If Blizzard bans subscribers/players for exercising a legal consumer right, that’s messed up right there. Friendly fraud is one thing, but it must be proven. They’ve created a legitimate consumer complaint here, and it seems…unwise to ban a player for exercising a consumer right.
I see decent support for what you’re saying, but to throttle the valid use of a consumer right via - essentially - holding accounts hostage or refusing to accept the ruling of the credit card issuer following card acceptance rules…well, that’s just wrong.
“We don’t get chargebacks because we punish consumers who exercise their consumer rights” is really, really poor form.
“We don’t have to provide customer service, and we can promote and sell broken products because consumers have no rights here” is also horrendous. OK then. They’ll ban me or lock that character, and I’ll keep pursuing a remedy. Perhaps I’ll be willing to pay for the boost again once it’s actually “working as intended,” to use their own language
Banning someone for disputing a payment for a product Blizzard themselves admits is broken and not working as intended is truly crappy. If they provided meaningful customer service on this breakage, chargebacks wouldn’t happen.
I assume you mean in terms of offering refunds, but they’re just doing what they can. If they could refund the boost and revert the character to how it was prior to boosting, I’m sure they would. Thats why they only offer refunds if the boost is unused. You gotta give back what you paid for, and if you don’t have it, there isn’t anything CS can do. They’re under the same impression as you, that the issue will be fixed, and if it hasn’t yet, then its not a simple issue. They can’t just snap their fingers and make it go back to working.
They also probably want it to be a meaningful fix. If they fix it but say, do so by just dropping everyone’s professions and making you re-learn them, I’m certain that wouldn’t be satisfactory anyway. Ideally they can put everyone’s professions back, intact.
Very rarely are chargebacks actually done for good reason (many are just bot accounts trying to get money back) so Blizzard just thwacks them all. Neither them nor the bank usually like dealing with it.
It’s almost impossible to open a ticket. omg. So basically we pay’d blizzard to make us fools. We give them money, and the give us broken chars. What a nice game.
I don’t really mean refunds only - I get that reverting a character to its previous state might be difficult - but as this has really dragged out, I think Blizzard should be offering something - and, even if they can’t determine what that might be at this point, they could acknowledge that this has gotten quite bad and indicated there would be some in-kind recompense for the trouble.
I think my major beef is that they continued selling after they knew about the bug/they continued selling without providing purchasers a warning. We could have made an informed decision if we’d known the risk. Or, “more informed,” at any rate.
Chargeback handling is part of the bank’s job. Providing meaningful customer service, and selling working services, is Blizzard’s. If they don’t like dealing with chargebacks, there are ways to mitigate that. If this were anything but pre-launch of a major expansion, I might be more inclined to look the other way. But it’s not. It’s right before a major expansion to the game, and many players boosted to finish off professions so they did not have to go back to old content after launch (this was my reason for boosting.) It’s rather clear that, at this point, the issue will not be fixed in a timely manner before May 20 - it’s less than five days away, and the issue has persisted for just over two weeks. This situation is not a trivial one when the overall picture is considered. It’s dreadful timing for such a thing to happen. I think player ire, refund requests - and, yes, a number of chargebacks - are only to be expected in this scenario.
I’d be happy to reverse the chargeback with a timely fix. I’d be happy to reverse it with any reasonable gesture from Blizzard re: “what terrible timing! we know this has seriously affected your enjoyment of the highly anticipated launch and we want to make it right somehow.” But all is silence and canned responses.
Another day and no blue post at least acknowledging this problem. If only open communication was a thing. Instead we get the silent treatment so even if they come out with a fix most of us will still be pissed and want our money back in some capacity like chargebacks etc.
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yea really would love some kind of fix for this man i wanna boost something else but i dont wanna screw myself out of my profs
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Come on Blizzard!!! Get with it, you used to remedy these things quickly!!!
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Has anyone boosted a toon with no professions & then learnt a profession?
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that is the only workaround. But you have to know about the problem and know that is the way around it before purchasing the boost.
Just want to add to my continuing saga with this. I went on ahead and disputed the charge for the boost with AmEx (using the online tool on their website). I was susprised that in less than 12 hours they had already reached a resolution and credited me the charge. In a nut shell, they found Blizzard’s explanation as compared to mine “unsatisfactory.” With the caveat being “for the time being.” They reserve the right to allow Blizzard to explain themselves further at a later date, at which time they may choose to reinstate the charge. I am cool with this because I figure by the time Blizzard gets around to it (if they do), the bug will have been fixed, in which case I am happy to pay for a boost. This was never about getting a free boosted character. It was about buying a broken service.
I want to shout out Vallynne, as I used their template they posted earlier in this thread. I put a lot of it in my own vernacular, but listed in similar bullet point form all the issues.
Also want to note that I had to do that list in a word document and attach it to the dispute, as the “what’s is the reason you are disputing this charge” window has like a 500 character limit. So I could only give the absolute basics there. The word document allowed me to flesh out an explanation of the boost system, how it works, what was expected, what was not delivered, etc.
As several others have said, would encourage those affected by this to follow suit. Money talks. It is obvious we are just a bunch of players shouting in a room that Blizzard is not interested in entering. This is how we make them listen.
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Good morning, still broken and now my bank is full of cloth just in case it gets fixed…
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15 days after post.
The Cataclysm launch in 4 days. I never see this type of thing happen.
It’s like nobody tested the service before putting in store for sale.
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Daily bump.
Cata in 4 days, my professions are still broken, character boost is still available even if its broken. much greed…
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Still waiting on my fix as well.
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Multi characters for myself and wife with this problem.
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Cataclysm Classic players: “Blizzard?.. Blizzard?.. Blizzard?”
seems they are not keen on fixing this one