no more help?

almost a week ago i wanted to send a ticket to report someone. it seems the help function at the bottom of the page is now a bot. there is no person receiving/administering any query. i wrote my piece and the bot responded that they would get back to me as soon as they could.

i have heard nothing.

my complaint was a simple case where the recent history of actions by the member could be seen by the site and a conclusion would/should be swift. this did not happen, so...

i thought i would email support@chess.com as i have in the past. doing this used to result in an automated message that they have received the inquiry and they would get back to us *soon*. even if the response was not swift, a staff member would eventually respond.

the email resulted in this response:

"In order to provide better and faster support, our contact method has moved to:
​https://www.chess.com/support
​​You don't need to be logged in to contact us. We'll reply as soon as we can!"

this link goes to the bot!! are there any humans that respond to any tickets? this is really sad. a person can get muted for writing nornally but when there is an actual issue, there is no action.

FAIL

i posted this in help & support because i'd like help with my issue and i think the support is lacking. 

You should be able to still get a ticket to staff. Depending on the questions it should end up offering to connect to an agent.

how?

that did not happen. and, as i wrote, the situation should be quite easy for staff (a person) to make a decision. in other words, there is no gray area regarding my complaint.

I did some testing early on after the new tool started and it looked something like this:

Did you get something similar? If so, it could take 1-3 days for a response. They may have tweaked the way it works since then though.

I'm not sure about the help bot cause I've never used it, but I'm certain that if you mail support@chess.com a human support agent will get back to you, sooner or later. They always respond with an automated message when you first mail them, and then the support staff gets back to you in a week or so.

The email address isn't being used like that anymore and requests using the Help option

i did not. i'll send in another ticket.

it should be pretty basic stuff.

so, martin, i tried the 'help' function again and then tried 'connect to an agent'.

the problem with this is that the bot ended the "conversation" before the issue was even stated.

there has to be an easier way to report a member. if i were to spell out the issue here the topic would probably be locked quickly for so-called naming and shaming.

how's that for irony. i'm trying to report someone for abuse and i can get no answer, but if i mention him/her here, this topic would likely be locked and nothing would be done either way.

Is the report option on the profile not sufficient?

https://support.chess.com/en/articles/8562517-how-do-i-report-someone

a staff member wrote to me today:

"If I had found the game against you still on Vacation and Live games were played, this does count as Vacation Abuse, and our standard protocol is to demand them to make their move in 48 hours.

However, since they have proceeded with the Daily Game, I cannot take an action against them because we do not have a system that records the duration of Vacation Time usage. Therefore, I encourage you to proceed with the game as normal and report back to me if you notice any re-occurence of Vacation Abuse.

I understand the actions taken would have been different if we had responded sooner to your report, and for this, I apologize on behalf of the Support Team and moderators once again."

*the italicised parts were done by me.

the staff member that responded was as nice as can be. BUT, the response shows glaring flaws. it is crazy to me that with all the crap cc has instituted (flair, up/downvote, etc.) another basic function is not addressed-time stamping game moves.

another huge fail is that nothing can be done because it takes so long for a staff member to respond. 

Was there any progress on this topic? I am struggling with the exact same issue...

What exactly is the issue.

vacation abuse.

that there is a bot when reporting players.

the lag time for a response where a staff member will say, "oh, the time has passed-we can't do anything about it now".

The issue is that Every time I cry your name at night...

How many mods does it take?

To keep the community safe?

Are we lost without you?

Or finding our own way?

Do we really need AI to help us?

What happened to direct human interaction?