I’m mad at myself today. I foolishly thought Blizzard was capable of doing the right thing. With WoW Retail’s 10.2 release this week, I decided to come back and try out a month of play.
Context: I’ve played WoW on and off since 2003 and generally kept my sub to a month at a time. Login. Play. Realize it’s more of the same. Quit. Repeat with new content.
Anyway, I fired it up on Tuesday. Played through the PVE released new content. Grinded the 10.2 honor gear and by Wednesday was over it. I logged in to my account settings to deactivate my month’s recurring sub and realized I’d made a terrible mistake.
You guessed it. I managed to sub for an entire year and didn’t realize I paid the 155 bucks. I immediately looked into refunding the purchase. I have NEVER in my life committed to anything for that long in advance much less a video game.
According to their own policy “ We’ll refund any unused World of Warcraft subscription within 14 days of the purchase . We won’t refund subscription time lost due to a suspension and/or permanent account closure. For permanent account closures and suspensions longer than 15 days, we will cancel upcoming recurring subscriptions.” So instantly I think, thank goodness, it has only been three days. I can refund this and pay for the single month I meant to pay for…
And how I was wrong. Evidently, there is fine print somewhere which allows them to not provide refunds based on an undefined “time played” clock. Basically in three days, I played enough wow to constitute a year’s subscription.
Obviously I messed up. I bought the wrong sub. But the fact Blizzard had denied multiple attempts to rectify the purchase just reenforces what most of you have known for years. This company has become a giant trash can full of garbage policies all seeking to take our money with more and more of the same half assed effort.
/sadpanda
Ah, this means you can’t have used the Sub at all. It is mostly for people who forget to remove a subscription and it bills during a time they are not playing at all. They realize it billed, quickly contact Blizzard, and Blizz can check that they did not use the sub, and refund it. It is worded oddly, but that is what it is for.
The whole sub has to be unused. It does not refund the remaining days if you play X days then decide not to continue for any reason.
The policy is a bit clearer if you check under the game purchase section. They allow only up to 2 hours of play time within that 14 days. Same as the Steam policy.
I don’t know if the 2 hours applies to the subscription refunds (I don’t think so), but it makes it clear they don’t allow days of use then a refund.
This is how the policy has always been with regard to subs. They only more recently added the 1 year sub option though, which does present a question about possible policy reconsideration. You can TRY ticketing again and asking nicely for a one time exception, but don’t be shocked if they say no, that CS can’t do that. Worth asking anyway.
Edit again, if you want to ask about policy questions for WoW specifically, you can always try the WoW CS forum. They are not GMs and can’t refund your money, but might be able to clarify policy. Customer Support - World of Warcraft Forums
Suggestions to change policy would go on the General Forums.
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An update: After posting this here and on the WoW general forum, I was contacted and they are refunding me. They cited my 20 year account as justification. Glad to report they stepped up and fixed my mistake.
Just to let you know, posting on the forums is not why CS refunded you. They don’t see anything here and nobody here relays messages to them.
I am very glad they were able to make an exception for you when it was manually reviewed. Just for future reference, the refund system is two parts. The first part is automatic and just checks the request against a basic qualfications list. If it is within policy, the system automatically refunds it. Easy peasy.
For more complicated cases you have to re-open the ticket and have an actual GM look it over - and make the call for an exception or not.
I am VERY glad they were able to help. I also hope the CS agent sends the case wherever feedback from the CS team can go. Those year long subs seem like they might need policy consideration on the refund policy.
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Yeah going through something similar. I purchased the standard MW3 and I remember it saying $64 when I checked out. Played 3 games in multiplayer and tried the zombies. Then went and worked for 3-4 days and the purchase hit my account and said I bought the vault edition for $107 which I did not. I submitted a ticked a d asked to please just bump it down to the standard and refund the difference and take away whatever it supposedly is that I received. They finally messaged me back 3 days after that and said no and gave me a link to their policy. Which one game of zombies takes more than 2 hours. Just sad they treat loyal customers this way. I have never in my life purchased anything except a standard edition, so this is a problem on their end and they don’t want to refund it.