I understand personal life issues. I've had several of them that have taken me away from Subeta in the last year. However, from a customer service standpoint -- of which I have both managed, worked, and trained in -- after something like this happens (i.e. major & substantiated customer dissatisfaction) the obvious way to retain the customer is to remedy the problem as fast as possible.

I am trying to figure out how to word this as respectfully as possible while not being rude. That said, I can't. So please know I mean absolutely nothing personal and that the following is how I would handle the situation if this happened in one of my offices.

First, obviously we wouldn't see, is some sort of reprimand for the UA(s) involved depending on circumstance. Second, an immediate reassignment to an online -- or soon to be online -- UA who, at minimum, would immediately respond when reassigned to alleviate customer concern. Third, in the event this was something that would take longer to remedy (which it isn't, considering my first ticket was smooth), replies every 2-3 days to mention it's being worked on/apologize for the inconvenience to, again, help ease the customer's concerns as a reference to the previous concern.

Customer service isn't hard. It's basically taking care of a bunch of squeaky wheels with pleasant wording and vague transparency. People suck. I get it. I love them, but I hate them. But what you absolutely never do is give a customer hope about a situation and not follow through on it.

You have an entire forum of people -- and who knows how many lurking -- showing concern, disillusion, and contempt for the issue. If you truly appreciate the summons to the court of public opinion then own the mistake, throw some fancy wording on veiled transparencies, fix their issue, and hope it moves on/was satisfactory.

We're not asking for un-retirements, or free shop items, or battle challengers, or a revamp we didn't like to be changed. We're asking for the services we paid for to be rendered. Timely.

[edit]

Because I'm a creeper and comments are public knowledge, a month-long ticket isn't all that uncommon apparently. I've found three others. I don't know the issue(s). But still.

Can we do something about the subscription page in the mean time? If people aren't getting what they're promised, then you need to stop people from trying to purchase from it and creating more tickets that will go unanswered.

My problem is also different, but I can't say why somebody just can't clear my GA to allow my charge to go through. I owe you guys money. My timer probably has to manually fixed anyway, and by the looks of it, I might be the only with the issue.

I also hope that the team will discuss better ways of going about it, like perhaps more training so that tickets don't have to be reassigned to a smaller team that may or may not be online when stuff like this occurs.

My apologies. Your initial response was not to the whole thread, but to specific people. It made it appear as though only those people are a concern since there wasn't anything to the rest of us!

I'm hopeful these more serious issues get resolved, and I'm hopeful that my ticket gets locked soon (it's resolved and shouldn't still be open) because it gives me anxiety seeing it there. I'd lock it myself if I could lmao just to take that off that staff's plate!

99% of the time, the ticket response is amazing. Especially when it's something the normal team can fix. But when it's a specialized problem, users must be prepared to wait for a long time and I think that's the real issue that needs to be brought up behind the scenes (if it hasn't already been! obv I cannot see or read what you guys are discussing!)

Okay, but.

I've been collecting data after Rah mentioning we could take concerns to her or Carol via the ticket center. While there is a UA in common, it wasn't the UA I was originally assigned to. Additionally, while I haven't received responses from everyone, it's the same UA -- so far -- that I was reassigned to. Whom we were told does not work on weekends, but responded to (and resolved within two hours) my first ticket -- on a weekend. So am I to assume this new person -- whom you're saying was the UA who had those tickets -- is no longer on staff? Or was it the first person who doesn't seem to be the common denominator between the tickets with issues? One user hasn't even been assigned yet.

Second, while you are correct that a chargeback freeze is an industry standard, that doesn't explain why the very person on this thread who it happened to wasn't allowed to regain her account.

When I mentioned vague transparencies, I meant logical ones.

I'm having the same issue with the timer. I was not up until the day of my renewal, but now I am.

And I concur, if this is going to be an issue like it appears to be, it would be supremely in their best interest to temporarily suspend subscription renewals or start assigning a staff member to work on crediting customers temporarily and then requesting they file a ticket if/when the site processes their membership to have the excess removed.

My ticket is still assigned to the staff member that I know is not responding to anyone, so if they've been removed, we do need reassignments on our tickets. I've had issues with purchases not being credited before and had a much more timely response. As I mentioned to Avel above, I was credited before and just told to let them know when the credit actually processed so they could remove the excess that I hadn't paid for, at least as a blanket repair for the moment. It's something I'm surprised wasn't even offered to the others at the very least after weeks of 0 response.

I understand people abusing the chargeback system - but it's also generally pretty obvious when someone with a long standing account isn't doing that, especially as our banks literally tell us that we have to do that ASAP or they won't/can't help us. Idk about industry standard but I've never had anyone anywhere freeze me/delete my account/etc for a chargeback on a fraudulent/unfulfilled charge. Also account recovery clearly isn't your standard when someone here has already said that she was frozen after being double charged when she charged back the excess. You allowed her to make a new account, which is not the same as restoring her previous account. That seems like something that shouldn't have had to happen.

We understand she's not working this weekend, based on what you said. But she's also got unresolved tickets from December that she hasn't responded to and her comments are filled with people who have been waiting 1 month++ for replies to their tickets and went outside the system just to try to get acknowledgement.

Again, we all understand that staff has lives outside of the site, but this is still a paid job for them and they should have work hours sometime in the last two months during which they resolve previous tickets one way or another.

In that event, this cycles back around to proper management of customer concerns. Bold portion is my personal addendum.

I realize things like this seem petty. Nitpicking communication seems petty. But the fact of the matter is this site -- for almost the entirety of the twelve years I've been here -- has ouroboros'd like crazy trying to figure out customer retention, proper communication, and transparency. Nitpicking, careful word choice, and explanation of processes are how those things get remedied. Having multiple people reporting the same issue, myself having to point out someone on the same board, with the same issue, and explaining/fronting to the customer base that you're handling an issue that won't see another response for at least 72-96 hours minimum is... part of the problem?

Regardless, thank you for the clarification.

- Yes this happened waaay before the ticket system was available. The hardest part was trying to email someone who could help restore the account. Had to have my sister help me and the only response I got was that my bank had put a full stop on the entire payment and that it signaled fraud of some sort (no one knew the reason behind the stopped payment I was told). But I was free to create a new account which I subsequently did. I was annoyed and did not buy csc until recently because I was afraid of losing this account too. I understand the reasons behind closing accounts with chargebacks but back then, communication really sucked and it was a lot harder to talk to admin without having access to the site :(

I just wanted to throw in my own criticism on the matter of an otherwise usually quick and easy ticket center: whoever is responsible for checking the support email needs to check it daily and respond when we are told to send an email to it. I shouldn't have had to wait over a week on a response when I was having problems last year. That should have been received and dealt with the very same night the UA told me to email the support address. Yeah i'm still bitter about that because the ticket system was the best damn thing that happened on this site.

Other than that, re:those affected have to wait another 72 hours for a response from a UA. They're not working this weekend, k fine, but apparently nobody else is either? Fucking laughable. You run a website, not some barista or restaurant where you might have the ability to close for the weekends or normal steady hours. Even if they can't do anything, a goddamned response is all that is expected I imagine. Customer service often speaks volumes about staff's commitment and care for the site and userbase. And when that goes down the toilet, it merely reflects the true state of this site. Opening the free shop and snowball shop ain't gonna distract or automatically forgive for this problem. No no, this is all kinds of dun goofed, you ain't gettin' off that easy. Our eyes are wide open and we are watching.

Plus i got the popcorn and Charleston Chews.

Can I ask how tickets are assigned? If you knew somebody had some trouble answering tickets in a timely manner sometimes, why were they allowed to get more tickets assigned to them? It's like giving somebody hard to replace shifts when you know they call in or show up late all the time. It just leaves everyone else to scramble to cover for them, and lo behold, that's exactly what happened.

Actually I do wanna chime in on this:

I had an issue in December where something in my custom css conflicted with some site coding overnight. Not sure what caused the issue, but every single page was blank; I could only see the site when there was a news alert, and it took me a day & a half to figure that out.

Seeing as I couldn't make a ticket, I sent an email. It took 6 days to get a response. In December. All I needed was someone to clear my custom CSS for me.

My Mom ended up making a ticket on my behalf (from her account) and a UA was able to clear my coding a day later, but I still missed the first day of Melody since 2011. Also killed my 300+ bathhouse streak. Still a bit miffed about that, but the fact that it took 6 days to get an email response... yikes.

I know December is a wild month for everyone, I don't know if that had anything to do with it... but yeah. Please keep the support email in the loop y'all. Sometimes it's the only lifeline people have to contacting staff.

This thread hurts my eyes n soul reading the posts. Seeing people beg for basic things they should already have is heartbreaking. I’m glad to see explain the situation, but at the same time its hard knowing its going to take a long time to resolve considering this is REAL WORLD MONEY!

Sounds like this may have just been the last nudge needed to make the jump, especially if it'd be better for everyone all around.

I definitely appreciate the changes y'all are working on to make the site better, and I hope we see an overall better subeta in 2020!

edit:

All I can say is I'm cautious. I'm neither optimistic nor pessimistic. Just cautious and keeping expectations low.

No matter what system you use, it can't ultimately fix staff's morale, so if morale is low, then nothing changes. It's easy to point your finger at something else, and true, that might be what's responsible. But some things can only change when you point that finger back at yourself instead.

...and that's even easier said than actually done, in regards to both the userbase and staff. Being human sucks sometimes.

yikes, I'm sorry to hear that happened. But I'm also kinda glad to know that I'm not alone as far as experience goes. To be fair, email has pretty much fallen off due to social media and texting now, depending what field you're in. Or if your email inbox somehow manages to have over 1000 unread messages in it, and you're terrified to go anywhere near it like it has herpes or chicken pox.

. . . does Subeta even have a Customer Service Rep? Or if not a PR person, then anyone with training? If not, I'd suggest that everyone who publicly interacts with the userbase get some. For instance, I hate people and am generally a cranky person, so I have a job that is not in a customer-facing role. If the staff are getting frustrated with interacting with customers, hire someone who isn't.

Just quoting this for the staff in the back. Promising things and then not delivering them in a timely manner is 90% of Subeta's problems. Don't make users create threads like this in order to get their problems fixed/heard.