Customer Service Shouldn’t Feel Like This...
There’s plenty of debate centered around product code AKA “key” re-sellers for the video game industry. Between keys purchased with stolen credit cards, fraudulent charge-backs, fake keys, and international scammers, this is a very scary environment in which to do business.
G2A is probably the largest of these “key re-selling” websites. I’m an avid gamer and was curious after reading an article about sites like these. As an experiment, I decided to try it out and see what all the fuss was about. Putting the debate of, “Do sites like G2A harm video game developers” aside, I’d like to talk about plain old good customer service, which is severely lacking from this particular company.
Roughly 10% of my purchases over the past 30 days have resulted in invalid and duplicate keys. If 10% of your phone charges were fraudulent, or 10% of your shirts were delivered without buttons, that would indicate a very serious problem.
It’s apparent that G2A is aware of the risky nature of these purchases, since anyone can become an anonymous “seller,” and the feedback provided is of about as much use as fraudulent or misleading Google reviews. To combat this, they’ve come up with a G2A Security subscription. For a set fee per month, the buyer is supposed to feel “safe” to purchase from G2A.
The first time I received an invalid product code, the refund process was easy, but it didn’t remain so. Beginning with my second request, the support staff started sending their “canned response,” which serves as a TOS disclaimer as well as a threat meant to deter those attempting to abuse this process. For a truly innocent buyer, though, this threat is detrimental. Not only does it cause anxiety and put the buyer on the offensive, but it creates an environment where the paying customer is under attack, where the burden of proof, even when met, may not be enough.
Today, that process came full circle for me. I received another invalid product code, despite doing my level best to purchase from those with the highest ratings. As a G2A subscriber, I contacted support via live chat, provided my order number, the invalid product code, and the screenshot reflecting all of this. However, I was told that I would not be provided with an “instant” refund option, which actually takes 14 days to complete, but would instead have to go the even longer route which adds up to an additional 3-14 days to the process.
I found myself asking the person on the other end of the live support chat exactly what I was maintaining a G2A security subscription for. The response was that since my purchase was protected by the G2A Security subscription, my claim would receive a “higher priority” and would be resolved “as soon as possible.” That’s about as helpful and useful as those shirts without buttons.
I went on to explain to this person that G2A sellers intending to scam customers feel comfortable doing so, because they know that the customer will have to wait for up to 3 hours on average just to get someone on live chat (my highest wait time was 5 hours, after which I received an apology discount code for 3% that didn’t work) and then we'll get the runaround by the support staff. If anything, that’s a deterrent for victims of these invalid and duplicate product codes to make a claim, deciding instead that the small amount of their purchase isn’t worth the hassle. That’s a very serious problem, because it actually distorts the statistics and indicates that there are most likely thousands of claims never filed with support.
Even paying a subscription for purchase protection isn't enough to warrant good customer service from this company, and that isn't right. I am not aware of any other industry or company where it’s acceptable to penalize paying customers when they're sold a bad product. From my point of view as a service professional, if a customer needs to request a hundred refunds, and has a legitimate reason to do so, the customer should receive them. It should alert the company that change is needed in regard to seller and product verification much sooner rather than later. It should not, however, result in penalty to the buyer.
The support person I spoke with told me that this process is automated, so he couldn’t give me a refund even if he wanted to. I’m very well aware that this company is likely using statistics and algorithms to automate the support process, assuming that a certain percentage of bad product codes will be sold and that anything over and above that makes the buyer suspect, but when the buyer is providing the necessary evidence, and there is reason to believe that those statistics may be inaccurate, it’s time to draw the line. People have to trump technology and statistics at some point.
This experience has been frustrating, challenging, and enlightening. Needless to say, I will not be purchasing from G2A now that my experiment has concluded. It’s certainly the most twisted form of customer service I've ever experienced in my life.