The house that Gabe built, as it turns out, is none too pleased with the state of their service support.
Assigned an ‘F’ rating from the Better Business Bureau, an American non-regulatory and non-profit organisation, it’s clear in Valve’s response that the ‘F’ doesn’t stand for ‘Fabulous’.
The summary of complainants that the BBB received about Valve which resulted in the ‘F’ rating, can be glimpsed below:
“On June 25, 2013, BBB recognized a pattern of complaints from consumers regarding product, service and customer service issues. Consumers allege the games they purchase from Valve Corporation or Steam malfunction, do not work or have an invalid CD key. Consumers also claim the company blocks users from accessing their library of games. Consumers further allege they attempt to contact the company for assistance, but Valve Corporation fails to correct the gaming issues, does not correct credit card charges or issue a refund, or does not respond at all.”
”On July 1, 2013, BBB notified the company of the complaint pattern. To date, the company has not responded to BBB’s request to address the pattern.”
Responding to the grading later, Valve’s Erik Johnson had this to say when he spoke to Kotaku.
”The more important thing is that we don’t feel like our customer service support is where it needs to be right now. We think customers are right. When they say our support’s bad, our initial reaction isn’t to say, ‘No, it’s actually good. Look at all of this.’ It’s to say that, no, they’re probably right, because they usually are when it comes to this kind of thing… We have a lot of work to do there. We have to do better.”
Nevertheless, the rating probably carries a little less weight than one might assume as the BBB itself, has, according to an article in TIME, been involved in some rather underhanded stuff involving giving out favourable grades for paid membership.
Regardless of the rating though, Valve at the very least seem keen to improve their customer support if Johnson’s comments are any indication and really, that can only be regarded as a good thing.
