Evony Customer Service is in fact, great. Blackhands Guide.

[Blackhands]

So I read just about everything that gets posted on the forums, excluding stuff regarding Age II.... and what i see all too often is people complaining about Evony Customer Service and calling them terrible .... and at the risk of brown-nosing...i would like to dispute that.

People are always posting saying '**** you evony, you didn't respond to my ticket' or 'sent 5 tickets, no response', or hurling abuse at Evony on the forums, saying they don't care, calling out davemata etc.... So here is my advice... DON'T DO THAT!!!!

I personally have sent tickets to evony on a number of occasions, I think 5 in total over the years... and 4 out of the 5 times... I have had the issue rectified within 48 hours... usually within 12 hours- by the following maintenance. The one time i didn't get my issue resolved, I was entirely at fault, I will explain why later. I would just like to clarify that i am not a major coiner- so it's not about preferential treatment, i think i have coined about $150 or so since starting on civony in 2009. I often feel that the issues are the players own fault, and deep down we know that, but want someone to blame- so assume it is evony's fault, and blame them, often to spare our blushes to our alliance and team-mates that we have done something stupid. The most common ones are-

My city is gone!!! - You probably barbed it by accident instead of a flat. Did you get captured a few days before and not notice and now reports are gone?

My hero is gone!! - Did you accidentally dismiss it? Did you cap a barb city with it then barb it? Did you attack someone with it who now has it? Did you attack someone with it who has now dismissed it? Did you give your login info to somebody untrustworthy?

All my heroes are gone!! - Were you botting?- did you trade badly and run out of gold in your city and riot them all away and not notice until the reports have disappeared? Did you get farmed/spammed by someone with gates open until your troops and res were all gone and they rioted away? Did you give your login info to somebody untrustworthy?

All my resources are gone! - Did you get farmed by a red flag and not notice until the reports were gone? Did you riot your res away?

In all of these scenarios, you(the player) are entirely to blame.

But fear not! Just because it's your fault... doesn't mean that evony won't generously restore your heroes/cities.

Here is my mini-guide on getting a favourable outcome on your ticket.

It is against forum rules to post tickets on here, so i cannot show you a copy of any of mine, but i will bullet point list the key things that cannot hurt your chances of evony customer care successfully dealing with your ticket.


You be polite/grovelling and specific with your ticket....Say Sorry to bother you or something, then explain - time/date hero/city went missing. Hero name, rough hero level, city it was in. How it happened- say it was your fault and you're such an idiot, and your kicking yourself, but the loss of the hero will ruin your game experience, years of working on that hero to accidentally lose it by accidentally dismissing etc. You will be sooo grateful blah blah blah- most important- be really polite!

Note; tickets DO NOT or are MUCH LESS LIKELY to work when you;
a); Blame someone else. (unless you are filing a 'report abuse' ticket)
b); Name someone else's account (unless you are filing a 'report abuse' ticket)
c); Are not polite or respectful of evony staff
d); Use bad language.
e); Make demands- 'i will do blahblahblah if i don't get..etc
f); Cannot give enough detail about the problem VERY IMPORTANT- I will explain more in detail later.
g); Try and che@t evony This is a big one e.g; If you lose a hero attacking and the defender dismisses it, or stone of finding it back, then dismiss it, then send ticket.
h); Lie. - Don't waste your time, evony's time, and everybody else's time.
i); Do not report people for things they have done to you using any function of a bot .... if you yourself are botting. They may have broken the rules to do it to you... but you are also breaking the rules- so you don't have a leg to stand on, they have just done it better than you.


To sum up;

• Be Polite - If you were working in a shop, and somebody came to the counter and said 'Where the (expletive) are the baked beans in this useless (expletive) place you (expletive) (expletive)!' Would you be inclined to help them? No? So why should evony staff?

• Be Contrite - If it was your fault, say so. Accidentally dismissed hero? 'I did something really stupid, i clicked dismiss on my hero, i'm such an idiot! Please don't punish me for one second of idiocy after 5 years of building it, would mean so much to have it back.'

• Be Very Specific - The easier you make it for them, the better chance of success. For example; I, 'your lord name here' from 'your server here', between xx:30 and xx:40 Server Time, today, the 'Insert Date', accidentally dismissed hero 'Insert Name of Hero' who was roughly level 'rough level here' from city 'city name here'.

• Use common sense - Don't submit tickets for things that haven't happened,(Lies), trivial things... I'm pretty sure I didn't get an ammie today! Complain about other botters if you are botting. Don't send a ticket when you accidentally dismiss rubbish 200att heroes.. i mean please. Just don't. If it involves Stones of Finding... don't bother!

.

• Don't be a **** - Self explanatory

Remember, if it happened more than 30 days ago.. it's probably too late. If you don't get the result you wanted from your ticket... life goes on, it's just a game. And most importantly- do not pester evony with excessive amounts of tickets... and second polite reminder- 'Sorry to bother you, I still haven't received an update on what happened from my last ticket- ref number xxxxxyyy. May i please have an update. Kind regards, 'your name here'.


I recently had somebody i did not know access my account against my will. I logged over them after only 7 minutes and immediately changed password...so they didn't do as much damage as they could have if they had wanted to, and i'm sure they could... But they had dropped me out of alliance and dismissed 7 of my best heroes. I sent a polite and VERY detailed ticket to evony using all of the above steps and 8 hours later, all my heroes restored to me and a nice email from evony.


Thank you evony, I hope others come to see the great customer service I have experienced with evony, and others use my guide to politely send tickets!

Ps

This is not a license to pester evony with tickets. Only send tickets if you have a legitimate problem/grievance. I offer no advice on coining/payment dispute tickets because it is not a field i have any experience in.

[Kiki.]

tl:dr - Don't be a **** and talk to them like a person.

[davemata]

Yes. Just... yes.


I'm not in CS, but I read CS tickets, and the biggest thing I can say is simply. Treat them decently, and they'll try to help you. Give them the specific info they need without a meandering story about how you went to the store, and then got a jacket from a friend's house, and then you dropped some chips on your cat, and suddenly your hero was missing, so after that you went to the monster truck rally... Don't be afraid to follow up on a ticket, but do avoid sending in multiple tickets, just follow up on the one you sent.


Here's a couple extras that would help:
- You need to have control of the main account email in many cases. Not having that and you can't really be identified as the owner sans other info.
- The guys working CS have a hard job and are facing a flood of problems, a little empathy helps, being specific and polite is a good idea.
- Not all problems can be fixed the way you want, but my colleagues in CS are fair. Much more fair than I would be.
- If you make threats and such, expect to drop to the back of the queue, because now your ticket got a lot more complicated, there may need to be server data review, an account review, legal review, etc.

I offer no advice on coining/payment dispute tickets because it is not a field i have any experience in.

This is a field I do have experience in. Evony delivers digital purchases immediately. Per the TOS there is no right to refund, unless delivery did not occur. Contacting Paypal and filing a chargeback is committing fraud, and will result in your account being closed. In the case we find alts, those will all be permanently closed. Simply put, don't do it, there's no reason. You pay for something specific, you get it, you use, and done. Don't like the product, you're not forced to make a purchase. We're free to play for a reason, and frankly free to play is the only part of the industry I want to be in anymore. Without going on a tangent, we take free forever very seriously. There are many successful players who have played for free. On the other hand, if you make a purchase, we appreciate it, and you're helping keep the lights on.

[main9man]

Yes. Just... yes.


I'm not in CS, but I read CS tickets, and the biggest thing I can say is simply. Treat them decently, and they'll try to help you. Give them the specific info they need without a meandering story about how you went to the store, and then got a jacket from a friend's house, and then you dropped some chips on your cat, and suddenly your hero was missing, so after that you went to the monster truck rally... Don't be afraid to follow up on a ticket, but do avoid sending in multiple tickets, just follow up on the one you sent.


Here's a couple extras that would help:
- You need to have control of the main account email in many cases. Not having that and you can't really be identified as the owner sans other info.
- The guys working CS have a hard job and are facing a flood of problems, a little empathy helps, being specific and polite is a good idea.
- Not all problems can be fixed the way you want, but my colleagues in CS are fair. Much more fair than I would be.
- If you make threats and such, expect to drop to the back of the queue, because now your ticket got a lot more complicated, there may need to be server data review, an account review, legal review, etc.





This is a field I do have experience in. Evony delivers digital purchases immediately. Per the TOS there is no right to refund, unless delivery did not occur. Contacting Paypal and filing a chargeback is committing fraud, and will result in your account being closed. In the case we find alts, those will all be permanently closed. Simply put, don't do it, there's no reason. You pay for something specific, you get it, you use, and done. Don't like the product, you're not forced to make a purchase. We're free to play for a reason, and frankly free to play is the only part of the industry I want to be in anymore. Without going on a tangent, we take free forever very seriously. There are many successful players who have played for free. On the other hand, if you make a purchase, we appreciate it, and you're helping keep the lights on.

I have always had good interactions with the customer service for the most part my one complaint is a lot of servers have a huge issue with massive amounts npcs being flipped in to flats way to often. Now don't get me wrong I 100% understand why we need flats to be open but it would be nice if it could be toned down just a bit. right now if you npc flats when they reach level 5 or 10 you can expect those same exact npcs to be flats again that same night after maintenance. I really wish you could give some feed back on this issue the few times I asked about it in customer support I get the generic answer which isnt helpful or true at all about how npcs are picked to be turned to flats.

[vivalacondog]

For someone that has worked in a technical support / customer service roll for years I can definitely empathise for the evony staff that have to put up with copious amounts of sh**.

But then again as an incredibly inpatient man all empathy goes out the window when my ticket is not responded to within a time frame of about 1 minute, granted I don't normally create a ticket i'm more the type of guy to do nothing about it then lash out a an evony representative on an online forum.

In relation to this thread I would still not consider Evony's level of customer service good in any way shape and form if anything its bearable maybe Evony needs to look at hiring more customer service representatives.

[davemata]

But then again as an incredibly inpatient man all empathy goes out the window when my ticket is not responded to within a time frame of about 1 minute, granted I don't normally create a ticket i'm more the type of guy to do nothing about it then lash out a an evony representative on an online forum.

Had flash backs to back when I worked tech support at earthlink... lol.

[SquirelPrincess]

The only problem Ive seen with CS is the... generic/automated?... replies you get a lot of times. When you try to put in a ticket about a bug (like the hero bug that has plagued the na/ca servers every so often recently) you get "This is a feature of the game and we encourage players to find them..." something like that (I'd need to look at the ticket I filed long ago) and never a real person replying. Things like this have gone on the entire 4 years I've been playing, and eventually you lose hope that there are real people back there.
On the other hand, eventually bugs like that do get fixed, so someone has to be back there reading, and most problems Ive ever had (beyond one event of hacking without sharing logs about 3 years ago, which I finally nearly completely recovered from a year ago when I got a flag change and it was no longer "LSER".... account is still a Male instead of Female unfortunately) have been fixed eventually when they figure out what the source of the problem is.

[Ailuros]

Evony customer service is hit or miss. On whatever server I'm on, I'm the alliance "go to" person for all things confusing to members, so I've seen a LOT of support responses. The good, the bad, and the downright ugly. Sometimes you get a nice person on the other end who actually wants to provide customer service. Sometimes you get a grade A doosh who wants to belittle you and yell at you despite your actual legitimate problem. I've had an evony support person threaten to ban my entire alliance if I didn't stop replying to support tickets, I'm not even joking. Sometimes the ones that want to be helpful have absolutely no idea what you're talking about, and end up ignoring you after a back and forth conversation spanning several days where you try to explain it and they try to fix the wrong thing. And finally, sometimes your problem is simple enough that someone can understand it and is willing to help you with it. This is like spinning the jackpot prize on the wheel. You might spin 200 times and not get it, you might spin once and get it.

As the previous post says, it's very difficult to submit a ticket about MANY of the common problems people have on evony due to the auto-responder. If it picks up a common word (like you put the word "lag" in a sentence for example) you get a generic automated reply and your ticket gets dumped instantly. Navigating your way around that automated nonsense is tough.

Another issue I have with evony customer service is they never believe you. I'm sure that 99 times out of 100 the customer is lying, because evony players are for the most part manipulative cheaters. Not everyone is a liar trying to get something free or undo their dumb mistakes, unfortunately everyone is assumed to be. Getting past the wall of responses saying "we cannot restore heroes that were captured by other lords" is tough when your hero genuinely up and vanished while marching on a reinforce mission between two of your own cities. I've seen it happen to others, I've had it happen to myself multiple times. Usually it happens in nasty lag. Good luck reporting that. Usually it returns at maintenance, but when it doesn't you're just shyt out of luck because no one at evony support believes you.

[wildpete]

Oh Please Enough.

We don;t get so much as a reply. Stop defending the undefendable.

Sick of people making excuses for what is fact.
All these players complaining cant be making it up ..stop with that.

You ARE totally eating the brownnose stuff. So stop with the propaganda based on no facts.

Bottom line is this. Many..and I mean a crap load of players dont even get a response to their tickets.
Can you explain that??
A hero disappearing overnight after maintenance is a players fault? or coins for that matter?

How about a player not being able to log into his account, the account being banned, with no explanation or word. On that players REAL LIFE Email and account. Not an alt, not someone elses... his. But ya its his fault. Pleae, they didnt even read the ticket. So its not him being polite, or threats or anything..its just LACK OF ANY service.

I know Dave and I aren;t on best of terms, but Im not closed minded or an *******. Im being realistic.

If Dave cares he would look at some of these and call or write the IT department and say hey guys there may be an issue here or there ..whatever, but nope.

What I will get or anyone with any negative comments is sarcasm, crassness and or getting banned.
For what?
Do you not think if issues were resolved that more praise would happen and less negative comments.

Also ..what does it matter if an account is restored, items given back, coins or heroes.. its a damn bunch of onscreen digits.
Like man, calm down, ease up..

And please stop with the bots and multi accounts. Its part of the game now, we need to grow up and face that fact.
You want to stop it, adjust the rules and system
Buy the bot company.. be creative.

Anyways my gripe is about lack of anyone answering at tech support. No one answers issues. At all

So yes I would love to join your band of beautiful violins to sing the merits of evony, but meh, we are far from there.

Word from our sponsor Dave?

[iamme]

Your post was made a year after the original post. The current state of the cs is non existent. It is all focused on the kings return because the game is a cash cow. There used to cs but its long gone from age 1. When you come to grips with that you will be much happier.