Playerassist was started in 2008 (see registration date)
We began by providing manual WOW powerleveling, and later expanded to offer products and services in over 20 other games. We still do all of our leveling by hand, which has allowed us to stay safe. We wanted to know how safe we actually were so that we could ask the competition and compare performance. After 200 orders without a single ban, they stopped believing us. Then they started asking for our secrets.
The secrets are out in the open, and its common sense:
1. Use US internet connections (quality VPN providers are expensive, but safer)
2. Don't level 24x7 (it looks suspicious)
3. Treat other players courteously
4. Don't shock the economy by dumping thousands of anything in the auction house
5. Don't speak Chinese.
To date, we've handled well over 1,000 leveling orders for World of Warcraft. Still no ban. (We've had 4 warnings). Along the way, our team has grown from ten employees to over 50, and our customers have been pretty loyal. One in particular wanted an account that was full 80s, all classes. We leveled order after order until all slots for his server were full. He still comes back for honor leveling and other services. As we talk to competitors about service quality, we also discuss growth, and again, they ask for our secrets.
Business growth is common sense stuff:
1. Have a real refund policy
2. Stand behind it! -Actually give refunds if asked
3. Give 24x7 support, or at least the same time zone as your customer base
4. Don't be overpriced
5. Get your deliveries down so if you say 15 minutes, you actually MEAN 15 minutes
6. Honesty - lie to a customer once, and they're gone forever. Don't do it.
The first two years of our growth had virtually no advertising. That means two things:
1. Satisfied customers are telling their friends
2. We're doing things right because people keep telling their friends and we keep growing
It is our ongoing mission to distinguish ourselves as a beacon of quality for the rest of the industry. This has required us to isolate ourselves from poor service providers and do a lot of work ourselves. i.e. when you order something, it's often done at our own studio. What this means to you as a customer is that if we say 1 hours, we mean 1 hour. Even if an order is outsourced to a different provider, we make sure that we have strong communication with them and they understand our no BS policies. '1 hour' means 1 hour, and 'in stock' means in stock, etc.
We also establish an example that you don't have to be dishonest in order to get customers. i.e. We're not from the US, (it's impossible to provide cheap services on US wages) which means that all those 'other' companies are lying to you. We're in China, same as the rest. We just provide much better service and believe that perfect service is the key to a perfect business. So far, this ideal has always been proven true, not only by ourselves, but by our customers.
Everybody and their pet dog has a leveling site. I have a leveling site too! So why me?
Feedback. Google my competition and you'll find all sorts of horror stories (negative feedback).
Then google playerassist. I am sure that you're starting to feel better about PlayerAssist already.
Among the horror stories from my competition will be complaints about banned accounts, work or product never being delivered, slow processing, refusals to provide due refunds, and dodgy customer service reps that lie about refunds and flat out just don't even given them.
To keep that from ever happening here, I moved to China. It's my company, I better take care of it and make sure things are ran right. That is something that I've only seen one other person do. If you have an issue and feel my crew didn't handle things to your satisfaction, I want to know about it. So here's my email support@playerassist.com
The other companies aren't going to give you a line to the boss, that's just unheard of. They aren't willing to run their company personally by moving to China... so where are you going to set your respective expectations?
They also aren't going to give you a bullet point list of how to test their service because they will be concerned about the risk of you learning the truth about their actual level of quality and support.
.Talk to chat support before ordering (They're available, they speak plain English)
.Place a small order to see actual delivery speed (Does it match their service guarantee?)
.The lie test, ask them, "I want to order 60,000 gold on Azgalore US server, you guys in stock to deliver in the next 20 minutes?" If they say yes, they're lying. Companies don't stock that much for immediate delivery. My staff has been trained not to lie, even if it means we might lose business.
.Place a small order and immediately ask for a refund. (Do they give you a runaround? If so, you'll be glad that order wasn't in the hundreds of dollars!)
I supervise workers directly, I live, eat, and work with them. I teach oral and written English, and give a lot of training on how to power level safely. Most of them come from other gaming studios and they have tales that makes them sound like refugees when they talk about living conditions,sleeping conditions, sanitation, work hours, food, even water. I give them a quick boot camp on safe trade, provide better pay and conditions... and set them to work.
Doing the job right requires a lot of knowledge. The reason why we don't get WOW account suspsned and can count our yearly warnings on one hand isn't anything magic. Most of it is common sense. But being an expert helps. Before I ever game to china to grow my business by getting employees, I made my living from video games.
Many of our customers come to me with a lot of curiosity. They asked me, "do you guys enslave a bunch of young guys?", "Where are you guys located?", "Most of the services I have tried so far were horrible, I have lost my faith in power leveling already."
All these ocurrs to me and my partner that we might do something to reveal what goes on behind the scenes. Some peoples' speculations are true. One of our workers, whom is now the group leader of our studio told me that he worked for a studio which mainly serves US wow. Workers work and live in the same apartment. 16 workers sharing one bedroom. (Note: this apartment has 3 bedrooms.) During the lunch time, you have to rush otherwise there is no leftovers for you to share.
Sometimes the food was rotten. I myself even could not believe it. Workers got kicked off during mid night if fired, straight out of bed. The treatement was inhumane. My parnter and I thought there might be something we could to do to change the industry, at least a little. Many big sites looks pretty decent, however they can be supported by hundreds of misable workers. PlayerAssist works as a news source to some gaming forums by telling them about what happens in China. For example, we helped spread the news when a farmer was owed about $2,000 US dollars from IGE and then made the IGE secretary into a hostage with a toy gun.
Nobody knew it was a toy gun until police arrested the man. However, nobody knew what IGE was doing to gamers either. Nonpayment is one reason why they no longer operate in China. We feel that gamers have a right to know when things like this happen because some studios went out of business, some workers could not be paid and had to beg while looking for new jobs.
The industry still has a lot of problems, and the only path to change is to provide good service, and also break the news on bad service so that potential customers can make better decisions about who and what they want to support. At PlayerAssist, you're supporting fair treatment and good living conditions. Some of our workers have stayed with us for more than two years now. If we were a backbreaking factory, they would have left for better work.
