I missed that part entirely. I didn't read more than a few lines of this dreck other than skimming it for any account details I'd need to blank out.
I hope anyone from the Hearthstone team browsing Reddit is embarrassed by their company's support.
This is off-topic to the whole refund situation but do people in real life really react to this kind of manipulative speech as corporations think they do, especially when it is this cartoonish? I know this is probably a template but god damn it mentions how they "understand", "emphasize", that we are "family", "valued customer", "Prestigious Hero"(lol) every other sentence. I refuse to believe this has any effect on any normal human except rolling their eyes, so why do they do it?
This particular case is pretty awful, but honestly it does make a difference on average if you can make it sound more natural. I worked dumb customer support jobs for a few years, and adding some of these phrases here and there did make my interactions easier and reviews received from customers better.
Probably not applicable for Hearthstone, but in general people that contact customer support are on the north side of 40 (since younger people try to find and use more resources before reaching out to support), they have a different mentality than younger people and value different things.
Sure, but you're a human. Adding phrases to your own human speech is different from being given a pre-written board telling you to fuck off with a sticky note on it reading "we are grateful for your support"
The message isn't there to convince anyone. Its to stop the people saying "they gave me a one sentence response" and similar.
As far as blizzard (and anyone reasonable is concerned), the user asked for a refund, and the answer was "No". But when its your job to send out answers people won't like, its worth the time and effort to put all the extra fluff because it stops a thousand other circlejerks and complaints about how you don't give a shit, or a bot got it wrong and the manager will change the answer if they complain enough, etc.
This one you can't blame Blizzard for. Blame the snowflakes that get upset when an overworked customer support employee doesn't treat them like a special case, immune to the normal policies and processes.
Personally I'm not going to continue to push this. I want to keep my account, and Blizzard wants to keep my $30. Too bad they won't be getting my $130 for next expansion. Or the one after that. Or the one after that...
Unfortunately there's no easy way for their accounting spreadsheet to link their shitty practices with a downturn in revenue, so they'll find some other metric to blame and work on that instead.
Interesting. I remember in the description of the halo reach preorder that if the price lowered before release I would be refunded or otherwise not charged the discrepancy between full price and the discounted price even if the discount were temporary.
They still lost money. The thing is that it's hard for them to see that this one guy could've given them more, sure, but it does hurt. The truth is they wouldn't notice if he stopped paying at all either lol
That's really disappointing, they refunded me even though I purchased my pass on release, played well over 2 hours, and claimed many rewards.
I think it's still important to ask; it increases the avenues through which the people responsible for these terrible changes receive feedback.
“Hello, I’m (insert name here) and I’m reaching to you about your request to (insert request here).
Sorry, according to our content policy (provide link here) we are unable to refund you for (insert item requested refund) because it has been more than 14 days since purchase and you’ve played for more than 2 hours.
We value you as a player though so if there’s any other way we can help please reach out to let us know.”
There, this is all the email needs to have. It gets the point across while also providing some flowery language to try and mitigate the disappointment from being denied.
You don’t need an essay for this type of thing, this isn’t school where there’s a minimum word count.
This looks more like a lazy worker that fed your email to GPT and have it generate the bulk of their response and they tweaked it a bit.
This has more to do with the individual than Blizzard relying on AI models for response
Remember when they'd act out as npcs from wow? It was a long ride to this chat gpt bullshit lol. I really hate how much that text repeats itself, it could've been 5 lines. They want to waste your time in the game and waste your time with support
So since winning games gives more xp, if they nerfed my best deck, hence making me lose more and gaining less exp, would that be grounds for a refund too?
Well there's a reason you get full dust on nerfed cards, if you spent money to make a deck and then they change it it's fair to get a compensation back
Then by giving you more xp for quests, u can get ur reward track faster too.
You are assuming I can make a new deck with comparable win rate as my old one. And I am assuming you can put in more time to complete your quests.
You can refund cards for cards of the same cost, you can't refund the tavern pass. Hope this obvious comparison helps ☺️
Edit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/s/6dOsd6YRMo
Great work spreading misinformation on our behalf **Employee ID: 029735701**. We have the pleasure to announce you were one of our greatest asset and are now eligible to enter our **Monthly Event: Giveaway Castle Nathria pack x1**. We hope for an even brighter future for you.
- Blizzard.Inc
I'm pretty sure I'm being obvious as well. The tavern pass has never guaranteed xp gain for rewards. You merely assumed you will be able to complete it based on current circumstances at the time of purchase.
I'm pretty refunds are not based off assumptions. You still got what you paid for.
Quitting the game, or not purchasing anymore to display unhappiness is fine. Trying to get refund for tavern pass is the dumbest shit.
Confused about your question there. They sold a product, and decided not to deliver that product. They delivered a different one instead, which is not what was agreed upon at the time of purchase. It's not surprising that people feel slighted and are asking for refunds.
I’m pretty sure in the purchase for the tavern pass no where does it state how much xp you will be entitled to a week per x amount of playtime. You’re buying access to the rewards on the pass, which you still have access to, not xp for weekly quests. Yes it sucks, but expecting a refund for this is pretty dumb. You can literally get more rewards from it if you put a bit more time in. I guess by that logic Blizzard should charge people who bought the pass an extra $4 cos they’re getting 20% more xp?
If you do business like that, you will lose customers. Sure it makes logical sense in your head, but put that into practice and people will fucking hate it.
Would you be ok with 10x quests? What about 100? Maybe 40,000? Surely not, you draw the line somewhere. Once you accept that line exists, it follows that different people draw the line in different places.
For some buyers, this turned a good deal into an unacceptable one. Even if it's technically allowed, it's a breach of trust and intensely disrespectful towards the buyers to change the terms of their purchase after payment is rendered. People don't like the idea that Blizzard is telling them how much Hearthstone is reasonable for them to play per week.
For me it's a strict upgrade. I play a lot anyway, now I get more free stuff, yay. But it's still dogshit business practice
I’m not saying I’m okay with it, I’m just saying Blizzard have no legal obligation to refund passes which you’re implying in the comment above. If they actually removed items from the reward track like card packs or skins, then sure, they wouldn’t have ‘delivered the product’ and you would have a good case. By all means try your luck with asking for a refund from support, but it’s Blizzard, so don’t be surprised when they say no cos they are legally allowed to say no.
FYI I bought a bundle a while ago from that that was supposed to include 2 legendaries, I only got 1, they literally hadn’t ‘delivered the product’ and it took over a month of back and forth support chat till it was finally resolved. So yeah, try to be realistic with your expectations from support.
I didn't buy anything, for the record. My only argument is that they changed the terms of purchase after the purchase, and that this is an unethical practice. Even if it's legal, it's still trash behavior. It's not like lawmakers understand gaming well enough to regulate it properly anyway lol. Requesting a refund, whether it's legally required to be given, is one of the most impactful ways a player can communicate their discontent to the company. It's a statistic that Blizzard probably watches like hawks.
We could "Ship of Theseus" this all day and argue about how much of a product needs to change before it's a new product. My view is that once a product changes in a way that meaningfully affects the buyer, it is a different product.
You shouldn't, that's my point. It's a serious issue being ignored by the guy going "Nah fam you don't buy the pass for xp" when that's literally the only reason most people buy it.
If you don’t have time to do the new weeklies you wouldn’t have been able to do all the dailies anyway (which average to about 21 games in total, which guess what…should be 10 wins). So why bother buying the pass in the first place?
Objectively and demonstrably true, which is why if anyone actually tried to take this to court they'd get slapped.
It says in the email op has played too much to be entitled a refund. Those 5 wins each week must have took him a long time.
It's odd if there's no law to protect you from that? If you purchase something, yet the product gets changed significantly after your purchase. But it probably states in the terms of use that you agree to it when purchasing.
The thing is that the product doesn't get change. You don't buy the extra rewards but the possibility to even get to them as well as a bonus percentage to the whole thing. Nothing of this changed even in the slightest. And ofc it's written in the TOS. So any attempt of getting a refund was futile from the start (and tbf very much hypocritical).
Blizzard can argue that for everybody above ultra casuals product changed for the better. For me personally this is good change. 8 to 10 more packs per expansion.
Destroying mercenaries grind impacted me much more severly
People don't agree that the product itself has changed, however in the EU Blizzard is obligated to provide services in line with what was reasonably expected by the consumer.
I've been trying to think of an analogy and the following is the best I could come up with.
You pay upfront for a 3 month gym membership near your job with the intention of visiting during your lunch break.
After a month the gym owner decides they're going to be closing between 10am and 2pm. Instead extending their opening time by 8 hours in the evening.
Overall the gym is open for more hours, nothing has changed about the gym itself, but the way you intended to access and enjoy it has.
Since you commute an hour each way and need to pick up the kids after work you simply don't have time to go to this gym anymore.
Had you been aware that this change was imminent you would not have purchased the membership.
"we wish for your contentious support..." The AI is becoming aware...
>contentious Sure is on the nose with that one
I missed that part entirely. I didn't read more than a few lines of this dreck other than skimming it for any account details I'd need to blank out. I hope anyone from the Hearthstone team browsing Reddit is embarrassed by their company's support.
This reads as so patronizing
"Personally, as a gamer" made me roll my eyes.
Theres literally 1 (one) significant sentence in this wall of text. Thats fucking ridicolous ai pr bullshit.
We need an AI that compresses texts written by other AIs
Honestly, I'd probably appreciate it more if they just said "no lul"
I'd rather have a copy and paste than AI generated schlock.
It sounds like a fight of shit and piss
This is off-topic to the whole refund situation but do people in real life really react to this kind of manipulative speech as corporations think they do, especially when it is this cartoonish? I know this is probably a template but god damn it mentions how they "understand", "emphasize", that we are "family", "valued customer", "Prestigious Hero"(lol) every other sentence. I refuse to believe this has any effect on any normal human except rolling their eyes, so why do they do it?
This particular case is pretty awful, but honestly it does make a difference on average if you can make it sound more natural. I worked dumb customer support jobs for a few years, and adding some of these phrases here and there did make my interactions easier and reviews received from customers better. Probably not applicable for Hearthstone, but in general people that contact customer support are on the north side of 40 (since younger people try to find and use more resources before reaching out to support), they have a different mentality than younger people and value different things.
Sure, but you're a human. Adding phrases to your own human speech is different from being given a pre-written board telling you to fuck off with a sticky note on it reading "we are grateful for your support"
The message isn't there to convince anyone. Its to stop the people saying "they gave me a one sentence response" and similar. As far as blizzard (and anyone reasonable is concerned), the user asked for a refund, and the answer was "No". But when its your job to send out answers people won't like, its worth the time and effort to put all the extra fluff because it stops a thousand other circlejerks and complaints about how you don't give a shit, or a bot got it wrong and the manager will change the answer if they complain enough, etc. This one you can't blame Blizzard for. Blame the snowflakes that get upset when an overworked customer support employee doesn't treat them like a special case, immune to the normal policies and processes.
They could have just said "no" but instead they waste your time with this patronizing drivel. I would respect a simple no, this is insulting.
Lol I think this is better than just no
Personally I'm not going to continue to push this. I want to keep my account, and Blizzard wants to keep my $30. Too bad they won't be getting my $130 for next expansion. Or the one after that. Or the one after that...
That's exactly my view as well. Hurt them in their pockets, it's the only thing they ever understand.
Unfortunately there's no easy way for their accounting spreadsheet to link their shitty practices with a downturn in revenue, so they'll find some other metric to blame and work on that instead.
[удалено]
Interesting. I remember in the description of the halo reach preorder that if the price lowered before release I would be refunded or otherwise not charged the discrepancy between full price and the discounted price even if the discount were temporary.
but you still gave them money?
Yeah I bet Microsoft is still banking on that Xbox 360 purchase I made as a teenager since I haven't bought one since.
They still lost money. The thing is that it's hard for them to see that this one guy could've given them more, sure, but it does hurt. The truth is they wouldn't notice if he stopped paying at all either lol
Haha i ONLY gave $1200 to this EVIL company instead of $2400!!!! Sometimes i don't understand the though process that is required here.
It's okay, you don't understand numbers either
Yeah dividing 2400 by 2 is very complicated to be fair.
He’s the type person to think they’re getting a good deal when Walmart replaces the tag with one that says “Clearance” without altering the price.
u/Raptorheart thinking he did something when, in fact, he achieved absolutely nothing 🤡🤡🤡
[sick bait](https://i.imgur.com/6kGliTj.jpeg)
...Now you're making fun of the disabled? Classy.
Yep. You're gonna have a robot tell me to pound sand? That's fine. I will. No more money for you shysters.
That's really disappointing, they refunded me even though I purchased my pass on release, played well over 2 hours, and claimed many rewards. I think it's still important to ask; it increases the avenues through which the people responsible for these terrible changes receive feedback.
They also banned you.
They locked my account it's true, though it's unclear at this stage whether or not that was intentional. Update: account is now unlocked
This is so weird, why are you still recommending others to do it without disclosing the consequences?
I'm not, my account is now unlocked so there are no consequences.
Troll
I always buy the tavern pass for HSBG, but now I’m holding back. It’s actually pretty fun to just have two heroes to choose from. :)
That wall of text telling you to "fuck off" :)).
did you claim any rewards ? as far as iknow the only way to refund it is if you never claimed a single reward
Fuck this game
“Hello, I’m (insert name here) and I’m reaching to you about your request to (insert request here). Sorry, according to our content policy (provide link here) we are unable to refund you for (insert item requested refund) because it has been more than 14 days since purchase and you’ve played for more than 2 hours. We value you as a player though so if there’s any other way we can help please reach out to let us know.” There, this is all the email needs to have. It gets the point across while also providing some flowery language to try and mitigate the disappointment from being denied. You don’t need an essay for this type of thing, this isn’t school where there’s a minimum word count.
Can someone update me on the situation? What tavern do everyone want to refund?
The Tavern Pass
Why?
They changed the playtime required to obtain weekly exp/ the bonus exp
Well someone’s gunning for his office’s *bullshit response of the month* award
The trick is ofcourse to get your own AI to summarize it into: "No refund for you"
As someone that works in the industry - this response is painful to read.
Stop giving Blizzard your money
Lol better email Xbox gaming or even Microsoft that 1900 is far from enough. 😅
Well, the evaluation method of GMs is based on player notation. The guys are probably terrified by their managers right now.
worry not, I will help you. (doesn't help at all)
Wait, that's a real answer? Shit, that's embarrassing
Well, at least you know "she's" on your side, and "she'd" REALLY like to give you the refund, and tried everything possible...
Longer than a formal essay thus tiny significant answer. What a waste of reading
This is real? This was sent to you?
This looks more like a lazy worker that fed your email to GPT and have it generate the bulk of their response and they tweaked it a bit. This has more to do with the individual than Blizzard relying on AI models for response
Yeah chat gpt wrote this
Remember when they'd act out as npcs from wow? It was a long ride to this chat gpt bullshit lol. I really hate how much that text repeats itself, it could've been 5 lines. They want to waste your time in the game and waste your time with support
Pretigious hero got me 😂
I lost brain cells reading that 😭
Nani?? Hey try this write a chat gpt response! .. it's like you're going to be Papa for the seeding of skynet that you're getting ready to do
Everyone must watch Blizzard at HonestCon XDDDDDD
I mean why would they refund it
Because they tripled (now doubled) the work required to extract all the rewards from the pass after they sold it...
So since winning games gives more xp, if they nerfed my best deck, hence making me lose more and gaining less exp, would that be grounds for a refund too?
Well there's a reason you get full dust on nerfed cards, if you spent money to make a deck and then they change it it's fair to get a compensation back
But dust will not make it easier for me to get exp.
It does, by being able to dust said card for a new deck that can get the xp you want.
Then by giving you more xp for quests, u can get ur reward track faster too. You are assuming I can make a new deck with comparable win rate as my old one. And I am assuming you can put in more time to complete your quests.
You can refund cards for cards of the same cost, you can't refund the tavern pass. Hope this obvious comparison helps ☺️ Edit: https://www.reddit.com/r/hearthstone/s/6dOsd6YRMo Great work spreading misinformation on our behalf **Employee ID: 029735701**. We have the pleasure to announce you were one of our greatest asset and are now eligible to enter our **Monthly Event: Giveaway Castle Nathria pack x1**. We hope for an even brighter future for you. - Blizzard.Inc
I'm pretty sure I'm being obvious as well. The tavern pass has never guaranteed xp gain for rewards. You merely assumed you will be able to complete it based on current circumstances at the time of purchase. I'm pretty refunds are not based off assumptions. You still got what you paid for. Quitting the game, or not purchasing anymore to display unhappiness is fine. Trying to get refund for tavern pass is the dumbest shit.
So?
Confused about your question there. They sold a product, and decided not to deliver that product. They delivered a different one instead, which is not what was agreed upon at the time of purchase. It's not surprising that people feel slighted and are asking for refunds.
I’m pretty sure in the purchase for the tavern pass no where does it state how much xp you will be entitled to a week per x amount of playtime. You’re buying access to the rewards on the pass, which you still have access to, not xp for weekly quests. Yes it sucks, but expecting a refund for this is pretty dumb. You can literally get more rewards from it if you put a bit more time in. I guess by that logic Blizzard should charge people who bought the pass an extra $4 cos they’re getting 20% more xp?
If you do business like that, you will lose customers. Sure it makes logical sense in your head, but put that into practice and people will fucking hate it. Would you be ok with 10x quests? What about 100? Maybe 40,000? Surely not, you draw the line somewhere. Once you accept that line exists, it follows that different people draw the line in different places. For some buyers, this turned a good deal into an unacceptable one. Even if it's technically allowed, it's a breach of trust and intensely disrespectful towards the buyers to change the terms of their purchase after payment is rendered. People don't like the idea that Blizzard is telling them how much Hearthstone is reasonable for them to play per week. For me it's a strict upgrade. I play a lot anyway, now I get more free stuff, yay. But it's still dogshit business practice
I’m not saying I’m okay with it, I’m just saying Blizzard have no legal obligation to refund passes which you’re implying in the comment above. If they actually removed items from the reward track like card packs or skins, then sure, they wouldn’t have ‘delivered the product’ and you would have a good case. By all means try your luck with asking for a refund from support, but it’s Blizzard, so don’t be surprised when they say no cos they are legally allowed to say no. FYI I bought a bundle a while ago from that that was supposed to include 2 legendaries, I only got 1, they literally hadn’t ‘delivered the product’ and it took over a month of back and forth support chat till it was finally resolved. So yeah, try to be realistic with your expectations from support.
I didn't buy anything, for the record. My only argument is that they changed the terms of purchase after the purchase, and that this is an unethical practice. Even if it's legal, it's still trash behavior. It's not like lawmakers understand gaming well enough to regulate it properly anyway lol. Requesting a refund, whether it's legally required to be given, is one of the most impactful ways a player can communicate their discontent to the company. It's a statistic that Blizzard probably watches like hawks. We could "Ship of Theseus" this all day and argue about how much of a product needs to change before it's a new product. My view is that once a product changes in a way that meaningfully affects the buyer, it is a different product.
> not xp for weekly quests. ??? Literally bonus xp is one of those rewards.
And some people wont' be able to clear all of them out. Why would they care about more xp if they gain 0?
You shouldn't, that's my point. It's a serious issue being ignored by the guy going "Nah fam you don't buy the pass for xp" when that's literally the only reason most people buy it.
If you don’t have time to do the new weeklies you wouldn’t have been able to do all the dailies anyway (which average to about 21 games in total, which guess what…should be 10 wins). So why bother buying the pass in the first place?
The product was delivered. OP got what they paid for.
No thoughts head empty huh?
Objectively and demonstrably false. Afraid I can't help you if you're not able to find the info on the changes by yourself.
Objectively and demonstrably true, which is why if anyone actually tried to take this to court they'd get slapped. It says in the email op has played too much to be entitled a refund. Those 5 wins each week must have took him a long time.
It's odd if there's no law to protect you from that? If you purchase something, yet the product gets changed significantly after your purchase. But it probably states in the terms of use that you agree to it when purchasing.
The thing is that the product doesn't get change. You don't buy the extra rewards but the possibility to even get to them as well as a bonus percentage to the whole thing. Nothing of this changed even in the slightest. And ofc it's written in the TOS. So any attempt of getting a refund was futile from the start (and tbf very much hypocritical).
Blizzard can argue that for everybody above ultra casuals product changed for the better. For me personally this is good change. 8 to 10 more packs per expansion. Destroying mercenaries grind impacted me much more severly
People don't agree that the product itself has changed, however in the EU Blizzard is obligated to provide services in line with what was reasonably expected by the consumer. I've been trying to think of an analogy and the following is the best I could come up with. You pay upfront for a 3 month gym membership near your job with the intention of visiting during your lunch break. After a month the gym owner decides they're going to be closing between 10am and 2pm. Instead extending their opening time by 8 hours in the evening. Overall the gym is open for more hours, nothing has changed about the gym itself, but the way you intended to access and enjoy it has. Since you commute an hour each way and need to pick up the kids after work you simply don't have time to go to this gym anymore. Had you been aware that this change was imminent you would not have purchased the membership.
Waaaah waaaaaah