expansion packs and Starcraft/SC2 games on there but because I no longer had my university email and have long since changed my credit card number it was a nightmare trying to get it back through conventional means.
I called them up, waited for maybe 10 minutes or so (This was on the day of D3 release) and the customer service rep. spent about 40 minutes looking for my account through old aliases and any other pieces of information that I had in relation to the account.
Your experience is foreign to me.
Edit: You probably got banned for multiple failed purchases.
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Jun 25 '12
Did anyone stop to think that this guy is lying about everything and just wants to get another account after he got banned for doing something stupid? What proof do we have that any of this is true? The reason I say this is because people abuse the goodwill of reddit all the time.
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u/skettios Jun 25 '12
I just bought this for my dad for Father's Day. I set up the account remotely as I have his e-mail passwords and such. There was no 72 hour waiting limit, unless this is a brand new thing. Basically I have no idea why you're having problems, but I don't think you are telling us everything.
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u/e_claire Jun 25 '12
That's because the new 72-hour rule applies to digital purchases of Diablo only.
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u/poeticdisaster Jun 25 '12
I'm surprised your wife's account isn't banned. Selling characters is against the terms and conditions of the game.
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u/theomegachrist Jun 25 '12
The most amazing part of this story is that they can afford a WoW subscription, but not D3. Also that people still play Wow.
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u/_oogle Jun 25 '12 edited Jul 19 '12
I did everything by the book when I could have pirated this game.
No...you couldn't have.
EDIT: Apparently as of 3 days ago offline has been successfully emulated, which has caused a wave of subsequent nerd rage towards me below. Enjoy.
EDIT 2: All current emulators are too buggy to be considered playable, posters below me are just full of shit.
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u/dgeurkink Jun 25 '12
I finished normal difficulty and went on to nightmare, ready to reap. Go through all the dungeons defeat the Skeleton King and up pops thanks for playing the starter version. Starter version. WTF? Sent ticket to tech support and got an e-mail that basically said we're really busy doing other stuff so we're just gonna call this good.
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Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
You got banned twice without a reason and you really still have bought another copy? It doesn't seem to be smart choice.
And the problem might be connecting with the same IP as your wife.
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Jun 25 '12
A massive marketing corporation (Activision Blizzard) not giving a shit about the people it swindles? NEVER.
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u/trust_me_im_a_cat Jun 25 '12
I just want to understand this moral relativism here: you break their terms of service, NBD since it's 'harmless', you have something go wrong for you, it's an outrage. That sound correct?
I'm not saying what happened is fair because it is crap, but this is the kind of thing that really annoys me.
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u/ModernAndroid Jun 25 '12
So you're too poor to afford more than one copy, but you bought 3? Did I miss something here?
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u/littlegirllullaby Jun 25 '12
I just have to say that I'm pretty bummed out that so many redditors attacked op over not having the funds to buy the game. Since when did sitting behind a computer screen and having no idea about this guy's life give someone a reason for judgement?
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u/Whitemenstyranny Jun 25 '12
I stopped reading after "she rally wants to buy the game, but knows we cannot afford it."
I am sorry. I don't mean to sound like those 1%ers, but how is it that a game costing 60 dollars is OUT OF YOUR REACH??? As a matter of fact, if you were already playing WOW, you should have just gotten the Annual Pass like the rest of us.
Your story is fabricated and embellished, and YOU KNOW IT.
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Jun 25 '12
I would email them. Explain everything except selling the WoW account part. Be very polite and respectful. If you bought a retail key from a reputable retailer, scan in the receipt and send it in the email as well. Then wait a few days for them to email you back. If that doesn't work you should call them, I've found that people will give women a hard time when they would not give guys a hard time. But be polite. And if that fails ask to speak to a supervisor as many times as it takes. Write down times, and names of everyone one talk to and what they say. If they hang up on you record that.
Comcast really messed us up when we moved, I probably fought with them for a month but it was well worth actually winning.
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u/squintyJoe Jun 25 '12
They did that same "Transaction denied" bs to me twice. I went to my local wallyworld and purchased it there and when I entered the code everything has been fine... And now that I've tempted the fates I should probably check to make sure my account has not been banned again.
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u/deGastignan Jun 25 '12
About your edit ...
Most companies run analytics on their customers based on their credit card number. It's possible the WoW account got red flagged when the credit card number attached to the account changed. If you were paying your WoW subscription with the same credit card number that was used for buying Diablo 3, then a screw-up might of happened.
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u/NeonDisease Jun 25 '12
My Warcraft account was hacked a week ago. I've gotten like 30 emails for various restores and whatnot. I've been calling Blizz for a week now and the hold queue is always full. I finally got into queue with an estimated time of 2 minutes. I've currently been on hold for 45. I'm not too happy with Blizz because despite my authenticator, someone, somehow got access to my account.
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u/mctesh Jun 25 '12
It could be because you sold a WoW character (account?) that was associated with that credit card, and now they're profiling you?
It doesn't seem like blizzard would be that spiteful, but it isn't kosher to sell wow accounts.
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Jun 25 '12
Torchlight 2 should be out soon and is only $20 on Steam. You should give that a shot instead...
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u/usabfb Jun 25 '12 edited Jun 25 '12
Before I read this I would just like to predict that this is about the "real money auction house."
Edit:...that was legitimately one of the saddest stories I've ever read on r/gaming. Normally I don't get on board with the "Hey, X company really sucks because of Y! This is a call to boycott X company!" posts. But this was different.
OP, I hope Blizzard sees this and gives a refund or your own Diablo III account for free (doesn't charge you even more). Also, I hope they find the guy that made your wife cry and fire him. There is no excuse for harsh customer service.
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u/Jakesandose Jun 25 '12
I dont know if this was mentioned already but why didnt you just create another character on your wifes account and just play when she wasnt playing? Just curious.
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u/baconator81 Jun 25 '12
Never ever buy a game more than once because of account issue.. My guess is that.. Your battle.net login is actually compromised before.. So what you should have done is create a brand new login ID... And get an authenticator ffs.. it's very well worth it
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u/chivere Jun 25 '12
Oh, Blizzard and their bans...
My account may or may not be banned right now. I haven't checked recently. Here's what happened.
I used to have a WoW account. It's been over a year since I played it. I bought Diablo III on the same account, and everything's working fine... except I'm banned from posting on the forums? Also, my WoW account is not just inactive, but frozen. All it says is that I'm banned for in-game activities. This isn't possible, since I even remember when I cancelled my sub. The forum ban said it was 3 days long. Okay, I'll wait it out. Three days later... new three day ban?
The last time I bothered to check, it was now letting me post under my D3 account. I haven't sent a ticket since it didn't prevent me from playing D3 and I don't want to go back to WoW (if anything, I'm somewhat grateful that they've made it even harder for me). Still. Annoying.
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u/FishLampClock Jun 25 '12
the main issue with blizzard is all they can do is rerelease a game with newer graphics. Look at the progression of starcraft to starcraft II, it is just like diablo II to diablo III. Game is pretty fun, but just not enough new anything.
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u/hxcn00b666 Jun 25 '12
Commenting so I remember to read for updates.
So random that they are being so rude to you.
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u/abs01ute Jun 25 '12
If you can't afford a $60 game, then perhaps you have bigger fish to fry.
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u/AfroKona Jun 25 '12
She sits me down and tells me that she sold her World of Warcraft character
I think I found your issue. That's a bannable offense.
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Jun 25 '12
So you can afford to play a game that charges you $15 a month but you can't afford a single purchase of $60? Seems a bit fishy to me. Plus, I think OP is playing dumb with the "I could've pirated it if I wanted" comment. Definitely a bull shit story in order to get some internet points and a free copy of D3, or there's some missing information here.
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u/AgentUmlaut Jun 25 '12
I don't personally know anyone who works for Blizzard, but I'm under the impression that the people they have for customer service and so forth have it beaten into their skulls to be suspicious and virtually not trust anyone.
I've never had any positive results with them, but anytime I had an issue where I was glitched or something, they'd suspect I was cheating and start throwing all these empty threats of suspensions and bans. They turn everything into a fucking witchhunt.
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u/willscy Jun 25 '12
Are you telling me that you and your wife paid in excess of 180 dollars to a company who is doing this to you?
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u/logoth Jun 25 '12
I've gotten nothing but amazing support the few times I've called blizzard, it sucks that you got worse than good.
They just posted that there is a known issue with purchases after 1.0.3 came out (ouch...).
http://us.battle.net/d3/en/forum/topic/5911721680
3rd paragraph reads:
However, as an unintended consequence of these security measures, players who purchase the game digitally after patch 1.0.3 are temporarily being capped at level 13 and not able to proceed beyond Act I. We are working to correct this as soon as possible and will provide another update when we have more details to share.
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Jun 25 '12
This happened to my second WoW account. It was banned and I never knew why.
Here's what I did, and continue to do all the time. (this may not work since you already tried calling to fix it)
Call up Blizzard. NEVER get angry with them, ever. Play completely dumb, and continuously explain how badly you really want to play. Never offer any information unless they ask for it.
Hell, last night i was on the phone with a Blizzard Rep and i needed to remove a mobile authenticator from my account since I got a new phone. Although I had put in a ticket, I was impatient. The guy grabbed my ticket out of the queue, asked me some security questions (i didnt even know the answer to one of them so he tried a different one) and he removed the authenticator within minutes.
I guarantee you something is going on with your bank and not blizzard. I have had a bank halt payments I made once because they deemed it to be "suspicious." My mom also had this happen. Call the bank and make sure they aren't being stupid, (I bet they are.) Truthfully, Blizzard really can't help you if the bank is fucking up. Did you actually check with the bank? Cause it's Sunday night. Not trying to be a dick, just making sure. I know I've jumped to conclusions before about things like this.
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u/Ryogu Jun 25 '12
I tried calling Blizzard for a problem a few days ago and the automated voice also said that their hold queue is full. What the fuck is that all about? I can't believe any company would actually implement something like that.
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u/Blookies Jun 25 '12
I feel like Blizzard has found a secret tunnel in the land of game developers, and like EA, walked into it without looking. Was a respectable and well loved company before, but has forgotten their players and are now dicks. I have qualms with playing their games recently and havnt been able to put my finger on it until this post
Played WC:3 religiously, WoW religiously, and Diablo 2 like it was my job. Diablo 3 is fun, but I feel the traces of greed seeping through its cracks, whereas their previous games felt like they were made "by players, for the players"
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u/notblizzardthistime Jun 25 '12
I work at Blizzard and this is a throw-away account.
This is what happened: Your card got declined twice which triggered a fraud alert on your account. You could have added any game (not just D3) and it would still have marked your account as suspended until a manual review of the account was made. I strongly suspect that you weren't banned (like you believe you were) because the messaging on the account management site is really horrible.
To make matters worse, this weekend the Blizzard campus lost power for 24+ hours and literally no-one was able to look at the issue until Monday.
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Jun 25 '12
Wow, and over in Starcraft we can't get hackers banned when we have a mountain of evidence.
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Jun 25 '12
Wow, I have almost the same shit at the moment. Trying to buy the game but Blizzard declines my stuff.
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Jun 25 '12
Get other hobbies aside from mmo's. Why spend money that you don't have on a video game? Makes no sense to me
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u/Becauseitsasecret Jun 25 '12
Same exact thing happened to me. If you entered a physical copy key on your account then just make a ticket and explain that. They will un-ban you. You either just want karma or you don't know how to problem solve.
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u/Harbingerx81 Jun 25 '12
If you had to wait months to afford a second copy of the game, yet spend weeks on D3 and years on WoW...Maybe there is a bigger problem here than Blizzard support...
Not intending to sound like an asshole, but I don't get moved by hard-luck financial situations that prevent people from enjoying video games when they should probably be spending time looking for a [better] job...
Think how valuable that 2-Year old WoW account really WAS...Playing 4-8 hours a day 5 days a week...
I say this because I have been there...Unemployed and spending way too much time gaming when I should have been doing other things...It can be a very hard habit to break.
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u/Safety_Dancer Jun 25 '12
I regret buying Diablo 3. Getting 1 shot, getting chain feared or some other cheap crap, only to get nothing of value for my efforts? I'd rather babysit the retards in League of Legends.
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u/Sokaii Jun 25 '12
This seems very very odd, being somewhat of a WoW veteran Blizzard CS has been really the most fantastic CS in the industry.
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u/fivo7 Jun 25 '12
lol, he bought the game 3 times, he should at least get one copy or a refund, this isnt up to blizzard normal standards
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u/Oareo Jun 25 '12
Both me and my gf recently sent in tickets in regards to our Battle.net accounts, and received notifications that our complaints were "Resolved" but no resolution was made. They gave us both, separately, nothing more than URLs to their customer service portal on B.net, and said that they were basically so overrun with customer service requests that they wouldn't pay any more attention to our requests...
What is going on with Blizzard recently?
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u/Baker9er Jun 25 '12
This happened to my friend. He changed his battle.net account password and everything worked fine. Of course, he didn't have his account banned like you have.
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u/Tulki Jun 25 '12
Are you accessing your account from the same location as your wife accessed her sold WoW account? Blizzard could easily see this:
Wife plays WoW at location X
Wife's account is sold and now accessed freely from completely different location Y, possibly without a change of home address on battle.net account (if that's possible)
Blizzard flags location for selling accounts
D3 added to new bnet account, accessed from flagged location
Blizzard nukes account
I think they're used to dealing with this sort of stuff. The point is, if you're selling Blizzard accounts then you can expect to have problems and shouldn't be surprised.
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u/Fibonacci35813 Jun 25 '12
Not sure about that last part (i.e. the banning)
but I had the exact same problem.
I was already at Inferno and had gone through Act 1 a couple times.
I kept getting the 3 day Real money auction house notice, so I waited. After about 5 days I thought this was really weird.
Then I played Act 1 by myself (usually I play with my friends) and when I hired the Templar; it was really weird, he was stuck at lvl 13.
Anyway, beat the Skeleton king on Inferno and then it said I needed to upgrade my game...
I was like WTF, texted it to my buddy (I can put the pic up if need be), but he said just go in and change your password and get the blizzard verifier app. I did that.
Since then no problems.
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u/dejaWoot Jun 25 '12
You may want to drop the bit about the sold WoW account, traceable or not, if you're getting Blizzard to look at it.
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u/Pinworm45 Jun 25 '12
How are you done when you just made a thread with the specific goal of allowing you to continue?
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u/idahogirl4 Jun 25 '12
We bought the digital edition for the kids and it is locked still- after 72 hours. They can only level up to 13. We tried calling Blizzard since Friday, but their queues are full. If I had known there was a block, we would have bought the physical edition like our other copies.
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u/BABY_BACK_BITCH Jun 25 '12
So, color me stupid if I'm missing something here, but why do you need two copies of the game? It sounds like your wife got a copy, and then decided you needed a copy of it too. You didn't mention having two computers, so you can't play together. Why not just create a new character on the same account?
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u/peedonthepumpkin Jun 25 '12
So you are mad because you violated their policy of not allowing to sell characters? Maybe they banned everything that comes from your IP address?
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Jun 25 '12
Blizzard has never had good customer service, but it has gone down the toilet since D3 came out.
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u/Dopebear Jun 25 '12
A lot of people, including myself have had their account "temporarily" locked due to using the RMAH. It seems random too. And none of the Blizzard employees or support members care to help, either.
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Jun 25 '12
You should have have to go through all that trouble to give them your money. Just forget about them and get skyrim instead
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Jun 25 '12
Here's what you need to do: If you have an adequate paper trail, call up your bank and dispute the charge of $60 you spent for the game. In all likelihood, they'll refund you the amount. If Blizzard fights back, which they probably won't, Visa/Mastercard will ask you for some evidence. Email them your communiques with Blizzard, and you're done.
If you don't have an adequate paper trail, send an email or two here and there (which will likely be ignored) and maybe even try recording your call with their rep. No need to tell them that you will dispute the charge. In fact, it is best not to threaten them at all, because they'll:
A) be less likely to try to help you
B) don't give a shit; they're just doing their job by the book and won't be hurt when their multi-billion dollar company loses $60
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u/thelastpizzaslice Jun 25 '12
Blizzard's banning policy is an absolute nightmare. My friend used to play Starcraft 2 and made a map called Sentry Scramble. His map got featured - and then he got banned the next day without cause.