Dev - Anyone from SE - Can we seriously please get a response to payment problems?

Yes, one of the triggers appears to be multiple charges to the same card in the same day. So if you reactivate your accounts via credit card, and then the same day try a server transfer, you just did two billings to the card, and you will likely get a 401 error. You want to get all the Crysta you will need for your transactions at once, not pay multiple fees in multiple transactions via credit card.

What I find most interesting. Yosuke Matsuda is reflected as having been a CPA on his linkedin profile. The man should be good at math... Yet SE doesn't understand they need to take payments to retain customers and most importantly, remain in business?

Yosuke Matsuda

The billing and payment policies need reviewed Matsudasan!

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Originally Posted by Jile

What I find most interesting. Yosuke Matsuda is reflected as having been a CPA on his linkedin profile. The man should be good at math... Yet SE doesn't understand they need to take payments to retain customers and most importantly, remain in business?

Yosuke Matsuda

The billing and payment policies need reviewed Matsudasan!

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Maybe he ended up at SE because he sucks. So far neither he or the company have given me reason to think otherwise.

The problem is there is nothing at all suspicious with reactivating and doing something like transferring or getting expansions and yet that still flags it. There is nothing suspicious about an account being autopaid by the same person for 11 years just because he tried to get an expansion for another account a couple of days earlier on the same card. I swear SE does not have a clue what suspicious means

Well, it's just like I thought. I went ahead and finally tried resubbing today (after my automatic billing stopped by itself last month due to a "payment processing error") and, lo and behold, I get the 601 error. Awesome. I guess I can try talking to support but I'll likely just have the same luck -- or lack thereof -- that the rest of you have been dealing with. I seriously can't get over how crazy it is that nothing has been done about this yet. They even come in here and give everyone a little false hope, only to not be heard from again for god knows how long. Effing ridiculous.

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Originally Posted by Seillan

Well, it's just like I thought. I went ahead and finally tried resubbing today (after my automatic billing stopped by itself last month due to a "payment processing error") and, lo and behold, I get the 601 error. Awesome. I guess I can try talking to support but I'll likely just have the same luck -- or lack thereof -- that the rest of you have been dealing with. I seriously can't get over how crazy it is that nothing has been done about this yet. They even come in here and give everyone a little false hope, only to not be heard from again for god knows how long. Effing ridiculous.

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We should make a new thread; "Games we are playing now instead of FFXI, now that our crysta has run out due to payment problems."

"Baldur's Gate" replay #5634 lol, casting fireball on shopkeepers!
"Cooking Mama" on Facebook.
"Exolon" on Amstrad 464.
"Daggerdale."

My crysta runs out soon and my Visa card is still being Zorro'd every time I use it. My UltimateGameCard crysta is bleeding away and when it does I've got a long list of old and new games to play through, instead of trying to get SE to take my money.:p

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Originally Posted by Stompa

We should make a new thread; "Games we are playing now instead of FFXI, now that our crysta has run out due to payment problems."

"Baldur's Gate" replay #5634 lol, casting fireball on shopkeepers!
"Cooking Mama" on Facebook.
"Exolon" on Amstrad 464.
"Daggerdale."

My crysta runs out soon and my Visa card is still being Zorro'd every time I use it. My UltimateGameCard crysta is bleeding away and when it does I've got a long list of old and new games to play through, instead of trying to get SE to take my money.:p

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That's not such a bad idea, although it's kind of depressing given the circumstances, heh.

I've been going through some old PSX rpgs that I never got around to back in the day. I just finished Persona 1 (finally) and now I'm thinking of working on Legend of Dragoon.

Others on my list:

- The Breath of Fire series, 1-4 at least
- The rest of the Persona series eventually
- Fallout 2 (beat the first one last year), along with 3 and New Vegas
- I bought the Baulder's Gate: Enhanced Edition when it was on sale last year but never got around to playing it. I might follow your lead on that one soon.
- Speaking of BG, have you ever tried Arcanum? That's another I'd like to go through.

There are plenty of other single player games I'd like to tackle but I'm trying not to overwhelm myself. On the online front -- since FFXI is likely not going to be possible for who knows how long -- I've been thinking of trying Elder Scrolls Online once they roll out their next big patch which is supposed to change a ton of stuff. I figure why start now only to have to learn a bunch of new systems when the patch hits. Dungeons and Dragons online is a possibility as well, but the learning curve in the game looks pretty steep for something I'd probably only be playing as a filler game. I do love being able to make many different interesting builds though. I've also been thinking of messing around again on this one Vanilla World of Warcraft private server again. I don't normally play servers like that, but it's pretty much the only version of WoW that I've ever enjoyed. It pales in comparison to the enjoyment and fulfillment I expected from FFXI of course, but what can you do?

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Originally Posted by Seillan

The Breath of Fire series, 1-4 at least

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I'm going to replay BOF series too. I was thinking that earlier today, I haven't played those games in a few years.

Arcanum was OK, I didn't really think it was great, but it was okay.

Baldurs Gate 1&2, plus the Throne Of Bhaal, Neverwinter Nights series. Those are awesome games, which I played from the late 90s, and only stopped playing when FFXI arrived and swallowed up all my free time lol. They're all great games and expansion spinoffs, but I like the original BG1 and 2 best. Great fun, and very imaginatively written story and characters.

I agree with you that I would rather play FFXI, but that if it isn't available due to SEAMS billing problems I will go with other games instead. I might have so much fun playing through my old games catalogue that I just don't miss FFXI and don't want to come back lol. :p

Well, that was fun. I just got off with a useless agent in support that gave me the BS spiel about how my card was blocked due to "suspicious activity." I guess you have to get lucky to get an agent that will actually help you with this issue. He told me my only option was to wait for other payment options "that will become available in the near future." Fat chance that I'll wait that long. I've never heard of a security system that was so touchy you got your payment locked out for literally doing nothing. When my automatic re-billing stopped initially, I hadn't even logged into my account for probably about a week prior. It makes no sense. Ugh, I'm ticked.

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Originally Posted by Stompa

I'm going to replay BOF series too. I was thinking that earlier today, I haven't played those games in a few years.

Arcanum was OK, I didn't really think it was great, but it was okay.

Baldurs Gate 1&2, plus the Throne Of Bhaal, Neverwinter Nights series. Those are awesome games, which I played from the late 90s, and only stopped playing when FFXI arrived and swallowed up all my free time lol. They're all great games and expansion spinoffs, but I like the original BG1 and 2 best. Great fun, and very imaginatively written story and characters.

I agree with you that I would rather play FFXI, but that if it isn't available due to SEAMS billing problems I will go with other games instead. I might have so much fun playing through my old games catalogue that I just don't miss FFXI and don't want to come back lol. :p

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Yeah, the BoF series is a childhood fav of mine. Another one that I still hold as one of the most unique, must-play rpgs of that era would have to be Earthbound. It comes off as a bit childish on the surface, but the deeper you get, the more you appreciate it. It also has one of the creepiest end bosses in the genre, heh.

Neverwinter Nights is another game I'd like to delve deeper in. I believe I still have a copy of it lying around somewhere, along with the 2nd. Maybe I'll finally get around to playing it now, considering these asinine payment issues (grr...)

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Originally Posted by Seillan

Well, that was fun. I just got off with a useless agent in support that gave me the BS spiel about how my card was blocked due to "suspicious activity." I guess you have to get lucky to get an agent that will actually help you with this issue. He told me my only option was to wait for other payment options "that will become available in the near future." Fat chance that I'll wait that long. I've never heard of a security system that was so touchy you got your payment locked out for literally doing nothing. When my automatic re-billing stopped initially, I hadn't even logged into my account for probably about a week prior. It makes no sense. Ugh, I'm ticked.

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Ah yes, but having a valid bank account, valid debit/credit card, and money in the bank is not enough. Even being a loyal customer for ten years doesn't help!

For payments to go through, you have to make the transaction during Full Moon, and during a Total Lunar Eclipse, and while chanting ancient sacred prayers in a room full of candles and shrines and incense burners. Don't forget to wear a lucky rabbit's foot, incase the other things are not enough. Happy New Year lol.

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Originally Posted by Stompa

Ah yes, but having a valid bank account, valid debit/credit card, and money in the bank is not enough. Even being a loyal customer for ten years doesn't help!

For payments to go through, you have to make the transaction during Full Moon, and during a Total Lunar Eclipse, and while chanting ancient sacred prayers in a room full of candles and shrines and incense burners. Don't forget to wear a lucky rabbit's foot, incase the other things are not enough. Happy New Year lol.

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I... may try this. :p

(Happy New Year!)

I thought I'd mention to those interested in knowing - SE does indeed read this thread, so take whatever comfort that is to you.

That said, since they just threatened to take my account and ban me for the wording I chose on my previous post, I bid you all farewell on the forum as this will be my final post here. See you in game! Hope you eventually get your accounts back online to enjoy the game again!

<take care>

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Originally Posted by Jile

I thought I'd mention to those interested in knowing - SE does indeed read this thread, so take whatever comfort that is to you.

That said, since they just threatened to take my account and ban me for the wording I chose on my previous post, I bid you all farewell on the forum as this will be my final post here. See you in game! Hope you eventually get your accounts back online to enjoy the game again!

<take care>

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Considering this is still an issue for some even on FFXIV, I'm starting to doubt anything will ever change -- regardless of how much we complain here. They apparently haven't lost enough people for it to make a difference; either that, or they just don't care. I've never seen a company that basically refused to take people's money, so I really don't know what to think. For the last three days, I've tried every different method I could find around the web for getting my payment to go through (waiting 24 hours in between each attempt) and it still isn't happening. The only options I haven't tried yet are buying Crytsa instead of the straight subscription (which I doubt will change anything) and using a different card. I only have a debit card myself, so I don't have many options in that regard.

Ugh, it's just so frustrating. The game is truly top notch, and I was really starting to get into it (after not being able to find an mmorpg that has been able to satiate my particular tastes for years) but the way they run the business side of their company is pathetic. And as for their Customer Service department, I'm not even sure why they have one -- it seems like they're unable to help you with almost anything.

Anyway, sorry for yet another rant, heh. I'll continue to keep my eye on the game to see if they ever get off their asses and fix this, but I'm not holding my breath at this point.

:p

EDIT : was able to pay with the new Paypal option and so posted again once to say thankyou for fixing it.

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Originally Posted by Stompa

We know they've read this thread, they replied to it around 10 pages ago lol.

They said they were working to install a Paypal option ASAP. So they have already "talked the talk" and now we are waiting for them to "walk the walk."

In my small FFXI gamer group, only a handful of people, three have already lost access to their accounts since UltimateGameCard stopped running, they were paying for crysta with Paypal/UGC and now their crysta has expired. My own UGC/Paypal crysta expires in March. All three of my friends (and myself) have tried to pay using debit/credit cards and experienced Error Lockout problems on SEAMS site. So they have abandoned FFXI now.

How many people have stopped playing due to payment problems since the Click&Buy disaster? When at least four people I know quit the game due to Click&Buy's larcenous brigandry treatment of customers. How many more people have stopped playing in the years following C&B, due to SEAMS website Error Lockouts? How many more people have stopped playing since Paypal/UGC option expired?

My guess is that the answer is "quite a lot of people" have stopped playing FFXI in the last 2 years due to payment issues. And in the case of my friends, these were model players, money in the bank, valid cards, great in-game behaviour / obey the TOS etc. / no cheats / always helping new players etc. Those friends are gone from the game now because of C&B and SEAMS website payment problems, and because UGC/Paypal is finished.

This is my last post here on this forum, ever. I've played FFXI since 2004 and I have said its the best videogame ever made. I'd love to keep playing it, and I have money / valid bank cards / bank account / flawless Paypal history etc. There is no reason at all why SE doesn't accept my money from my UK bank, or the money from my half-dozen friends who no longer play the game due to SE randomly not accepting money from their valid EU/US/Canada bank accounts. Its a total mess, and with this sentence I wash my hands of the whole sorry affair. I'll take my money to other games where it is welcomed with open arms.

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I was conflicted about liking your post since you said it will be your last, but given the circumstances, I can understand completely :(. This situation is frustrating enough for me and I'm still a relatively new player (well, I played pretty heavily at one point but it was around the release era.) For someone who's been as loyal to this company as you have, and a model customer for so many years to boot, I can imagine how big of an insult this is to you. To be locked out of something you've devoted so much time and effort to -- for no fault of your own -- is unacceptable, especially when they have the gall to try and pin it on us for "suspicious activity" or other such nonsense. Just thinking about it pisses me off, arrg.

Anyway, I enjoyed the few back & forths we had around here and I'd like to think that one day, when/if SE decides to get their sh*t together, we might have a few more. If not, I wish you the best and I hope you find another "home" that is just as fulfilling :).

Maybe if we post this a few more times, they'll add some more payment options.

http://img4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb2...ey-card-34.jpg

Greetings, everyone,

You will be pleased to hear that PayPal is now available to use as a method of purchasing Crysta!

We understand that many of you have been waiting patiently to utilize this payment option and we wish to thank you for your patience while we worked to get it implemented.

hey Grekumah, your post isn't showing up on the dev tracker here like it is on the other boards. Just thought you should know.

http://i61.tinypic.com/2gw98ww.jpg

Summarizes my feelings.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings, everyone,

You will be pleased to hear that PayPal is now available to use as a method of purchasing Crysta!

We understand that many of you have been waiting patiently to utilize this payment option and we wish to thank you for your patience while we worked to get it implemented.

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Funny, I was just thinking about a possible PayPal implementation just yesterday (I figured that would be the choice.) I fear some irreparable damage has been done to the once very dedicated vets that were affected by this for so long, but at least now if they decide to put faith in you guys again, they have the option. I've been getting into other games lately so I'm not sure if/when I'll be coming back, but it's nice to know I won't be locked out of my account if I do.

Lol. Only 3.5 months late.

Too bad most everyone has moved on by now.

I've been locked out of my account since Oct 2. Maybe if you guys give me all trusts, random stuff etc I missed from the billion different short campaigns since I wasn't able to play during that time maybe I'll come back.

Edit: not to mention this doesn't fix the 401 etc problems to start with. Any plan on actually fixing that this century?

It's interesting how much more negative the tone here is, compared to the FFXIV forum...

While not realizing the implications of dropping their payment processor that handled paypal *is* a bit of an oversight... they probably added Paypal back as fast as they could. Keep in mind payment services aren't that trivial to get set up, there's a lot of requirements and review and potential for audits and things like that.

But, whatever else, at least it's an option again now.

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Originally Posted by Jeanna

Lol. Only 3.5 months late.

Too bad most everyone has moved on by now.

I've been locked out of my account since Oct 2. Maybe if you guys give me all trusts, random stuff etc I missed from the billion different short campaigns since I wasn't able to play during that time maybe I'll come back.

Edit: not to mention this doesn't fix the 401 etc problems to start with. Any plan on actually fixing that this century?

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Good point. I'm still pretty PO'ed that I was basically accused of "suspicious activity" with my own debit card -- the same one I had been using for months prior. I can only imagine how much of a slap in the face it was/is for those of you that have been loyal customers for so long.

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Originally Posted by Ris

It's interesting how much more negative the tone here is, compared to the FFXIV forum...

While not realizing the implications of dropping their payment processor that handled paypal *is* a bit of an oversight... they probably added Paypal back as fast as they could. Keep in mind payment services aren't that trivial to get set up, there's a lot of requirements and review and potential for audits and things like that.

But, whatever else, at least it's an option again now.

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If they hadn't taken away the third party option that was already there, people probably wouldn't have been nearly as pissed about it. As far as I'm concerned, SE brought this entirely on themselves and they deserve any lost business that comes from it.

Edit: And let's of course not forget about the people that had their accounts locked for upwards of 30 days because they had no warnings about repeated payment attempts. I wonder how many of those are still in effect...

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Originally Posted by Ris

It's interesting how much more negative the tone here is, compared to the FFXIV forum...

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Don't get me wrong, it's nice they re-added Paypal after so long. It's still only a band-aid fix to a much, much larger problem.

Their payment system is still punitive and ridiculous beyond belief. Errors galore, with no explanation for those errors and the consequences involved with them. You can lock yourself out of your account for 30 days and not even know you're doing it. Stupid. NA support is completely useless and can't help or remove the blocks. Heck they can't even tell you how long the block is. The best they can do is guess.

Not to mention they removed paypal with zero notice in the first place. (Which is what I think upset people the most.. while I can't speak for most people I would have greatly preferred knowing, and I would've stocked up on max crysta).

Add in the domino effect where when a few people in a LS/group are unable to play for long periods of times, so their friends end up quitting or moving on too. Who wants to come back to a small, dying game like this after all their friends have moved on?

When you buy any game, even an MMO, it's pretty reasonable that one should be able to actually play it. Locking people out of an MMO for a month or months at a time is pretty shitty. People are gonna find other things to do with their time and likely aren't going to bother to come back when they find something else to fill their time with.

If I get bored enough I might play again but there's some pretty damn good reasons for people to be pretty bitter about this.

Edit: I really hope their paypal method isn't subject to the same amount of scrunity their credit card system is or people are just gonna continue to have the same problems.

PS: it looks like it's not se that actually added paypal, it was global collect. Which is probably what we were waiting so long for.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings, everyone,

You will be pleased to hear that PayPal is now available to use as a method of purchasing Crysta!

We understand that many of you have been waiting patiently to utilize this payment option and we wish to thank you for your patience while we worked to get it implemented.

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Thankyou!

I just put 9999 crysta in my account, using the new Paypal option! It was very easy and simple, just clicked the PAYPAL button and was swiftly sent to my secure Paypal ID page, and the Crysta was up on SEAMS page in under a minute.

Excellant, thankyou very much for fixing this, SE.

Now to start messaging my friends to see if they want to come back to FFXI, now that they can pay for it again. I think most of my friends will come back, only a few of them made SE Voodoo Dolls and stuck lots of pins into them.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings, everyone,

You will be pleased to hear that PayPal is now available to use as a method of purchasing Crysta!

We understand that many of you have been waiting patiently to utilize this payment option and we wish to thank you for your patience while we worked to get it implemented.

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Fantastic, I'll assume since you're a global company that I am now able to use PayPal on my Japanese account so I don't have to go through the painful and expensive processor buying Webmoney right? Since you refuse to accept payment from other regions even though we live in a global economy and people are more mobile today that ever before.

J/K

Please fix the gaijin payment options.

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Originally Posted by Ris

It's interesting how much more negative the tone here is, compared to the FFXIV forum...

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It's well deserved, trust me.

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Originally Posted by Grekumah

Greetings, everyone,

You will be pleased to hear that PayPal is now available to use as a method of purchasing Crysta!

We understand that many of you have been waiting patiently to utilize this payment option and we wish to thank you for your patience while we worked to get it implemented.

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Question though will this occasional give us that weird random lockouts that credit cards randomly will if you do something as simple using it twice in the same day?

God guys, they fixed it, the least you could do is be positive and not whine even more about it.

From what I understand, they added the old work around back, they didn't fix the issues people had as a whole. Paypal so far as I know has always been a work around for many and adding that back helps a ton, but it's not a true fix. That said... I don't know exactly, but~ yeah, even though they took forever I'll give them credit, they didn't just ignore the problem entirely and they finally fixed it.

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Originally Posted by Jeanna

Lol. Only 3.5 months late.

Too bad most everyone has moved on by now.

I've been locked out of my account since Oct 2. Maybe if you guys give me all trusts, random stuff etc I missed from the billion different short campaigns since I wasn't able to play during that time maybe I'll come back.

Edit: not to mention this doesn't fix the 401 etc problems to start with. Any plan on actually fixing that this century?

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if you're not subbed how are you posting? Yes, the forum has cookies, but their expiry is pretty short. I was kicked off within days of a subscription lapse.

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Originally Posted by Alhanelem

if you're not subbed how are you posting? Yes, the forum has cookies, but their expiry is pretty short. I was kicked off within days of a subscription lapse.

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I haven't been able to sub for close to a month and I can still post.

The negativity is because FFXIV is fairly young, FFXI isn't, and FFXIV at least has prepaid time cards, which FFXI doesn't. Many of the people affected by this in FFXI lost their only way to pay for the game, while FFXIV had a couple other ways.

As far as short forum cookies, they're not, just certain forum actions cause the server to renew the cookie, which fails if your sub is up. I was able to post for about a year with an inactive subscription by avoiding those actions, during my 2012-2013 break due to financial crisis.

PayPal isn't an option for Japanese accounts because they have prepaid WebMoney cards available all over their country. SE hasn't gotten with the times to expect people to move internationally. I had to fight for 8 months in 2011 to get a region change so I could use my account from JP launch with NA payment methods, sicne I moved and they locked out non-JP cards from processing on JP accounts. SuToCorp was getting to be too expensive with their profit markup and the exchange rate, and to use it for Crysta I would have had to register a false JP mailing address and risk an account ban if they noticed. The response was finally that they would do a region change once in the life of the account. Ugh, and the wife wants to move to Europe after she gets her college degree.

Ive been able to post without having an active acount til the last time in december. I had one of my two characters on my account active (not my main one) and suddenly everytime i opened the forums it forced me to the page to pick my character. right now i have both characters goin and cant switch back to my main character and its very annoying.

While this might not be entirely related to the issue people were describing here, it's rather similar, and since positive feedback is so rare to find, I'll write about a somewhat recent experience of mine here.

Firstly, I'm in the Europe, and secondly, I more than likely caused my 401 (and other) errors myself.

I've used a Visa Electron to buy Crysta (handled by Global Collect, if memory serves me right-like), and sometimes it would error out once or twice (perhaps I mistyped something). About two months ago, when it was doing that, it seemed to finally be a permanent issue for me as well. I decided to see if I can make the error change (I forget the other error message I got; it looked like the page did not load correctly, and I think it was telling me I had no permission to access something).

So I went and tried to pay repeatedly, without pause, for about twenty (20) times.

At some point, I went to look at my bank account, and just a day or few ago, the bank had taken its service fees... which had put me about 1 EUR below what I needed to pay for the crysta!

Oopsies ! !! !

I contacted the support, and within few days, the payment method (and the same card) worked again. I had to send a picture of an ID and the bank card as proof that I'm indeed the owner, or that I at least possess both of them...


I often read about the horror stories with regards to the SqEX customer support, but I can honestly say that I've had a few good ones myself!

It's unforgivable (to say the least) what others have had to go through (or not been getting through even).

I did make sure to point out that a more telling error message could be helpful, instead of just throwing a 401, without really saying what's going on... not that the customer support can affect any of that, I imagine.


Blubb!

So this was originally caused by SE dropping PayPal support? Did I read that correctly?

Yes, when they dropped UltimatePay, the PayPal option went with it, becuase it was provided by UltimatePay. It took them several months to bring the option back under their own provision. Paired with SE's payment processor not being liked by some banks, many people couldn't pay at all during that time.

Still wish SE could introduce their own gametime card like XIV did. ^^;