Petition: clickandbuy the only way no,thanks.

[Maacha]

Those are reservations, it's not actually charging you, or so they say.

Other people who have posted about the ClickandBuy verifications back when FFXIV was beginning said they did not get refunds, they got credits to their "emoney" accounts. As of right now, they are actual charges, they are not marked as "pending" by my bank. Only time will tell if they are refunded or not, but those fees from my bank are likely permanent. Again, it's only a few cents, but after being told we would not have any fees...

[Maacha]

I think the silent majority is waiting for SE respond which probably won't happen until the the end of August when their face turn white and start pointing fingers after looking at the monthly subscription figures.

There won't be a shitstorm on these forums after Aug 31st when people discover the changes, because all those people will be locked out of the game and thus locked out of the forums... The shitstorm will happen on BG, Allah, FFXIAH etc. Sure hope SE still reads those...

[Nvr]

Again, it's only a few cents, but after being told we would not have any fees...

I hate bumming you out, but your statement shows $3.49 in charges.

it starts with -1.62, so you account started at 650.84 before the first charge, and you account ends with a 647.35 balance.

[Maacha]

I hate bumming you out, but your statement shows $3.49 in charges.

it starts with -1.62, so you account started at 650.84 before the first charge, and you account ends with a 647.35 balance.

I meant a few cents by the .05 international service fee charged by my bank after the C&B transaction, which I highly doubt I will have refunded even if C&B does refund those 2 test charges they made.

[Dragoy]

They are (or at least were not so long in the past) 're-funded' to your ClakandBuy account so technically they are not charges but... yeah.

[Lollerblades]

In the politest possible way . What a bag of wank... Why change it after 9 sodding years ? Yes FFXIV will eventually be billed this way but why can't you just leave use with PoL? Why change it ? Is it broken? Does it need fixing? NO! So why on earth do you need to change the whole paying system. I refuse to use click and buy as they are a big bag of crap . Paypal i could understand but this shoddy piece of shite? Is Squeenix on CRACK ?

[Knives]

To be fair, billing on POL wasn't perfect. You'd constantly hear about people being double-billed on some months, and if you resubscribed later in the month, you could essentially be paying $13 for five days of play. It's good that they wanted to change it.

However, this new system is not an improvement. People are quite literally getting locked out of playing over this. Many people will no longer have to worry about double billing, but many won't have to worry about that at all if they can't even buy Crysta or go through C&B due to their countries rejecting such offers. All this proves is that Square-Enix has a lot to learn about billing its customers, even nine years later.

[Zoner]

Those are reservations, it's not actually charging you, or so they say.

Last I checked reservations don't show up on paper bank statements

[Oddwaffle]

In the politest possible way . What a bag of wank... Why change it after 9 sodding years ? Yes FFXIV will eventually be billed this way but why can't you just leave use with PoL? Why change it ? Is it broken? Does it need fixing? NO! So why on earth do you need to change the whole paying system. I refuse to use click and buy as they are a big bag of crap . Paypal i could understand but this shoddy piece of shite? Is Squeenix on CRACK ?

To answer the 1st question: Why did SE change their payment method?

I think the answer is fairly obvious of why SE changed from POL to SquareEnix account management. They want to cut down costs and responsibilities of doing their whole payment/credit card thing. The whole charge back, angry customers, fraudulent cards, RMT, payment servers, international payments, currency conversion...etc those costs SE money to operate and SE is smart enough to know that it's not really good at those aspects. Shifting the billing department to a 3rd party firm is a fairly common practice for MMO companies as the 3rd party firms are usually experienced and efficient for these tasks.

SE account management does 2 things POL set out to do (and failed). #1 It collects all the online player base of SE for current and future games into 1 single database. #2 Acts as a platform to connects SE with its customers without the need to tie any games to act as an intermediary (such as FFXI player base connects with SE through POL while FFXIV player base is not) so SE can promote its game much easier and player can streamline several games with just 1 single account instead of several.

If you think about it, you will notice it's much easier to sell your used items when ebay acts as your seller and paypal acts as your billing agent. Your only concern would be to present the stuff, ship them and wait for money to roll in. You might get a few hick-cups here and there but it's much better than opening your own website and do everything on your own. SE is in the same position as you are. They are a game company that is used to make games and sell them in stores through a distribution agent. They aren't very good with the whole subscriptions and international currency/markets/laws/customers.

Now the 2nd and more important question you wanted to ask was: Why did SE select C&B for the international market?

For this question, your answer is as good as mine. I think C&B just sent a better sales person on SE door with a better offering on costs saving for SE. Or maybe SE was just throwing the lottery and C&B name showed up on a very big piece of paper and SE is clueless about NA/EU market business. Or perhaps Paypal has certain restrictions that SE doesn't like or they just couldn't work out the fine prints in their deals. Or perhaps SE is so bad that nobody wanted to deal with them and only C&B is the willing firm.

[Sparthos]

There won't be a shitstorm on these forums after Aug 31st when people discover the changes, because all those people will be locked out of the game and thus locked out of the forums... The shitstorm will happen on BG, Allah, FFXIAH etc. Sure hope SE still reads those...

Honest question: Do you immediately get locked out of these forums if your account goes inactive due to nonpayment?

I ask because last month when SEs biller goofed and locked out my character, I was still able to post on these boards.