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Epic Customer Service...lol
sadeisinsane
Member Posts: 58
Ok, so I was thinking about going back to WoW after not playing for a year, as I have not found an MMO to occupy my time as I am stuck waiting on SW:TOR, and a few others.
However I can not. A few months ago someone reactivated my account with an unknown credit card, and cleaned out my account of all items and rougly about 2 million gold. A friend of mine told me that one of my characters logged on, and he reported it for me. I also reported it submitting an email to Blizzard. 24 hours later, I get a notification about suspicious activity, sorry for the inconvenience..blah blah blah...account under review....restoral of all items if my account is really compromised. A couple days go by, get a new letter statying the account is restored, however recommends logging into it and updating my personal info.
Great idea...go to battle.net, and attempt to log in and it asks for an encryption or authenticator key (whatever you call it), I never got one of those... Turns out the person who hacked my account bought one, and Blizzard wasn't smart enough to realize that and remove it. Two weeks go by with back and forth emails to them to try and get them to remove it...Finally it is removed.
At this point I am a little irritated with how this has all gone down and decide to wait and cool off a bit before reactivating my account. Thought I would give it a couple days...then I get another email from Blizzard stating that the credit card that was applied to my account has requested a chargeback, so they have suspended my account until the past couple months is paid in full. ARGHHH!!! So I submit another email, advising them to look at the notes and history of my account and they should be able to surely see that it wasn't me, and they should negate the charges, and allow me to reactivate my account. I get a reply back stating "sorry for your inconvenience, unfortunately you will need to speak to a representative live to clear up the mistake, regardless of the history of recent events.
So about 3 times a day for about a month, I called Blizzard in attempt to speak to someone, and got a recording stating they are too busy to take my call because of high call volumes. At one point I did get through to the point where they told me it would be a 45 minute wait, but I couldn't wait that long on my cell phone. Now I call maybe 2-3 times a week, and still never can get through. I emailed them back and just get the typical "sorry for your inconvenience" crap.
Allthough I really did enjoy WoW at one point, and I thought Blizzard was a great company, I think in this particular aspect they truly have failed a customer.
Comments
Join the club.. What you discribed is 100% accurate how they deal with problems.. Especially with the weird epidemic of hacked accounts via emails and addons. etc etc.. I"ve seen first hand how the hacking occurs, and what goes on and tried to report it to Blizzard and they don't want to hear it.. Good Luck to you tho..
I'm wondering if this problem will happen to some millionaire. I bet he would just sue Blizzard for their incompetence and end up winning the trial with even more money than before.
Same thing happened to me but the person changed the email and password and linked my account to a battle.net account and when I tried to contact Blizzard I was told they couldn't talk to anyone about the account that wasn't on the email the account was registered with or some crap like that.
I had my WoW account hacked. Somebody else paid for it with a game card. The account was supposed to be suspended for 3 hours. It was still suspended two days ago, about two days after the event. I'm not interested in playing WoW. I haven't logged on since December, maybe earlier last year.
I haven't bothered to report it. I changed all personal info. I have a back up email address. So far as I'm concerned if I can't use the account then neither can anybody else. If I report it I'll be subjected to a lot of questions and nonsense to a company that probably wouldn't be in the least bit bothered since I'm not paying anyway.
I havnt played in a long time myself but get phishing emails at the rate of two or three a week. I no longer use that email account but check now and then and there they are. Its gotten to where I just mark everything a phishing attempt whether its really from Blizzard or not. Funny I dont remember getting those when I actually played the game. Seems they started coming sometime last fall.
I haven't played WoW for over 9 months, but I get about 3 phishing emails a day. And I only started receiving them within days of registering with battlenet. Coincidence? I think not.
I know Diablo 3 is a ways off but Blizzards obvious lack of security is making me a little wary of them.
I had the same problem-- although luckily it only took me three days to get through to a representative live.
Just keep trying on the phone-- if you get through --the problem will be handled in <20 minutes.
Though--that said -- I got an email saying "There is no guarantee that my characters/items will be restored"
They deleted 45/50 characters.
*sigh*
Ive read here and other places that the leak came into play after registering for Battlenet, what is puzzeling in my case is I quit the game before having to join Battlenet. I understand being wary as I believe Blizzard has a real problem that they seem to try and gloss over. And for the Blizzard defenders out there, I have never had a phishing email disguised as a game company in my life until this started. So while I do make mistakes, this isnt one of mine.
I think its a bit odd how often I hear about people getting the phishing emails, even people who have been canceled for long periods of time. I've been subscribed on and off (mostly on) for going on 3 1/2 years and have never seen one of these emails. I wonder why it affects enough for it to be a major issue ob forums, but not to everyone? Why does some info get out and not others?
I had the same thing happen to me as the OP.....I called and called for about 2 weeks because email was getting no where, the trick for me was to call them as soon as they opened in the AM....got through to them right away and had everything fixed in a few minutes...they set up a new email address and password...mailed the info to me at that address and had me reply to the confirmation letter they sent to verify it was me. I was about to give up and just let the account go because I havnt played it in so long...but it just bugged me so much that the security was breached after all this time of not even being active and I was detemined to get the account back.
You dont even have to have an account with any particular game in question....I've been spammed with these types of emails asking for verification to games I dont even play. I think they send out a variety of phishing emails and hope someone has that type of account, and that you would click on the fake link....then it's theirs. It's more of a chance system to them, as I said before....I've gotten phishing attempts on games I dont even play.....that alone showed me theres no real system, at some point, with the millions of subscribers out there...someones gonna bite and accidently follow their scheme.
I signed into battlenet (for non-WoW related reasons) some 5 months after discontinuing my WoW account. It was only then that I started getting these emails. And I do not receive them from any other game or really any other spam emails at all.
So it is pretty easy to correlate the lack of security with their battlenet system, not WoW at all.
In the grand scheme of things, it is a LOT easier to keep a 'data sniffer' on battlenet to see logins then just mass phish. I've had guildmates get hacked, and the same chain always happens. A little email tag, they go back and forth, show proof that they did not add the authenticator and they truely own the account, some have to make short phonecalls to verify stuff and then a week at most and all the stuff is returned. Remember there really is no email way to really prove who you are short of including jpgs of you holding the box with the cdkey showning, hence the "You have to call us blahblah" stuff. As for the whole worry on account security? Pay the 10 bucks for the authenticator, kills the chance of a hacker stumbling on your password. The only thing you have to worry about is something you should be doing anyway, and that's personal network security.
Maybe I am having a dense day but I really don't understand what you are getting at. My WoW account is inactive. I haven't a care in the world if it gets hacked - nothing there. The problem is that days after I used battlenet for the first time since playing diablo 2 so many years ago I begin to get the blizzard phishing emails.
Personal network security has nothing to do with it, nor does using an authenticator. My account has not been hacked but the simple act of creating a battlenet account caused my email address to start being inundated with very targeted spam. The problem is mine now, but the cause of it wasn't.
Now if this happens it makes me wary of just how secure Blizzards websites are. And therefore makes me wary of using their products in the future. The onus is not on me to provide security for Blizzard it is on them to provide it for me.
Interesting thread to read,
This is a subject I haven't looked into much because I've never been hacked. However, my older brother's WoW account was hacked just a few days ago. And I haven't witnessed such a good customer service ever before.
First off, he got a mail from Gmail saying that there has been a suspicious IP activity on his account. He did some investigation, started the process of cleaning up the computer. Secondly, he got a Skype IM from a friend asking if he was hacked, because he saw my brother's character online at a earlier time, without him actually being on Skype.
So, we concluded he had been hacked. He sent a mail to Blizzard, he also had to confirm the legitimacy of his account with a picture of his drivers licence aswell as a picture of the accounts serial key.
He went off the night to his friends, came back the other day with the account completely restored.
The hacked has used a authenticator, but that was removed without question asked - However, the little core-hound pet reward was not.
Didn't seem to take much of a effort. Flawlessly handled.
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All it would take for phishers to get your email address is a little money sent the wrong way to a blizzard employee. In fact, for enough money...say, enough to pay off said employee's salary for 20 years plus get them out of the USA before they are found out, I am sure they could get the passwords and emails for many accounts...but then the market would pretty much crash, and WOW would no longer be profitable.
That being said, its just as likely they somehow stole a list of emails from MMORPG.com, Curse, one of the many WOW fan/databse sites, or the forums/bnet servers somehow, and sent phishing emails to em all.
If you are reading any emails from "blizzard" that tells you to log in to secure your account, or anything similar, you really should get a clue.
Anytime you get an email from Blizzard. Never. Ever. Ever, use the link.
Go to battle.net, or the wow site. That should be common sense.
I finally got my first fake email from someone trying to get my account after I quit. It said "OH NOES YOUR ACCOUNT IS UNDER INVESTIGATION, LOG IN TO PROVE ITS YOURS LOL!!111". Mousing over the link showed it went to some weird site, that did look like the battle.net site.
People on this site read these forums all the time, yet they get hacked. There are very few ways that some random account is going to get "hacked".
You downloaded "hacks" for the game. You downloaded iffy mods on iffy websites. You visit bad websites with noscript not on. You give your friends your info. You don't have an authenticator if you don't have safe surfing/password abilities. You click bad links in bad emails and put in your info.
It's very unlikely that YOU are targeted by a great hacker, JUST to get your account.
Swan and others..
It's not only emails that are attempts to hack.. but addons as well..
I can tell you first hand.. my account, a friends account and the BLIZZARD employee I spoke to on the phone account all got hacked from the use of ADDONS.. None of us ever got an email from Blizz or even a Blizz imposter.. NEVER.. According to the Blizz employee, the keylogger is piggy backed onto popular addons,, It ONLY becomes active if you have a browser window open and attempt to log into an offical WoW website, such as "forums".. If you attempt to view those pages, the keylogger will pop up a fake screen that is 99% identical to the WoW page, that ask for "log in".. BAM.. they got you..
Blizzard is AWARE of the addon issue, but it's on the hush hush, as it would be a HUGE hit to their game survivalibilty and pocketbooks.. BTW, the bliz employee was only a customer support account phone person, so I figure she was unaware that she was crossing any lines that her boss would not be happy with..
The Battle.net list have been comprimised and most of us and Blizz knows this.. and Addon's are being compromised as well, which Blizz is aware of and will not react.. Why? Best way to avoid the addon virus is to BAN them from being installed and used.. NOT GOING TO HAPPEN..
Oh dear, not you too... =(
I feel your pain, I can't check my account management anymore, I believe it's been hacked because I just checked my emails and I see them stating that my account has been permanently banned, the credit card has been changed to one that's not even mine and now the account management now asks for a Authenticator code, and I never got one myself. I haven't been on since December but I'm glad no real money has been taken away from my Nationwide bank account but what I don't understand I never gave my password to a fake website so how they got my information is anyones guess. I guess because of this I can't come back since I can't log in anymore to set up any subsciption...
Meh, I never wanted to come back to WoW anyway, I personally left it because it had a very unkind community. I used to think Blizzard were cool but now I think they have become rotten, they completely messed up everyones account to the newer battle.net account saying it's "safer" but instead it only made things worse since hackers now know everybodys email address and senting out fake Blizzard emails and now this, I guess the hackers have now become too clever and so Blizzard have put everyones accounts at risk. I never had this problem before the change to battle.net so what Blizzard did is probably the worse idea they have ever done and to make things worse they are part of Activision, the same publisher that are responsible for the infamous Infinity Ward incident of two top game designers getting fired who bought us Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 and then soon after even more people were dropped out of Infinity Ward.
I used to think EA were bad for getting rid of Westwood Studios and ruining the Command & Conquer series but now I think Activision are worse, they are not just rotten, they are rotten with maggots and flies crawling all over it, things like this make me sick...
Blizzard and Activision are evil.
EXACTLY the same thing happend to me, i just gave up when they didnt answer the phone for a few days.. wow sucks anyways these days so meh, i was just really bored and some friends wanted me to play with them so i didnt bother..
Currently Playing Path of Exile
Technically if the "hack" was due to you using an addon or clicking a link and putting in your password Blizzard does not owe you anything. It is a kindness that they reset your account for your. They could just wash their hands and tell you to better protect yourself. They have no legal obligation to fix a problem you can not prove they caused. Not saying they should not fix these, but the 5% with a bad experience compaired with the rest I have seen saying they got it fixed make me think Blizzard is doing pretty good on their customer service.
So true, WoW used to be good but now it sucks and is bad to the bone. =p
Guys, all of the above complaining please read this.
First of all, YOU are at fault here not BLIZZARD. You wasen't secure enough with your info or got a infopass stealer on your pc by visiting some crap site /addon etc.
Second: Blizzard is doing this as a FAVOUR they dont have to do it but they do it as a service to the players, yet you all moan when you dont get directly what you want back.
Seriously guys.... You are wrong here not them stop moaning about this and make another pointless thread like the other 5000000 out there.
Okay, to clarify a few things.... I originally started this topic just to share a story. I wasn't trying to be a troll or hater. I just wanted to share my experience with what happened. And I figured if others experienced the same thing then they would share as well.
2nd.... I didn't have an abundance of addons, I didn't make a habit of trying all the different ones out there, I just used a very small list of addons, and when I did get them, it was really early on when they came out, Also anytime I installed a 3rd party program like an addon, I always scanned it for viruses/trojans/keyloggers. I spent the time/effort to take care of my WoW account.
3rd... When I closed my account, I had actually already uninstalled WoW and all addons as well prior to actually deactivating the account, and when I had closed the actuall account, I had changed the password. So no game, no addons and new password, my account was untouched for over a year, then somehow it get's hacked???
I don't think that is my fault..sorry
Which Final Fantasy Character Are You?
Final Fantasy 7
Sadly its true that most of those things startedd happening witht he introduction of battle.net accounts across all Blizzards games. I dont play WoW for nearly 2 years now and still recive the spam mails on the email i have registered with battle.net account. And they advertised it as more secure, better way of protecting the accounts. Oh well.
Personally, i dont care, before leaving WoW i gave my guild friends all valuable things i had leaving myself something around 100 gold which is nothing. Im not planning a return to WoW now or ever in the future. Them hackers are however free to take my char and level it to new lvl cap when expansion hits, not my problem.