The COVID-19 pandemic has forced countries to enforce lockdowns, causing hundreds of millions of people to isolate themselves within the confines of their homes. This has led to a tremendous increase in traffic on streaming platforms such as Netflix.
But, what happens when most customer support agents are unable to go to work due to the lockdown? Over the last few days, Netflix users, mainly from the US, have reported their accounts to have been hacked but they have nowhere to turn for help as Netflix doesn't have enough customer support agents to resolve their issue.
Users complain over lack of support after account gets hacked
With people forced to stay at home due to the ongoing coronavirus situation, many of them turn to Netflix as a means to spend their time. However, a large number of unfortunate users had their accounts compromised by hackers, which means the hackers had changed the e-mail address on the respective Netflix accounts.
So, when the rightful account owner went to try changing their password, they were unable to because the e-mail account they had access to was no longer linked to their Netflix subscription. As you would expect, users then tried to reach out to out to Netflix's support team only to find out that customer support was no longer available.
Several users have taken to social media to express their anger over Netflix's reduced customer support hours during the crisis, which has rendered their accounts unusable amid a global lockdown. Check out some of the reactions on Twitter below:
Netflix makes some changes amid coronavirus outbreak
Unfortunately, for users who had their accounts hacked, Netflix announced over the past week that it was reducing support hours as more customer service agents were no longer able to work due to the COVID-19 crisis. This, in turn, has led to longer wait times on the Netflix support chat. Netflix's full statement, as reported by Comicbook is below:
"The COVID-19 crisis has meant that thousands of our customer support agents are unable to work, or are now having to work from home. So our wait times are higher than normal. We're working hard to provide the best support we can under the circumstances, and apologize for the delays you are experiencing.
We're now offering live chat and online Help Center support only globally. Shifting to chat instead of phone support allows our agents to help more people while working from home. We know this is less convenient for some members, but we will be able to help more people more quickly this way. Given the shortage of agents, we're also having to reduce our support hours. This will vary depending on the country you're in – and as we experiment with what works best given the current crisis.
Your support is very important to Netflix. So we're sorry for the inconvenience and appreciate your patience while we work through these issues." Users growing frustration is understandable but in these trying times, Netflix is trying to do its best amid a global pandemic that continues to spread rampantly around the world. So, be patient, stay safe and hope this all blows over real soon.
