Blizzard gets an F at the Better Business Bureau
by Mike Schramm 
Apr 20th 2009 at 3:00PM
Looks like quite a few of those players who threatened to complain about Blizzard ended up doing so: over on the local Better Business Bureau website for Blizzard's region, our favorite game developer has earned an F. The BBB says that they've been given this rating "for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law's licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company's industry is known for its fraudulent business practices." Ouch. We don't really know that any of those things are true about Blizzard's way of doing business, but there are certainly many people on the forums every day who claim that the first two especially are major issues.Personally, I'm as big a critic of Blizzard as anyone when I think that there's something to complain about, but this rating hardly seems justified -- even if the BBB has received tens of thousands of complaints, that's still just a small portion of the playerbase. And despite the occasional downtime and various class nerfs, they hardly deserve an F rating, especially when a company that many people really do have issues with is riding along with an A rating. The BBB page also says that Blizzard's mass bannings have been a factor in many complaints -- there is probably no distinction made (or that can be made) in terms of complaints between people who have broken the ToS and people who have not.
At any rate, even if the F rating is there, it obviously has very little effect on Blizzard's business -- how many of you ran to check the rating before you decided to subscribe to World of Warcraft? It seems like a few customers (who may or may not have broken the rules to begin with) have ruined Blizzard's reputation with the BBB, but it's fairly apparent that the BBB doesn't hold much sway among Blizzard's customers anyway.
[Thanks ThisURLNotFound!]
Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Fan stuff, Virtual selves, Odds and ends, Blizzard
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 9)
T Apr 20th 2009 3:05PM
Comcast has an A rating? That is more shocking than Blizz's F. Blizzard doesn't burn your house down to faulty wiring installs, and their employees don't steal things out of your house. To say nothing of all the other things that make Comcast so special.
I could see Blizzard earning a C or maybe even a D. Maybe. I'm not happy with some of the things they do, and they certainly don't respond to complaints, but an F just sounds like someone got organized and bombed the BBB with complaints.
eric_barbaric Apr 20th 2009 3:12PM
uuuum...I'm no fan of comcast either, (though they are my service provider at my house) but they shouldn't be responsible for burning down anyone's house since their lines don't generate enough current to burn one down. As for employees stealing, well, that's why I always stand right behind the tech. That should just be common sense. If someone you don't know is in your house, don't leave them unattended.
T Apr 20th 2009 3:40PM
The internet. Use it.
A quick Google linked to stories of both a Comcast Cable employee and a Cox Cable employee both starting fires when they installed the cable.
I never said that their lines cause fires. The install process itself. Sigh. Reading comprehension...
Yoseph Apr 20th 2009 3:52PM
QQ Moar.
smiley Apr 20th 2009 3:52PM
@ the comcast thing... always tip the service peopel who come to help you or install stuff and not only will this not happen, but the best techs will always WANT to come to your place the local jimmy john's people have told me the delivery drivers fight over who comes to my house, $10 bucks for the meal, 5 bucks for the drink, and its always at my door in under 5 min. comcast person when he comes for a service call is always the same guy, i offer food, bevrage and usually a $20-$30 tip depending on how involved it was... btw... guess how many channels i get on "basic ;)
@ the blizzard thing. My problem lies in the BBB not knowing anythign baout the industry and therefore not knowing how to properly grade thier performance. I ran a company for years and let me tell you, I and all of my techs would be in anywhere from 6-8 houses a day, with 9 employees plus me the manager and my assisstant manager 11 total. thats alot of houses. now if i got a total of 7 complaints in the 4 1/2 years i was working there and we had an A rating I am willing to be tthe number of satisfied customers to complaints for blizzard is even higher thn ours was ... and ours was ~ 7: 108,108
however factor in nerd rage and the fac tthat as i said the BBB has liekly NO regulation regarding MMOs I'd bet dollars to dimes they simply looked a tthe number of complaints and not the overall customer base to complaint ratio
native Apr 20th 2009 3:54PM
sigh. failing to be clear and concise in your initial post resulting in a misunderstanding.
/sigh.
:P
Kakistocracy Apr 20th 2009 3:55PM
"Blizzard doesn't burn your house down to faulty wiring installs" is, shall we say, unconventional structure. Though the comment's interpretation was clearly inaccurate, criticizing his or her reading comprehension should, perhaps, come after increasing your readability.
eric_barbaric Apr 20th 2009 4:01PM
@ T
You didn't state WHAT caused the fires other than "faulty wiring installs" which is a very generalized term. I assumed you meant the wiring itself caused the fires. How about you state your meaning more clearly before getting all pompous.
Grinn Apr 20th 2009 4:22PM
I am a WoW addict and have played wow more than anything else over the last 1.5 years. Before that I actually had a life lol. All I can say is that in my experince (and I am pushing 40) Blizzard has the worst customer service for a company its size I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. BTW I was a comcast customer for years and 2 even compare the 2 companies is ridiculous. Love them or hate them Comcast is fairly typical or large corporations. Blizz still acts like a petulant teenager working out of the garage.
Aladek Apr 20th 2009 5:54PM
imho this causes me to question BBB more than Bliz. And adding in the positive rating for Comcast? I'm not sure I can actually trust the rating system of the BBB.
Joddie Apr 20th 2009 11:35PM
mmmfff.. I'm agree with this.. have u ever playing their (new) game ? so terrible..
wwww.Gravis-Design.com
Angry Joe Apr 20th 2009 3:06PM
In Before the fanboys.
Plan Apr 20th 2009 5:07PM
Then call me a fanboy.
I've played many EA games (C&C, BFME, BFMEII, etc) and it takes them between six months and a year to issue patches. It is not uncommon for their RTS games to be hacked within a week or two of a patch or release, so it is nearly impossible to play online without running into legions of cheaters. I remember when the xpac for BFMEII came out and THE VERY NEXT DAY people were cheating in multiplayer. EA doesn't care, they just pump out the games, take people's money, and complaints fall on deaf ears. I distinctly remember an EA CM publicly admitting on the company's official boards that he wished he could devote dev resources to patching BFME II, but he could not because the entire team had been shifted to development for the upcoming C&C title. Seriously, WTF?
Ditto for Bethesda. Although not all their games are terrible, I remember buying Star Trek: Legacy and experiencing the buggiest PoS I've ever played out of the box. The chop job was so evident, Bethesda did not even bother to change its user manual's control section from XBOX controls to PC controls. WTF?
Or how about Microsoft? Remember the famed AoK A and B patches? Two patches for a game that had a multiplayer life of about eight years. It got to the point where the player community banded together to issue regular patches. In other words, volunteers with their own day jobs and families, coding anti-cheat patches regularly to keep the game playable.
Anyone remember the PC version of Gears of War? Epic released that PoS knowing that it would crash on the vast majority of systems, then systematically deleted the widespread complaints on its official forums, with the vague promise that a patch would be "forthcoming." It was -- some two or three months later.
With all of these companies, it was nearly impossible to get ahold of customer service people, either online or by the phone. With all of these companies, patches were NOT a priority, and playability or customer experience be damned, the first priority was doing a rush job on the next game they had in the queue.
So complain about Blizzard all you want (and I HATE the class imbalances in PvP, the slowness of tweaks to certain classes, the ridiculousness of the PvP rewards system, etc) but you can ALWAYS speak to a GM, you can always voice your opinion, and if you post on the appropriate forums -- and you aren't a supreme dick about it -- chances are good GC or another dev will not only read your comment, but they might actually respond to it.
So until another game company shows 1/10th the amount of concern for its playerbase that Blizzard does, the BBB rating means nothing. Blizzard has many, many faults, but compared to its peers in the gaming business, it looks downright amazing.
Don't believe me? Go pick up an EA, Epic or Bethesda game, play it online, sacrifice yourself to the legions of hackers and cheaters, and tell me your experience with them was better than your experience with Blizzard.
Alkaios Apr 20th 2009 8:11PM
@ Plan:
I love you
Meg Apr 21st 2009 2:37PM
@ Plan...
You.
Me.
Make Babies.
Now.
Cranke Apr 20th 2009 3:09PM
Its people like that who never grew up, and learned no one cares about their whining(sp?), and their fail to see the larger picture.
Its that, and also most likely they are the same people who spam trade chat for gambling, or if they don't get blizzard to answer their question like how come that guy is doing more dmg etc.... i'm in comp sci class cant think of very good examples.
It's kind of pathetic... that these are adults too.
Cranke Apr 20th 2009 3:11PM
Failure** im so tired, i got 4 hours of sleep after raiding 25 naxx in a pug got my t7.5 chest woot woot.
offday Apr 20th 2009 3:12PM
F is a tad harsh. A? No way. B? No. Maybe C.
famousedsdk Jun 30th 2009 1:46PM
let me tell you something about blizzard.in two words "they suck!"
And as for customer service.when they have problem they make sure you cant even go on the forums and complain.Look at me for instance.i complained about there scheduled maintenance.every Tuesday that's supposed to last 8 hours.at about 7 & 1/2 hours they will give you new notice that it has bee extended 2 more hours. About 2 weeks ago this maintenance lasted almost 21 hours.and blizzard says they will give you credit to your account.YA right.your not gonna see the credit you think you would.for it being down 21 hours my wife got 2 hours credit.i did get no credit.And don't bother complaining on the forums about there services.Cause if you do instead of helping you with you problem the suspend you from the forums with some lame excuse.i asked blizzard to change the Death Knight back to the way he was.and i get banned for spamming.for 72 hours.Reason "Spamming and trolling" Trolling!!! wtf is that.I give them "FFF" all the way.want to play a real game.then your looking for "war hammer"NO lag! never have wait on ques to be logged .yulp you pay for wow.yet they will make you wait to play.witch could be for hours not to mention there rolling restarts that's getting more and more often.and as for there customer service forums.they should just get rid of them cause when wow is having problem they make it so you cant even use the customer service they disable it.ya that's why you don't see much cause when there having problems the make it so you cant even complain.you have to wait till the problem is over then suddenly the customer service is working.Don't bother complaining when it over or you will get banded for 72 hours i guess for making them look bad.But you know what i didn't make them look bad. They did that all on there own.Its the worse monthly paying gaming company out there.Don't even bother with them.it a wait of you time and money.there better game out there you could pay for.And that will actually work the way its suppose to.The BBB need to get on this company there ton of wow users out there just like me. To bad wow Silence them.
A Apr 20th 2009 3:13PM
I dunno, this BBB report is very misleading in itself, it gives generalised statements about why it's received an 'F; but with no back up evidence. Also it's conflicting: Where it says "they are not in compliance with the law's licensing or registration requirements" it also has on the blizzard page "We know of no licensing or registration requirement for companies engaged in this company's stated type of business." If BBB doesn't know of any licensing requirement how can Blizzard comply?. Under Advertising Review BB have said "No questions about the truth of this company's advertising has come to our attention." Either they need to seriously update their page or withdraw the rating.