The billing team is working through the tickets as quickly as they can so please have patience. Your ticket will get answered and your issue will be addressed.
**Reposting in it's own thread, original thread found [thread=162585]here.[/thread]
Okay, I could use some assistance with this now.
I had some billing fuzziness when I joined in April, but my ticket was pretty much ignored (I received a rubber-stamp "Everything-looks-okay-to-me" response from whomever was supposed to be working in Biling and/or Customer Service) and I eventually forgot about it. Then a week and a half ago on 6/24/2010 I got that
ACCOUNT SUSPENDED notice when I attempted to log on. It was immediately following a Thursday patch and I assumed it was related to that as I had read posts where people had the same experience.
I posted to [thread=162585]
another thread[/thread] but decided that I didn't want to wait and went ahead and resubscribed for another month at $14.99. I edited out the jerk-comment I posted as I was set to renew anyway. Well yesterday I noticed in my Account section that my next billing date would end on July 4th even though it hadn't been two weeks yet. Sure enough,
ACCOUNT SUSPENDED. Now I just went and renewed
AGAIN just so I can log in!!
Will somebody at Cryptic
PLEASE look into this; it's supposed to be on automatic renewal and I shouldn't have to worry about renewing every
TWO WEEKS for my
MONTHLY subscription! Do the math,
June 26th to July 4th is not a month.
And here's the kicker: Now, just minutes ago, after I renewed for a month for a second (and possibly third) time in four weeks, it says my subscription is back to
ACTIVE, but the next billing date is already listed as
TODAY, JULY 4th!!
I will log in now and attempt to place a ticket; it seems impossibe to create one on the website out of game. Someone should look into that as well.
Somebody please help me. I have already invested a lot into this game in just a few months, in terms of Cryptic points and unnecessary renwals. ) If there isn't a satisfactory resolution, it will likely be the last month I (willingly) pay for.
Please help. Ticket about to be submitted.
Comments
I have also submitted a ticket, and am expecting to be compensated in some way.
Edit: Ticket #906359
I hope this issue gets some attention before my account is unjustly suspended again. I refuse to keep paying 15.00 every 2 weeks to keep my subscription.
Thanks for your support; it sounds odd, but there's some comfort knowing that I'm not the only one with this problem.
The good news is my account is still listed as ACTIVE and I will be able to log in. The bad news, however, is that the next billing date has been changed to...THIS WEDNESDAY, JULY 7th! For those at home keeping score, that's another $15 due in just three days!
I just saw the link posted in the [thread=162093]Tech Forum 101 thread[/thread] on where to go for billing issues. It's a dead link for Chanpions Online, so I went to it's support section which redirected me to Atari, so I'll try to submit a ticket there. Maybe somebody, somewhere between here and there will see that there is a problem and perhaps be motivated to do something about it.
Gahh I forgot to change that link in the 101 sorry. On to the issue, unfortunately no one in the tech support forums can address this issue. If you submit a billing ticket someone will get to you as soon as they can.
I have submitted a ticket. Its been 3 days now. I still haven't had a response of any kind. :mad:
Well it was a holiday weekend and billing is only open during business hours. 8am-5pm PST Mon - Fri
Someone will get to you though.
Payment and billing questions for any purchase made on Atari.com, should be directed to:
United States
Store Support Homepage
Order Lookup
Contact Store
Online Form
Email: webhelp@digitalriver.com
Phone: 1-800-310-2850
Im going to be calling them tomorrow morning about my stuff and see if they can sort it out for me since they are showing my tickey on there sute as well
so i dont know if this will help but tis worth a try!
Well I did get a response (posted avove) to the first of two tickets submitted. It seems all they did was to check to see if the account status was ACTIVE (it was, as it should be) and rubber-stamped the everything-looks-okay-to-me reply. Clearly no one bothered to investigate what the real problem is, that being why my account is suspended for an expired subscription multiple times within a month, when a month is the minimum length of a subscription.
And after double-checking, IT STILL ISN'T RIGHT!! My next billing date is listed as July 23rd when my last renewal was July 3rd!! Hell-looo, that's not a month!!! Clearly, I am going to lose the game time I have over paid for.
If submitting tickets can't get me help, what am I supposed to do?
Cryptic, I am a customer, not an employee. It is not my job to play Nancy Drew and super-sleuth my way to a solution. I guess STO will be losing yet another subscriber altogether.
Let me see whats up.
Here is a cut and paste of the ticket:
The highlighted text is the response I just added when I tried to log in and saw my account was suspended again for no reason. I absolutely refuse to pay for another months service for the fourth time in about a month.
The first ticket took several days to get an answer..and revealed that there was nothing wrong when there in fact was. So I suppose there will be no STO for me for several days, if ever. I am really not sure its worth all this hassle anymore. All I wanted was to pay my subscription and play like I've done with many other MMOs.
Ok, here I am again.. my account is suspended AGAIN. I just paid it FOUR days ago. I have submitted a ticket, got a response that my account was ok, then it was canceled again today!! Seriously??
Here is a cut and paste of the ticket:
The highlighted text is the response I just added when I tried to log in and saw my account was suspended again for no reason. I absolutely refuse to pay for another months service for the fourth time in about a month.
The first ticket took several days to get an answer..and revealed that there was nothing wrong when there in fact was. So I suppose there will be no STO for me for several days, if ever. I am really not sure its worth all this hassle anymore. All I wanted was to pay my subscription and play like I've done with many other MMOs.
I have sent another ticket, emailed an admin, tried IRC Chat, posted another thread. Funny how there is no way to contact billing support except the massively example of failure that they call a ticket system.
Even the response I got was wrong. They claim that I only paid on the 4th of June, and the 4th of July, yet my bank records clearly show they accepted my payment on 6/4, 6/13 and 7/4. I even have the the "Thank you for re-activating your account" emails that they sent to me. Then, 4 days later, my subscription is up again! Sheesh!
I can't understand why they can't seem to nail this down. I have been playing MMOs for many years, and I have never had an issue like this with any other company.
Its a shame that such a great game as STO has such a pitiful excuse for customer service.
Implausible, perhaps it has something to do with the fact that I changed payment methods. I know I changed from Visa to MasterCard; perhaps the mechanism set up for facilitating renewals has not/can not reconcile a changed payment method?
Now have a look at this: (please make note to the dates)
http://i426.photobucket.com/albums/pp341/Stromgold1/SubRenew1.jpg
Then, it was cancelled again on the 4th of July, so I paid again!
http://i426.photobucket.com/albums/pp341/Stromgold1/SubRenew2.jpg
Then, yesterday there is this:
http://i426.photobucket.com/albums/pp341/Stromgold1/SubCancelled.jpg
I have paid for my subscription 3 times in one months time, and now Cryptic wants me to pay a 4th time, all within 34 days time. Please fix this or pass it to someone who can. Your ticket system has failed me completely. I even offered in my original ticket to provide proof of what I am saying, and I was told that I never paid on the dates I have specified. If needed, I can also provide my bank transaction records. I can't understand why Cryptic's transaction records would not match my own, but apparently that is the case.
I am starting to wonder if the billing department is just flying by the seat of their pants. As I stated before, I love playing STO, but this billing issue is the worst example of customer care/service that I have ever seen.
I only hope to have it resolved soon so that I can have the service that I have not only paid for, but have over-paid for.
Edit: Ticket #906359
Both tickets I opened on this were closed without any investigation. I have no choice but to keep opening tickets. The sad part is, that by the time anyone gets around to fixing this, it will have been another month...which means I will have paid approximately three more times for the minimum month at the current rate.
Implausible, you said you were looking into this? Tickets #905983 & #906791, if that helps expedite a solution. I understand these things may take time, but all it takes is a note from Billing, like "We're looking in to this, sit tight!" or something to that affect, to calm an upset customer.
(I love how they close out tickets as "Resolved", with no resolution.)
I also agree that it would go a long way toward re-assuring customers if they would get some sort of response at least saying that the problem was being looked into. That long "silent wait" just leaves you feeling like you are talking to yourself or being ignored. I myself never received any sort of response at all, even after the problem was fixed for me. I just checked my account status on a whim, and saw that it was right and that my gametime had been adjusted accordingly.
I hope I have seen the last of billing/account issues from this game. Two months in a row of billing errors is more than enough frustration for what should really be a simple business transaction.
I wish you the best of luck in getting this issue addressed and remedied.
It certainly does add to the frustration when one is told by another that they will personally look into a partticulr issue...and then never be heard from again. And I do feel bad that customers with problems have to come to a PC/Tech forum for help when they get more assistance and information there than from creating a ticket.
*Fingers crossed*