Why is steam support so bad?

[Cowy]

So, long story short, i got hacked, i'm still not sure how (was using steam guard etc. i know this isn't fool proof, but still) and have submitted a ticket to steam support. Never had to do this before so i wasn't too up set, trusted steam to reply within 24 - 36hrs and hopefully return my account and items back to me. It's been five days, still waiting... Why should i have to wait 5 days to get my account back? some of the worst customer support i have ever seen and i don't see why it is so bad? Huge company, has very little staff granted but why is there no live chat, phone number etc? i just don't get it. Companies like EA with there origin service have great customer support, every problem i had has been resolved with a live chat service. 

[StareX]

Steam needs to f******ing listen and give us Live Chat support and/or phone support.

 

My friend and I had to wait a week for our account to be "disabled" due to massive credit card wrong uses which we never did.. but waiting 1 week for our account back from a hacker?? ABSURD!

 

We have to do something about this one. Get our voice heard.

[Elven]

I dunno, but that's really bad! I've never had any dealings with Steam's customer contact. But I totally agree. Something like that should be handled within 24hrs first contact and resolved withing a 2-3 days (if/when genuine and straight forward). I've encountered other companies through MMOs that handle an issue much quicker. 

[GoodBytes]

When you are the best, and you have no real competitors, you can have fun maximizing profits and cutting on things like service.

That is why competition is always good. Right now, people prefer Steam, as you don't have any competitor, and not willing to switch to another service just because it might have a few things not well executed compared to Steam service, or just not willing to change.

Example, while I don't have any actually fact and this is only based on my personal observation on another forum (as this one didn't exists back then).

When The Wicther 2 came out, a lot of people got it on Steam. Even though you could get it from GOG.com which is the sister company of the makers of the game, with all exclusive retailer DLC's and bonuses, DRM free, no restriction what so ever, not even a product key to enter, with also music sound track, and video bonus. and CHEAPER. Nope, people got it from Steam, because that is what they are used to, and not willing to try. Even friends required heavy convincing, and me showing how easy and better it was.

And even THEN, still one of them got it from Steam.

[IdeaStormer]

Welcome to Linux! Yeay! The Linux way is you dig and dig for info on the interwebs or ask on the plethora of Linux forums till you get an answer, you are also expected to read, read, read and of course tinker on your own till it works or you toss it out the window.

 

How you ask questions is as important as who you ask and where. Don't do the typical LTT method of providing no info, list out everything that is pertinent and any corresponding logs that are related to the problem. Yea, you need to scour /var/log for it, but the timestamp should help.

 

Then you can also look at the source code.

 

Help those who want to help, don't hog tie them.

[Cowy]

When you are the best, and you have no real competitors, you can have fun maximizing profits and cutting on things like service.

That is why competition is always good. Right now, people prefer Steam, as you don't have any competitor, and not willing to switch to another service just because it might have a few issues not well executed compared to Steam service.

I suppose that makes alot of sense, but surely they look at their support and think: "Damn, 5 days and no reply is a shit service". Surely they should at least implement more options like live chat or a hotline service. After a quick search it look like people have been complaining for years. But yes, why would they change, there isn't a real competitor at the moment. 

[WiiManic]

That's really weird, I've contacted them twice before, both times about the same issue.

During really heavy load and steam charging my paypal, but not actually giving me the games.

If they got back to me within 2/3 days around summer/winter sale time, its strange they aren't doing anything now when it should be more quiet.

 

One time it sorted itself out about 5 hours later, but support still got back to me within about 2 days.

Other time it required them to add it to the account, required a few messages back and forth but was sorted fairly quickly.

 

It wasn't as quick as something say like Blizzard, who I've only ever had and seen really good live support from, but it was quick enough that I wasn't disappointed with the service.

[Cowy]

That's really weird, I've contacted them twice before, both times about the same issue.

During really heavy load and steam charging my paypal, but not actually giving me the games.

If they got back to me within 2/3 days around summer/winter sale time, its strange they aren't doing anything now when it should be more quiet.

 

One time it sorted itself out about 5 hours later, but support still got back to me within about 2 days.

Other time it required them to add it to the account, required a few messages back and forth but was sorted fairly quickly.

 

It wasn't as quick as something say like Blizzard, who I've only ever had and seen really good live support from, but it was quick enough that I wasn't disappointed with the service.

If only i had such service, i believe an account "hijack" is pretty serious and should be resolved within 24hrs maximum (Depending on the time of year). As you say, why is it taking so long at this time of the year. 

[Victorious Secret]

Hence why I wish Microsoft refined GFWL to the point that it is on the Xbox platforms. 

 

Steam is the worst for customer service. Just pathetic. Any reply that you get might as well come from a automatically generated script. 

 

MS? FFS. Email or calling they are great. It just works. At least they TRY. 

 

Steam is a joke and Valve is just complacent and lazy. Would hiring proper CSR be expensive? Absolutely. But if those clowns are telling me its too costly, well what the hell are they doing with all the money they earn? 

[Snake]

Not sure why people bash EA as origin has amazing customer service. Steam are so bad with there customer service i had to contact them over the whole WarZ thing had to wait a week for a reply from there pretty pathetic email support team...so so bad.

[xamon]

I found out that some issues get resolved a lot faster than others through Steam support. Some of the more technical issues does take longer because of the amount of time it takes them to respond, the type of response they give you the first time (usually a canned answer that shows they haven't even read your question) and then repeat those sequences until you get a real answer. This is something that is well known around Steam and something people have been campaigning for a change for a long time but in true Valve fashion has not been changing at all. This follows a long list of issues Valve has and refuse to either acknowledge them or change them in anyway.

 

This is why competition is key. Fanboyism apart, no one would ever want a company to be as monopolistic as what Valve has become on the PC market. It doesn't matter where you buy your games most of them comes with Steam keys, some people want every game to come to Steam only and according to many Indie devs (those that do not have an advertising budget), being able to have your game on Steam is imperative in the current market. This is so dangerous that a single platform has such a high influence on a whole market and that people are so reticent to see it and even go as far as wishing any competition to disappear for the sake of either convenience or seeing other clients as "adware/bloatware etc".

 

The thing is, Steam has a lot of issues. The client is bloated, the community side of Steam is buggy and has been since it was introduced (the same issues still happen to this day, outages are more and more frequent), the library is not well though out and trying to sort it in any way is a pain (try doing any type of sorting when you have 950+ games), the store features are not complete etc. Some of those issue where by third party software such as EnhancedSteam for the store and Depressurizer for the Steam library (to some extent) which just shows that the issues people have can be fixed and that it is not that hard to fix them (both are 1 man team). 

 

When Origin was introduced, they were the only client that could install games on several drives without the use of 3rd party software. Not long afterward Valve added the feature to Steam something that was asked for so long that someone had to make his own software for it. Origin introduced their new return policies (only for EA games as of now) and now Valve offers refunds on pre order but in Steam wallet (a step in the right direction).  I am not saying other clients do not have issues, just saying that if they become more popular they can bring some change in how things are done.

 

Competition is needed. No matter how much good will a company has accumulated at one point or how much loved they are they need real competition to keep them in check. I still cannot even imagine how people still see no fault with Valve with all the issues they continuously have.

[Snake]

I've had to contact Steam support once in my entire 6 years of owning my account. That one time was to ask for a refund for a game I spent 3€ on.

 

I've had to contact Origin / EA support dozens of times because their shit breaks all the time. Account related lockouts, games not working despite being purchased through the Origin client, etc. No wonder they have to set a massive Indian call central to take care of this, vs Steam's band of 10 people. 

That maybe but still Steam has horrible support and also the whole refunding thing they say they will only refund you once...Good luck with that Steam so far have had 3 refunds and each time they have said its the last time...

[SOLO_AVENGER]

That maybe but still Steam has horrible support and also the whole refunding thing they say they will only refund you once...Good luck with that Steam so far have had 3 refunds and each time they have said its the last time...

Isn't that a good thing?

[Almercenary]

Steam has a lot issues. Customer support being one of them. It's not like they can't afford to hire more people to work and valve. Only about 400 in total work there so there's probs a minuscule amount on customer support and a ton of tickets. It took me 4 days to get a clearly hijacked account back, which meant I couldn't buy stuff on the steam summer sale TBH Origin does a much better job at support...but not much else.

[TheWall]

A company can't be perfect. Valve does everything else amazingly so they have to have this one weak point, it's like a deathstar

[-iSynthesis]

They need to get more staff, like much more.

[Cowy]

Excellent news everyone, i got my steam account back, it's like someone was watching this thread!!!!

[xamon]

Excellent news everyone, i got my steam account back, it's like someone was watching this thread!!!!

Congrats. Now you just need to change every password associated with Steam (email, steam account etc)

[Humbug]

Excellent news everyone, i got my steam account back, it's like someone was watching this thread!!!!

LOL, doubt it.

Glad your problem was sorted. But regardless a lot of what is said in this thread is true. Valve needs to invest in customer support. From what I have heard they do respond but they take their own sweet time about it. That has to change and they need to start responding in a timely manner. If they don't want to manage it they can outsource it.

[LogicalDrm]

Something as easy as password reset can take a week. I think that sums it up how bad their support really is. There isn't any change of getting help during weekends and I'm pretty sure US office hours is only time they may do something fast.

[BrightCandle]

Even if a game is really broken and unplayable they wont refund you, against UK law. If your account gets hacked it can take a long time (months) to get it restored. If Steam decides to ban you for whatever reason then it takes a lot of discussion to get that fixed. I got banned once because I was developing a fraps like tool to record frame time variances (think fraps but much smarter) but because it uses DX hooks Valve thought it might be a cheat tool and I had to hand over all my source code to prove it wasn't, they didn't even ask they just locked my entire account. Funny thing is I wasn't even using it on Steam games.

 

So yeah Steam support = Sucks badly. A mark of a good company is not how often it goes well (although that matters) but what they do when they make a mistake. Steam is pretty reliable normally, but when it goes wrong it takes ages to get it fixed, and the refuse to do things about broken games they sell you which in my country at least is probably illegal under the distance selling legislation.

[Ryoku]

I've had to contact Steam support once in my entire 6 years of owning my account. That one time was to ask for a refund for a game I spent 3€ on.

I've had to contact Origin / EA support dozens of times because their shit breaks all the time. Account related lockouts, games not working despite being purchased through the Origin client, etc. No wonder they have to set a massive Indian call central to take care of this, vs Steam's band of 10 people.

Ea has come a long ways. Recently I accidentally purchased 2 copies of a dlc and I requested a call back and literally 5 seconds after I hit the button on my browser someone from ea had called me back. And they instantly refunded me right back to my credit card no hassle.

[jbr]

Because they can get away with it.

 

EA's support however is #1 when it comes to their Phone support.... Chat not so much.

 

They'll call you back before your finger lifts off the mouse after clicking the call me button

it's freaking creepy how fast they call back... 5 seconds literally

[Aarondkiller]

mine got hijacked 2 days ago and still no reply from customer service.. its killing me to that my account could be gone

[Victorious Secret]

mine got hijacked 2 days ago and still no reply from customer service.. its killing me to that my account could be gone

If it was Origin they'd have called you instantly and gotten to work on fixing it.

Ea might be dodgy but their CSR is the best I've com across in PC land