Customer Service might as well be replaced by AI

[RedbeardO'Conner]

My niece spent some time at my place about a month ago. We had a lot of fun, good to catch up. A while ago I find out I have an alert on my Steam account. Apparently, she's swiped her Mom's credit card and went on a little shopping spree. Kids will be kids, she knows she did the wrong thing. She's already being punished.

Because I have good faith that business owners will try to make things right with customers: I contacted Steam Support, explained the situation hoping to have the suspension on my account lifted as this was a very rare, one-time kind of event. I have never done anything like fraud or anything like that. I have a clean record; never been VAC banned or anything.

The replies I got from VARIOUS members of Steam Customer Service were all so embarrassingly template written that it made my head spin.





"Hi there,

As the Steam account owner, you are responsible for the security of your account, any actions made and all purchases made by you or anyone who has access to your account.

Since this purchase did not qualify for a refund, you'll need to wait for the restriction on the account to expire. Since disputing a charge is used to report charges as unauthorized or fraudulent, these restrictions are automatically set in place to protect the account holder from further unauthorized purchases. It's set to expire on July 9th if no further disputes post to the account. The Visa ending in **97 will remain restricted on Steam. We encourage you to contact Steam Support in the future to resolve issues with your purchased product. If future purchases are charged back, we may be forced to permanently lock the account to protect ourselves from chargeback fraud.

Lastly, please consider setting up our Family View feature, which allows you to customize your family's accessibility to the Steam account. Please visit our Family View FAQ for more information.

Steam Support
(redacted"




"Hello,

As previously mentioned, as the account holder, you are responsible for all charges incurred, including applicable taxes, and all purchases made by you or anyone that uses your account, including your family or friends.

If you're unable to reverse the payment dispute, since this purchase was not eligible for a refund, the account will remain locked for the duration indicated in Steam.

Future payment disputes may result in the account being locked permanently to protect us from chargeback fraud.

Steam Support
(redacted)"




Okay. So I can accept taking responsibility for what happens on my account. That is in my court. But I hoped, as I have no prior history of this kind of behavior, to maybe get a little bit of forgiveness based on the context of the situation. Notice how both replies copy and paste the exact same phrase about "not eligible for a refund". I'm not asking for a refund. I'm asking for forgiveness. If I reversed the chargeback, that would mean my sister (niece's mom) would get dinged for the cost of games, I didn't actually buy. Why would I do that?

More concerning is the threat of of permanent ban if future disputes occur. "Future payment disputes may result in the account being locked permanently to protect us from chargeback fraud."x2. Really got to hammer home that point, don't they?




I went on a multiple paragraphs long reply about how this is extremely anti-consumer. If this was a small owned business, I would be able to talk to the owner, and we could probably reach an understanding; a compromise. But since Steam's service department seems to be more concerned with just clicking on buttons that euphemistically tell me I'm SOL, I'm essentially being told that despite being a good, well behaved user for something like 11 or 12 years or so, doesn't matter. Forgiveness doesn't matter. Gotta protect the company from chargeback fraud.




Throughout the years of it's existence: Steam has done little to nothing to protect it's users from credit card fraud, Steam key theft, data leaks, spam ads, predatory business practices, trading card scams, and just plain Digital Homicide, and I've forgiven them for all of those mistakes because I still think they're the best game platform on the internet. BUT, they need to protect themselves from chargeback fraud. I don't see any rhetoric about protecting ME from fraud. Way to go, Steam! Way to protect the poor impoverished, multibillion dollar corporation from that bully Big Consumer!


So anyway. After that, I received this:


"Sorry, as my colleagues have been mentioning, there is no indicator your Steam account have been compromised or being used by another person.

Please be aware that disputing a charge through your payment provider is not a valid means of obtaining a refund.

The account will remain restricted until July 09, as long as there are no other disputes coming to the account.

Once the account is unlocked, it can be used back as normal.

Keep in mind, if another chargeback/dispute happens on the account due to the same action as before, then we will need to lock your account permanently as a way to protect ourselves from chargeback fraud.

I understand is not the answer you were looking for, but we cannot accommodate your request.

Because we have provided all the information we have for your issue I'm closing this help request. If you have an unrelated issue please open a new help request and we will be happy to help.

Steam Support
(redacted)"




Then he closed the ticket.




(redacted):

Did you even read a word I said? Did you even care? You just had to hit the button that says "protect ourselves from chargeback fraud" didn't you? Did you have a gun to your head? Blink twice if you're in trouble, (redacted)!

BTW, I redacted all the employee names myself. I don't trust Steam to do the right thing by their customers. But I DO expect them to punish me for ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ "community policy violations" because I pissed one of their more vindictive desk workers off.

But do you see what I mean? Absolutely nobody paid any attention to the context. Nobody thought, maybe I can ask someone for an exception. Nobody cared.




So I'm making it public. Since it looks like they figured they wasted enough time dealing with a whining customer, they just closed the ticket without my say-so. This is what a decent, non-offending, well-behaved customer gets in a tough situation. It sucks, but there's nothing I can do about it. I will not be surprised if I get banned for "community guideline" violations for this, and that'll be that. I got a bunch of those over at Amazon for speaking up about shady, anti-consumer behaviors. I won't care much. I am not a paypig. I will not give money to a company that so blatantly acts entitled to my money, but doesn't lift a finger to help me when I have a slightly more difficult than usual problem.

[RedbeardO'Conner]

Messaggio originale di Knavenformed:

Messaggio originale di RedbeardO'Conner:

I think most of you miss the point. I'm not upset about the chargeback or the consequences. I'm upset that Service didn't even read my emails thoroughly enough to even bother with a personalized response. They pressed the automated answers in front of them. They were trying to solve a technical problem. I just happened to be attached to it.

If you were CR for Valve, just imagine how much they are flooded with just outright incomprehensible support messages

It's not a job you can just do with manpower, it would be cost inefficient and the problem solving wouldn't even be that much of better quality

I have many years of experience in customer service jobs. I was always taught that every problem requires personalized attention to detail and customized solutions. It's kind of like working on a car. You can't solve every problem just by doing a lube, oil, and filter change. You might have to take the extra time and effort to diagnose the problem before you can fix it. It's more time consuming, more stressful, and maybe less efficient, but it's the right thing to do.

[D. Flame]

Messaggio originale di RedbeardO'Conner:

Messaggio originale di Ben Lubar:

Because you posted the response but not what you wrote in the first place, so the people reading your post had to figure out what you might have said from only the response.

And the response they gave you didn't claim that you were asking for a refund. It said that they can't remove the lockout because the item is not eligible for a refund.

Good point. Perhaps a bit unintentionally deceptive on my part. If you don't mind, I'll give a quick play-by-play of events: mischievous-but-lovable brat makes unauthorized purchases on my account on her mom's credit card; Mom doesn't know it was on my account; files dispute with credit card company; Steam refunds her the amount and takes back the games; I get a purchasing suspension on my account. Now, if I dispute the chargeback to get access back, SHE'LL get hit with the $100 or so of purchases, that's also not fair. I already called VISA and explained the situation, and they said I had to contact Steam to clear up the problem. Steam does not analyze the situation and tries to make the problem fit into their templates, which seems to operate on the assumption that I'm asking for either a refund or for the games back. This has taken about 6 days between Steam and Visa together. So I am becoming quite impatient.

You are at fault.

You allowed your PC and account to be accessed. You are responsible for any purchases made during that time.

You can hand your sister $100 in cash and ask her to remove the charge backs, or you can deal with the consequences and go without being able to make purchases for now.

If the games were eligible for a refund, then Steam could have cancelled the entire thing, but they were not.

Steam is not responsible for analyzing the situations; YOU WERE RESPONSIBLE for not letting anyone else access your account, EVER.

[Knavenformed]

Messaggio originale di RedbeardO'Conner:

Now, if I dispute the chargeback to get access back, SHE'LL get hit with the $100 or so of purchases, that's also not fair. I already called VISA and explained the situation, and they said I had to contact Steam to clear up the problem. Steam does not analyze the situation and tries to make the problem fit into their templates, which seems to operate on the assumption that I'm asking for either a refund or for the games back. This has taken about 6 days between Steam and Visa together. So I am becoming quite impatient.

So you are trying to get a refund after all

For "only" 100 [currency] I'd say be glad you did not get outright banned
You can only walk away from this really
If you don't dispute the chargeback, there's already money lost for Steam on those chargebacks since they have to pay for processing, you are not getting 100 bucks out of thin air no matter how hard you try.

[Satoru]

Again you are responsible for your account. What you have to do is
1) go back to the mother
2) tell them to reverse the charge back

Valve is not going to magically just 'make everything ok' because you made up some bizarre sob story. They don't have to. They're not under any obligation to believe you in any way. Steam did analyze the situation and saw that these purchases, made under your account, were done so without the account being hijacked.

Steam isn't obligated to 'fix' your problem. They gave you the correct answer. Reverse the chargeback. If yuou don't then what they told you is the consequences.

You not liking the correct answer does not mean they did "not analyze the situation". Them giving you a template answer is absolutely fine because your situation deserves the template answer. Everyone 'thinks' their situation deserves a personally signed letter from Gabe via owl or something. It doesn't.

You keep saying 'it was a mistake on our part' but then keep blaming steam because you know, they told you exactly what to do but you refuse to do it. You not liking the answer does not mean you didn't get an answer, or that said answer was incorrect. It seems like literally no one wants to own up to this fiasco except the kid.

[Doctor Zalgo]

Messaggio originale di RedbeardO'Conner:

Messaggio originale di Knavenformed:

If you were CR for Valve, just imagine how much they are flooded with just outright incomprehensible support messages

It's not a job you can just do with manpower, it would be cost inefficient and the problem solving wouldn't even be that much of better quality

I have many years of experience in customer service jobs. I was always taught that every problem requires personalized attention to detail and customized solutions. It's kind of like working on a car. You can't solve every problem just by doing a lube, oil, and filter change. You might have to take the extra time and effort to diagnose the problem before you can fix it. It's more time consuming, more stressful, and maybe less efficient, but it's the right thing to do.

But you don't have a 'custom problem', your problem is 'I did a charge back against valve and they restricted my account'. Valve probably deals with that a hundred times a week or more and the solution is the same every time.

Also for what it's worth, I don't see how you have standing to 'dispute the chargeback'. Her bank isn't going to talk to you and valve isn't going to start a slap fight with her bank either. They've already done their bit which is restricting your account.

[Overseer]

That's way too much drama for 100 bucks. So you now have a couple more games in your library and you decided to get your payment service and Valve involved into something that should have stayed a family only issue? Neither Valve nor the payment service are responsible for kids having access to things they should not. And you can't even argue its damages as you received goods in return.

[Tito Shivan]

Messaggio originale di RedbeardO'Conner:

I'm upset that Service didn't even read my emails thoroughly enough to even bother with a personalized response.

Your issue is pretty much template material, it didn't require a personalized response.

[Aesthier]

Messaggio originale di RedbeardO'Conner:

I'm upset that Service didn't even read my emails thoroughly enough to even bother with a personalized response.

And your response is a suggestion to further increase the automation of an already automated system????

Logic truly is rare these days.