I had a recent problem with renewing my subscription. I tried to send an in game ticket but the response I got was essentially “lol, go farm some more gold” So, I am trying to get it resolved here and hopefully I can.
On patch day, I attempted to renew my subscription and it gave me 2 months instead of 1. It charged me twice and I am trying to fix the unwanted charge. I will detail everything that happened so I can be as clear as possible:
At around 5pm CST on patch day, June 29th I attempted to renew my subscription to WoW. I did not go online to battle.net and I did not go to the auction house or in game shop. As I have done before, when I log in with an inactive account and select a character, the game asks me if I would like to renew my subscription with gold. It informs me of how much it will cost and how much gold I will have left. As I have done in the past, I accepted and waited for processing. That is when things froze. Due to server lag, I was lucky to get to the character select screen. So, I was not surprised as it was patch day. I waited a bit to see if it would still process. After it would not process, I shut the game down and reloaded.
This time I was able to get to the character selection quicker. Once again, it showed my account was inactive and asked if I would like to renew with gold. Before clicking, I checked my email to see if a confirmation occurred for the stalled out attempt. I DID NOT want a double purchase. After verifying I received no confirmation email, I returned to the game to renew my account. After the gold purchase, this time the game immediately activated my account and I was sent a confirmation email for the purchase. I double checked my battle.net launcher to make sure I had only 1 month of subscription time. It seemed that everything would work out.
I played for a little bit and then logged out. 5 hours later at 10pm CST, I received another email for activating a month subscription. I looked on my battle.net launcher and found out I had 2 months. I specifically DID NOT want 2 months of subscription. I am simply looking to refund the 2nd month that purchased by the slow processing of the Blizzard servers. Instead of closing WoW and reopening it, I sincerely hope Blizzard was not expecting me to wait 5 hours for my account to activate. I simply want a refund of the month I did not want to buy. Either by gold or BNet credit, this should not be difficult to do.
Sorry, Zenovias, but all Token purchases for gold are non-refundable. As the first Game Master said, if you don’t end up using any of the second month of game time we may be able to provide a credit (i.e. you play for a month and then take a break, when you return we may be able to add that game time to your account).
You’d just need to submit a ticket before reactivating.
Thank you for the response. I find it hard to believe that credit can’t be restored. It seems as though all of Customer Support is hiding behind a rule so they don’t have to deal with the problem.
It’s also pretty insulting that Blizzard’s automatic services can make a mistake and all of Customer Support rallies together and says it’s your fault. I don’t think it’s right that Blizzard can steal from you and blame you at the same time.
I’m not quite sure how to submit a ticket when my account is deactivated. Maybe I do it here? Anyways, it seems I won’t be able to buy Diablo 2 remaster now. Plus, I don’t know why I would even try if Blizzard can double charge you, blame it on the customer, and then claim “no refunds”.
But the reality is that you did purchase it twice with gold. That gold was then given to another player who purchased a token for money to sell on the AH.
To refund what you did, they’d have to remove the gold from someone else. That doesn’t seem fair to me.
You weren’t double charged, you were just a little impatient unfortunately. And yes, you can put in a ticket even if your account isn’t active. You can do that on a character level 20 or lower or via the Support link in the top right of the forums.
We’re not hiding. Customer support has specific policies and guidelines that we must follow. There are certain things we absolutely can make an exception for, but even those exceptions are governed by specific policies and procedures. We can’t simply do something because we want to.
I’m not entirely where you are seeing where anyone from Customer Support has stated it was your fault. Neither of the replies you received from your tickets gave that indication at all.
That said, what may have happened isn’t something that can be verified. You claimed that you experienced lag, that the process froze. That is something that should be reported as a possible bug to be looked into, but Support itself cannot undo what happened here.
It is also important to note that the “Charge” you are referring to is specifically for in-game gold. Not real-world funds of any kind. If it were a regular purchase we’d have refund options available. This is not that, and based on the nature of the WoW Token purchased for Gold, it does not function in the same way.
Nothing is stolen. It is that you purchased two WoW Tokens with gold and you aren’t able to claim the time that those were for. Both I and the first Game Master you spoke with also indicated that if you don’t wish to use the second month of game time immediately that our staff can likely help. Assuming you don’t use any of that time by logging in during that period.
Your account doesn’t need to be active in order to contact Support. The option in the upper right corner of this page called “Support” starts the process. You’d then click Contact Support > World of Warcraft > “I would rather categorize the issue” > WoW Token Purchase problem.
In the description box, you simply state that you didn’t use the game time from your last WoW Token and the previous Game Master said they could give you that time back if it was unused.
This isn’t quite true. There is a intermediary. That intermediary is the automatic services provided and owned by Blizzard. I told this intermediary that I would like game time. It failed to process. I tried again and succeeded.
Imagine going to get $20 from an ATM. You try one time and you receive an error. The 2nd time goes through and you get your $20 bucks. 5 hours later the ATM spits out another 20 to some lucky dude. The bank isn’t really at fault and neither am I. However, I lost $20. I can notify the bank and I’m willing to bet the bank will refund the $20. I know my bank would. That is something Blizzard is unwilling to do.
A refund isn’t hard. Blizzard are masters of their game. They could flood the economy with gold if they wanted to. While it is completely understandable to keep the game’s economy healthy, refunds when a problem like this occurs would hardly break the game’s economy.
Just to make it clear, you’re basically saying you’re willing to lie and scam your bank out of money when they, on their end, have no tell the you’re telling them the truth. Because, to be honestly, sounds heavily disconnected from the real world to make a point.
No you received both 20.00 withdraws in this case if you are trying to use this analogy (which doesn’t work BTW). You basically got all your money, you just got it at a time you didn’t intend. All banks in this case are going to go by their records (as Blizzard is) and unless the camera shows someone else taking the money) there is nothing to refund.
Basically you are out nothing because you have been given everything that you paid gold for. You just don’t want one of those things and want Blizzard to take it back and refund you the gold. Per policy that can’t happen as all token purchases for gold are final. Nothing was stolen, you were not denied something you paid for, you simply don’t want it.
That isn’t really what happened though. Ignoring the fact that this isn’t real-world money but virtual currency… in the scenario you listed some random person wouldn’t be receiving the second $20, you did. So in the end, while the request to withdraw money was hit twice, the person with the account received the money both times.
Yes, because this isn’t a refundable situation. The WoW Tokens purchased with gold cannot be refunded. They are basically an assisted trade between you and the person who was selling the WoW Token.
You are trying to equate this with a purchase of a service with real money. It isn’t, it wasn’t made with real currency. It was gold, a virtual currency.
You didn’t lose the value of what you purchased with the virtual currency, you simply received one more than you initially wanted. Something again, that can be addressed as has been outlined.
I think you are operating under some misconceptions, Zenovias. Being the creators of the game doesn’t equate to being able to do anything we want for whatever reason. When systems are designed they have specific functions that are built into them. The ability to refund/return a WoW Token that is purchased with gold is simply not one of them.
I apologize. I shouldn’t have said that Blizzard directly blamed me. I recently got cookies from Costco. Unfortunately, we bought a bag that was already open. This was completely our fault. Even though Costco shouldn’t have opened bags on the shelf, we should have checked. However, Costco took the cookies and exchanged it for an unopened bag. They have no way to verify what we said was true, but they stood behind the customer.
In this instance, yes, you have no way of verifying my statements. I have to basically prove my innocence to Blizzard which is impossible for me to do. Therefore, Blizzard stands behind its systems rather than the customer. That is what irks me the most.
Thank you Mourningg for pointing out how bad my analogy with the ATM is. I was trying to relate to the use of an intermediary but most of it fell a part. I’ll try again, but probably fail.
Essentially, I bought a single Apple and the store clerk charged me for that apple and another apple. He gave both to me. Upon protest, he tells me that I bought both and that I am in possession of both. When I complained to the store manager he did not accuse me nor was he rude but he said “I see a receipt here for 2 Apples and you have 2 Apples”
Thank you Vrakthris for dealing with me (a clearly irritated person). I’m sure you get enough of my types in a day and I’m sure you did not need another. Thank you for letting me know the process to which I may be able to use the 2nd month.
I appreciate the frustration, Zenovias, but you continue to use real-world examples that really do not fit the situation. The WoW Token isn’t a physical item, it can’t be opened, left out to spoil or otherwise be exchanged or refunded.
No, you don’t. Basically, how it happened is not relevant to the situation outside of looking into a potential bug. If this was something that was occurring to multiple users, just based on that volume alone it would give us an indication that something is going on. We’d use that data to investigate the situation and resolve what issues we could. At the moment, there isn’t really enough data to do more. This is, as far as I can determine, a rare issue that I have frankly never seen happen before.
That doesn’t mean that we don’t care that it happened to you, Zenovias, but there simply isn’t an avenue available to allow us to undo it.
Again, it isn’t a physical item, nor did we accuse you. I’m sorry if you feel I or any other CS person was rude. that is not our intent, only to provide what clarity we can.
In the case of a store they have the capability of exchanging or refunding an apple because it’s a physical item, easy to exchange/trade. A WoW Token purchased for gold does not have a refund option.
I think at this point we’ve covered everything we can so I’m going to keep this one locked.