Complaint Review: Jagex

A few weeks after signing up as a paying customer on RuneScape online game, I received a threatening, nonspecific and aggressively worded email claiming I had been caught breaking two rules (Rule 11 on advertising and Rule 9 on encouraging others to cheat), which I had not broken as far as the descriptions given were concerned. After several attempts, customer service finally clarified that the alleged breach of Rule 11 was a brief mention of a fansite by name (not address). Rule 11 does not say that mentioning a site by name is against the rules, it says that giving an address or "actively advertising" a site is banned. It still has not been explained how I supposedly broke rule 9, despite repeated complaints to customer service. I was threatened with the banning of my account, into which I had invested both time and money.

Also, customer service was inadequate. I was unable to submit a detailed complaint because the only procedure available was a 400-character-limit online form. Since the messages I was sent by Jagex were longer than this, I could not reply word-for-word, and I was also unable to explain specifics of my position, which include psychological/learning difficulties which are relevant to the issue in question. Some of the customer service emails were phrased in an aggressive and hostile way. Finally, after an exchange of only four messages, I was threatened to stop sending complaints about the issue or else customer service would be cut off from my account. This happened when the complaint was obviously unresolved.

Jagex is therefore guilty of the following:

1) misrepresentation (by enforcing rules in ways which are not contained in their wording, and by promising good customer support which is in fact nonexistent),

2) slander/libel (accusing me of breaking one and maybe two rules I did not break),

3) threatening retaliation against a customer for complaining,

4) victimising a paying customer on petty grounds,

5) causing me considerable trauma and distress. (Makers of online games and the like should realise that users may become extremely attached to their products, and that these products are likely to attract people with obsessive personalities etc., so that shoddy treatment of customers and petty enforcement and/or rule-making cause psychological damage and other knock-on effects as a predictable consequence),

6) repeated failure to resolve complaint or to apologise for false accusation,

7) non-availability of adequate means of complaint (through artificial restriction of the number of characters used and web-based instead of written or email complaint system).

If Jagex routinely treat customers in this way, then no doubt there are also many users who have had accounts suspended and have actually lost money as a result, but who are substantively innocent of whatever accusations are made.

Andy
Nottingham
United Kingdom