Mail Mystery

[Rathji]

I logged in tonite, excited to be off shroud timer and craft my para-elemental SS on my rogue. I check my timer, verify it's clean. Then switch to my cleric, who holds all things shroud. I get a guildie to do the transfer for me, send everything over via him, then get a bunch of **** weapons of the AH while I wait for him to meander back to Meridia.
He shows up, gives me my items and I start organizing. But wait. I am missing 5 shrapnel form my list. My word spreadsheet says I have them, but they are not on my rogue. My guildie checks his inventory again, and nope. not there. So I log back to my cleric and hit gather on the ingreds bag. Yup. five lonely shrapnel sitting all by themselves.
So, being as the cleric was in the marketplace and everyone was getting ready to head into the shroud, I decide to use our trusty mail system. There was a bit of a lag issue, as there happened to be multiple instances in the marketplace at the time. I type my rogue's name in, double check and hesitatingly hit send. I close my inventory box and start to walk away, then think I had better check and make sure that went. I open my backpack and lo and behold, there is my stack of large shrapnel.
So I open the mailbox again, and carefully type the name of my rogue. I hit send, keeping my inventory open now. Nothing. I hit send again. Nothing. After a few seconds that seemed like eternity, I see the items disappear from my backpack, and I get a flag saying "unable to attach items" ... something about not being located or something. No worries. I switch back to the rogue and run to the mailbox. No mail. I run around meridia again. no mail. I cry. no mail. I put in a ticket. That's what we're supposed to do right?
They told me to post in the developer forums. The GM claims that there is no record of me mailing anything form my cleric tonite. I say, of course not! if I was successful in mailing something, it would be in my rogue's backpack right now!
Here's my question: There should be a tool enabling troubleshooters to go back and check what was in my bank space. I believe there also should be a log of every time an item transfers from or to a toon. SO. If the log shows no shrapnel being transfered off my cleric, and clearly show that she held the items in her bank only a half an hour earlier, then why can't I get my shrapnel back and not have to run the shroud again fifteen bazillion times for my FIRST T-3 upgrade of four. Is there not a way to verify that I actually AM telling the truth and not trying to scam turbine out of five large shrapnel???

[Falco_Easts]

Maybe a "Sent Items" tab that stores for 5 days the auto deletes could help in these sort of situations.

[Pecky]

Turbine believes their mail system is absolutely fool-proof and doesn't have a single bug in it regarding the ability to lose items. I, too, have lost an item in the mail and basically the response was 'If we can't duplicate this problem. There is no problem.' and the ticket was closed. Infact, they were so RUDE that they didn't even have the respect to send me a tell and let me know that they were looking into the problem. I never even knew it as being addressed until I checked my ticket again to make sure it was still there (several hours later, and yes, I was logged in the entire time waiting for a response).

I think you're pretty much S.O.L. until this happens to one of the developers. Then they'll finally believe theres a problem and perhaps dig around and fix it. I doubt you'll ever see your item but theres always hope. I imagine theres a small, occasional bug between the moment of hitting send and the actual code entry to log the mail sending.

I'm not sure that its lag related. When I lost my item there wasn't any noticeable lag.

I'm sure there are countless others who could share similar experiences if they felt that Turbine would give them the time of day in regards to this issue. I might suggest reposting your problem in either one of the developers posts and maybe you'll garner some sort of response.

Best of luck!

[Vaypor]

I too have lost, probably 2 items in the last year, year and half or so, and they have said the same thing to me. I knew someone who lost one of the first vorpals in the mail system. On a similiar poor customer service note, in GH, Crag the giant is supposed to take your relics to let ya do the reaver. I had 60 relics (20 of each) and no more on my character. Crag refused to talk and/or take my relics til just before Mod6. I had several trouble tickets, and spoke w/ a senior GM at one point. The first ticket they closed w/o ever speaking to me while I was online. I opened the ticket window to write the ticket number down and it said the status was closed because they couldn't get ahold of me. I had been waiting for over 2 hours by that time. The other two times they said, tough luck there's nothing we can do.

So, I firmly believe both points you made:
1) You HAD something and it got lost in the mail.
2)Turbine's customer service, doesn't service it's customers.

I've not done the Shroud yet (it doesn't need relics does it?), but I'm betting real hard your gonna have to re-do them to replace your stuff.

[Mirta]

Sounds like the standard "I lost an item because I'm too impatient to wait for DDO lag to go away" issue. When you send an item or plat you HAVE TO stand within range of the mailbox until said item/plat leaves your inventory. If you don't you will definitely lose it. Good luck getting anything back, because the admins just don't care about your loss, and the devs don't care either as they refuse to fix what seems to be an easily fixable problem. They could simply extend the range at which you can use the mailbox to a larger or even unlimited distance. So who cares if you can open your mailbox from across the marketplace? Is that really an issue? This issue also causes profitable exploits (no detail), so it should definitely be fixed.

[Rathji]

Sounds like the standard "I lost an item because I'm too impatient to wait for DDO lag to go away" issue.

...actually, I believe I said I stayed and watched the item disappear from my inventory.

My point is that the mechanic is most likely there to verify this actually happened. The GM needs to have some ability to use and fix the problem. People who have to contsantly redo something because the game screwed up aren't likely to like the game.

[esoitl]

i've never experienced mail problems before

there are a few simple solutions to the cannt attach though
1) has to be unlocked
2) has to be in inventory, not equipped
3) has to be in inventory, not a bag

i get that message a lot and realize i missed one of these and just have to fix and resend, no worries

[Strakeln]

I logged in tonite, excited to be off shroud timer and craft my para-elemental SS on my rogue. I check my timer, verify it's clean. Then switch to my cleric, who holds all things shroud. I get a guildie to do the transfer for me, send everything over via him, then get a bunch of **** weapons of the AH while I wait for him to meander back to Meridia.
He shows up, gives me my items and I start organizing. But wait. I am missing 5 shrapnel form my list. My word spreadsheet says I have them, but they are not on my rogue. My guildie checks his inventory again, and nope. not there. So I log back to my cleric and hit gather on the ingreds bag. Yup. five lonely shrapnel sitting all by themselves.
So, being as the cleric was in the marketplace and everyone was getting ready to head into the shroud, I decide to use our trusty mail system. There was a bit of a lag issue, as there happened to be multiple instances in the marketplace at the time. I type my rogue's name in, double check and hesitatingly hit send. I close my inventory box and start to walk away, then think I had better check and make sure that went. I open my backpack and lo and behold, there is my stack of large shrapnel.
So I open the mailbox again, and carefully type the name of my rogue. I hit send, keeping my inventory open now. Nothing. I hit send again. Nothing. After a few seconds that seemed like eternity, I see the items disappear from my backpack, and I get a flag saying "unable to attach items" ... something about not being located or something. No worries. I switch back to the rogue and run to the mailbox. No mail. I run around meridia again. no mail. I cry. no mail. I put in a ticket. That's what we're supposed to do right?
They told me to post in the developer forums. The GM claims that there is no record of me mailing anything form my cleric tonite. I say, of course not! if I was successful in mailing something, it would be in my rogue's backpack right now!
Here's my question: There should be a tool enabling troubleshooters to go back and check what was in my bank space. I believe there also should be a log of every time an item transfers from or to a toon. SO. If the log shows no shrapnel being transfered off my cleric, and clearly show that she held the items in her bank only a half an hour earlier, then why can't I get my shrapnel back and not have to run the shroud again fifteen bazillion times for my FIRST T-3 upgrade of four. Is there not a way to verify that I actually AM telling the truth and not trying to scam turbine out of five large shrapnel???

When you attach something, you MUST wait for it to be removed from your inventory before doing anything else, such as logging out, switching zones, or attempting to send the same piece again.

This is how you avoid this mailing bug that "doesn't exist".

[Vaypor]

From my experience, I know I stood next to the box until it said it was sent. I don't click send and run away. The OP has made it clear he didn't move away. Just becuase, I'm going guess, most people haven't experienced this problem doesn't mean it doesn't exist, it means they are fortunate. I have several trouble tickets, over SEVERAL MONTHS because Crag the giant in GH wouldn't talk to or take the relics from my toon so I could do the Reaver. I suppose if this isn't common enough it's not a "bug" either.

Bottom line, ALL software has some bugs. And the people that don't experience a bug should be happy, maybe even offer "work arounds" if they've heard of any and the problem is more prevalent and a work around is known. But don't doubt the existence of a bug just cause it didn't bite ya yet.

[Strakeln]

The OP has made it clear he didn't move away.

No, the OP made it clear that he did move away, then went back to the mailbox and tried to send the same item again.

I close my inventory box and start to walk away, then think I had better check and make sure that went. I open my backpack and lo and behold, there is my stack of large shrapnel. So I open the mailbox again, and carefully type the name of my rogue. I hit send, keeping my inventory open now. Nothing. I hit send again. Nothing. After a few seconds that seemed like eternity, I see the items disappear from my backpack, and I get a flag saying "unable to attach items"

edit: to be clear, my previous post put the words "doesn't exist" in quotation marks (meaning: it does exist but GMs still seem to be in denial)

[Rathji]

Actually, I never "moved away"... I turned around. I don't think it was "clear"... and I don't think this is a "proximity bug"... the point I was trying to make which was so painfully missed was that the game ALREADY has the capacity to deal with this. They just choose not to. There are systems in place to get the information needed to verify this type of problem. But they don't. So as a result, dedicated players get frustrated and leave the game. Honestly, I took a four month break until this mod. My entire guild did the same. Some of us returned. I liked this mod. Until the mail system ate my ingredients. I think I'm ready to make a permanent break. The fact that nobody who has the power to fix it really cares enough, and the only response I get from our "ingame support" is to post on the forums... which OBVIOUSLY doesn't actually result in anything except a place to rant, makes me think why do I pay to maintain two accounts for a game that really doesn't give me what I need ... aka... stress release.

[Burem]

A couple of days ago in an alike lag related incident a buddy of mine lost a vorpal he was trying to give me. We petitioned and he had it back in his mailbox the next morning. Take it as you will, but some of the support staff is at least occasionally useful.

[Strakeln]

Actually, I never "moved away"... I turned around. I don't think it was "clear"... and I don't think this is a "proximity bug"...

Ah, okay, vaypor is correct then. I agree with you, it's not a proximity bug... it hits me when log out before the item has left my inventory, it sounds like you found another way to trip it (attempt to send a sent item that has not left inventory).

I agree it should be fixed. Until it is, what I've been doing is follow two simple rules when mailing something important:

1) Double-check the name
2) Wait for the item to leave my inventory before logging out

I haven't lost any items in about six months by following these rules.

[Rathji]

A couple of days ago in an alike lag related incident a buddy of mine lost a vorpal he was trying to give me. We petitioned and he had it back in his mailbox the next morning. Take it as you will, but some of the support staff is at least occasionally useful.

Support staff was useful. They said they could help if there was a record of me mailing it, then they could remedy the situation. My issue is that the error happened before the record was made,therefore they can not help me. There are alternate ways to ascertain my situation aside from a mail record. I would like some attempt to be made to:

a. recognize there is an issue prior to the system making a record of mail; and
b. have some ability to remedy an issue that occurs prior to the mail record being entered.

I know the game makes back-ups of what you have. The information is there. They told us with the server merge.There also must be existing records of any time an items moves from one player to another, through any means. This only makes sense to me. It would be nice if the support staff -- even if it's only a super-senior one -- had the ability to verify your claim and give you your stuff back while it was being dealt with on a development side.

It is extremely frustrating to have something huge happen, and it my be that I'm an emotional female and gonna go cry in a corner for a week or so, but I seriously am having a hard time giving a rat's patootie about loggin into the game atm.

To think I am set back three weeks of runs because of an "error" on the game's part, really really really makes me feel like the time I spend online is a complete waste.

/crying in corner

[Beherit_Baphomar]

Simple solution to this and sending mail to the wrong person is a sent box....just like regular email.