Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Scam'd Part 2: Proactively Getting Your Problem Solved in Warcraft

So earlier this week I did a post called Scam'd where I talked about a guy who tried to scam me by telling me he'd sell me an epic as part of a package deal for 1,700g and did not go through with it. A lot of people both in blog comments and on reddit were surprised with the response I got from the GM that I dealt with and that the problem was resolved in one message so I figured it'd be useful to share the ticket that I created in the first place and some reasons behind why I think it was successful on the first go.

So the ticket went as follows:
Hi, in whispers I agreed upon exchanging 1700g for a variety of items with [Redacted]. Everything we were to exchange is in chat logs through whispers about ~10 minutes ago. I gave him the 1700g, and he did not furnish all the goods, scamming me out of gold. He was doing this as a scam, including 3 epics in the whispers which he did not furnish at the time of the trade, followed by putting me on ignore, which is why I decided to report this, as I'd hate to see it happen again.
1) Don't be a Dick
I wasn't overall too upset about what happened, but honestly the sheer audacity that he thought he'd get away with it and that he had just ignored me ticked me off. Did I let that show in my ticket? No. Imagine a common ticket that GMs have to deal with every day. It's undoubtedly a thankless job, and I'm sure you can imagine any number of random assortments of LFR companions you've encountered that these GMs have to deal with on a daily basis. Try to remain calm, and convey your message politely.

2) Be as Clear and Concise as Possible
Now this one is really important. Hanging around the TSM IRC ChannelConsortium Forums, and /r/woweconomy you inevitably come across a person looking for help who says something like "Hey I have Jewelcrafting, how do I make gold with that?" or "TSM's not working correctly, how do I fix it?" All completely answerable questions, but jeeze I would need a heck of a lot more info. In my original ticket I made sure to include when it happened, what the questionable exchange was, what my expected outcome was, and what happened. I also made it clear that I thought it was a scam, and why I thought it was a scam, to avoid any confusion. I think specifically noting the problem as you understand it is key.

Hope this helps in the future, if you have any other tips for writing tickets, feel free to leave them in the comments below!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

2 comments:

  1. I've worked in and around complaints teams for a bank and an energy utility over the last 15 years. And everything you say goes a long way in any complaint - even when you are complaining about the business itself. Be polite - state the facts as you saw them and be clear (but not rude) about why you are disappointed and real life (tm) refunds or compensation are very easy to get.

    Make yourself easy to deal with and people will not feel aggrieved when giving you recompense. The last thing you want is the person with the power thinking you're a tosser too.

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  2. As noted in my comment on your prior post discussing this exchange, I think your approach most likely expedited the resolution process and made a favorable outcome far more likely.

    In addition to Bonesai's suggestions for what to include in contacts of this nature, I think it's helpful to articulate what remedy you are seeking. In other words, always tell them what they can do to make you happy again so that you can go back to enjoying your product/service and they can clear your issue from their task list. This might seem pointless since it usually feels like the appropriate remedy is obvious when you're the aggrieved party, but it is not necessarily obvious to the people in a position to help. While there is no guarantee that you will get exactly what you want, it establishes the initial parameters of the interaction on your terms and vastly increases the chances of a satisfactory result.

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