So there is an offer right now to get a Sylverian Dreamer mount with the purchase of a 6-month subscription. I don’t buy items from the store very often, and only if it is a good sale or a rare occasion when I treat myself to something I really wanted for awhile. I have been scrounging up gold since my last purchase and was planning to buy either some frog mounts, or the new vendor reputation mounts (in game) so I can work on my next collection achievement… but then I saw this offer. I had gotten the Dreadwake when it had a similar promotion, which at the time I had also BARELY gotten enough gold together for and I was happy with it even though it left me essentially broke in game. I was torn but decided to take the same hit to my gold savings and go for it again.
Unfortunately, after buying 5 tokens on the AH and then transferring that to balance I realize that you CAN’T get that offer using balance! It has to be paid with a credit card or paypal! As soon as I saw that I realized how screwed over I was… because I figured there is no way to refund an AH purchased token - especially once you have already claimed it! Sent in a ticket anyway, and of course they confirmed nothing can be done… which absolutely sucks but I definitely saw it coming.
There IS a ‘heads up - some payments methods can’t be used for subscription payments’ message… but that doesn’t even show up on the page for the promotion. You have to actually click through to ‘subscribe now’ before you even see it, which you aren’t likely to do until you are trying to actually make the purchase! Yes in hindsight it makes sense that something involving a recurring payment would want a credit card instead of balance, however given the recent promotion for the Dreadwake the setup for this feels somewhat underhanded and sneaky/misleading. Blizzard would still have been paid for 6 months of game time if it was paid with balance, the only difference is the recurring subscription. Is it because they wouldn’t be able to charge me again if I forgot to renew?! Because that is the only difference I can see here!
So now I have no mount, and all my gold I was planning to use IN game is now stuck in my account balance leaving all of my characters essentially broke. I literally just burst into tears when I realized (yes it’s pathetic but this was just the icing on the cake for an overly rough week… it all added up) Maybe tomorrow I can laugh it off but for now I am just pissed off and want to blow up Azeroth.
I know this probably won’t be received well, but I just needed to rant… because this absolutely sucks.
That sucks. They could at least convert them back into tokens for you so you could apply them to your game time. I don’t see why they can’t allow players to use battle.net balance pretty rotten IMO especially since they make an extra $5 per token anyways.
To be fair, I CAN still purchase game time per month with the balance. The main issue right now is that I would have preferred to keep that as gold instead so I could use it in game (other than a token for a month of time every now and then).
Thanks for your input Nusku, but I would not have put any of this in account balance for the mount if it didn’t come with the 6 months. Maybe one day if it is part of a really good sale I will consider it, I just wish that fine print would be put on the main promotion page so it is clear - I know I’m not the only person that did this.
Please try to actually read what people have the issue with before you kick them when they’re down.
WTF Blizzard? I just got screwed by this as well. There was no warning and I had about $60 on my account so I added another $20 to grab the 6 months sub with mount and it won’t let me! I would not have added more balance to my account had I known this!
I purchased the previous promotion (pirate ship mount) sub time just fine with balance credit. This is a scummy bait and switch.
They either need to place warning text on the product page making it clear you can’t use balance credit or they need to allow it. We shouldn’t have to search forums, reddit, and help articles to find that information out.
I am here to let you know you are in the right and all the actiblizzion fanboys are wrong. There should be no difference between subscription and gametime in the end you are an active account for 180 days. This is just another example of them gating mounts behind real money purchases and not being obtainable by playing the game and using gold earnt to buy it via tokens. It is also predatory because they are hoping people sign up to a 6 month recurring who may not always keep their sub active and then forget to cancel it and then they get another 6 months out of the person which looks good to their shareholders.
Use your account balance to buy the mount direct from the store, then use the remaining account balance to buy some tokens and sell them on the AH to get your gold back.
This was a learning experience, but it’s not the end of the world.