So… I’m pretty pissed at the moment. I’ve been playing since vanilla and have had an active subscription almost the entire time (usually month-to-month but sometimes longer just depending on what I felt like doing and could afford at the time). But since Blizzard started rewarding mounts and other items for people with 6 month or longer subs, I’ve switched to doing that.
My current 6 month recurring sub was set to renew in March so in February I decided to upgrade to a yearly sub. It was taking longer than I thought it should to be rewarded the most recent Charming Courier mount reward, so I first went to the forums to look for answers and then eventually submitted and in-game ticket.
The first response I got said: “As I understand, you have not received the Charming Courier mount despite having signed up for a 12-month subscription earlier this year. Checking your account, I’ve noticed that you currently have no active subscription, which means you are currently not eligible for the mount. In order to receive rewards from promotional subscriptions, you need to keep those subscriptions active, as it isn’t enough to just have time. If you sign up again for the 12-month subscription now, you might get charged right away since you’ll also receive rewards and game time at once, instead of waiting for your current game time to end.”
The definition of “active” didn’t make sense to me. I had a 12-month subscription. I had an active payment method on file. I hadn’t just purchased game time. So, I respond with: “There must be a problem with your back end because I 100% purchased a 12-month recurring sub for the $169.75 (after tax) price that’s supposed to renew every 12 months.” and I then gave the Order ID number for the purchase.
I once again got a response that said my sub was not active from a different GM: “Okay, XXXX, I just went ahead and checked your sub status and found out that your sub is not active, your sub needs to be active and make sure you choose the 12-month sub and not any other option after that you will get the mount.”
I responded with: “Is there any other yearly subscription offer that Blizzard sells that DOES NOT make it recur? Because I guarantee you, I did not make that purchase and then cancel my subscription or remove my debit card information. There are also quite a few people on the forums saying they do in fact have recurring subs only to be told by CS that their sub is not active. So, this isn’t an insolate incident. Please do whatever you need to on the back end to sup my sub to recur (as it should have been when I made the 12-month sub purchase so that I’m not doling out any more money. If you cannot do that on your own, please escalate this to the next level of customer service.”
The next response I got was from yet another GM: "I have looked into your concerns about your subscription and after a thorough investigation, I can confirm that your billing profile was indeed removed on July 4th. Consequently, this led to the cancellation of the subscription’s recurring status. Unfortunately, we are unable to reinstate the recurring status from our end, and we appreciate your understanding in this matter. I hope this clarifies the situation for you. Should you decide to enjoy the special rewards, please feel free to set up a new subscription at your convenience.
This is when it clicked it for me. At the end of June, I noticed a fraudulent charge on my banking statement. I called my bank to start the process of challenging this charge and getting it removed. My bank informed me that to do this I had to have my debit card cancelled and a new one issued. I had no choice in the matter. And it was a massive PITA because I had to go through and change my payment method on every recurring bill I had plus all websites like Amazon, etc.
I did this as soon as I got the new card in the mail. So, I had not “removed my billing profile”. I had simply updated the card on file. I removed the old card and added the new card on the same day. There was no gap, and I still had 7 months before until my subscription would renew where this would be remotely relevant.
I explained all of this context in my follow up reply, but I was still told: “Please note that by removing the billing you previously had, you cancelled the recurring subscription and now you will need to re-add it. Customer Support cannot grant you this reward, as this is an automatic reward that comes from having meeting the right conditions. You may read more about it here: https://support.blizzard.come/article/000283409. I know that this isn’t the answer you were hoping for, but we do hope that you can be understanding our limitations.”
The response I just submitted was: “If this is the case then here is my proposed recommendation: Refund me a prorated amount of the $169.75 for the amount of time left on the 12-month subscription I paid for to the card that is now on file. Once that goes through, I will purchase a new 12-month sub.”
Regardless of how this plays out, something needs to change with this process. Simply updating your payment method on an active recurring sub should not “cancel” it. That’s absolute… I’ll just say garbage to keep it clean so hopefully someone from Blizz will respond. This should NOT be how things work. People make changes to their payment method for any number of reasons. Doing so should not have any kind of negative effect on your account. Especially when it comes to large lump sum purchases for subscriptions.
If CS cannot refund me this prorated amount, then I guess I’m SOL on this mount. I’m NOT going to shell out even more money than I already have for it.
Do better, Blizz. The payment method on file shouldn’t matter until it’s time for the subscription to ACTUALLY renew.