Smolderforge Support Community

Hello Smolderforge, I recently bought 2 donorships for me and my friend, we were going to play Warrior Shaman together for some fun, we also recently got back to wow.

Basically, when he was going to make a shaman, he first looked at Orc. He pressed Orc, then Shaman, he then decided to look at Tauren, he chose that race but the problem is that when you press another race; the class automatically switches to warrior.

He didn't notice the fact that he was a warrior until he was literally standing at the vendors in the donor mall looking at the gear available to him.

He IMMIDIATELY made a ticket as he noticed that, he didn't buy a single piece of gear or anything like that. After a while I made a ticket too just to explain that I'm the one who bought the donorships etc and that we were going to play together to add abit more insight to the matter.

He then bought some gear etc so we could atleast play together, I think we played like 3-4 BGs perhaps? He has 5 hours of played time, ~2 of those hours consists of him AFKing waiting for an answer to the ticket. Other than that he's been sitting on an alt mage mainly. Now, after 3 whole days both of us get a mail from customer support saying that they can't refund anything due to the fact that he's played the warrior, if you are to get a refund you need to log out RIGHT AS YOU NOTICE THE PROBLEM otherwise it counts as a donation transfer; thus it cannot be refunded.

5$ isn't much, I know. I should just buy another donorship and everything will be solved, right? Well... no, I would surely buy more donorships for more characters if it wasn't for the fact that I'm pretty damn upset about this bad service, it's just the principle of the whole thing. I find it greedy as hell to not refund this, I know that it's not hard to simply delete the warrior character for him and then give him a new code, yet you decide not to.

Some would say it's because he obviously "got tired of the warrior and wanted a new class"... Well, that could've been the case if it wasn't for the fact that he made the ticket right as he saw what class he was, as I mentioned earlier he didn't even buy a single piece of gear before making the ticket!

The thing is, you just lose money by doing this, if you'd simply solve the problem for us we'd be happy to buy more donorships, I'd love to have a mage, warlock etc with donor gear but I sure as hell wont buy any at this current situation.

Sorry if this suddenly comes out as a blackmail now, it obviously isn't. I'm just saying, this bad service just results in less money for you guys, both of us lose on it...

My friends warrior character is named Garbege btw, I'm Dragesas in-game.

Thanks for your time and thank you in advance!

I don't see what's wrong here. It should be pretty obvious that buying any equipment on your toon pretty much seals the deal, nothing wrong with that policy, that's common sense.
Regardless when its bought, it's just totally reasonable to come up with something like that.

But its quite bold on your behalf to bring greed in... you pay 5$ for hundreds of epics. On other servers you don't even get a single one for that amount, now you ask for more? Are you serious?
If you come up with strategies how Smolderforge can make more money you better try harder, as it's obviously not related to charging 5 bucks for a full PvP set, and most of the engame PvE stuff.

What the hell...

Peekaboo wrote:I don't see what's wrong here. It should be pretty obvious that buying any equipment on your toon pretty much seals the deal, nothing wrong with that policy, that's common sense.
Regardless when its bought, it's just totally reasonable to come up with something like that.

But its quite bold on your behalf to bring greed in... you pay 5$ for hundreds of epics. On other servers you don't even get a single one for that amount, now you ask for more? Are you serious?
If you come up with strategies how Smolderforge can make more money you better try harder, as it's obviously not related to charging 5 bucks for a full PvP set, and most of the engame PvE stuff.

What the hell...

I don't see why buying a piece of gear should seal the deal, his intentions were obvious FROM THE START. He made the wrong character, why should it seal the deal that he tests a few BGs to feel how it is? He made his mind up before buying the gear, thus I find it justified.

Also, my greed statement has nothing to do with them making money in general, they obviously lose money by not solving these easy problems when it's easy to solve. I'd understand if my friend makes a warrior, plays 5 hours and then makes a ticket saying he made the wrong class; this isn't the case now.

By just helping us with this simple thing I could atleast respect the GMs and the server itself thus spend more money on it, atm I feel like I'm talking to Blizzard.

And that's the part which can't be proven, there are many people who would abuse this, that's why it totally makes sense to rely on obvious guidelines.
If he wanted to test, he could have created a new character. The second any gear is found in the log it can be exploited.

I see no reason a GM should give in, just to farm personal reputation with you, that has nothing to do with Blizzard, on top of that you actually never paid for any items, you donated, and got a reward, which your friend apparently played football with, so blame it on him.
But that's just my opinion on that matter anyway.

I see no reason a GM should give in, just to farm personal reputation with you, that has nothing to do with Blizzard, on top of that you actually never paid for any items, you donated, and got a reward, which your friend apparently played football with, so blame it on him.
But that's just my opinion on that matter anyway.

I have to agree with him.

Peekaboo wrote:And that's the part which can't be proven, there are many people who would abuse this, that's why it totally makes sense to rely on obvious guidelines.
If he wanted to test, he could have created a new character. The second any gear is found in the log it can be exploited.

I see no reason a GM should give in, just to farm personal reputation with you, that has nothing to do with Blizzard, on top of that you actually never paid for any items, you donated, and got a reward, which your friend apparently played football with, so blame it on him.
But that's just my opinion on that matter anyway.

I'm pretty sure they can actually see that he submitted the ticket before the gear appears in the log, timestamps?

It's not farming personal reputation with me, it's acting human to a customer rather than acting like a robot following a rule that should obviously be able to get twisted around if the circumstances call for it.

Would be great if people just stopped giving their opinions on their matter in this thread now and let a GM find it to actually judge the situation himself.

Peekaboo wrote:And that's the part which can't be proven, there are many people who would abuse this, that's why it totally makes sense to rely on obvious guidelines.
If he wanted to test, he could have created a new character. The second any gear is found in the log it can be exploited.

This is the biggest reason why we have a strict policy on this matter. Peekaboo is correct in many ways when he told you that using the character at all would be marked as used, plain and simple.

This has always been our policy, it's nothing new. There are other threads on the forums discussing this matter in previous times as well. The fact is, you're asking for me to refund a donation that has been claimed as used and go out of my way to literally perform a "transfer." The exact same steps I would take to do on the paid donorship transfer for $3. Therefore, you're cheating out everyone else who realized they didn't want their characters later on and paid for the transfer. I should not be held accountable for you or your friend's mistakes and impatience. Yes, you had to wait a while for your ticket to be serviced, everyone does. I've made it clear to the community high-level petitions will take a lot longer to receive responses to these days because it's no longer summer. Furthermore, you don't seem to have said you wanted too long after having opened the ticket and playing it, so the wait time here seems irrelevant almost.

I don't see how you can claim us greedy here. With points like Peekaboo said, we are actually quite generous in the donation prices. I think it's a bit greedy and arrogant on your part to think that donating will grant you high-level customer support and refunds like you are paying a monthly subscription to a game like retail WoW, and to expect me to drop what I'm doing to service your ticket immediately and give you what you want. Transfers are manual, and take time, that is why we charge for them. This game is also not 24/7 monitored, it's run by volunteers and people that manage it with their free time.

It's a strict policy on refunding like I said before -- it's just too easily to be abused, regardless of whether you're actually being honest here (which I'm sure you are). It would only cause some controversy between people that paid for the transfer. So like all the others before you, I'm afraid we're going to have to decline you once again. Our answer stays the same. This is the way it has been and will be, simply be more careful in the future.

Maybe I should edit the email text to include a statement regarding this fact? It's not too rare but it does happen from time to time.

Therefore, you're cheating out everyone else who realized they didn't want their characters later on and paid for the transfer. I should not be held accountable for you or your friend's mistakes and impatience. Yes, you had to wait a while for your ticket to be serviced, everyone does.

The bold part; I'm not cheating the people who realized they didn't want heir characters later on and paid for the transfer. The difference is that my friend literally wrote this ticket IMMIDIATELY, he literally did NOTHING before he wrote it. If people goes on a character, buys gear, plays arena, plays BGs and then make a ticket saying "hi guise i made wrong class" then YES I would understand your argument. However I do think it's quite OBVIOUS that this is not the case here, I just have to ask, aren't there TIMESTAMPS for when the ticket was written and when he bought the gear? Should be quite obvious in that case.

I've made it clear to the community high-level petitions will take a lot longer to receive responses to these days because it's no longer summer. Furthermore, you don't seem to have said you wanted too long after having opened the ticket and playing it, so the wait time here seems irrelevant almost.

You're kind of contradicting yourself in this post, as you say you made it clear that it'd take time to get someone to take care of the ticket. I think we stayed online for 10 minutes after we bought the gear since it was quite late for us (we're european) and then we went offline. Would it have made a difference if he bought the gear the day after? Waiting for what feels like an eternity when you want to get competitive in arena with proper high-end gear when you just came back to wow is hard, thus he bought the gear and couldn't wait, yes.

Maybe I should edit the email text to include a statement regarding this fact? It's not too rare but it does happen from time to time.

Yes, yes you should.

Bottom line is, I feel that this is taken care of quite unprofessionally, I've gotten a new race change in retail after picking the wrong race aswell, I made the ticket right as I saw the problem and then ofcourse I PROCEEDED TO PLAY THE CHARACTER until my ticket was handled. The bottom line is, I made the TICKET before USING THE ACTUAL PRODUCT. There's a difference in using the product, then asking for change and asking for change before you even use the product.

Minoema wrote:Bottom line is, I feel that this is taken care of quite unprofessionally,

sorry to say but like henhouse said , Summer is over. they arent doing this for a living.

Minoema wrote:I've gotten a new race change in retail after picking the wrong race aswell, I made the ticket right as I saw the problem and then ofcourse I PROCEEDED TO PLAY THE CHARACTER until my ticket was handled. The bottom line is, I made the TICKET before USING THE ACTUAL PRODUCT. There's a difference in using the product, then asking for change and asking for change before you even use the product.

and maybe it would be nice to read the post properly cuz he also stated :

Henhouse wrote: I think it's a bit greedy and arrogant on your part to think that donating will grant you high-level customer support and refunds like you are paying a monthly subscription to a game like retail WoW, and to expect me to drop what I'm doing to service your ticket immediately and give you what you want. Transfers are manual, and take time,

Mynce wrote:

Minoema wrote:Bottom line is, I feel that this is taken care of quite unprofessionally,

sorry to say but like henhouse said , Summer is over. they arent doing this for a living.

Minoema wrote:I've gotten a new race change in retail after picking the wrong race aswell, I made the ticket right as I saw the problem and then ofcourse I PROCEEDED TO PLAY THE CHARACTER until my ticket was handled. The bottom line is, I made the TICKET before USING THE ACTUAL PRODUCT. There's a difference in using the product, then asking for change and asking for change before you even use the product.

and maybe it would be nice to read the post properly cuz he also stated :

Henhouse wrote: I think it's a bit greedy and arrogant on your part to think that donating will grant you high-level customer support and refunds like you are paying a monthly subscription to a game like retail WoW, and to expect me to drop what I'm doing to service your ticket immediately and give you what you want. Transfers are manual, and take time,

When did I ever state that I thought he should drop what he's doing immediately and service my ticket? Also how is it arrogant that I think he should refund the product that I reported being wrong BEFORE I even used the product? I don't expect high-level customer support, all I expect is human GMs who don't blindly follow their guidelines.

The only excuse I hear is that "you can abuse the system by playing and then asking for a change" when it's freaking OBVIOUS that this is not the case here.

Let's say I have a namechange service and I get a customer. He buys a namechange and proceeds to use it. He enters his desired name (lets say Legolas in this case) but it's already taken, a little box comes up saying "The name Legolas is already taken, Legolasxx is available, would you like that name instead? He mistakes the box for a "Are you sure you want to namechange" and just blindly presses yes, not thinking about it. When he gets in-game he notices what he has done and IMMEDIATELY makes a ticket explaining his problem and asks for a refund. He then proceeds to play his character until he gets an answer. He finally gets an answer from a GM and it says "Sorry but you already used your character with this new name, we can't change it. It is too easy to abuse this by changing your name and then regretting it a day later or so and then asking for a refund, thus we cannot help you!"

In this case, by looking at the timestamps that are in your logs (I am 99% sure of this, correct me if I am wrong) you can CLEARLY see that he made the ticket before he did ANYTHING else with this new product of his, clearly indicating that he did not intend to have this name. Isn't it correct to give him a refund then?

The fact that you don't seem to agree with this makes me come to the "greed" conclusion, sorry if I came off as some prick by saying that but hopefully you see what I'm saying, I guess I worded it poorly.

If you think otherwise I guess we'll agree to disagree.

Just one last thing, please add one of those warning boxes when you enter your donation code saying "Are you sure you want to use this donation code for this character? If you do, there will be no refunds" or something in that style.