worst support experience of my life

#1 - Dec. 20, 2013, 5:26 p.m.

Part 1 (due to length)

Okay, so to avoid seeming completely disgruntled (even tho I am), let me start out by saying, I’m a big fan of this game and I have had relatively few issues. Despite that, this most recent support ticket experience has left an awful taste in my mouth that makes me think twice about logging in at all.

This all started with an attempt at purchasing gems for a special 3-day sale item with a card I had bought gems with before, and even pre-ordered the game with. Payment authorization failure. So I ticketed, noting the time sensitive nature of my issue and asked when the sale would be over and if I was going to miss it. No acknowledgement whatsoever. I waited a day and replied again asking if someone could please update me because I didn’t know when this sale ended. No acknowledgement. Naturally with several minutes (literally) remaining on the sale I get a reply telling me there was something considered “high risk” about my transaction and to try again. Payment authorization failure. So I ticket again. I get a reply telling me it may take 48 hours to investigate my issue. Of course I miss the sale and am pretty annoyed by this point. Finally some days later I get the following reply:

“Looking over your purchase attempts, I see that the billing information differs from your home location where these purchase attempts are coming from. Why are we seeing a difference in locations associated with your account? Where are you currently located? How long will you be there?

Also, we would not be able to discuss the sale in the in-game store until the purchase issue is resolved."

First…there’s really no reason at all that they couldn’t answer my questions about the in-game sale. (was this really somehow considered a security breach?) Second…people play on laptops at coffeeshops all the time. (why does it matter where i am if my information is correct? this is not a security measure. this is an inconvenience.) Third, my billing information was entered correctly. (which really should be the only pre-requisite to being able to purchase anything.) The truth of the matter is that I just moved less than 2 months prior. I replied stating as much and gave them my current address in hopes that it might serve to validate my identity which for some reason was being called into question. My next reply was:

“After manually reviewing your purchase attempts, I see that they are displaying characteristics that are commonly found to be associated with high risk transactions. For that reason, your purchase attempts have been determined to be high risk by our system and you will be unable to complete your purchase at this time.”

#3 - Dec. 20, 2013, 6:19 p.m.

I am sorry that you had this experience, but fraud costs companies billions of dollars a year, and as the saying goes: if you watch the pennies, the pounds watch themselves.

When someone tries to buy from XX country and the credit card is from a place many thousands of miles away, that’s a huge red flag for fraud. Millions of CCs are stolen each week, and then are used quite commonly for online purchases, game acquisitions to advertise account-theft sites, etc. We must — for the security of the game and of every player within it — take careful steps to do out best to keep out fraudsters and those who would harm our game or our players.

It’s painful to be flagged as “potential fraud” when you’re not at all a potential fraudster, and I sympathize with you about this. However, there is no ticket number in this thread to allow me to review the situation, simply a lengthy post with information that tells me that there is more to this story than you or I know, at this point. Too, not giving confidential, security-based information is very important.

If you want to supply that ticket number (and please, no additional comments are necessary) I can take a look. Please understand I’m not involved directly in Payments or Billing and my involvement would not be that of an expert in those subjects.