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So I'm being blackmailed by SOEFollow

#1 Jun 08 2006 at 5:20 PM Rating: Decent
So I recently canceled my everquest 1 subsription and SOE charged for another 6 months anyway. My dad (the credit cards in his name) called his company and they took it off his bill. Now SOE won't allow me to log on to anything, EQ2, station access, anything, until we pay them for the everquest 1 subsricption that we canceled. We call the customer support and we have to jump through hoops to talk to anyone who knows what they're talking about and the CS lady in the call center in india and she refuses to connect us to a supervisor or anyone with any power.

Now I've been a paying customer of SOE for close to 5 years now and this is pathetic, how can they expect to run a business like this? They literally told us that I cannot do anything with my account until we pay them the $90 or so for the everquest subscription that we canceled.
#2 Jun 08 2006 at 6:00 PM Rating: Decent
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My understanding of SoE's terms of business is that they don't give refunds for game subscriptions. You cancel, then you can just keep playing until it expires (or so they think).

This info must be on their site somewhere?
#3 Jun 08 2006 at 6:01 PM Rating: Decent
Right but I canceled and they auto-resubscribed me, after I had canceled.
#4 Jun 08 2006 at 6:04 PM Rating: Decent
They have to allow you to talk to a supervisor, so ask for that first.

Can you prove you unsubscribed and then they renewed the account?
#5 Jun 08 2006 at 6:23 PM Rating: Decent
Quote:
They have to allow you to talk to a supervisor, so ask for that first.

Can you prove you unsubscribed and then they renewed the account?


She refused to connect me to a supervisor, and no, since I can't log onto my account at all even to check my information.
#6 Jun 08 2006 at 6:42 PM Rating: Good
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So long as you actually canceled your account before the rebilling in June then something is certainly wrong there. Call again, and keep bugging until you can get a sup.

When exactly did you cancel and when was the rebil date? Preferably the exact dates if you remember.
#7 Jun 08 2006 at 6:48 PM Rating: Decent
I canceled sometime around May 20th or so, and the rebill date was around the first. (Can't check exactly since I can't even viw the billing data.)
#8 Jun 08 2006 at 10:24 PM Rating: Good
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Huh... something is up there i'd say then for sure... Did you cancel EVERYTHING related to SOE? Like station access, ect? I'm not too sure on how their billing policy works, but it seems to me that that may cause a rebill since you probably have to have an active subscription to gain access to those things. If you had one of those "all access pass" thingies then you may also have inadvertanly caused a rebill... I'm not really sure, your best bet is to just push for a sup on the phone... don't take no for an answer.
#9 Jun 08 2006 at 10:48 PM Rating: Good
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The whole 'They have to allow you to speak with their supervisor' claim is a fallacy.

I worked customer assistance for a major auto manufacturer for a long time. There were in fact supervisors, people higher up the chain etc. However it was company policy (from what I understand most customer care centres have the same policy) that it is the customer rep that handles the case who is in charge. If that person can't do anything for you than the supervisor can't either.

Basically they hire the customer reps to talk to the customers. They hire the supervisors to administrate and co-ordinate the customer reps. They dont want to have the supervisor swamped with what basically is not his/her job and they also don't want to give the appearance that the customer service reps are ineffectual front men who can be circumvented.

The best advice I can give you is to call, speak to the person in a calm, friendly, polite tone. Answer any questions they have as concisely as correctly as you can. See if they can help you or at least direct you to someone who can.

However you do have to be ready to accept the fact that SOE might not have recieved your cancellation (for whatever reason, you might have timed out or they might have had a glitch on their end) and that you will be faced with the choice of either paying the bill or not playing another SOE game until you do.
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#10 Jun 08 2006 at 11:13 PM Rating: Good
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Well maybe not asking for a sup, but normally there are "teirs" to customer service. See if you can speak to someone on a higher level then the base you come in on.

Like every now and then when I call tech support for various things i'll get the call "escalated" because who I was talking to had either very little knowledge of the product, or just couldn't help in me in general because of how deep the problem may be or somehting.
#11 Jun 09 2006 at 1:17 AM Rating: Decent
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chances are when you cancells it didnt go through.
i was lucky when that happend to my xbox live, i managed to get a refund
#12 Jun 09 2006 at 3:18 AM Rating: Decent
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I honestly have played Sony games for years now, and have never had ANY problems with their billing. I honestly think the cancelation didnt go through, beyond that I dont know what to tell you. I know lots of people have had this happen ( with lots of companys). I always double check my subscriptions when I cancel to make sure it went through. The internet isnt fool proof ya know?

Honestly, it's not really blackmail, you (according to their records) have a delinquint payment. Therefore they cut you from their other services. Doesnt matter if you payed for EQ2, you still have an unpaid bill for another of their games. Any company would have cut you. That's just a normal business practice.

Sorry for your bum luck. Hope you can get it sorted out.

#13 Jun 09 2006 at 8:47 AM Rating: Good
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The idea of teirs is still not the same as 'let me speak to your supervisor'. Also tiers are more tech support than customer service, due to the whole technical expertise side of things.

Like others have said for whatever reasons it appears that his cancellation was not recieved by SOE. Whether that was due to his own incompetency, an internet connection time out, or an error on SOE's side we will never know. However SOE policy is more than likely to refuse all access until bills are paid. This is probably to prevent scammers from trying to weasel free time. They rather risk losing a couple honest customers than put themselves at risk of losing lots of money.
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#14 Jun 09 2006 at 9:12 AM Rating: Good
If costumore service cant help you, you can try emailing a vp or get a lawyer. There probably was a glitch when you canceled, and customer service can only tell you what is on the screen, you had your credit card default on payment.

I only have one experience with having to get my credit card to take back a payment, and that was a double billing from a car rental place. So I had all the proof I needed for when their lawyers called, and I threatened to have them charged with credit card fraud, amazing how they never called back.


Though I do think it is wrong for them to suspend all prepaid accounts as well. They should be refunding you the payments for those accounts as well. So it may just be best to get a lawyers advise, and for them to send a letter advising SoE on possible recourses.
#15 Jun 09 2006 at 9:35 AM Rating: Good
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Getting the issue successfully resolved hinges upon two things

1) The competence and quality of the customer rep you get on the phone.

2) Your interaction with that person.

If you approach them in a friendly manner and calmly explain your claim (without making it into a 20 min long life story) and ask them what you can do to resolve it they will usually try to do what they can.

If you approach them in a whiney or attacking manner demanding that they resolve the issue they will most likely read a pre-packaged statement out of the training manual as to why they can't help you and wish you a good day.

How you approach the customer rep makes all the difference in the world as to the quality of the help that you will recieve.

I hope you can get the issue resolved Dak.
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#16 Jun 09 2006 at 10:45 AM Rating: Decent
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LOOOOOOOONGGGG Post incoming. Just needed to get this off my chest.

Good advice, Bodhi, unless you are dealing with a mortgage company. Those coniving thieves will not do anything to work with you. Here is a little background on the happenings of my particular experience.

When one purchases a new home, you receive a mortgage. In order for your lender to make more money, they sell your loan to another company who, in turn, assumes your loan. This can happen at any time during the life of your loan and it can happen numerous times. Well, my girlfriend and I's loan was sold twice in the first six months of owning our home and here is where the problems began.

Our second lender sold our mortgage to CitiMortgage in April. Now our payments are due to CitiMortgage. No problem. We pay our payment on April 14th and move on with life. When we call CitiMortgage, their automated system tells us that we are now due for our June 1st payment. O really?! How did we skip a payment? We hit 0 to get to the operator and they confirm the same thing the automated system told us. SWEET!! Knowing that this may be too good to be true, we continue to call from April 15th until May 15th only to be told the same information.

Around the 16th of May, my girlfried started to receive calls from their automated system telling us that our May payment was late. Upon hearing this, we called a manager. The manager informed us to ignore the phone calls because we were definitely due for our June payment.

On Wednesday of this week, we received a letter from CitiMortgage informing us that they had made an error and the May and June payment were now due. As you can imagine, we flipped our sh'it. I called the number provided and asked to speak to the person listed on the letter. And this, my friends, is where I almost lost it. As it turns out, the woman currently on the phone was in a different department than the person on the letter. The woman I was conversing with was in...COLLECTIONS! It seems that our May payment was now 30 days past due and they had reported this to the Credit Bureau.

I then asked to speak to a supervisor and was put through to an "Account Manager". After 30 minutes of speaking with him I realized this person was not going to be able to help me. I asked to speak to his manager and, to my surprise, he patched me right through. After another 30 minute convo, she regrettfully informed me that she could not help and that it was our fault. The only thing she suggested was speaking to collections to try and set up a payment plan. Soooo...back to collections. I must have received the dumbest person in their department because he had no idea what was poppin'. I try the manager route again and am transferred to an "Account Supervisor". (What is with all these fancy titles.) It my nicest voice I tell him that I would really like to speak to a manager. He transfers me and 30 seconds later I hear a message letting me know that "this number is no longer in service." <Click>. An hour and a half of speaking to people, only to get disconnected.

Not one to be deterred, I call back and get a rep in collections again. I told her the spiel of how I was speaking to someone in her department and I was disconnected and if she could please transfer me back to them. To my surprise, she had never heard of either of those people because she was in a different location. At this point, I feel completely defeated.

To wrap things up, I was pretty much told that it was our fault and that we needed to make both payments, or else. We finally came to the compromise that the negative credit would be removed if we paid our mortgage up to date. I tried nice the entire time, complementing them on how they were handling the situation and letting them know that I was not angry with them, just the way their company handled things. I know this is partly my fault because you cannot just skip a mortgage payment, but when a manager and every other CSR that you speak to tells you to not worry about it, it tends to make you believe it.

The moral of this story and how it applies you to Dak: no matter how right you think you are or how wrong you may be treated, corporate America is the man and the man always wins.

Edited, Jun 9th 2006 at 11:41am EST by Mearyk
#17 Jun 10 2006 at 12:12 AM Rating: Decent
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Sounds to me like you thought your payment date was day x and it really was day y and you cancelled after the 6 month billing time. This is one reason why I never pay more than 1 month at a time for ANYTHING. I also double check to make sure that it says cancelled. I have a completely cancelled account with SOE and am able to log in just fine and check my cancellation date. I think they must have banned your account since you cancelled your credit card payment. I have read some other people have had this happen in a similar situation. I also print out the page after I cancel.

I don't remember but don't they email you saying you cancelled your account?
#18 Jun 10 2006 at 2:42 AM Rating: Good
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Well, at times it can be handy to just pay for a longer time frame and then not have to pay per month after. You do nomrally save a couple bucks, and with the price of gas and living on the rise... Of course, then you run into the problem that every x months you get a pretty large charge, so you do have to factor that in.

If you plan to play a game for a long time then it can be benefical to pay for like say, 3 months at a time, or even 6. Save a couple bucks and only have to worry about being billed every couple of months.
#19 Jun 10 2006 at 9:14 AM Rating: Good
Mearyk, that sounds like my first car loan. The first company was great, never a problem, until a year and a half in. They sold my account to GE capital, and no one told me, Ge capital didnt even give me any info about my new account until 6 months later. Meanwhile I kept making payments to my old account, and all of a sudden GE capital started calling about late payments, since I was never told they now had my loan I said I never had a loan with them, I said I wouldnt pay them. You would think that would speed them up, but nope, just the same thing every month until they finally sent me the paperwork about the deal.


The worst part of it, every month for the rest of the loan, they called saying I was late, even though when I checked after the phone call, they had already taken the money out of my account.


Edited, Jun 10th 2006 at 9:15am EST by dirges
#20 Jun 11 2006 at 12:09 PM Rating: Decent
I have have the same kinda thing happen on my citibank visa card. i was talked into a trial magazine subscription, did nt like it so I cancelled it. Well what do you know 2 years later I got billed for it again without my knowledge, which happen to put my over my limit, so of course i had to pay that fee too :). Dam I was mad! dont know what the heck happened, but neither did they. Anyway they took it off my bill. not the over the limit fee tho lol. Sony on the other hand has no heart and could care less what is right or wrong. They need to change their tune or they will have no custommers :). I have many stories to tell bout that but they will not give you what you want trust me.
#21 Jun 11 2006 at 4:25 PM Rating: Decent
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Well, if what most of us think happened, did indeed happen and the request timed out, they wont owe him anything. That is something that they would consider his fault, since he didnt double check after he cancelled.
#22 Jun 12 2006 at 3:57 PM Rating: Decent
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Sounds like SOE customer service at its best.

Even if somebody did by accident go 1 or 2 days over there renewal time you would think a GOOD, HONEST, and overall LEGIT business would be flexable for Customer Support's sake and refund there money. It just goes to show what a greedy company SOE is. This is why I will never pre-pay more then 3 months in advance. There is too many things they can do to ***** you.

Anybody remember the plat dup bug in eq1 a few years back. I don't remember exactly how it worked but in any case when they caught the people doing it they banned them. Now thats good dont' get me wrong, glad to get rid of them. However they also went in and Banned people who sold things to these people. Now how is it your fault if somebody has illegal plat and buys something off your bazaar merchant? So now Joe gamer who has 2 years prepaid eq1 is banned from the game forever. Do you think SOE is going to refund any of that 200 some odd dollars for prepaying 2 years? Nope they are going to pocket it. In fact even if you did do something wrong to get banned you should be legally entitled to get your money back that you prepaid for service.

I had some trouble with SOE a long time ago shortly after Luclin came out. I don't remember the details but I know I paid 3 months in advance and for some reason Everquest simply would not work with my PC. After calls to tech support etc it was concluded it simply would not run with my setup even though there was nothing in the documents etc saying it would not. OF course they refused to refund my money. So I called my Credit Card Company and they told me if a company is unable to provide you service for ANY REASON... let me repeat that... ANY REASON they are REQUIRED to return a portion if not all of your money. So my Credit Card company got me the entire 3 months time back and that account was basically destroyed.

Also to me ANY REASON should mean if they ban you for poor conduct (not that I ever plan on getting banned, but still). IF you list a illegal ebay item they refund your listing fees because its the law. Just because you put something in a EULA it does not mean its a binding contract. If I sold somebody a car and hid something in a contract saying "I have the right to come to your house and take your first born child if you don't pay for this in 1 week." Do you think I am goign to be able to take their first born child? Heck no, Laws supercede some game companies EULA.
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#23 Jun 13 2006 at 5:10 AM Rating: Decent
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I remember that dup bug fiasco. Not the greatest moment in SoE history.

Still though, they shouldnt refund your money if you get yourself banned. That's ignorant. (Though the dup bug BS is a bit different.)
If you knowingly break their rules, they shouldnt have to pay you back anything.
Think Blizzard refunds for it? Nope.
How about NCSoft? Huh-uh.
Square? No.
Why should SoE?

Also, I dont know many companies, if any, that would refund you after the subscribtion date. Most will tell you to have fun with their game for __mnths you just payed for.
#24 Jun 13 2006 at 7:05 AM Rating: Good
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I dunno there are so many variables

1) Is Dak telling us the whole story or just his side of it (not calling him a liar its just I take everything with a grain of salt)

2) Did he fail to cancel correctly? Was there a time out and SOE perhaps just not recieve his cancellation? Did he try to cancel 5 min before expiry and get burned?

I could go on and on.

Customer Service still does not come before the almight dollar with most corporations. If the sony rep is sitting there looking at their screen and see that they have no record of the cancellation and that perhaps 1 month of the 6 month subscription has passed and the person is looking for a refund they probably have no choice to refuse. Otherwise people could start buying 6 month passes and using them for a month then begging for a refund.

It sucks but you have to be realistic. Perhaps if Dak tries saying I want a refund but keep the money for the "x" number of days that have passed already.
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#25 Jun 13 2006 at 11:20 AM Rating: Decent
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Even if Dak didn't cancel correctly, or confirm the cancellation went through, SOE's position seems overly rigid and inflexible. They want to force him to pay for something he doesn't want and got by mistake? There's no excuse for that level of stupidity. What do they have to lose by letting this go? Losing the sale is far less important than losing the customer - that's why we have the old addage about the customer always being right...

Many big companies set these kind of rigid policies because they can't or won't deal with people directly because they don't trust their CS staff's judgement or they don't want to spend the money to hire people they can trust. All their customer sees is a big inflexible monolith that doesn't care about the individual circumstances that bring their problems about.

The worst inflexibility offenders are the large companies that have either been around for a long time or even worse, sprang into existence as big as they are. Companies that were grown from a small business don't forget how to treat people. If SOE was a small corner business there is no doubt the businessperson would work this out and wipe the EQ1 subscription and let the customer continue with their other services.

<end business ethics rant>
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