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Steam Support: slow, or they just didn't get my ticket?

C

Commanche Raisin Toast

Member
Guys/Gals, I need your help here as I'm not familiar with how Steam Support works at all.

So I just moved into my new house with my wife a few weekends ago, and decided to log into Steam on my laptop and see what games in my library can actually run on it. I got a wrong password screen and just figured I forgot what I had reset it to last. (comes with years of autologon)

I went through the recover password prompts and when it came time to put in my verification code and secret answer, it ended up telling me that either the code was wrong or my new password isn't valid. I tried several more times, being careful to follow the password rules, and also manually type in the code. No dice.

20 retries later I put in a ticket on Steam Support to get my issue addressed. I immediately received an auto-response pointing me to the typical methods to recover a password. I have received no response from Steam Support since then. I added a few more messages a few days after that asking for status and if anyone was looking into it. Nothing. The ticket is still labeled open.

It's now been 8 days and I haven't been able to log into my account or recover my password. What do I do? I don't see any other means of contacting support other than hitting F5 on my ticket page all day. I already tried getting in touch with them on Twitter but didn't get a response.

tl;dr: i put in a ticket 8 days ago to get my password reset and haven't so much as gotten any reply from Steam Support.
 
Welcome to Steam support. Longest I've ever had is 6 days before a reply, but make sure if you do bump your ticket that it does not replace your position in any make shift queue.

They're probably being bogged down via Dota 2, plus it's a weekend currently.
 
Steam support is notoriously terrible for response times. They'll most likely get back to you with some boilerplate response at first, you may eventually see your account again in the next lifetime.
 
Steam Support is that slow, yes. Maybe they'll respond your ticket next week.

As for the Twitter account, I'm surprised that Valve even remembered they had an account set up for it just a few days ago.
 
Meanwhile I get instant live chat on Origin.

What a joke Steam support is. Sorry man.
 
To be honest with you? This is normal, unfortunately.

For your case though, it will be a priority for them to sort you out at ASAP, but from my experience, and from hearing many tales of Steam Support's response time, you'd be pretty lucky to get a response on the weekend.

My money would be on Monday, specially for what you've asked for assistance in. If it were something else less important like a question about a feature that wasn't crucial, be prepared to wait a week, depending on the time of year.

EDIT: Also I wouldn't keep replying constantly, as that'll bump it down, rather than raise its priority level to be responded.
 
K.Jack said:
Meanwhile I get instant live chat on Origin.

What a joke Steam support is. Sorry man.
Click to expand...

Steam support times are indeed a joke, but EA are pretty terrible themselves.

Origin+support_687e75_4584897.jpg
 
Extremely slow, to the point where developers were answering questions on good 'ol SPUF.

At this point in time, I guess you'll have to deal with , what was for me, a three week waiting period.
 
it's hit and miss.

For instance, last time i needed to contact them, i had redeemed my Dark Souls II key to my brother's shared account instead of mine. I opened a ticket asking if they could reverse the activation so i could tie it to my account instead.

They got back to me in about 8 hours and unlinked the game so i could redeem it on my own account.
 
I can't believe there isn't a big backlash over this.

enough is enough with Steam not being held accountable for this mess.
 
Agent AA1 said:
Man, I have had to contact EA a few times last year and their support was actually much better than Steam's. Steam's support seriously is archaic.
Click to expand...

I've never used Steam or Origin support, and I've over 700 games on Steam and 50 on Origin. I really don't know why people have to contact them so much, but that's no excuse for Valve's absolutely pathetic approach to customer support.
 
well i feel a little better at least knowing it's somewhat normal, but it definitely sucks hard and i can't believe they don't have any 24-hour response policy with their reps. (or rather the number of employees to handle the load properly)

btw, how many amazing sales have i missed? :\
 
When I got Portal 2 for PS3 last year, the online co-op was broken. It took them three weeks to get back to me, but when they did, they had finally solved the problem, at least.
 
I have used Steam support 4 times. It took two weeks to get a response for three of the questions and three days for fourth question.
 
Valve is the video game corporation form of a ponzi scheme. They have to continue selling games to be able to financially support the ongoing service they provide for free. This model doesn't let them afford to hire a proper customer service department, as they clearly don't have the cash flow to spare, or else this issue would have been addressed years ago. Something has to give eventually.

Edit: If any other corporation had the user base that Valve has on Steam, with the customer support they offer relative to the size of their user base, they would be routinely be voted worst company in America. Despite the shit Comcast receives, at least they have people to pick up the phone, whether competent or not.
 
I always thought that Microsoft was the king of bad customer service during the RROD days, but then I had to deal with Steam. They are on another level of awful.
 
HBroward said:
Valve is the video game corporation form of a ponzi scheme. They have to continue selling games to be able to financially support the ongoing service they provide for free. This model doesn't let them afford to hire a proper customer service department, as they clearly don't have the cash flow to spare, or else this issue would have been addressed years ago. Something has to give eventually.
Click to expand...

Uh, what?

They're making hundreds of millions in pure profit.
 
Tenebrous said:
I've never used Steam or Origin support, and I've over 700 games on Steam and 50 on Origin. I really don't know why people have to contact them so much, but that's no excuse for Valve's absolutely pathetic approach to customer support.
Click to expand...

This is an exact reason it should be much faster than it is. It's a low volume support area, which shouldn't suffer from being saturated with issues and questions all the time.
 
HBroward said:
Valve is the video game corporation form of a ponzi scheme. They have to continue selling games to be able to financially support the ongoing service they provide for free. This model doesn't let them afford to hire a proper customer service department, as they clearly don't have the cash flow to spare, or else this issue would have been addressed years ago. Something has to give eventually.

Edit: If any other corporation had the user base that Valve has on Steam, with the customer support they offer relative to the size of their user base, they would be routinely be voted worst company in America. Despite the shit Comcast receives, at least they have people to pick up the phone, whether competent or not.
Click to expand...

I think it's the opposite. They are so big, dominating PC game sales, that they realize they don't have to care/try - what are people going to do, buy from...Gamestop online? (Does that still exist? I know they bought Impulse a few years ago). So they get away with the minimum possible
 
samn said:
Uh, what?

They're making hundreds of millions in pure profit.
Click to expand...

Show me the proof. They are a private corporation. Everyone always assumes they print loads of money, but the evidence would suggest otherwise. Obviously they make a profit of some form, I'm just saying it clearly isn't enough to support proper customer service. If they can't afford to run a proper company, then clearly something is wrong with their financial model somewhere. Right now they are being sustained by exponential growth, but when that fails, what next?

Edit:
DiscoJer said:
I think it's the opposite. They are so big, dominating PC game sales, that they realize they don't have to care/try - what are people going to do, buy from...Gamestop online? (Does that still exist? I know they bought Impulse a few years ago). So they get away with the minimum possible
Click to expand...

This is what people like to assume, and may be valid to a certain degree. But at some point they will have to change, I feel this has been an attempt to save as much money as possible, but one day they will have to accept lower margins.
 
HBroward said:
Valve is the video game corporation form of a ponzi scheme. They have to continue selling games to be able to financially support the ongoing service they provide for free. This model doesn't let them afford to hire a proper customer service department, as they clearly don't have the cash flow to spare, or else this issue would have been addressed years ago. Something has to give eventually.

Edit: If any other corporation had the user base that Valve has on Steam, with the customer support they offer relative to the size of their user base, they would be routinely be voted worst company in America. Despite the shit Comcast receives, at least they have people to pick up the phone, whether competent or not.
Click to expand...

Lol wut

I'm almost certain they've talked about not wanting to hire people that would be solely focused on customer service/help. Doesn't fit their company makeup.
 
HBroward said:
Show me the proof. They are a private corporation. Everyone always assumes they print loads of money, but the evidence would suggest otherwise. Obviously they make a profit of some form, I'm just saying it clearly isn't enough to support proper customer service. If they can't afford to run a proper company, then clearly something is wrong with their financial model somewhere. Right now they are being sustained by exponential growth, but when that fails, what next?

Edit:

This is what people like to assume, and may be valid to a certain degree. But at some point they will have to change, I feel this has been an attempt to save as much money as possible, but one day they will have to accept lower margins.
Click to expand...

They don't have customer service because they don't need it. For all the complaining, barely anyone wouldn't buy on Steam just because they're worried they may have problems down the road. It's an expense that wouldn't bring in enough income, and that isn't accepted by any company of any profitability.

Valve only want to hire the most talented bunch of people they can get. They don't want anyone else under their roof. Any 'labouring' they want done as efficiently as possible, they want all that busywork automated. Which is why they came out with Greenlight, so that they wouldn't need to employ as many bodies to pick new games.
 
There was a thread about someone emailing Gabe Newell directly the other day because CS was so useless and he took care of the problem right away.

So email Gabe Newell.
HBroward said:
Show me the proof. They are a private corporation. Everyone always assumes they print loads of money, but the evidence would suggest otherwise. Obviously they make a profit of some form, I'm just saying it clearly isn't enough to support proper customer service. If they can't afford to run a proper company, then clearly something is wrong with their financial model somewhere. Right now they are being sustained by exponential growth, but when that fails, what next?
Click to expand...

Are you joking?
 
Roto13 said:
There was a thread about someone emailing Gabe Newell directly the other day because CS was so useless and he took care of the problem right away.

So email Gabe Newell.
Click to expand...
The especially funny thing is, it was EXACTLY the same situation as far as I remember -- a password reset request ignored for over a week. They finally emailed gaben@valvesoftware.com, and Gabe said that basically everyone there works as tech support, and took care of it after asking for their ticket number.

I guess I thought there was an automated way of resetting a Steam password. With millions of users I would think they would either have a quick way for support to handle it, or an automated system so they don't have to.

Maybe if enough people start emailing Gabe about passwords something will get done (or he'll just stop reading emails :P). There's also this page to pick other people besides Gabe to email: http://www.valvesoftware.com/email.php
 
samn said:
They don't have customer service because they don't need it. For all the complaining, barely anyone wouldn't buy on Steam just because they're worried they may have problems down the road. It's an expense that wouldn't bring in enough income, and that isn't accepted by any company of any profitability.

Valve only want to hire the most talented bunch of people they can get. They don't want anyone else under their roof. Any 'labouring' they want done as efficiently as possible, they want all that busywork automated. Which is why they came out with Greenlight, so that they wouldn't need to employ as many bodies to pick new games.
Click to expand...

This. That is definitely the feeling I get from Valve - they view systems that are not >99% automated as a failure.
 
HBroward said:
Show me the proof. They are a private corporation. Everyone always assumes they print loads of money, but the evidence would suggest otherwise. Obviously they make a profit of some form, I'm just saying it clearly isn't enough to support proper customer service. If they can't afford to run a proper company, then clearly something is wrong with their financial model somewhere. Right now they are being sustained by exponential growth, but when that fails, what next?

Edit:

This is what people like to assume, and may be valid to a certain degree. But at some point they will have to change, I feel this has been an attempt to save as much money as possible, but one day they will have to accept lower margins.
Click to expand...

You realize they are getting a cut of every game sold on Steam, right?

I agree that their CS is a joke but thankfully I've barely had to deal with them. OP maybe you should just try calling them.
 
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