About customers using Japanese accounts in foregn countries. (billing issues)

[oliveira]

First, hello to all Square Enix staff involved on this new service.
I'm looking forward for having an pleasant experience with you, as just it been with the Final Fantasy XI product.

Firstly I've been playing Final Fantasy XI since july 2003 (I've been to Japan with a friend for visiting and each of us brought back a set of FFXI discs to play). He started earlier than me but in the end we played a lot together.

In conjunction with the Japanese FFXI account I've been purchasing several items related to the Final Fantasy XI game (including an NA Playstation 2 console with it's harddrive and all expansion discs) and every single boxed expansion that released so I could activate them and play in both Japanese and english.

Obviously I could just forget the Japanese account and start fresh since I have a full set of codes for all boxed expansions but that would be forgetting about all the friends I made on the game, all hard earned achievements and other found memories I've been pilling up since 2003. I don't want to abandon my character.

If I am told to start over I'll simply not do it and forget everything else.

Basically my problem is that the billing server on the Japanese PlayOnline service is refusing to complete the registration of new credit card with an "UCS-60096" error in the stage it attempts to check if the card is valid.

I had an card placed on the account in September 2008 which worked properly until it expirated last month. Since 2008 I was unable to purchase new content IDs but old pre-registered IDs were working fine.

I researched diligently on community forums and found out that several other people had been locked out from their accounts for the same reason.

If needed be I can proof ownership of the account with the original documentation from the game box, the registration card which was mailed from Square Enix to my friend's residence (he was kind enough to mail it to me here in Brazil) and everything else needed.

Thanks for your attention,
Oliveira.

[Zenoxio]

Billing server is basically down/congested right now.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/341-PlayOnline-UCS-60257-error

Has been for 5 days.

[EDIT] Unrelated to this issue though.

[oliveira]

Billing server is basically down/congested right now.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/341-PlayOnline-UCS-60257-error

Has been for 5 days.

I've been seeing "UCS-60096" since 2008, friend. I don't think it's related with the current congestion ... :3

[Zenoxio]

Oops sorry. I see SE changed it back in 2008 like you said.

[Lushipur]

learn to use webmoney. there are lot of guides and, if u need help, i can point to the right site.

[oliveira]

learn to use webmoney. there are lot of guides and, if u need help, i can point to the right site.

I want the issue properly fixed. To use webmoney I would need to pay an "prize" for an third person mediating the transaction for me with Square Enix. I don't want to do that.

I want to be free to pay for my game. I could do that easily with FFXIV why they can't let me play FFXI anymore ?
If this thread happen to be fruitless I'll have no choice but pursue the Webmoney route.

But honestly do you think I'm wrong for thinking they should allow me to use an proper credit card with my own FFXI account ? Why it worked before and can't work anymore now ? I'm sure there are better solutions than simply completely block international credit card purchases and then tell the customer they *do not put any kind of restriction for international purchases* on their Japanese billing service.

Omg I'm trying to give them money, why it has to be a fight to make them take my money ?

[bungiefan]

Non-Japanese banks can't verify billing information as fast as a Japanese POL account demands, so it rejects non-Japanese cards as of late-2008. Web Money is the only solution. SE has refused to allow a region change of accounts, and unless you speak Japanese, you can't contact the Japanese support center that can actually manipulate your account. The American center can't modify Japanese account data.

I've been in the same boat.

Is this vviper on Fenrir?

[oliveira]

Yep that's me. Good to see you're alive, Bungiefan :)

[bungiefanNA]

There is one other solution. I have email logs of what I had to do. I had to email JP support for 8 months straight fighting for a region change, using Google Translate to convert my emails to Japanese and posting the English text alongside (JP support refuses to use anything but Japanese since the 2003 American release. They spoke English in 2002-2003.). I had to explain all the reasons why it was unreasonable to not allow a region change for just one region during a 10 year period, where it's likely someone will move between countries for a work reason. In the end, they unlinked my POL ID from my JP SquareEnix account and linked it to my American one, and deleted my JP SE account. I can now pay in US Dollars, but I still have to buy Japanese registration codes for expansions. This also forced a new forum account. They said they would only ever do it once.

WebMoney was a possible solution, but it must be converted to Crysta. JP accounts can't use Crysta until they have a mailing address attached, and not having a real JP mailing address, I didn't want to risk my account being banned for using a fake address.

[Pixela]

I have the same issue, they won't accept your credit card. I have to pay via paypal buying crysta.

They may in-fact actually ban your account since you're playing it illegally from the wrong region, yes they really are that anal about it. Lately they are now actively blocking sales of expansions to incorrect regions etc, you would think that they wouldn't do these things since they would lose money from a long-term regular customer right? wrong. Square are very much that idiotic in all things related to money or customer interaction.

Try talking to customer service if you need some comic relief, they are among the worst in the industry. In almost every mmo CS team I've dealt with they will try really hard to fix whatever issue you have, Square Enix CS? You are lucky they will even talk to you for more than 2 mins without cutting you off with a copy and pasted useless answer.

[Afania]

I have the same issue, they won't accept your credit card. I have to pay via paypal buying crysta.

They may in-fact actually ban your account since you're playing it illegally from the wrong region, yes they really are that anal about it. Lately they are now actively blocking sales of expansions to incorrect regions etc, you would think that they wouldn't do these things since they would lose money from a long-term regular customer right? wrong. Square are very much that idiotic in all things related to money or customer interaction.

Try talking to customer service if you need some comic relief, they are among the worst in the industry. In almost every mmo CS team I've dealt with they will try really hard to fix whatever issue you have, Square Enix CS? You are lucky they will even talk to you for more than 2 mins without cutting you off with a copy and pasted useless answer.

Not that I'm defending for SE customer support, but blocking sales or IP ban none service region connection is very, very common in MMO industry. There are many games I can't get access to without VPN, nor even download the client.

[Pixela]

Not that I'm defending for SE customer support, but blocking sales or IP ban none service region connection is very, very common in MMO industry. There are many games I can't get access to without VPN, nor even download the client.

The only time this applies is if the game has different publishers for each region, even then it rarely actually applies since they don't want to lose a customer. As an eu player I played Tera NA, Aion NA and never once had an issue.

I've played wow from the wrong region too and had no issues at all with customer service or getting expansions. Square will actively try to stop you and they own publishing rights to all regions so it's just silly. I can understand them not wanting to you to buy a game from another region initially but if you have already bought it years ago and have been paying a sub and buying expansions for a long time why on earth would they do anything to hurt that?

Makes no sense to me.

[bungiefanNA]

Olievera lives in South America. There is no official client for him. They shipped Security Tokens to all regions except Africa when they released them though. I updated to say that I was able to get a region change, it was just a long fight with Google Translate assisting.

They shouldn't have to region-lock accounts, since the servers are shared instead of segregated. They already allowed American and European accounts to have a one-time region change when they forced the SquareEnix Account system, since a bunch of people in Europe imported the American version before the official 2006 European release. I had trouble with the region change because Japanese accounts were never offered it, and I linked to a SquareEnix Account as soon as I could get a Security Token, since it was required to use the token, and the token unlocked the Mog Satchel. Europe didn't get the region change option until 2010-2011, and Japan never got it. I started with a whole ton of importers on FFXIOnline.com and GameFAQs over a year before American release. Expansions cost me in equivalent currency, and average of about $40 each (double what American expansions ran). In 2009 they stopped accepting non-JP credit cards, and in 2011 they forced the move to SquareEnix accounts, which meant I could only use Crysta, and only if I was willing to link a fake address to my account and risk a ban for doing so. Instead, I fought for a region change, unable to play the game for 8 months so I could keep my 9 year old character (since it took me 8 years for my first level 75 and some items and quests I had completed aren't easy to get people together to complete on a new character).