Why Our Staff Doesn’t Give Private Support

Not giving private support has been a policy here on our forum since it was created.
There is, in fact, a rule against contacting the staff asking for private support:

Support is offered only via these forums and in-game. Do not
contact team members privately (via any method) to ask for support.
Users found to be contacting team members/admin asking for support will be
warned.

Most people who contacts our staff for private support do so because they figure they can get a faster response and that doing so will take very little time for the team member to answer because they “know their stuff”.

Now, either of these cases may be true if only one user is doing it.
Let’s now consider the scenario where multiple users a day (maybe even 3-5 or more) have this reasoning and choose to do so.
That’s 3-5 PMs that must be answered or handled per the rule above.
Now repeat that again for 35 members. Assuming each PM takes 3 minutes to deal with, that’s about 3 hours of time spent dealing with these PMs instead of helping other users!

Just consider for a moment what we could do with that time.
Most users PM team members because they think their response will be quicker
— in fact, by doing so, you are not only slowing down the response you will receive, but the response others will as well!
The reasoning, then, is quite simple:
because private support will take time away from you, the end user. Answering questions takes time.

Add on to that the fact that a PM helps only one person, and you have a lose-lose situation.
Most of us would much rather take the time to answer topics in the support forum that could potentially benefit tenths of users than spend equal (or more) time answering PMs that will help only one. ;)

So, remember: next time you go to send a PM to try to get a quicker answer, stop and think for a second: What will be the side-effects of this?
Aside from being warned, it takes time away from helping you, the user.
The warning isn’t since we’re uptight and don’t have a sense of humor.
— it’s because such PMs take away from our time that could otherwise be spent helping you.

Thanks!

Regards,
Doomie