Why is Daz Tech Support so bad?
MeneerWolfman
Posts: 421
in The Commons
I see hundreds of comments in threads by other users talking about unanswered tickets, tickets that are closed out w/o actually being fixed, etc.
I filed a ticket over two weeks ago and haven't even gotten an acknowledgement of the ticket outside the automated ticket response saying I'll "hear back in 1-2 business days". I'm past "1-2 business weeks" at this point.
This is ludicrous.
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have you checked your ticket for any action on it.? go to the "Submit a ticket" page, click the 'Sign In' button top right and then click "My Activeties"
I just checked.
Absolutely no activity on this ticket besides the two addition e-mails I sent after 1 and then 2 weeks after I opened the ticket asking for an update or at least an acknowledgement by a human being.
Daz customer service has been excellent as far as my tickets. They respond timely and even if the situation can't be solved right away, they always reach out. They have even updated me on a ticket I submitted months ago stating that although not resolved yet, they are working on it.
Well, is a hit and miss. I'm relative new, but all my tickets were responded properly.
My guess (i know this is kind of a bad word here) on why problems like yours happen, is that some tickets are are not properly directed so get kind of "lost". I work in IT and have plenty experience in TT Systems. DAZ one entry point is overly complicated, it shows some disregard for ITIL recomendations so is really easy to "loose" a ticket that went in the worng direction.
As long as it is sales tickets, they are rather well responding. Technical tickets seem to be on the "ignore" list. All of my sales-related tickets have been dealt with in no time, maximun 24hrs, some even over a weekend.
Technical tickets are either not answered at all, fixed only half-way, closed with "fix provided" although nothing was fixed etc. I am currently considering just returning any product that has issues, instead of waiting forever for simple things to get fixed (e.g. a missing displacement map in one product, or reference to a non-existing shader in another, or messed up metadata, etc)
Given some of the errors, DAZ QA never ever has tried to work with some of the products. E.g if a missing shader pops up each and every time when a scene provided as part of the product is opened, it is very unlikely that this error does not get noticed if anyone in QA would have actually loaded such a scene. Same applies to metadata. If a product is installed and the SmartContent entry of that product shows "Lost and Found", QA just did not do its job.
Daz tech support is actually pretty good usually IMO.
1-2 business days is the processing time in normal circumstances. But there was a site upgrade a week and half ago which broke quite a few major things, and before that we had a big sale with lots of problems caused by the old store system. So there's a very good chance Daz support currently has a huge number of tickets to process. So yes, it will take time, especially if it's not a critical issue.
On a more general note, tickets about errors in content often can't be fixed by support directly, especially for PA items. They have to contact the PA so they can fix their products (assuming they can fix it), then it has to pass QA before the fix can be set live. And yes, that can take time.
Some technical tickets also can't be reproduced by support (sometimes because the caller doesn't know how to reproduce it either), and in that case it's pretty difficult to fix.
DAZ customer service has always been quick to reply to my tickets and I've always found them super helpful and friendly. Although, during some of the big sales like the PC Plus sale, things can get a little crazy, but that's understandable. Especially when DAZ3D has been having issues with their system migration. Hence the Were Sorry Sale, during the Weekend. Where they gave away free and near free stuff. I corresponded with someone at the help desk today and they've been having trouble with processing some orders, but said they hope to be up and running soon!
I'm really sorry you can't get thru to them, I just can't think why?
I'd really like to give my biggest heartfelt thanks, to Alex, Amy, Emma and team "Help Desk". It can be a thankless job at times, but thank you all, for just being patient with my dumb questions and requests. I've never had an problem you guys, have not been able to solve, and have always left feeling totally satisfied with your service and the outcome.
I love team "Help Desk" 
Sales support - always wonderful
Tech Support - Hit or miss. I've had tickets returned as "solved" telling me to do something that I'd not only already tried, but told them I'd tried in the initial ticket. I haven't had anything lately, but honestly, that's mostly because I've just found my own work-arounds or went without, rather than pulling my hair out at clearly half-read tickets where they just skimmed for key-words rather than actually reading my issue.
That's not to say I haven't had successful interactions with Tech Support too, but when they fumble, they fumble hard and it's very frustrating trying to get them to see what the actual problem is.
I've had a few tickets with sales support and one I think with tech. They were all dealt with quickly and in a competent and helpful way. While the tech problem couldn't be solved in the end, they sure spent a lot of time and effort trying. So personally, I haven't had any reasons for complaints, I agree with those who wrote that the DAZ customer support is one of the best there is online.
Most of the support folks also have a really sweet and personable way of writing e-mails I think. It's actually nice to be dealing with them although you contact them basically because things are not working the way you want them to.
I've always found Daz support to be very good but right now I expect they have got a lot of tickets to deal with due to problems with the new store software.
As said, sales support is fantastic. And so are the guys at CS. There problem is, that they are the meat in the sandwich.
They have to beleive what the tech guys tell them. About 90% of all the tech issues I have or had, in fact, have been QA issues on products. It would help CS most, if QA would do a better job. If QA would iron out issues before release, no one would have to deal with lots of product issues afterwards.
I'm on day 8 for a sales ticket--they finally responded with their typical canned response yesterday to see their blog post but nothing further. I'm out 70$ while waiting on them to respond. I have the proof that I turned off the Platinum Club renewal, including at Paypal, but something got wrecked during the store transition and I was billed for a renewal anyways (even though my platium club doesn't expire until November 2021). They didn't even add the additional year, just took the money and absolutely no change. I've been patient since I know the new store has probably caused their tickets to explode in number but it is frustrating.
How many tickets? Hundreds? Do we even know the number of suppot staff tech support has?
Personally, I have never had an issue with tech support, sure I have had to wait a bit but having worked support I understand there is a flow to resolution. Tech Support has to do a good bit of knowledge and information gathering. Fixes can be individual, system, product or something else, fixes have to be tested and then verified. There is a lot of stuff we don't have information we don't have information on. Plus, these are strange times.
Just give them time.
Yea, it was super busy, even before the site-relaunch.. throw in that, the DS 4.14 launch.. they are super swamped.
Seeing how bad users are in their posts here about problems...lack of system info, lack of details, etc., I can see where it could take some time to resolve an issue, not to forget user language and intelligence issues. I've never had a problem with customer service and tech support in those rare instances where I had to contact them.
Like the title says, "Tech Support", not "Customer Support".
I'm just saying it's mind boggling that it's over two weeks without even an acknolwedgement of the ticket. I've been patient and waited a week between each e-mail asking for an acknowledgement of the ticket and update, screenshots of the error messages and captures from my log have been included in my replies. It's not that I've received bad support, or they didn't fix the issue and I'm upset about that, I haven't even gotten an e-mail yet from a person.
In my experience, tech support has responded within a reasonable time.
Tech support, like quality control, isn't a profit center, so it may be understaffed and, consequently, overwhelmed by numbers of tickets.
Tech support and DAZ store seems to be caught in customer avoidance behavior. They are either overwhelmed or inexperienced and seems designed to stonewall. It takes months to get items fixed, during which time I may get an email asking if it is still an issue. I find that frustrating since they can easily repeat the issue and see that for themselves.
it isn't my job to beta products that DAZ store does not properly test.
If there are some people getting their customer service issues adequately handled quickly and consistently while others never get theirs handled at all, then that means customer service is only taking care of issues for certain people. That is a whole new issue.
Jack, I fully believe you. In my opinion, some issues never should reach tech support. The have to deal with things that could have been avoided easily by QA before release. It is a case of someone has to work harder, because someone else did not.
Exampes:
In all cases, I have provided all required information in the ticket. I am working in that area myself and know how frustrating it is to have to ask for each and every small bit of information.
Then there is the mystery problem with Install Manager suddenly deciding to stop people logging in, which Tech Support says is a known problem, but they have not been able to fix, despite saying it has been fixed, and closing tickets without consulting with those of us who have the problem. When we re-open the tickets they get ignored.
I have posted about this before and it has been totally ignored by other customers, Mods and Daz people, so there is not even a work around, except for manual installation, which is useless for some DIM only products and Studio Betas.
So how impressed do you think I am with TS, and with the new version of Studio, which will need all the plugins updated?
This I can understand, just someone saying we are aware of issues and working on the problem is a 'good thing'. So, I will say it (even if I am not connected to DAZ) I am petty sure they are aware of the issue and are working on the issue. Hope they resolve all problems as quickly as possible.
I occasionally get a fluury of "is it still an issue". While I understand the frustration, if they are trying to get caught up then checking a bunch of issues - some of which may well have been resolved by updates in the meantime, is going to slow the process down for everyone - and of course some issues may be system-specific in any event, and so need confirmation from the reporter.
Richard it sn't the customers job to inform support of product updates. That's their job. If it has been escalated to bug tracker, and there is no notes, if they want to see if an hdri still loads with an error for an example..-a bug they confirmed- they should be able to check that as well as I can. They are basically wanting me to beta test. The last one I got was a supervisor for a two month old ticket. They said they would close my ticket if they didn't hear back from me. But nothing had changed in two months since I laboriously documented the issue. I then had to test it again.
Pas are paying the store for the support. But if I do the leg work where is my cut?
But if they recheck the issue the queue is going to be even longer, asking users to confirm the issue allows them more chance to get caught up - which benfits everyone with an open ticket.
First, when a lot of people report the same issue, it's a waste of time to reply to the tickets. It's better to use this time to fix issues.
Second, nobody is a magician who makes vanish issues in 1 second. It's a long investigation process to identify the culprit and find a way to fix it without breaking something else.
Not all the issues are high priority.
Lately, we seem to be getting a lot of requests from Daz for "patience" while we keep sending them money. Their interaction with their customers has always been pretty poor (radio silence for the most part), but now I do feel as if the quality of the store items and tech support has cratered.
Correct, if it comes to DAZ. Incorrect, if it is concerning me. DAZ did take my money, so I would like to have a working product. I am willing to help getting a broken product fixed, but at least I would like to have some feedback. For some of my tickets, the silence was deafening.
I feel bad for all the people here and in other threads who are having these terrible issues with DAZ support, maybe most of my problems were rather simple ones and therefore got solved quickly? But then again, my Mac problem was more complicated and not resolved in the end; still, the tech guy really really tried to help me and we exchanged a lot of emails before both of us finally gave in. Maybe it's just sheer luck on who's desk your ticket is gonna fall - some just can't be bothered while others - the majority, I'd say - do their very best to help.
I've also been told some pretty messed up stuff by Tech Support. I once reported a trenchcoat for g3m (https://www.daz3d.com/classic-trenchcoat-for-genesis-3-male-s) because the product listing said "Iray presets". The materials under content had a material setting listed as "Iray", loading that Iray material preset just loaded up the same 3DL settings and not the Iray ones. I figured it was simple mistake by the vendor and it would be fixed quickly. The response I got back from Tech Support was "I did test the Iray material and it does render correctly in Iray. Please note that even though the product does list "DAZ Studio Default" in the Surfaces pane, if the product renders correctly in Iray, we do not require the PA's to create Iray specific materials." and closed the ticket as solved. Then why are there Iray presets still listed on the store, if it only has 3dl surface settings, then just be honest in the product listing.
That was the point where I lost confidence with Daz tech support :P
There's way too many bugs the past year with products and simple things that should have been caught with Q&A that are not. Daz seems to desperately want to be taken serious as a "real game asset" company. No production company is going to rely on a vendor that kicks out broken products that haven't been properly.