(From my blog over at: <removed> however I wanted to share the tale here as well, perhaps in the hope other innocent players don't have to go through what my boyfriend is.)

While I normally keep the posts here light-hearted and fun, I wanted to share the following story about just how crappy Blizzard’s customer service really is.

As most of the folks who play with us in game know, my boyfriend has two accounts: one fully packed with 80’s, and another with a bunch of lowbie alts. Yesterday, like he often does, he took one of his 80’s and ran one of his low level characters through some instances. Suddenly, his account with the 80’s got signed off, and a password reset notice was sent to his e-mail. When he tried to log back in, he got notice that he was on a 72 hour ban for illegal activity.

Immediately assuming he had been hacked, he got on the phone and tried to contact Blizzard only to find they were “too busy” and “not taking any calls.” Really Blizzard, you just made millions off a shiny pony but you can’t hire enough folks to even be able to allow your paying customers to wait on line to be serviced? After an hour of repeatedly calling back, he was finally able to wait in the virtual line (where he then waited another 2 hours to speak to someone.)

The person he talked to on the phone was also confused, stating that “no one had signed on his account” and that “they couldn’t decipher the GM’s notes as to why the account was banned” .. they said that he had to talk to a GM to get his ban removed or recover any lost items but could be of no further assistance. My boyfriend then e-mailed a GM, and went about his evening. The next morning, still searching for answers, my boyfriend called Blizzard back (and waited another 2 1/2 hours on the phone) this time to find out the following:

His account was safe from hackers, but not safe from Blizzard. Turns out THEY themselves requested the password reset, and placed a 72 hour ban on his account for botting. My boyfriend explained to them he has two accounts and did nothing differently than he normally would have done with them that afternoon, sure he gained a bunch of levels via the dungeons with help from his trusty 80 mage by the lowbie warriors side, but obviously having two accounts and playing them together is not illegal or against any of their rules. The man on the phone told him he couldn’t help him, or remove the ban .. nor could he give him any information about what triggered the ban, or tell him that it wouldn’t happen again. No apologies were made, no attempts to rectify the situation were suggested.

Now, not only does he have to pay for his game time during the ban, but his account is also now “marked” and he will never be able to participate in any betas or special offers. The whole situation is complete crap. Not only do you have to wait for hours on end to talk to them about something, but when you do there is no guarantee you will get a straight answer or even be helped at all. Currently, he is still banned, and still waiting on a reply from a GM. I will be discussing the issue a bit more on next week’s podcast, and share the conclusion of the story then.

Hi there Chelley!

I'm gratified to see that everything seems to have turned out alright. It seems that there were some arguments and misconceptions in this thread and I'd like to provide some clarifications where I can. Just as a note, I removed references to your blog, to avoid any possibility of a forum code of conduct violation for advertising - it's nothing personal.

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Q u o t e:

So to those hellbent on the fact he did indeed do some illegal stuff and there was no way Blizzard could have messed up because they fully investigate everything .. sadly, you were wrong :) It seems Blizzard stepped up to the plate and admitted that the GM made a mistake .. it's a shame some of the user base here in this thread found that to be an impossible odd, but thankfully those at Blizzard aren't as ignorant or small minded.

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I'm glad his follow up investigation turned out favorably. We never take action against an account without reason. We have a variety of sophisticated processes in place (incorporating both automated and human elements) which are designed to help limit and eliminate undesirable influences from World of Warcraft for our players. While we trust the overall efficacy of these processes, we also understand that the rare error can occur and that's part of the reason why we've provided a means to contest an account suspension by emailing wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com.

Also, for the sake of fairness, the players who frequent this forum have seen a wide variety of issues pass through. All too often, those vocally protesting innocence aren't innocent at all =/. They've seen the rare cases where an account action was applied incorrectly too.

On all sides of this particular discussion I would like to add the reminder that, generally speaking, returning hostility with hostility isn't particularly helpful. After all, being "right" is of limited value if your audience is seeing too much red to read what you've written.

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Q u o t e:
Now, not only does he have to pay for his game time during the ban, but his account is also now “marked” and he will never be able to participate in any betas or special offers. The whole situation is complete crap. Not only do you have to wait for hours on end to talk to them about something, but when you do there is no guarantee you will get a straight answer or even be helped at all. Currently, he is still banned, and still waiting on a reply from a GM. I will be discussing the issue a bit more on next week’s podcast, and share the conclusion of the story then.

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Marked and unable to participate in betas or special events? I'm not sure where you got the idea that such a thing occurrs, but I'd like to reassure you that there are no such 'marks'. Perhaps you were thinking of the gradual penalties that stack on an account until it is finally permanently suspended? Also, after your boyfriend's case is reviewed, and if the suspension is reversed, then he can discuss any lost play time then.

I noticed that you had some concerns regarding the long wait times for service. We are indeed receiving a large number of incoming requests, so wait times can be a bit high. We're taking steps to address that, and in fact, we've posted a sticky on the subject here:

Experiencing a High Volume of Calls

While there's no guarantee that we will be in a position to lend a hand with a given request, we take the service we provide quite seriously and we always do our utmost to help whenever one of our players contacts us.

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Q u o t e:
I know most GM's won't put their job on the line for a grudge, however, if your boyfriend knew someone, ticked them off, and they became a GM on that realm, and found out your BF played there... well, that is a mighty big IF (possible, but not probable.)

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Actually, the integrity of our staff is of extreme importance to us, and there are safeguards in place to prevent any possible abuse. Thus, not only is such a scenario vanishingly unlikely, it is virtually impossible due to the systems which restrict the opportunity for such a thing to occur.