One MONTH after Paypal was removed with no notice and STILL no replacement ?!

[Jeanna]

Yes, me again. It's been over a month since you removed Paypal with zero notice to the playerbase and there still isn't any new reliable replacement. And before anyone tries to contradict me, they did indeed remove Paypal with zero notice - while UP stopped their points and game card, they're still up and running. SE gave no notice that they were removing UP completely.

What the heck is going on??

SE has got to have the worst business operations (and customer service) I've ever seen. How long can you seriously expect customers to sit around and wait so that they can play?

Hope for SE's sake you guys get this sorted out before Blizzard releases WoD and you end up losing players for good :/

I've been playing across 4 accounts since 2004 and not a single one of them has so much as a warning. Payment issues have more or less destroyed our LS and all but 3-4 people are left. I've enjoyed the game for a long time and miss playing but at this point, I'm so sick and tired of this BS and the way I've been treated by customer support, that if it's not fixed by the time WoD comes out, I'm just not going to bother to come back.

[doublesbrian]

I quit the game a few months ago, recently someone i know on another server invited me to his linkshell and i decided i would reactivate and mvoe server i paid my crysta fees and activated my account, i then checked how much it was to move server and went to add that crysta with the same card only a few minutes after i added the crysta to reactivate my account. It would not allow me so i tried 4 diffrent cards all with more than enough money on to cover the fees and none would work.

So now im stuck on a server i don't want to be on and i can't add any crysta or anything now. What kind of service is this ? I later learned that i now might be blocked from adding crysta for 30 days.

[bungiefanNA]

I quit the game a few months ago, recently someone i know on another server invited me to his linkshell and i decided i would reactivate and mvoe server i paid my crysta fees and activated my account, i then checked how much it was to move server and went to add that crysta with the same card only a few minutes after i added the crysta to reactivate my account. It would not allow me so i tried 4 diffrent cards all with more than enough money on to cover the fees and none would work.

So now im stuck on a server i don't want to be on and i can't add any crysta or anything now. What kind of service is this ? I later learned that i now might be blocked from adding crysta for 30 days.

Apparently GlobalCollect (SE's payment processor) won't allow multiple SE charges on the same day to the same card, and if you try, SE puts a payment block on the SquareEnix ID for a certain amount of time. You need to do all the billing at once, or wait until another business day to do an additional charge.

Unfortunately, we are having to deduce the rules ourselves since UltimatePay was removed as an option. The only way we get more information on what the rules actually are is for people to be blocked from paying.

[Xaphina]

Their website is showing false information on many different levels. There has been incorrect information on the website for many years now as well. I am not sure if this is covered under the false advertisement laws. A lawsuit could possibly be made for having bought a product and not being able to use it nor get a refund.

[Ris]

Calm down a little... they said they're working on it. Probably as quickly as they can, given the people that can't play right now.

[Angrymithra]

Calm down ? Are you for real ? It shouldn't take more than a full day to add paypal to there payment options but it has taken them over a month. I'm another new victum to this my crysta runs out in two days and i have tried to add it today and im getting 401 errors.

This is really unacceptable behaviour from a company as large as se, they are taking the piss out of us.

So come on se or reps when are we getting paypal give us a time and date and no more of this were working on it bs that you spew.

[bungiefanNA]

Calm down a little... they said they're working on it. Probably as quickly as they can, given the people that can't play right now.

As quickly as they can would have been to have an alternative in place as soon as they dropped UltimatePay, since they knew ahead of time they were going to be removing the option. People have linked threads back in July that said they were removing the option. It shouldn't be almost 6 months later and they still don't have a solution. Entire linkshells are being more than decimated by having people unable to pay their subscriptions. If they don't fix the problem quickly, a lot of people are going to find other ways to fill their time and stop paying attention to FFXI, meaning they won't come back to the game. Once someone stops playing an MMO, statistics say the majority of them don't come back, they jump to a new game or quit the genre altogether. Having a payment issue affect this much of the userbase for more than a week is going to seriously hurt the remaining population.

That's a lot for remaining players to get upset about. This is not a "remain calm" situation. This is a "yell at the company to get themself in gear and fix the problem" issue. If linkshells lose too many members to do their events, the remaining members without payment issues are going to jump ship to whatever their friends with payment issues are playing, to maintain their social groups. Something like this should never be allowed to happen, especially for so long. MMO attention spans are short if you have to go without the game.

It's also bad that SE hasn't well communicated the problem, and they're offering no recourse. If they wanted to retain players, they could at least reactivate the accounts that can't pay, or do a full everyone-plays-free while they fix it. They've already been reactivating all inactive accounts for 1-2 weeks at a time. Instead, we are getting silence until a large enough thread appeared for them to say they are working on a new option, but still couldn't give an ETA. It seems that SE only communicates with the player base about problems when we get upset enough,and minimally at that. They are reactive instead of proactive about our problems, and thus take longer than they should to fix things.

In light of that, remaining calm is the wrong choice. We only get things done when we get upset.

[Olor]

remaining calm is the wrong choice. We only get things done when we get upset.

Yeah they pretty much seem to ignore any suggestions or problems that don't involve the playerbase losing their minds over it. You'd think ensuring people could pay would be a priority. Instead they are derping around while people fall off the subscription roll.

[Jeanna]

Calm down a little... they said they're working on it. Probably as quickly as they can, given the people that can't play right now.

Really? Just no. These 601/401 errors have been constant for over a YEAR. A YEAR. There's a 120+ page thread on the 14 forums. People got around them before by using UP which is no longer available or gamecards which are not available for 11 . Now that UP is gone people are getting locked out of the game with no other options. They had a a very, very long time to look at these errors and think about fixing them; people certainly were complaining a lot about them.

I think the amount of anger/frustration people are having is pretty justified.

Here's the link to the 14 thread. Spans from September 2013 to today. (http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/threads/93493-Payment-Method-Registration-Errors-Error-Code-401-and-601)

I personally have only had my credit card go through ONCE in 7 months.

So yeah.

[Vasch]

I'm personally not affected by these issues, but it's wrecking my linkshell. I can say that there's going to be several of us quitting soon if our friends are locked out.

It would be nice if someone in the community team could chime in and let us know the progress of getting a new option added. Even if there's no new news to report, it's nice to hear something to know that our pleas aren't falling on deaf ears.

[Vanfrano]

I'm not affected either, I just wanted to bring my support since I find this issue outrageous and so direspectful.

[Vasch]

I'm not affected either, I just wanted to bring my support since I find this issue outrageous and so direspectful.
I know that their focus is FFXIV (God knows why...) but seriously ? Leaving players like this for so long ?
Do they have a secret plan to make people quit FFXI ? Keep in mind that it has been the most profitable FF thanks to us, and that a huge part of this profit was used for XIV, not even XI.
And no, a lot of us won't go to XIV if you manage to force us out of XI.
I actually came back running to XI after trying ARR.

It affects XIV too, but to a lesser extent. They have game time cards that allow them to bypass the credit card altogether. However, this doesn't help Legacy players, who have to pay via the website to get their lower price. There's also a thread about this issue on the XIV side that's been going since September of last year.

[Jeanna]

FF11 and FF14 share the exact same billing page and system, so this is just as much a problem with 14 as it is 11, which is why it's somewhat surprising they aren't getting off their asses faster to fix stuff. I guess their game time card solution is "good 'nuff", even though it's locking people out of some retainers.

I've had people trying to get me back into 14 but it's very quickly getting to the point where you couldn't pay me to play a SE game :/

[DarkStoneDragon]

Yea it's to the point that my Wife and I won't touch another SE MMO maybe something that's offline/co-op/co-op online, but we'er done with SE MMO's, we found out that the SE store's billing is done by Digital River (bought a time card for 14 and it was declined payed through paypal) and SE account management billing is run by Global Collect, so SE doesn't do any of their own billing, so we'er done with SE MMO's the lack of fixing billing issues and not doing something about RMT spammers, botters, hackers, ect. I have seen and reported a lot on 14 and seen in these forums it's happening here too, I guess money is more important, that's not a company we'd want to stick with, money hungry even if it's from the ones f'ing it up.

for those TL; DR people bottom line we quit, not touching another SE MMO, we don't support money hungry companies.

[bungiefanNA]

I'm not affected either, I just wanted to bring my support since I find this issue outrageous and so direspectful.
I know that their focus is FFXIV (God knows why...) but seriously ? Leaving players like this for so long ?
Do they have a secret plan to make people quit FFXI ? Keep in mind that it has been the most profitable FF thanks to us, and that a huge part of this profit was used for XIV, not even XI.
And no, a lot of us won't go to XIV if you manage to force us out of XI.
I actually came back running to XI after trying ARR.

Since FFXI and FFXIV share the same billing system, people with billing problems can't jump to FFXIV. As such, they'll find another game from another company to jump to, probably stop paying attention to this one, and drag any of their friends that still can pay. Having a situation where legitimate players can't access the game for so long is bad for the population. There's enough MMOs on the market now that attention span for them is easily taken away by another one. You can't afford to not have your customers be able to play your game. You may not be affected by the billing trouble, but it will affect you by lowering the population of your linkshell/server/social group.

[Zumi]

The way SE set this up is, the country that is on your SE account must be the same as the credit card you are using. For example you put US when you sign up for SE account but try to pay with a Canadian credit card it isn't going to work. Also country IP address must match. For example you can use a US credit card while on a trip to Japan to pay for the game because they will see you have a JP IP trying to pay with a US card.

This cuts down on RMT and people selling accounts, which is probably why they do it.

[Vasch]

for those TL; DR people bottom line we quit, not touching another SE MMO, we don't support money hungry companies.

They clearly don't seem very money hungry to me, considering they're turning away paying customers.

[DarkStoneDragon]

They clearly don't seem very money hungry to me, considering they're turning away paying customers.

The 14 cash shop.. yes it has a mount I like but, its 24.00 USD. Honestly I am like you guys I want to see them bring back paypal.

[Camiie]

The way SE set this up is, the country that is on your SE account must be the same as the credit card you are using. For example you put US when you sign up for SE account but try to pay with a Canadian credit card it isn't going to work. Also country IP address must match. For example you can use a US credit card while on a trip to Japan to pay for the game because they will see you have a JP IP trying to pay with a US card.

This cuts down on RMT and people selling accounts, which is probably why they do it.

You know what they say about good intentions and the road to hell.

[Jeanna]

40 days after and trying once every couple days, I still can't buy crysta or re-activate any of my characters. FORTY DAYS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

My CC has worked once or twice in the past so logic would suggest that it's not a problem with my card or with the address not matching, ect.

I have tried literally everything mentioned by se and others. Even went so far as to try different internet. It's either a 401 or a 601 every. single. time.