You've probably noticed that up until today, I was a pretty big supporter of Hellgate: London. In fact, I defended them even under the most blundering decisions. Design, QA, launch procedure, billing woes, etc. It didn't really matter, I simply assumed that due to the experience at Flagship that they would work through all of this. But there was one issue I consistently complained about: The Memory Leak. Normally, with any game – particularly an online one, this is the most important thing to get fixed. See, for people to talk about the game, enjoy the game, and most importantly, recommend the game to others they need to be able to play it. For a little more than a week, I haven't been able to play the game.

And I was OK with that. I figured these people would get their shit together. That I'd see some patch notes that said “fixed memory leak that was causing crash after zoning blah blah blah.” But I didn't see that. I saw some chat window shit that doesn't really fix a damn thing. I saw a bunch of other bugs being fixed (that turned out to create new bugs on the test server...), but nothing about the memory leak. Sure, I know these things are hard to find sometimes. But I'd had it. Ignoring the issue (admittedly, some code jockey did post in the forums – not everyone reads forums though) is a surefire way to get people pissed off. At least say “hey, we haven't tracked down this horrible shit yet, we'll find it I SWEAR!!” But we didn't even get that. They're just choosing to ignore the big pink elephant standing in the room that's playing the trumpet and stomping on bubblewrap.

So, what did I do? I did what any sane person would do, I asked them – pretty politely as far as angry-as-fuck customers go, to cancel my lifetime subscription and refund me minus the cost of the first month. Wait, I just said 'lifetime' – alright, I'll preface that.

I bought a lifetime sub for $150. Ok, my bad. Originally, this was a pretty limited offer, 100k people and only until the end of November or sommat. They extended that date and then today managed to take one of the subscriber features and give it to everyone. Leaving one less reason to subscribe. And anyone who subscribed will probably list this reason as their top reason to subscribe RIGHT NOW YESTERDAY. Anyway, I paid $150 under consideration of a situation that no longer exists. Strike 1.


Well, there aren't any pets. Yet. I'm pretty sure that thing says Right Now.
Alright, so here's the first ticket I submitted. Bolded for seriousness.

How does one cancel a lifetime account and get a refund. In light of the new patch not fixing anything of value in the game - for example, memory leaks, nightmare difficulty curve, and quest bugs (for example, dying after killing Sydonai [from a DOT spell] resulting in not being able to finish the game) - I'm forced to ask how to get my money back. I realize it's still the first month, as such, I'd have no problem eating $10 from the lifetime fee. But I'm pretty disgusted with the direction of development at the moment. Particularly in relation to opening up the 24 character slots for every player. Basically, the game should've been in beta for another 2 months. And I feel robbed paying for either of these first months. The memory leak has kept me from playing for the last 9-10 days anyway.

tl;dr version: How do I cancel my lifetime sub and get $140 ($150 minus the first month) back?

Seems fair. Apologies for the minor spoiler involving the name of the final mob. Oh noes, I spoilt it moar. Ok, so I submitted that ticket thinking it was fairly straightforward. Here's the response:



Strike 2.

He misspelled 'canceled' twice. In official correspondance. Considering the only grades are 'A' and 'Fail Hard,' well, he failed hard. Although the name Jovi is weird, I didn't assume he was a foreigner. I simply thought he was a moron who had a number of responses he had to get through to keep his job. So I gave him the benefit of the doubt and wrote back. Bolded again, for your pleasure:

So, I recently sent in a ticket. Asking how I canceled my lifetime account and got a refund, as most companies are kind enough to offer such a thing in the first month of service if it's not up to part. To my shock, I got a response that answered nothing. The response basically babbled about how I already paid on a one-time payment plan and if I canceled the stuff I paid for wouldn't be accessible.

Well, no kidding.

I was trying to be somewhat kind and ask if you all would cancel the lifetime sub and issue a refund. I know I can't cancel it, I already looked for the button. Yes, I'll probably sub again when you all get your problems worked out, but between the painfully unaware and corporate-grokking rookie CSR folk at Ping-0 and Flagship's inability to fix gameplay-breaking problems, I've been forced into this position. Which is a shame, because I've been one of your biggest supporters.

tl;dr
What do I have to do to get you all to cancel my lifetime sub and refund me my money? As I said in the previous ticket, feel free to subtract $10 from my refund as we're a couple weeks into the first month.

And the response:



Motherfuck! That's the same fucking letter! Also, I'm pretty sure this “Marcus” fucker drew that name out of a hat at the beginning of the month. Marcus, my ass. But to keep from going off on some sort of quasi-racist IT rant, I'll stick to the problems. 'Conatacting,' 'canclled,' 'cancelled,' and 'inconvinience' are not words. I don't even want to talk about the grammatical errors. The worst part is I don't think he understood a goddamn word I said. Actually, I'm not even sure he understood what he said. Obviously they have some sort of program that grabs specific words from a support ticket and tells the CS staff a combination a number and letter so they can look up the response on a grid. Obviously 'cancel' + 'subscription' + 'lifetime' = 2C or something. Obviously. Unfortunately it's just a poster on the wall and the CS member has to use his rudimentary grasp of English to retype the response he's from across the room.

Nonetheless, I thought maybe I wasn't clear enough. My last and final support ticket is as follows. Oh, and I'm aware of the weirdness of this ticket. Yes, this is reprinted exactly as I wrote it to them. In fact, it is copied and pasted from their response back to me. Yes, I can be a dick.

Anyway, strike 3. Gloves are off.

Finally, bolded once more, for the blind this time:

I want you all to cancel my lifetime and issue me a refund minus the first month.

Greetings,

Thank you for conatacting Hellgate London Support. In concern to your query Lifetime Subscription cannot be canclled. This plan requires only one time payment, which you already did and thus canceling it would not have any significance. If there were an option to cancel Lifetime Subscription then it would only keep players from accessing the features for which they have already paid for. I hope this explains why Lifetime Subscription cannot be cancelled.

Thank you for your patience. The inconvinience caused is deeply regretted.

Regards
CSR Marcus
Ping0 Customer Service

PS Fire Marcus, he makes you all look like a bunch of uneducated halfwits. Or stop outsourcing. It's not amateur hour anymore. You all went live already. At the very least, show him how to spellcheck.

PPS I want you to cancel my lifetime sub and issue me a refund. Also, incoming public embarrassment. I'm sorry, but you brought this on yourselves.

Now, as you can see, I copy and pasted the response from the last ticket into this one. Mostly because it's a trainwreck of hilarity. Also, I warned them that this article would be written. I thought it was only fair.



Well, I suppose that's not so bad. It's not the same canned answer and there's no spelling errors, just some grammatical fuckups. It's painfully obvious now that they outsource their CS. Which is interesting, because that means Flagship outsourced to Ping-0 and they in turn outsource to Bratislava.

I guess this explains why the customer service for Hellgate is so goddamn abysmal. Not to mention the fact the Ping-0 seems completely incapable of doing the job they were created to do. Either that or they simply can't afford native speakers. Which is pretty sad. And is exactly why there's no in-game support for Hellgate. They'd have to change their name to Ping-16,000 or something.

What it comes down to is that Flagship and Ping-0 took money, changed the conditions of an agreement with no real contract of any sort and no refund system set up. I'm scared to think what happens if the game absolutely bombs and 100,000 people are out $150 a piece. Or rather, $200 a piece as they paid for the box. It's almost the perfect scam, though I don't honestly think that's where this is going. Mostly, Flagship made a shitload of bad business decisions and now they're getting burnt for it. They fucked up. They need to admit it. Fire the billing company (who already fucked up shit for another company) and divorce themselves from Ping-0. Which is obviously run by retarded apes and staffed by... well, I'm just going to let you be imaginative with this one. I can't even say what I want to say because it would blast the standards of good taste right out the window (where they belong?) and frankly, I don't want to do that. Yet.

It's not even about the money anymore. At first I was like, OK, I should probably be getting $140 back. We're far past that now. I'm more interested in gamers knowing what's going on. Also, I want to make companies aware that Aria Systems (the billing company, www.ariasystems.com) and Ping-0 (the CS company, www.ping-0.com) should never be hired for any game in the future. That is, if you value customer service and would like some sort of system in place to distribute a refund in situations where customer's really get fucked over and deserve a refund due to no fault of their own.

Because you never know who you might piss off.

Corrections: Someone brought this up (from the terms of service, section 7.3):


Which is interesting, as it means that no matter how badly they fuck up, your money is theirs.

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