This weekends billing mishap.

[Gades]

Well as most of you have already no doubt noticed by now, some (or all) of your content ID's have been cancelled without any of your knowledge. Furthermore, Square has failed to properly inform their customers of what their issue really is.

Personally I was irritated by this billing and service mishap, (who wouldn't be?) and although I was willing to re-activate my ID's myself I had to do my own research just to proceed through the steps necessary to do so. I'm going to try and outline the steps you'll need to go through in order to re-activate your ID's yourself in an attempt to make up for Square's lack of output information, but I also would like to take the time to express my irritation through this course of events.

First of all, you WILL need to update your billing information (in my case I had to put in all my pre-existing credit card information in again via the POL menu, located in the main menu as service and support >> membership section. when you get to that menu you need to select the tab at the bottom of the screen and scroll down to "update payment information" from there just input all your old info. even if it seems to be there already, you will need to put it in if your id's have been cancelled and you are unable to re-activate them.

After you input all the required information through there you'll be redirected to an authentication website where you'll have to login with your credit card (or what have you) login information. Once this is complete you should be able to get your content id's reactivated as per usual in the ffxi section of the playonline viewer.

When I originally tried to create this thread, I was blocked from even logging into the forums because I had not selected a main character or setup a forum account before this incident. That's nonsense in itself, because I could no longer even contact anyone with my problem via the forums. I was entirely locked out - as a result of this billing mishap, which I was trying to log on to complain about, no less. It goes without saying that I could not get a representative on chat or the phone because their office business hours have ended. They run an online service worldwide 24/7 but lack the necessary 24/7 support that is required to keep their customers satisfied.

Square, if you can read this you need to seriously re-consider how you treat your customers. I was heavily insulted by how I was treated after this incident, and I'm sure many others world-wide share this sentiment on a regular basis when dealing with you. If you continue to act this way in the future, you can expect that one day, you will truly create a final fantasy, and be brought back to the days when you first created the genre (facing bankruptcy and all). It is my hope that you learn to treat your customers better in the future because of this.

I do enjoy your games, artwork, and music.
I do not enjoy how we, your customers are often times treated.

[Octaviane]

I concur.

With respect SE/PoL. A 24/7 game needs 24/7 support. The players pay, they follow, for the most part, the rules in the ToS. You are the ONLY company, worldwide that makes players jump through hoops to get an account re-activated. No credit card company, bank or any other service acts in this manner, nor would they be allowed to. YOU are responsible for what happened this weekend just as you always are, you post a deplorable excuse for it then offer no Customer Support for people to call and get help. It's not always as simple as getting your account re-activated.

Sadly, we are going to have to jump through more hoops to transfer accounts to an SE account. You claim it's for an additional layer of Security. Don't we have enough already? Goodness knows how many more people will lose their Content ID's during that process.

If you have any legitimate reason for this happening on an almost monthly basis to hundreds of paying customers, please outline them for us so we can better understand why it is that you have so many problems with your billing partner each month and why, when Customer Service is able to be contacted, they dish out the same answers or put people on hold and don't come back.

Thank you.

[Runespider]

They don't need 24/7 support, they just shouldn't do maintenance on the registration server at the time of billing, on a weekend...maybe?

[Lutschfactor]

@rune. actually yes they need 24/7 support. no reason there is something open and run 24/7 and not have anyone at all that can ever help during anything. this is completly ridicilous. there is no need for me to enter the same info i have been using the past 3 years. it should not have been taken away from me to begin with. and then for them to not even fix it. its all kids of fucked up on their end. and not to even let us know anything. shitty company i wish i could easily to the BBB crap and rip them to hell

Edit: another thing. it says its 15.95 to re-activate. which is what i normally pay, im not arguing this. i will argue if im double charged for it. and then they can bet i will be calling them and if nothing is taken off. then i will take farther action against the company that has messed up.

[Anadosia]

THANK YOU GADES for posting the steps! When I tried to log on today and it wouldn't let me reactivate my ID's I never would have thought to re-enter my CC info and would have wound up waiting until Tuesday to call SE. I too agree that SE needs to communicate with us more in detail, this being a prime example. What bothers me is that I know full well that they communicate more info with the Japanese players than the English speakers. That really bothers me. Our money is just as good as theirs.
On another note, I am very happy that they are going to no longer have POL handle the billing because they are absolutely horrible as we all know. Personally I think they are making this change not to enhance security but to just plain do away with them. POL causes them just as many headaches as they do us. I am afraid however that the transferring will not go very smoothly. I just hope that all the billing nightmares will no longer occur after this has been done.

[Luvbunny]

They need to reactivate all those cancelled account by mistake - automatically. If they don't - well they are going to loose a lot of paying customers. This is rather final nail in the coffin for me - see ya later FFXI - now I can actually do other stuffs and never bother to come back till much later.

[Juilan]

They don't need 24/7 support, they just shouldn't do maintenance on the registration server at the time of billing, on a weekend...maybe?

hire me for support SE, i wont let you down... and i might increase your security while im at it
you guys can pay me in gil

[Izzybella]

I just want to know that I am NOT going to be charged twice in August. I was charged for July then deactivated and had to figure out what to do to get back on. ok thats fine with me, shyt happens. But if I am charged for July's activation and August's gameplay in August I WILL be po'd...

[Vitrum]

I feel the pain here. Thank you Gades for the guide to fix this issue. I'm most angry that I spent an hour on the FFXI Live Chat support site waiting to be the next to receive support only to be told: "Status: Canceled
There are no agents available to chat with you right now. Please try again later." as soon as my turn came up. The customer service ought to be much better, especially when you are working with a franchise type brand name. Some of us have dumped thousands of dollars into this and other SE titles. We deserve a little bit better treatment than what we are currently being provided.

[ShadowHeart]

think they would at least have a toll free number by now ........