Pay by Game Card? read this:Follow

mmaguire:
I need an explanation as to why I cannot create a guild simply because I pay my account by EQ Card.
I waited a hell of a long time to have TSR Oliver kick me off with a link to the page, which does not work and says "I must have an account"





TSR Nash K.: Hi, my name is TSR Nash K.. One moment please, while I read your question.
Michael: do NOT just send me your uselees Guild Creation link and dump me, I've been at this for several hours
TSR Nash K.: Unfortunately, Game card accounts cant be used to make Guilds as account using Game cards are auto-cancelled. You need a active account to make a Guild.
Michael: I HAVE an active account
Michael: It says so right onmy page
TSR Nash K.: May I have your station name please?
Michael: mmaguire
Michael: exactly where in the EULA does it say I will be denied content on account of payment option?
Michael: hello??
TSR Nash K.: Your account is on Game Card.
TSR Nash K.: It cant make a Guild. You need a credit card subscription for that.
Michael: and you think that it is ok to deny particular content to an account in good standing?
Michael: what kind of customer "service" is this?
Michael: because you can't figure out how to code it?
TSR Nash K.: I am Sorry that is a company policy and that Guild creation requires active subscription.
Michael: exactly where in the EULA does it say I will be denied content on account of payment option?
TSR Nash K.: You can use credit card for one subscription, apply for Guild and use Game card from next time. Thats only a suggestion.
Michael: exactly where in the EULA does it say I will be denied content on account of payment option?
Michael: and where on the game card does it say that?
Michael: And why do I pay exactly what everyone else pays
Michael: you could not possibly defend or even explain this "policy"
TSR Nash K.: Unfortunately, every game specifications and requirement cant be mentioned on EULA.
Michael: lol, give me a break, this is nominor thing at all and I doubt anyone outside of SOE would agree to that
TSR Nash K.: I am Sorry, but active account is must for Guild creation and Game card cant be used for it.
Michael: IHAVE AN ACTIVE ACCOUNT!! I AM LOGGED IN NOW
TSR Nash K.: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Michael: correction, is there ANYTHING you can help with?
Michael: Why do you insist I do not have an account?
TSR Nash K.: Cancelled accounts are 'Active' but it means that you wont be billed automatically next time. The account status has to 'Active' to be eligible for guild creation. '
TSR Nash K.: Its possible only through credit card subscription.
Michael: IT IS ACTIVE, IT IS NOT CANCELLED
Michael: Do I have an active account or not?
Michael: what did I pay for?
TSR Nash K.: You are using Game cards and Game card accounts are auto-cancelled. Cancelled means that you can still play the game till your game card expires. The account wil close itself afte that and then you wuill need another game card.
TSR Nash K.: *will
Michael: that is your network bs, not a reality and you know it
Michael: cancelled means you can play the game? listen to yourself you are not even amking sense
TSR Nash K.: I am Sorry, I understand your issue but its a Company Policy. Nobody here can go over that. Game card accounts cant be used for creating Guilds. You can feedback regarding this through in game command /feedback.
Michael: and where was I informed of this?
Michael: when I shelled out money for the card
TSR Nash K.: Yes, Cancelled means you can play the game till the next billing. If the account is on 'Closed' status then you cant play the game.
TSR Nash K.: Game card cant have such minute details like this.
Michael: You can polish it anyway you want, but you are denying me content I paid for
TSR Nash K.: Yes, but you need a credit card for Guild creation. I am sorry, thats a company policy and it cant be changed. You can feedback regarding this through /feedback command.
TSR Nash K.: Is there anything else I can assist you with today?
Michael: If I was not right, your answers would be a whole lot quicker
Michael: First agree I am being denied content I paid for and I can e-mail that
TSR Nash K.: I am Sorry, Game cards cant be used to create Guilds. You need a credit card subscription for that.
TSR Nash K.: Thank you for visiting our Sony Online Entertainment customer support chat. Take care and have a nice day!
TSR Nash K. Has Disconnected

What I see is someone making an a[sm][/sm]ss of themselves and providing little to no reasonable arguement.

As far as game cards go, no, it is not an active subscription. All a game card does is pay for 30 - 90 days of service and cancels the subscription. Just because your playing doesn't mean you subscription is active. It just means your being allowed to use the rest of the time you payed for.

Instead of wasting your time making an *** of yourself as to whether or not your subscription is active pay attention.





He explained it to you right here but instead you continued to argue a point that is of little relevance.

Next time try using your brain and pay attention to what you are being told:



This was your MAIN point to argue, but you were to busy whining about whether or not a game card was an active subscription. Maybe next time a TSR tells you HOW TO GET AROUND THE POLICY you will pay attention. Or maybe you will use it as a point to argue.

Let me see if I can wrap my feeble intellect around your obviously superior reasoning....



ok, note to self, always begin discussion with someone you do not know by calling them an ***.... got it. moving on..



try and mix those insults in a post, try not to be repetitive.

Now does the above little bit of legalese mean anything to anyone besides jchapin and SOE?
You either have an account in good standing or you do not.
I have an account. I have an account name and password.
I can log in and play. I have had this account for two years and have paid it by both credit card and game card at various times.

And for your information, I play by game card a lot because friends and family give me the cards as gifts. Not that is any of your business.

Now I guess I'm just stupid but you either have an account or you do not. Making up newspeak for "Active" "Cancelled" and "Closed"
depending on how you pay for it, does not differentiate anything any non-lawyer would accept.

but let's take it from the horse's mouth, SOE's own statement of my account:






Status: Non-Recurring Billing Method OR Cancelled *

ok, it's one of those two, let's follow the asterisk and find out, shall we?

well reason 1 does not apply, it's not a 30 day subscription included with purchase, so on to 2
well, I did not cancel my account, if I had I would have to log in and choose a new method of billing. In any event the key phrase is "You have chosen to cancel..." well, I have not so on to the last,

"You have activated your account using a non-recurring billing method (for example, you may have used an official Game Card). Don't let your game be interrupted once your trial period expires. Grab yourself a Game Card at the Station Store, or take advantage of one of our other billing methods by using a Credit Card or Global Collect."

yes that is it I believe. Using a Non-Recurring billing method.

So (if anyone can still follow this) since my status is NRBM OR Cancelled, and I have established that it is NRBM, it is not "Cancelled"
In fact it has been in continuing existence for two years.



Well pardon me for expecting the content I paid for and for not wanting to use my Visa to "get around" their obviously flawed policy.

My original post was to make others aware of this policy as I am quite certain no player who plays by game card is even remotely aware of this Byzantine claptrap.... unless he has tried to form a guild.

If you do not like my tone with SOE, sorry no one cares.
The fact is people who pay full price for the game and all of it's content AND have an account in good standing (by anyone's definition) are denied very important content simply on the basis of the Billing Method they choose.
And even more so, are not made aware of that when shelling out the money, thinking they are buying full content.

btw jchapin, who in your family works for SOE? I assume that is the case since you went out of your way to make your reply so personal.... and I don't even know you.

I would be very annoyed if I were you also. Saying your money isn't equal to someone else's money is total BS. Soe gets the money. Do you think it's a different color if they get it from a card or ah, um another card?

/edit Let's call it the my plastic's better than your plastic policy.

Edited, Thu Nov 17 22:43:17 2005 by Kelti

So, um, it IS ok to use a game card? Unless you want to form a guild...No wait...

that's not getting around it. that's following it. there's a difference.

many people who use gamecards do so, because they DONT HAVE a cc.

Let me see how to reply to this in the end so even jchapin gets it,



Hmmm, you really think you are the only genius here? If I wanted to "get around" the policy, I can think of at least a half/dozen ways to do it in a minute.
Obviously, that wasn't my intent. My intent was to try and make SOE look at how farcial their policy is , admit it and agree to look at it again. It is pretty hard to make a cogent argument and get someone to respond when they have set up a customer service model that precludes any real contact that reduces you to pecking at a keyboard on a thread that they can cut off any time they get bored.

Just as with the Halloween Quest ending, SOE refuses to look at anything they do and address players' frustrations and hopefully improve their service and product. This would be the new model for corporate America.
No office you can visit, no one (not in India) that you can talk to live and an "if you don't like it, ***** you, we have plenty more customers" mentality.

These of course were the real issues here.



Well, I work for a major utility and I am a union brother so I have a very different perspective.
When someone gets paid many times what I do to simply sit in an office (and, yes it is simply sitting in an office, ask anyone who has to work in a dangerous setting, outside with heavy tools in all kind of weather each day) and use their superior intellect to devise policy, is it too much to ask that these Uber Men come up with something that actually works? Not simply a patch because SOE cannot figure out how to code for the different payment options.



Well, thanks for descending from Mt Olympus and "explaining" it in small words for us worker bees.
I think we all understand it quite well.
Management (at SOE and a lot of corporations) is either to stupid or lazy to address a major flaw so they craft a "policy" you could drive a truck through and tell you, "If you don't like it, lump it."
Because they can get away with it, because they have you by the balls.



I invite all the readers of this thread to highlight any "whining" in my above messages and point it out. I see someone trying to make a valid point and getting nowhere. I guess today, when you argue for something you believe is right in the face of corporate indifference that is "whining".
Well, I guess management will always look at it that way.

You can tell I'm much older than our new breed of corporate lions here. I can still remember when you handed money over to someone for something you got what you paid for or somebody on the vendor end would make it right. I keep forgetting we all have to be Machiavelli now to get any kind of service from anyone in this industry and most other industries today.

and as for "management" experience, I have managed one factory for seven years and another field service company for five before working for the utilty. In both cases, revenues for the company were doubled over the length of my stewardship. I didn't get my experience in a classroom.

On my worst day, hung over and tired, I could manage this problem a whole lot better than any MBA, and I'm positive SOE has a "whole passle" of 'em sucking up air at six figures only to come up with this "policy".

One of the problems on these boards is that people arrive from many walks of life with a whole range of experience, but a lot more insist on making snap assumptions about their fellow posters.

I guess you either see the issue here for what is is or,
for how you can "get around it" and "make it work to your advantage".

Guess, I'll forget about it and go to work now with the "simple people" who I can believe what they say and know they'll hold up their end of the job. Never thought work would be preferable to my "recreation" :-P

take care all

I may not agree with the policy but for god's sakes, how many friggin times does he have to tell you it's company policy? It's company policy, there is nothing he can do about it. Deal with it and leave the poor guy alone.

Nobody decreed when you were born that life was going to be fair. If this is the worse thing that happens to you then you can consider yourself lucky.

Btw, you might want to look into getting a credit card. Most everyone has at least one these days. Hell, even cats are getting them.

http://www.hometownannapolis.com/cgi-bin/read/2005/11_16-40/TOP

So what you're saying is, you can't create a guild on a GameCard.

Sounds like SoE wants some sort of auto re-occuring payment in order to be able to create a new guild. Seems pretty easy to understand to me. Is it a crazy rule? Sure. But if that's their policy, then you as a customer, have to learn to deal with it. Personally I think late fees for renting videos at my local store is an absurd policy, do I get to go in there each time I'm late and argue that it's a dumb policy and ***** about how they didn't change it right on the spot only for me? No.

Here's a tip. I've found that I get much better response from costumer service orginization if I treat them with respect. I can be horribly mad at them for something, but I will still say thinks like "please" and "thank you for checking". The ******** I am, the ******** they get. Sony owns the game, they make the rules. You can either choose to follow those rules, or not play the game. If you are not happy with the rules, then don't play. No one is forcing you to log on to EQ everyday.

There is thing you can skill up called "maturity", try some next time you are online with a customer service orginaztion...you might find that your results are much better.

If I were the TSR and you talked to me like that, I would've denied your request much faster than that.

I'm sure you're going to come back and act all /butthurt about this post, but, this is a great place to practice "maturity". Take this advice, and contact SoE again, politley asking someone to look into the issue and going up the chain of command as necessary. Getting mad and ****** will not end in a way that you desire.



Edited, Fri Nov 18 09:30:58 2005 by Frakkor

TSR Nash K didn't make the policy, so why are you asking him to defend it. You spent entirely too long ******** at the wrong person.

It's not hard to understand. SOE gets all the money from a credit card (less a very small fee), SOE gets only some of the money from a Game Card (the retailer, distributor, etc, get the rest). I understand their policy quite well.

And you do whine, a lot. I expect better from a Union brother.

:(

Ok, here is where the Libra side of me comes in.

Half says: That is one of the most stupid loopholes I've ever seen, to offer a way for people to pay for the game, but consider it a closed account. Maybe that, in and of itself, can help explain to me why I don't have 4 vet rewards. You are paying the same money, regardless, to play, you should receive all of the "benefits" that we do.

Other half says: It's their game, it's their contracts, it's their system. Follow it.

I am not union, but I deal with corporations all the time, concerning hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Sorry, but if I was on the phone with you, I would have told you to "Have a nice day, and thanks for calling," and hung up.

The whole way you handled yourself was, simply put, like a child. You even BEGUN your statement of a problem with an attitude:



You DON'T know that the person reading your email knew what you were talking about. Need I remind everyone that SOE's customer service is now HEAVILY outsourced, to different countries??

CS reps dont neccessarily deal with the product themselves, they deal with solutions.

Their solution, was that they could not OFFER you a solution based on the way you are paying.

Long story short: Sorry you are getting F'ed in the A with no L, but play by the rules, and do it with a slight bit of respect next time.

Not any more, now you request your guild first, and then need to recruit 10 unique members within 30 days.

Once you apply and are approved for your guild name, you get tagged, then you start recruiting.