SE is against the U.S.Military

It's not just US Military, it's anyone who moves from one region to another that they are against with their billing policies. Anyone who has to travel internationally for work or school is potentially in trouble. You cannot change the region of your account, and you cannot get account support from a support center foreign to your account. If you get a Japanese copy there, because it's common, you can't have American support help you, and if you don't speak business Japanese well enough, the Japanese support center won't talk to you. Non-Japanese VISA and MasterCards also won't clear billing on a Japanese account. Non-American banks rarely issue 3D Secured cards, so you can't pay the fee if you end up out of country dealing with a local bank.

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Originally Posted by bungiefan

It's not just US Military, it's anyone who moves from one region to another that they are against with their billing policies. Anyone who has to travel internationally for work or school is potentially in trouble. You cannot change the region of your account, and you cannot get account support from a support center foreign to your account. If you get a Japanese copy there, because it's common, you can't have American support help you, and if you don't speak business Japanese well enough, the Japanese support center won't talk to you. Non-Japanese VISA and MasterCards also won't clear billing on a Japanese account. Non-American banks rarely issue 3D Secured cards, so you can't pay the fee if you end up out of country dealing with a local bank.

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Nah,i was angry an frustrated when i posted this.I have been in Okinawa for 3 years with no probs,i moved afew times overseas and had no probs.Turns out it was an outside issue that my isp resolved finally.Though i would figure it to be harder if ur here on a work visa vs being military.

OP, your message wasn't very clear to me, as to why SE is responsible for your American ISP problems, but since you live in Okinawa (lucky you) why don't you simply subscribe to a Japanese ISP? That would solve your problem and you'd probably have a much better traffic and service. You could get WiMax for instance, it works on Okinawa-hontou and you can play FFXI with it.

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Originally Posted by bungiefan

It's not just US Military, it's anyone who moves from one region to another that they are against with their billing policies. Anyone who has to travel internationally for work or school is potentially in trouble. You cannot change the region of your account, and you cannot get account support from a support center foreign to your account. If you get a Japanese copy there, because it's common, you can't have American support help you, and if you don't speak business Japanese well enough, the Japanese support center won't talk to you. Non-Japanese VISA and MasterCards also won't clear billing on a Japanese account. Non-American banks rarely issue 3D Secured cards, so you can't pay the fee if you end up out of country dealing with a local bank.

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It would be best if all companies had multi-language support... but then again, if you're buying a Japanese copy of a Japanese game in Japan, why would the company be offering support in English? It's not like English is a major language in Japan; if anything, they'd have Chinese and Korean before English.

I don't know where it was said banks outside the US don't have 3D Secured cards, but that's incorrect.

I agree it's unfair to block non-Japanese cards... if anything, you could always try the other payments options.

3D cards are uncommon outside the US. I am using WebMoney, but I have to import it at additional cost, since you can't buy it from the WebMoney site without a Japanese address and credit card. There's the currency conversion, plus a profit margin of 10% or so for the shop selling me the card code via email The other option was to lose my account completely.

My issue is that living in the US now, I can't talk to US customer support because they can't view or modify my billing information, and the Japanese support center is international long distance with a time difference. They also used to speak English before NA release. The support centers should be able to talk to each other or at least access accounts from anywhere. If you move, you can't convert the account. You can't even punch in your current correct address.