Customer Service

Well, while I often find things aggravating in Farmville, I certainly cannot fault them for their customer service - especially not when it comes to Live Chat support.

It is not always available - and sometimes it can take many refreshes of the support page before you will see the link - but every time I have used it, they have solved my problem quickly, with a minimum of fuss - and usually thrown in a bonus for my aggravation.

Several times I have had FV$ magically disappear - which worries me somewhat, as I am not confident that I would always notice it. But when I have noticed and contacted them through Live Chat, they replaced it and then some.

Yesterday, I happened to notice that my coin tree had disappeared. Trees do that, occassionally - if I happen to have an error while in the middle of moving a tree - poof! But every other time (that I have noticed; I wouldn't notice unless they are level 1 trees I can't replace) they have turned up... usually in my storage. But this time, it was just gone. And since coin trees were a quest prize and (don't get me started!!!! ) non-reproducable (even though they SAY they are) and non-purchase-able, I was irked.

I spent altogether too much time searching for my poor lost coin tree... went through every single orchard, moved them all around, etc etc. No luck. The next step was to start moving everything around, checking to see if it was hiding behind something or other - still no luck - and using an aborist didn't change the mastery level either... so it seemed it was gone, not just misplaced.

Nothing worked - the silly thing was gone.

So...after another search this morning, I contacted Live Chat support, and was given not only a replacement, but also 4 more (so they could stay together and not get lost).

Excellent customer service.

Zynga's email support tends to be rather more hit & miss - although most of us diehards know that if you don't succeed, you can always reply to the message, get a different rep, and keep at it until you get resolution - and that CS representatives are not always provided with good information (that applies to Live Chat reps as well) - but on the whole, this is something Zynga does do very well.

Suggestion #3

Keep up the good work in the customer service department, Zynga. (But you might want to look at communication between CS & the developers; that could be improved)