I have heard this from several other people I play  other  MMO's with or in chat in other games. I also had one issue, my only interaction with customer serivce.  It seems wizard 101 has a very low customer service rating among people who used them.  My only experience with them was that I was accused of something and my account chat was muted.  I asked them to research.  I heard back 32 days later, I stopped playing by then due to boredom, and they said they could not substantiate my claim.  I asked them, as i did in the previous correspondence, to provide any evidence of the issue.  Get this, they gave me a date and time.  Problem was I was on vacation and not online at all for a three day period during the date they gave me.  When I checked my own account, I was able to confirm I wasnt logged on during those times.  I sent this information to them and heard nothing in response.  I found out on that other people have had the same issue, but you won't hear about it on the forums.  Why?  because they monitor and approve all forum messages.  Sadly these type of stories and issues with  customer service are more the standard and NOT few and far in between.

I agree with you. They completely careless about your situration - they just need to get your money. I will better invest my money in another game.

Greg2005NY

Sorry to hear you did not receive the resolution you were looking for with our Customer Support Department, however it is our policy that we do not offer refunds of real or virtual currency for in-game purchases.

Regarding the issue at hand (the repeated paid loot rolls on Lord NIghtshade's Second Chance Chest), the loot roll chests are an incremental cost, each time the chest is used, it's a higher Crowns fee, the player is shown what they received and given the option to roll again. Prior usage of these chests in other locations indicates that the player was aware of this dynaic and appears to have been attempting to retrieve something specific from Lord NIghtshade's Second Chance Chest through repeated rolls.

In your initial contact on April 20th, you stated "My son inadvertently redeemed all crowns" and we replied on 04/20/2011 stating our refund policy. In your follow-up email on 04/22/2011 you mentioned you did not receive the initial reply. You also said that the "decrease in Crowns was due to either misconduct by your son, or a technical issue". You asked for a refund of Crowns, which is a virtual currency. Since there was no technical issue to cause this we must stand by our policy of not refunding real or virtual currency for in-game purchases.

We invite parents to create a parental control account that can purchase Crowns which can then be transferred to the child account manually - allowing the parent to control the flow of Crowns on the child account and keeping large amounts of Crowns from being available to the child at all times. 

As I said, I’m sorry you did not receive the resolution you had hoped for from our Customer Support Department but we stand by our policy of not refunding real or virtual currency for in-game purchases. 

sumdumguy1 

When you report someone, or you are reported, a message is sent directly to Mr Lincoln that includes the chat logs of everything that was said before and after that report. 

Mr Lincoln then reads the log and assess the situation. He determines how bad the offense was, looks up prior offenses for the reported individual, and based on that assessment he issues sanctions such as muting or banning and sends an email to the offending account explaining the violation and the sanctions. 

If you did not receive this email explaining the violation, you may not have a valid email address registered with Wizard101.

If you did receive this email, feel free to forward it to community@wizard101.com and we will investigate.

How does anything you say in the post above explain why it couldnt have been opened more then twice? It doesnt ofc. "Why would he do that, that doesnt make any sense" Well, thats kids for ya! =))

Er.....guess that's that then. My nephews play Wizard 101 and did the same thing. I was watching them as they tried to get a better reward from the chest ..each time paying more. The parental controlled account sounds like an excellent alternative.

Ye your kid is probably 10-12 judging by your age... I'd take the word of a 12 year old anyday! Kids lie, get over it. You are pretty gullible if you think otherwise. For whatever reason maybe he doesnt want to disappoint you which is probably the most common or he doesnt want to get in trouble etc, no point getting into child psychology here.

I'm pretty sure I'm smarter then a 12yr old, I wont get into that discussion really =)

The more you post the more desperate you sound, and still you fall back on "why would he click the box 40 times?" Yeah I dont know why, but you have to admit that is what most likely happened. Good luck!

Originally posted by Greg2005NY
When i wrote the first time i was not aware about what caused the decrease in crowns. Thetefore, i asumed that my son did something wrong. However, after i finished research i figured out that the same box was opened more than 40 times. Are you reasonable person to assyme that somebody was sitting and openning the box more than 40 times and getting in return the same item. There is no logic behind what you said. But since you are stubborn enough i will resolve it throu gh my bank. If i follow your logic than my son was sitting and clicking more than 40 times and got 2-3 the same item with home of get something soexial. LOL does not it sound fynny? We are way beyond that level and only one reason we could get their because he helped his friends. What's the reason to get items that are worse than what you can get now on a different level. I can assume that he opened it 1-2 times but not 40 and more. Where is your common sense?

Here is a complete list of the items he received during the two separate visits to Lord Nightshade's Chest. One at 9:52am and again at 10:22 am on the same day. 

It only takes less than a second to press the button to roll for the loot, and the item received is displayed after each roll. Lord Nightshade has the chance to drop a rare pet that is very sought after, however it is not a guaranteed drop. It is clear that the player used the Second Chance Chest 20 times on the first visit, then returned and tried another 22 times on the second visit. 

Again, I'm sorry you did not receive the resolution you had hoped for, however we still hold to our policy of not refunding real or virtual currency for in-game purchases.

KingsIsle: After reading this thread, might I suggest you'd change the game system to be more idiot-proof. Creating a parent account and child account is a bit complicated, and it should be common knowledge that parents are idiots who will fail to use the protective measures.

Maybe you could implement a way to limit the speed at which an account is allowed to spend their crowns in-game (e.g. max. 3000 crowns/day or max. 4 purchases/hour), and then set the account management page to automatically ask if you want to use spending speed limit each time you purchase crowns. Not that a smart kid couldn't log into account management and disable the limit, but it would make it a bit harder and might be easier for stupid parents to use.

Originally posted by Greg2005NY
You cannot be smarter than kids. They play because they are young. You play because you does nit have anything to do. Istead of earning money and studying you just sit and repeat the same operation million times. Good luck hardcore ;) player - sit and play. I hope you will play all tour life.

 I play for entertainment =) I'm not hardcore, maybe I was once but that doesnt matter. I have kids of my own, I certainly wouldnt let them play a game where they could spend my money =P But it doesnt really give me any joy that you were idd wrong as we expected. There's no need to lash out m8, you were wrong, simple as.

edit:

@ greg: let it go already, you've been proven wrong and you're only making yourself look silly. Try be an example for your kid =)

@ vrika: its maybe worth looking into, but end of the day parents are responsible for allowing their kids to have credit card access no? I wouldnt dream of it myself.

Greg your spelling is atrocious m8, hard to understand a lot of your posts

Originally posted by Greg2005NY
Why is time 9:52 for 20 redemptios? Shoud it be differet? Enjoy i hope that $60 will get your reacher.

As KingsIsle pointed out in another post, it only takes a second to roll for loot.  20 redemptions = less then a minute.  By the looks I would say your son was wanting something that dropped in that chest and didn't get it, he could've seen someone with that rare pet and was told it dropped in that chest so figured he would use his crowns to try and get it.  

Don't see what you have to complain about really, the onus is on you to prove to Wizard 101 that what you say is the truth, if you can't prove it then tough luck i'm afraid, and from what i've read on your other posts you have no proof at all except for the word of your son who's realised he's made a mistake.  Take it on the chin, move on with your life, Wizard 101 position won't change.

Originally posted by KingsIsle

sumdumguy1 

When you report someone, or you are reported, a message is sent directly to Mr Lincoln that includes the chat logs of everything that was said before and after that report. 

Mr Lincoln then reads the log and assess the situation. He determines how bad the offense was, looks up prior offenses for the reported individual, and based on that assessment he issues sanctions such as muting or banning and sends an email to the offending account explaining the violation and the sanctions. 

If you did not receive this email explaining the violation, you may not have a valid email address registered with Wizard101.

If you did receive this email, feel free to forward it to community@wizard101.com and we will investigate.

 

First of thanks to KingsIsle for taking the time to respond.  In terms of my situation specifically, I don't want to waste your time.  I mean that sincerely and not in a demeaning way.  I no longer play the game and the likely hood of me returning to play the game is very minimal.  It wouldn't make sense for you to waste time on my issues when your time could be spent helping current players. 

In terms of my email address,  it was valid because I did receive an initial response and as I indicated, it was when I asked in a response for specific information regarding the infraction that I never received a response.   I never pushed the issue since I had lost interest in the game. I feel its also important to state my acount never had any issues for reporting prior to this incident.  The only response from customer service was a  consequence without any indication of my specific infraction  beyond a few words or proof, the email I sent in response was never responded too even though I enclosed my own proof to contradict the initial assigned consequence.

My other concern I mentioned was the sheer number of people who express displeasure with customer service on WIzard 101.   In playing other games, I have found a great many people who have tried or played wizard 101.  The conversations I had with people always mentioned customer service and their dissatisfaction with how an issue was handled.  Even on a wizard 101 fansite, wizard 101 central, the sheer number of threads and comments regarding customer service issues was alarming. In my active days of playing, I honestly saw several comments a day regarding some kind of injustice or lack of response to what was a genuine problem.  A  few times, even the moderators of the site posted comments regarding their issues and support of others who had issues.   My understanding  from speaking with others is that wizard 101 central is now censored and comments are now subject to moderator approval.  Due to this, many people have complained they are no longer able to create posts or comment on other past posts regarding cusomter service issues. 

While I certainly understand some people do tend to complain or misrepresent the truth, the sheer number of comments I've read,  discusssions I've had and my own personal experience tells me there are issues that may need to be addressed.  While I no longer play the game, I do hope the issues can be straightened out.

 

 

Originally posted by Greg2005NY
You cannot be smarter than kids. They play because they are young. You play because you does nit have anything to do. Istead of earning money and studying you just sit and repeat the same operation million times. Good luck hardcore ;) player - sit and play. I hope you will play all tour life.

 Instead of letting your child waste time on a game maybe you should make sure he studies. It would seem he has some obstacles to overcome there.

Some of us may not be smarter than kids, others of notice that kids do not run the world. Probably because they are not so smart as kids.