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Why is Steam Support so inept?

F

FlutterPuffs

Member
I recently decided to give away all my Dota 2 items, but somehow, hit a snag where both me and the person I'm trading with had error while trying to enter the /tradeoffers page.

This happened last week, and for the past week I have been in touch with a Steam Support staff who have given me steps to solve it from

i) asking to resubmit the trade offer which is impossible for both of us to do in the first place since we couldn't even enter the page to do so.

ii) running app that is interfering, which I have checked and no, I am not using any apps that could cause any problems (or the other person I'm trading with even)

iii) participate in Steam Client Beta, which obviously doesn't work.

It's frustrating because everything shows it's a problem on their end, but still they refuse to acknowledge it. Makes it EVEN more frustrating that since I'm living in Asia, I have to wait until early in the morning for a reply. Why dont they have support teams in other regions to help facilitate these matters? Why do they still keep persisting with using a messaging system when everyone else has gone for Live Chats, which is undeniably a better and quicker option?

How could they still keep with this even with the amount of money that Valve undoubtedly have that could have paid for a better support system for their users?

giphy.gif
 
This is pure speculation but I get the impression there's little to no staff on support at all. I've worked in corporate environments for IT for 7 years and for the life of me I have no idea how Steam doesn't have call centers and big support teams. The staff that *is* there is probably immensely overworked and not given the resources they need.
 
Levito said:
This is pure speculation but I get the impression there's little to no staff on support at all. I've worked in corporate environments for IT for 7 years and for the life of me I have no idea how Steam doesn't have call centers and big support teams.
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Same here.

Doesnt make sense when they are the biggest digital PC game distributor with millions of users.
 
Didn't steam used to not have any dedicated support people for steam? Just regular employees would do it when they found freetime?

Did that ever change?
 
They'd only increase the quality of their support, if the current quality wasn't enough to retain customers. Gamers aren't known for voting with their wallets :/
 
So I use Steam Guard to log in, but lost my phone number last year and had to get a new one (new SIM card). I can still log in no problem since Steam Guard is working as expected, but I've tried changing my phone number in Steam but it's a no go without having that original phone number, even with Steam Guard on my Steam app and knowing my password.

Steam support has told me there is nothing they can do. If I ever lose my phone's Steam app data for a Steam Guard, I'm pretty sure I'll lose access to my account. I just don't know anymore.
 
SwiftDeath said:
Didn't steam used to not have any dedicated support people for steam? Just regular employees would do it when they found freetime?

Did that ever change?
Click to expand...

Would explain why they gave me a free game all those years ago because they couldn't work out how to give it me at the previous sale price when I originally purchased it with some issues lol.
 
I went back and forth with Steam support late last year when, all of a sudden, my Steam client wouldn't load anything except for my library. We must have traded twenty messages. They were super unhelpful and I still can't use the Steam client.

In my case, they literally stopped trying to help me fix something that encourages me to spend money on their platform.
 
Yeah, steam had some outright horrible policies that were plain wrong.

For example, I bought an Alice: Madness Returns key on ebay and it turns out the keys were purchased with a stolen credit card. That was 100% my mistake. I bought the key from a shady dealer and I deserved to lose my right to play that game.

Steam ended up locking my entire account that had over a 100 legally purchased games. I could not play one single game because of that. After about two weeks of back and forth they finally unlocked my account. I just felt that it was wrong to have that kind of power where they could lock someone's entire account due to one bad game. What they should have done was take away Alice Madness Returns, which is what they did do when all was said and done. I would have been okay and accepting if they had done just that.

My understanding is that their policy has changed in that they no longer will lock the entire account, just the game in question.
 
FlutterPuffs said:
Why dont they have support teams in other regions to help facilitate these matters? Why do they still keep persisting with using a messaging system when everyone else has gone for Live Chats, which is undeniably a better and quicker option?
Click to expand...

Because they don't have a 3rd party support team. They just use their own employees.

Imagine a software engineer with the talent to work at Valve having to do customer service lol. What a waste of time.

Live chats are the best and I'm hoping Gaben talking about making customer service a priority in that last AMA wasn't just bullshit.
 
LumpOfCole said:
So I use Steam Guard to log in, but lost my phone number last year and had to get a new one (new SIM card). I can still log in no problem since Steam Guard is working as expected, but I've tried changing my phone number in Steam but it's a no go without having that original phone number, even with Steam Guard on my Steam app and knowing my password.

Steam support has told me there is nothing they can do. If I ever lose my phone's Steam app data for a Steam Guard, I'm pretty sure I'll lose access to my account. I just don't know anymore.
Click to expand...

It says here you can remove your phone number by entering your current steam auth code

https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=8625-WRAH-9030&l=english#removephone

Seems to work as explained for me.
 
SwiftDeath said:
Didn't steam used to not have any dedicated support people for steam? Just regular employees would do it when they found freetime?

Did that ever change?
Click to expand...

In TotalBiscuits video on meeting with Valve, I'm pretty sure he mentioned they do employ both 3rd party and/or inhouse customer service support.
 
Here's a funny thing, I just googled for 'Steam Support Robert' since he's the guy handling my request at the moment.

Here's a reddit post I found:

T9jj85H.png


I'm never going to get this solved am I :(
 
Ultimately, I think it has to do with the lack of meaningful competition in that space. Valve/Steam don't have to worry about putting resources into their support because there's really no place to do business on PC otherwise. Obviously other platforms like Origin and the Windows 10 store are there too, but I'm not sure they'll ever get to the level that Steam is at. That's why you saw EA/Origin pushing support/refunds when they went live (or soon after they went live, I don't remember).

Competition is always a good thing. Steam doesn't have any, therefore they don't care (my take, anyways).
 
I'll never forgot how I was having an issue accessing my games entirely on steam. No I wasn't banned or anything I just kept getting an odd error message.

I contacted their support staff several times. They responded 3 months later..........to close the ticket. The issue had thankfully resolved itself after a couple updates, but man does steam support suck. And they don't give a shit because they are king of the castle.
 
2 Slice Toaster said:
No incentive for them to improve. They are the big dog.
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Pretty much. They're a functional monopoly when it comes to PC, so there is genuinely no reason for them to improve their service.

The last major improvement they made to user experience was digital refunds, which they only did once it became obvious EU regulations were going to bite them in the ass without it.
 
Far as I can if it doesn't make them money they are not interested in it, I'm sure if they were able to get the steam community to handle it they would.
 
What's also bad is the lack of action they take on profiles and groups. I've seen some truly grim things like groups dedicated to Columbine Shootings with little drawing someone made in Paint depicting the deaths of the innocent people to plain racist names and profile photos that I've reported and still remain open. It's bleak.
 
Tagyhag said:
Because they don't have a 3rd party support team. They just use their own employees.

Imagine a software engineer with the talent to work at Valve having to do customer service lol. What a waste of time.

Live chats are the best and I'm hoping Gaben talking about making customer service a priority in that last AMA wasn't just bullshit.
Click to expand...

This is false, stop spreading misinformation.

Steam Support: Over the past few years, Valve has hired two external companies to provide the majority of "front-line support". There is a division within Valve to deal with cases that the external companies can't deal with. Valve is looking to further improve it, though they are hoping that by making the Steam store a better place support will be less necessary.
Click to expand...

https://www.reddit.com/r/Games/comments/633c0c/i_will_now_talk_about_my_visit_to_valve_and_the/
 
SwiftDeath said:
Ah okay so they do now employ 3rd party or dedicated support staff for the store

That would seem positive although it still seems to be fairly substandard so wonder what they need.
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Yeah there's definitely room for improvement, but they are improving.

Steam has over 125 million active accounts, more support staff is always going to be needed.
 
I had an issue with Steam support a few years ago and it was kind of the last straw for me. They suggested that I check the forums to look for help, that was after it took weeks for them to respond to my support ticket.
 
I remember when I still liked Valve and Steam

Seriously though, when are they going to get their shit together, it just seems like they have too much money to really care these days.
 
Yoda said:
They'd only increase the quality of their support, if the current quality wasn't enough to retain customers. Gamers aren't known for voting with their wallets :/
Click to expand...

I don't think it's about customer retention. I'm sure that Valve is well aware that customers have few other places to go. They don't have to do a stellar job, just the bare minimum.
 
Steam has some of the worst customer support I've ever had to deal with, but it seems more like Valve not staffing the numbers needed rather than the teams being inept. For being the virtual storefront and digital distributor for untold millions of people, they seem to give little to no shits about customer support.
 
like any customer center,it can widely depends on who you get...once i had a problem with a game key,contacted the italian customer center and they told me that they could now solve my problem..like ,nothing they could do...then contacted the english equivalent,don't remember if the UK or USA support..my problem was solved in 2 minutes.
 
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