Let me preface that this post is not about me trying to get unbanned. I am purely discussing my (and other peoples) interactions with Amazon Games’ Customer Support + “Moderation Team”.
I utilize Amazon Games Live Chat functionality to contact live support and find out a status update. The representative created an internal ticket to investigate:
Basically copy-pasted my response asking what Commerce Lock means again since they did not answer my question and provided even more information (bank transactions with steam history purchase screenshots)
Submitted another web ticket appeal since no one is responding to the original appeal anymore.
Received another response from the “Moderation Team” with a completely different reason for my ban. This one talks about behavioral issues.
I respond back asking for support to verify what information he has added to the appeal ticket and ask for clarification on what I have been banned for again.
I get a response from a different support representative saying he is not at liberty to discuss.
I submit another appeal ticket since no one seemed to be responding to this one.
I called the phone number provided in one of the support ticket responses and it connected me to Amazon Digital Services. I ask to be transferred to Amazon Games and after 30mins of trying, the support representative tells me that Amazon Games Department has been closed for > 1 week. There’s no way to contact them. I ask them to create an internal ticket to track this issue and they did. They requested me to send logs to their internal system so they can track it, so I sent them the forwarded correspondences from previous appeal tickets.
03/06/22:
I receive this response for my appeal ticket asking for images since he can’t view external links.
I respond with all the relevant information (steam purchase history, bank transaction history).
I have not heard back for a while so I start up another live chat support. They basically said to wait and there’s nothing I could do.
Later in the night, I open up live chat again to ask for a status update and was told to wait another day since it hasn’t been 72 hrs since an “investigation” was opened. Live support chat recommends that I post this on the forums for help.
03/07/22:
No emails from support yet so I open up live support chat to see if there’s any update. Live support says that they can’t give me an update, however my account is marked to have a scheduled follow up. I ask when this follow up will occur and the representative says that they can’t tell me.
03/08/22:
Woke up to no email, looks like the off shore team did not respond over night. They might have closed my ticket without me knowing so I created another ticket hoping that I’d get a response.
Receive a response about 30minutes later asking for me to contact them through live mediums. This is kind of weird because the only live medium there is is live support chat since they took away the live phone call a few weeks ago.
Receive another response at 2PM telling me that if I want to appeal my ban, I must present my case to prove that I should not be banned. How am I supposed to do this when I don’t know what I am even banned for? It’s also kind of annoying because I already attached information on this appeal that they clearly did not look at. You can see it in the original message portion of the screenshot.
No response for a few hours so I assume the ticket has been closed again and I resubmit another web ticket for my ban appeal.
No response for a few hours so I create a live chat with a representative who says that they have escalated my issue. This is probably the 5th time that someone has escalated my ticket.
No response for another few hours so I decide to call up Amazon Digital for help. Amazon Digital was very nice and provided me with a status update saying that the recently created ticket is in progress and that the customer support representative that created the ticket is following on the issue (good signs). She also provided me with Legal information in case I wanted to pursue a legal route.
03/09/22:
Woke up to an email telling me to contact Amazon.com for support, I’m kind of confused on why they would say this. The email came from AGS as well…
This was a brief summary of what I had to go through and I still haven’t received a clear reasoning for why I was banned.
Again, this post is not about me being banned or me asking to be unbanned. I am trying to highlight how poorly organized the support and “moderation team” has been handling this situation. The CMs have also been locking/deleting all the forum posts that players make regarding this issue, even when live support directs us to use the forums.
Edit: Here’s a nice interaction I had with live support the other day as well. They even know that the responses are copy-paste and we should ignore them.
It looks like that their business structure is terrible, as seen from the many topics that pop up every day.
There seems to be no clear two-way communication in place between AGS and Steam. It only goes one way as in:
A customer buys something off Steam → it pops up on AGS end (in-game) and you claim it.
The problem here is that these founder packs are marked as “DLC content” on which Steam allows refunds but AGS does not, and in turn it creates problems for people who refund (with malicious intent or not). On top of that AGS cannot tell the difference, they treat all refunds as ‘fraud’ and ban accounts as ‘Commerce Lock’.
Secondary: any items included in a founder pack seem to be tied together with the purchased founder pack:
Someone buys a founder pack, opens it, puts the cosmetic stuff in it on the market → you buy said cosmetic stuff, They refund their founder pack and as a result they get banned for refunding and You get banned because you had possession of the items which came from the refunded pack.
Very poorly done from a company which has nearly unlimited resources in today’s world and owns one of the worlds biggest web service providers.
Their customer confidence is going down the drain if they don’t fix this ASAP.
There’s not even two-way communication even inside AGS departments let alone Steam… as it’s obvious the moderation team seems to be in some sort of cabin in the mountains excluded from everyone else.
I logged in to a, banned for code of conduct. Didnt give me a reason. Messaged live chat for help, already dealt with them in new world where i shit you not… I made up a completely bs bug and asked if it was being worked on and was swiftly told the devs knew about it and were working on it. Something like “do the devs know about the tier 12 arcane repository not allowing you to craft the brambit top dog winter lodge gauntlet?” Laughable at best.
They refused to tell me anything about my ban and other than to appeal it. I searched every email i had in junk, inbox, promotions… Nothing. Finally figured out you can monitor your received messages on your actual amazon shopping website. No luck their either.
Finally I just went and appealed my ban… Evidence proving im innocent? I dont even know why im banned wtf do u want me to provide?? Submitted the appeal, immediate denial because of lack of sufficient evidence, something something commerce lock something something refund… Lol what? Cant you like… Look to see if you actually paid the account owner? Im still trying to figure out where all my money got refunded to…
Spent half a day googling and trying to get support to tell me wtf commerce lock was and all i got was we cant talk about it. Like im trying to get into fort knox or something. You banned me for “refunding” and ur treating it like im trying to figure out a way to bypass your anti cheat software when in reality im just trying to get one single explanation to wtf is even going on.
I see other similar posts and submit my denial ticket along with statements to prove i didnt charge back. 24-72 hours im told. Time is long passed and im still being told “be patient, i assure you we are working on it” lol one of the live chat support who told me that actually sent me an email afterwards saying shit about how they will help me out with my problems in new world. Bruh hopefully you copied and pasted the wrong template or something because im beginning to lose hope. Not even the right game… Half the time you have to exit the chat and try to get another person who appears to be able to do anything at all. Id love for screen share to be a thing during live chat so I can see if they like keep all their spades and hearts in the same stacks, spades and diamonds, or if they just randomly stack in solitaire. Last time i was patient and waited for tickets from ags i waited months about in game problems the whole time being told to be patient… Then I was finally told that my tickets didnt even exist… And guess what? Theres zero way for you to track your outgoing tickets and they dont send you a history of the support conversation so theres zero evidence for you to know your ticket even went through. I even messaged Roxx like they were telling people to do and after a day or two asked for a simple yeah i sent it or w.e confirming they even got the message. View count on the conversation went up but any reply? Nope
I have an almost 19 year old steam account with 182 games that now says “1 game ban on history” because of this pathetic excuse for support.
I’m really sorry you (and so many, many other people) are having these problems with support from AGS. It’s pretty sad, but you should be aware the AGS support team for New World is just as bad. I stay out of global chat and have been soloing in Lost Ark so that I do not get banned accidently. I did not buy founders packs and I am not going to buy crystals until a lot of “banning” issues are resolved. I would guess a large swath of the people reporting being banned who did not actually do anything are just going to move to another game, which is sad.
I am really enjoying Lost Ark, and even better, it’s become my primary game. Yes, there are some “asian” aspects I do not like, but gosh darn, it’s a fun, fun game. I just really hope AGS can get their act together in regards to the banning stuff before the developement team (Smilegate) begins re-considering their relationship with AGS. (And no, I have heard nothing about that, just saying, at some point, it will be an issue, I am sure).
Trust me, i played new world from the start, shit show doesnt even begin to explain what that was. The AGS Support needs to preface their live chat with, we can do nothing more than provide moral support because when you read AGS Support its confusing and you think for a moment they might actually be able to do something… anything… literally the tinniest thing… but they cant. Ive even had support tell me they can only see the title of a support ticket and ive literally been in a screen share with a friend watching his support person basically copy and paste the ticket conversation to him. Its a complete and utter joke
There is internal communication surely, We’re just not supposed to know about it.
Nearly all corporate customer service desks have a rule to not allow outside communication to reach some part of their business structure outside of intended channels, in this case the “Appeal-a-ban” page.
They have it in their job description to deter any attempt in doing so.
This is seriously not the level of service and professionalism you’d expect out of such successful game from an extremely well funded company. For crying out loud, it’s Amazon.
I seriously cannot think of any CS experience that was more unprofessional and unorganized than the ongoing experience with AGS CS, and they literally closed down their phone center couple weeks ago according to the livechat rep.
We’re not asking for insta-fix as we see that AGS is making effort to improve the current infestation that is plaguing the game, though many have voiced our concerns PRIOR to launch which AGS simply ignored.
However, we expect to be treated with minimum level of professionalism and respect as your customers, that is getting a REAL HUMAN RESPONSE instead of forcing us to go through endless cycle of appeal ticket and copy paste response, rinse and repeat.
To add icing to the cake, apparently couple people received email in the past couple of days, where their perm ban turned into temp ban. No explanation why, what happened, etc. Just received email about when their ban expires. No apologies, nothing, nada, zilch.
Today marks the 8th day of waiting and a multitude of emails pretty much all like yours shown.
Amazon do not have any idea how to run a gaming support system, its atrocious.
Not only “games”… Try to get back password for amazon profile. I forgot what nick(name) i used for registration. And i can get code on my mobile phone but i can’t pass further because i forgot “username/name” and that’s is far more important. And no one can help with that. They told me to make a new account.
It seems that my ticket I’ve been waiting on has finally been updated, with a coded message that not even live support and his supervisor knows what it means.
