Steam account suspended: 100s of games and $$$ lost?

Phone support gives customers direct access to support people that can help. PROPERLY done phone support would be entirely based in the country they are supporting, even if it was only during office hours. CSRs with good training can solve issues quickly and easily. There is no reason for them to not have phone support. Email support will never be as good.

Why can't the properly trained CSRs do email support in exactly the same way?

This allows for level ballancing and all sorts of other stuff. The problem with email / web support has never been the interface it was always the relaxed attitude companies took toward it, they view it as non critical support. Go do some web hosting where they have ticket based support which allows you to set priority, in that business almost everything is critical web sites cannot be down. I use pretty cheap web hosting about $15 / mo and with properly done tickets 3 of the 5 companies I deal with solved every problem I had within 30 minutes. And if I set it to urgent it was typically as fast as I could write out the problem the and respond with any info they needed. They could hire people all over the world typically someone in Europe, India and the North America. Then they had a 24 hour time course handled. The person could work from their home and do whatever they wanted when no emails were coming in.

As others said Valve is a big company now who has matured from a user base of mostly self helping cutting edge tech savy users to a mass market company like walmart. Because of this they need to commit to support. And so far they have not done that. No excuse ever for a ticket sitting in the que for days. Phone support will not solve the problem of lack of commitment. You will just end up with a half ass job of the lowest paid indian support with little to no training and almost no guidence or power to change things fast enough. And you will wait around for 30 minutes to get that then they will read back the same exact thing you found in the self help section. That is what lack of committment does no matter what the interface is.

It is also my feeling that this is a game not a time critical item like a web site, so I think of all the companies that do support this is one that has a very reasonable arguement to do it through a web interface only.
 
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Why can't the properly trained CSRs do email support in exactly the same way?

This allows for level ballancing and all sorts of other stuff. The problem with email / web support has never been the interface it was always the relaxed attitude companies took toward it, they view it as non critical support. Go do some web hosting where they have ticket based support which allows you to set priority, in that business almost everything is critical web sites cannot be down. I use pretty cheap web hosting about $15 / mo and with properly done tickets 3 of the 5 companies I deal with solved every problem I had within 30 minutes. And if I set it to urgent it was typically as fast as I could write out the problem the and respond with any info they needed. They could hire people all over the world typically someone in Europe, India and the North America. Then they had a 24 hour time course handled. The person could work from their home and do whatever they wanted when no emails were coming in.

As others said Valve is a big company now who has matured from a user base of mostly self helping cutting edge tech savy users to a mass market company like walmart. Because of this they need to commit to support. And so far they have not done that. No excuse ever for a ticket sitting in the que for days. Phone support will not solve the problem of lack of commitment. You will just end up with a half ass job of the lowest paid indian support with little to no training and almost no guidence or power to change things fast enough. That is what lack of committment does no matter what the interface is.

It is also my feeling that this is a game not a time critical item like a web site, so I think of all the companies that do support this is one that has a very reasonable arguement to do it through a web interface only.

The problem with email support is that it will take time no matter what. No matter how good CSRs for email support are it still requires hours or days worth of communication back and forth between the rep and customer. Phone or web-based chat support could solve most problems in as little as a few minutes. In fact a well set up phone/chat support structure could handle most problems with less than an hour.

It isn't always "just" a game. Billing and account issues are far more important game issues and a user should never have to wait days to hear back about those issues and the reality of the situation is that no matter what that will happen with an email system. There is no such thing as a perfectly working support system, that is why many companies offer multiple ways to get support instead of relying on a single point of contact.
 
Yeah, email systems suck for communication of problems and solutions. You send them an email, most often it takes at least a couple of hours for them to respond, you might not even be sitting at your computer anymore, so if the support advice doesn't help you then might be responding back and requesting further assistance a day later... when multiple emails have to go back and forth the time really builds up, which is really not acceptable when there are potentially billing and account issues.

If there's something like a credit card fuck up, I want phone support, full stop, I want it fixed or on its way to being fixed, now, even if I have to sit on hold for half an hour to talk to someone.

A good email system is fine, but it can't be your ONLY port of call because its simply not sufficient for all problems and all users. Recently one of my relatives had a problem with a program they subscribe to use, they asked me for help with it and said they'd be in contact with tech support via email. I read through the emails and fuck all information had been sent back and forth, partly because the tech support weren't knowledgable and also because my relative wasn't knowledgable enough to implement their suggestions and comment on the outcome.... but looking at the dates he'd been in contact with them for almost 2 weeks. If he'd just rung a telephone support line, there would have been struggles and problems, but the conversation would have taken maybe 10 to 20 minutes to reach the same point. For the most part the support guys had actually responded reasonably quickly, within the same day or early the next day, but because there was a bit of back and forth required and the person requesting support wasn't glued to their computer, even if the support guys were, it just got drawn out for an unacceptably long period of time.

Ideally it'd be something like you email them, they email back promptly, if that doesn't solve the problem or they don't communicate fast enough, there's a number you can ring. Back and forth communication over email is not an acceptable method of customer support.
 
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I don't really understand how waiting for an email response is better than waiting on hold. Sure, they both suck, but I've never been put on hold for multiple days before.

Because you can do more things while waiting for an email response and do them at your own time. If something is not time critical like a billing issue, I will send off the email then come back in an hour or 2 to look. If it is more critical I will just check my phone to see if they replied more often. But honestly how many of these issues are that time critical?

Many times the whole email cycle takes more time but the fact is you actually spent less time on it. But of course that hinges on 2 very important points. 1 did write an email that actually included useful information and 2 did the rep bother to read your whole email and understand it. And of course both of those problems happen on the phone too. I like to say if you wrote a proper email you would never need a reply and admit when I need to provide more info it was almost always obvious.

For these reasons and because I do not want to pay higher prices because other people just want the phone I do not care for phone support. There is no way to level balance phone support unless you totally outsource it to some company that provides a pay for service system. And if they do that well you can guess just how good that service will be. Since no one wants to lose money the pattern in 99% of all companies is clear, they never have enough people watching the phones.
 
Many times the whole email cycle takes more time but the fact is you actually spent less time on it. But of course that hinges on 2 very important points. 1 did write an email that actually included useful information and 2 did the rep bother to read your whole email and understand it. And of course both of those problems happen on the phone too. I like to say if you wrote a proper email you would never need a reply and admit when I need to provide more info it was almost always obvious.

You assume the people who want support are the people who already know enough to form a proper email and then the tech support people are competant enough to form a decent solution and then the person with the problem is knowledgable enough to implement the solution and evaluate where and why the solution fails. That's a bit of a pipe dream :p

Fact is, most the people requesting support have so little experience and knowledge that they hardly even know what the problem is to know what to ask. Then the tech support people are rarely insightful enough to produce anything beyond a generic response. Then the user who has little experience and knowledge usually has no idea why the solution provided didn't work. This situation, when done via email, creates a very long and painful process. When done over phone, its still a painful process, but at least it doesn't take 2 weeks to resolve.

But that aside, for most people frequenting these forums, our "tech support" when it comes to something like Steam is known as "google search", and by the time we get through with google, the actual tech support people probably know less about the problem than we ourselves do... I'm guessing that's the situation for most [H]ers at least. For most other problems, it'll be an account or billing problem where, personally, I'd rather be able to phone someone to resolve it as I'd want to get it solved as fast as possible.
 
I do not assume anything other than basic english knowledge on the client side and common sense. I realize though that common sense is rare in these days. You know simple things like mentioning on the phone who you are when you call seems to be rare.

If steam makes the committment it fixes the issue for all but the rarest cases.

I can tell you already they have not made the committment, for instance I tried to get help for steam and they made me create a support login, I had to wonder why? I already have an account why are you not allowing me to make a trouble ticket from within steam at the point I am having trouble. Then without me saying anything valve would already know what my account was, and which window I was in (purchasing) when the problem occured. Then it took 2 days to get a reply of course by then the sale was over so steam lost money as I would not buy at full price.

Because I described the incedent which was steam not accepting my paypal and mentioned other things I tried they were able to fix the issue in a single reply.

Now if you want to get into tech related support that is a whole different issue but I assure you that I am not the best web admin in the world and I am still able to get everything solved through my web hosting company without calling them. But that is not what is going on here, we have billing and account issues. Simply knowing which account it is and the person just saying I cannot log in is the only thing steam support needs to know in this case. Now if you email them and do not mention what your account is well then that is just basic common sense. In which case I think people that stupid should pay extra for phone support. I choose email support every time for these reasons and only call when a company just does not bother to respond for days or weeks.

Just like people said they always shoot back some generic response which means they are not reading the email. And that is once again a committment issue. Same thing happens on the phone oh you got to go through these steps before I can help you further.
 
Don't buy keys for out of the country steam accounts. Just wait until the games go on sale legit or save a little longer. It may be a gray market key but those are out there in those countries to help try and curve piracy. It's a way for the developers to still get some cash
 
I don't see anything on this about anything I could've possibly done wrong..

THIS IS WHAT FUCKING HAPPENS WHEN YOU THROW ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET.

There is also an agreement when you enter keys for certain games. Sucks that you had to learn the hard way. Don't use steam in the future.
 
Because I have unlimited minutes on my email for one, but to give you an example I have a CMTS card install and service groups rebuild thing Im working on and I'm having a discussion with one of the Vendors about the details. Yeah sure I had a nice long conversation with him about it on the phone, but is either of us gonna remember all the details after we hang up "did he say 5 to 1 or 4 to 1?" "how many cable-mac's did he have configured?". 90% of the conversations I have are so techincal they have to be over email. Its gotta be that or spend an hour saying "Alpha bravo frank papa niner".

Don't get me wrong if you have a simple quick problem call into tech-support, but if you have a simple quick problem why are you calling into tech support?

Also lets face it. How often did someone instantly fix your billing issue over the phone? That shit always ends up taking a few days no matter how simple.

Steam is a purely online service I'd be happy with purely effective online support.
 
This is another one of the reasons I like electronic communications. How many phone chats have you had where the rep offered to email you a transcript? I have not had one. But if I email I can archive and if I use a trouble ticket or chat I am usually given the option to email or copy the transcript.

If you email or chat you have evidence and lets just say that is valuable when many CS contacts are about billing. Then of course there are technical issues where you need to remember steps to do things and if you are on the phone that is pretty stupid. I hate just how long it even takes to activate windows over the phone.
 
There is also an agreement when you enter keys for certain games. Sucks that you had to learn the hard way. Don't use steam in the future.

Or try to get around the system in a gray area that the vendor will try to protect itself.
 
The issue has already moved on the gray market keys issue, not sure why that was re-brought up.

More relevant to the topic at hand regarding support options, there is nothing limiting support options to one method. Having phone, or some other form of live support, does not mean that e-mail support has to be abandoned. Different communications methods are more suitable depending on the problem and/or individual, which is why more options is better. Amazon for instance has e-mail, phone and live chat support options.

EXACTLY!!!! You can always camp on the phone for 7 hours straight and eventually get threw like when I have to call verizon, but waiting for a reply from steam support takes multiple days i'm my experience over 3 days to get any kind of human response..... Steam not having a phone number proves how problematic the service is. When I have a problem with there service, all they have to do is shoot me an email that doesn't make any sense and problem solved for them! However i'm not sure how they will succeed long term burning bridges like they do with there customers.

Well you see this is the brilliance of modern account and client linked digital distribution, you have a built in customer retention mechanism (really a ball and chain) because people will be extremely reluctant to fragment or possibly even abandon their existing game libraries due to the rather big inconvenience that would cause. You'd need some sort of catastrophic customer relations issue compared to retail.
 
Because I have unlimited minutes on my email for one, but to give you an example I have a CMTS card install and service groups rebuild thing Im working on and I'm having a discussion with one of the Vendors about the details. Yeah sure I had a nice long conversation with him about it on the phone, but is either of us gonna remember all the details after we hang up "did he say 5 to 1 or 4 to 1?" "how many cable-mac's did he have configured?". 90% of the conversations I have are so techincal they have to be over email. Its gotta be that or spend an hour saying "Alpha bravo frank papa niner".
I doubt most Steam support issues are that complicated or technical. Most "I can't get this program running" complaints are a case of "have you tried this?", "what does this window say?", "are these files in the correct location?". Things that its quicker for people to discuss it to determine if they're clicking in the wrong place or looking at the wrong window. Every time I help my Dad out with his PC, he's always contacted tech support first and there's usually a long string of miscommunication that is clearly taking both the tech guys and my Dad far longer than it needs. At least that's my observation from my non-tech-savvy friends and relatives communicating with tech support... I can't remember the last time I had to contact tech support, coz, ya know, google and all.
Also lets face it. How often did someone instantly fix your billing issue over the phone? That shit always ends up taking a few days no matter how simple.
Ummm, almost all the time? Most recently I got incorrect charges at a hotel, rang them up, they fixed it. Another time recently someone charged the wrong credit card, rang them up, they sorted it out over the phone. It all happened before the charges actually went through on the card, if they'd waited to do it for a day, I would have been charged extra fees. That's why I like to have the option to ring up, I want to know someone is working on the problem, like, right now, if its gonna take them a couple of days, fine, at least I know they're working on it now. I don't like being held in suspense from the time I send the email to the time they reply and I'm next sitting at my computer to check it. If its gonna require complicated details that are better sent over email, fine, email it to me after I hang up, doesn't change the fact I like to be able to ring up someone to get some instant feedback and acknowledgement. But hey, I'm old fashioned like that :p
Steam is a purely online service I'd be happy with purely effective online support.
I've never had to deal with Steam support so I'm not gonna make any broad sweeping comments, however I'm always happier to have more than one option when it comes to customer support.
there is nothing limiting support options to one method. Having phone, or some other form of live support, does not mean that e-mail support has to be abandoned. Different communications methods are more suitable depending on the problem and/or individual, which is why more options is better. Amazon for instance has e-mail, phone and live chat support options.
Yeah, basically.
 
What's with the roid rage on the forums recently?
Glad you got the account thingie sorted out.
 
What's with the roid rage on the forums recently?
Glad you got the account thingie sorted out.

Is that the new hip phrase the kids are using after Paul Christoforo's little problems? :p
 
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