Banned, HmmmmmmmFollow

As one person has said in the Sony forums, this is a ***** up of epic proportions. People are reporting their level 100 chars have been de-leveled to 50. 9th and 10th bag slots gone, expansions listed as 0/19 and on and on. Just when people were drifting back to the game. Sigh.

Wouldn't it be nice if these kind of goofs resulted in a message like:

"Due to your loyalty and dedication 3 months of free time has been added to your subscription. Plus we threw in 100k platinum pieces on your main account. Enjoy your travels in Norrath!"

Even if it turned out later to be a glitch and they took it away, at least the customer didn't go thru that sphincter-clenching experience of seeing "YOUR ACCOUNT HAS BEEN BANNED."

The latter is the approach government tax agencies take in dealing with their "customers." A possible problem with your tax return, you receive a sharply-worded notice that hints about major penalties and possibly even prison time (!!!) if you don't respond within 3 days---and the notice arrived a day after the response deadline! EVEN IF THE ERROR IS THEIRS. This happened to me one time when a tax authority processed a credit card payment I made and missed a decimal point so it looked like I underpaid. (I printed out their online page so I could prove I TOLD them the right amount to charge on my card.) On the other hand, my business has on very rare occasion processed a customer's payment and made the same mistake: we undercharged them. If it's small we just waive the difference and "eat" it. If too big to eat, we contact the customer, very POLITELY explain the mistake and REQUEST that they provide payment of the balance. Never had a customer offended or turn me down.

Using the word "ban" or even "suspension" in a communication with a dues-paying customer is something Sony should only do after extensive error-checking and vetting, preferably involving actual live customer service personnel, as opposed to automated banning programs. These people are CUSTOMERS, after all, the "life blood" of any business. The customer may not "always be right" but he is ALWAYS "king"---unless she's a "queen"! ;)

Evidently they still have not solved this problem. I'm not able to log in on my account which I've played for 10 years. Don't they know better than to leave the summer interns in charge of the servers on the weekends?
Guess I'll watch the ball game for for a while..

Also banned! WTF? Plus they make it so difficult to send a ticket, you have to start another account just so you can complain, because on your "Banned" account you can't do that. Very frystrating SOE. Furthermore, I have not seen an explanation nor apology from SOE (not very good for business-HINT)

Whenever they do maintenance on the account system, odd things like this happen. Basically, the log in server cannot communicate with the account server to verify your account status, and then it gets all discombobulated from there. Just have to wait it out when that happens (maintenance again this morning, 7-9 PDT).