Here is the thing...as far as cryptic know, your "friend" bought 20 bucks of zen, got the 20 bucks of zen, spent the 20 bucks of zen and then the CC company took the money back. They don't care WHY it happened...but as soon as that DOES happen, it becomes FRAUD and they are completely within their right to ban you right then and there.
^^ This has the ring of truth to it. Although the 'then the CC company took the money back.' part confuses me a bit. Normally, when I charge online stuff with my Mastercard -- and certainly from PWE -- there's an 'contact & approval' stage which precedes the actual purchase. Once the payment has been approved, by the credit card company, payment, to the seller, is guaranteed (if it wouldn't be, approval would not have been granted). So, you'd have to run some pretty nifty scam to get the CC company to do a chargeback on their own behest (maybe some distributed purchase 'attack', hoping for a race condition?). Especially since the CC companies know all the scam tricks in the book, I reckon.
So, from that perspective, it's almost impossible his 'friend' actually received any Zen (or any chargebacks from the CC company took place). Far more likely is that the payment simply failed. In that case, is the $50 really fair? Probably not, but 'If you snooze, you lose!' So, man up, pay the fine, and next time remember to balance your checkbook.
If you have a pending payment that bounces and your current charges goes above the grace amount of the CC, they will do chargeback on anything that goes above that limit. At this point, they assume they ain't getting their money back so they go into basically closing your account down. This can also happen if you do rapid charges and the total amount goes above the credit amount. So if you had 20 bucks left on CC and then you charge 10 bucks at steam, 15 bucks at blizzard and 20 bucks for zen in a period of a few min. Each of those will go and check and it will report that you have 20 bucks left and so will be approved...but when it is all settled, you are 25 over the limit. Depending on your agreement and what you may have done, either the last one...or last two of those will get charge backed...or you pay a fee. Usually, you pay a fee...$35 for most cases (so really 50 bucks is saving 5+ bucks because if this friend's card let him go over the limit, he would be paying 55 bucks + interest to the CC company). So yeah, there are outlier cases where a CC company does a charge back without your appoval. But they basically require you to be really irresponsible. I mean REALLY.
I can't really say much on the original subject, but Credit Cards work differently in different countries (what we call a Credit Card in Germany would be a Debit Card in the US), so maybe mileage will vary depending on where you're coming from. In any case, I'd also try to contact my CC issuer to ask what, how and why happened. We have three parties here (customer, seller, CC company), and any one of these three may be at fault for anything. Maybe even some fourth party handling some technical stuff on any end.
And while it may seem a little harsh if your friend bought stuff regularily and only the fifteenth purchase went bad somehow, if that is what happened, Cryptic may, again depending on how your contracts and the technical handling in your country work, get scrutinized/fined themselves by the CC company for a wrong booking, so they may not like it at all.
But to quote others, I also had a financial issue once (too few zen for the money I spent), and even though customer service was a little slow and obviously using predefined text blocks in the conversation, they could sort it all out within 15 minutes. Agreed, the situation was different in that I had a right to something which they could change, while your friend probably needs to ask for a favor (and I hope he used a different kind of voice than you are using here, because if you start with demands and accusations, some people may be less inclined to be helpful than if you calmly explain a situation, open to the possibility it was your wrongdoing).
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OP, nobody on the forums is able to help you, with whatever technical/account issues you may have. You need to contact the support.
/Closed
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I can't really say much on the original subject, but Credit Cards work differently in different countries (what we call a Credit Card in Germany would be a Debit Card in the US), so maybe mileage will vary depending on where you're coming from. In any case, I'd also try to contact my CC issuer to ask what, how and why happened. We have three parties here (customer, seller, CC company), and any one of these three may be at fault for anything. Maybe even some fourth party handling some technical stuff on any end.
And while it may seem a little harsh if your friend bought stuff regularily and only the fifteenth purchase went bad somehow, if that is what happened, Cryptic may, again depending on how your contracts and the technical handling in your country work, get scrutinized/fined themselves by the CC company for a wrong booking, so they may not like it at all.
But to quote others, I also had a financial issue once (too few zen for the money I spent), and even though customer service was a little slow and obviously using predefined text blocks in the conversation, they could sort it all out within 15 minutes. Agreed, the situation was different in that I had a right to something which they could change, while your friend probably needs to ask for a favor (and I hope he used a different kind of voice than you are using here, because if you start with demands and accusations, some people may be less inclined to be helpful than if you calmly explain a situation, open to the possibility it was your wrongdoing).
/Closed
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"bIghojchugh DaneH, Dumev pagh. bIghojqangbe'chugh, DuQaHlaH pagh."
"Learn lots. Don't judge. Laugh for no reason. Be nice. Seek happiness." ~Day[9]
"Your fun isn't wrong." ~LaughingTrendy
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