Please stop using shady 3rd party websites as payment options.... & payment problems

[Calipso]

Not sure if this is the right place to post.

I know by far I'm not the first person to have payment problems with FF-related services.

Today my account was cancelled with an email saying :

Dear xxxxxxxxxxx,

Thank you for using the Square Enix Account Management System.

Due to a processing error with your payment method, all continuous options for the following service account have been cancelled. The details are as follows.

Date: 05/19/2012
Payment Method: Credit Card/Debit Card
Service Account Name: PlayOnline / FINAL FANTASY XI

So I went to the SE site to re-activate my character. First, with the credit card I was previously using. Second, with a different credit card linked to a totally different bank. With both of them, I recieved this error:

An error has occurred.
Please confirm the status of any relevant options and then try again.
For details, please contact the Square Enix Support Center.
(Error code: 601)

After trying several times on different computers/browsers, I decided to try to add crysta, instead. Every time I tried, it said my credit card was declined.. I tried paypal, and I got this error:

PayPal Express Checkout has rejected your payment attempt. Please select another way to pay. We apologize for the inconvenience.

However, I now have massive charges in my bank account, without a single crysta in my SE account or UP point from playspan to show from it. Again, every single attempt at payment was declined. I don't even know how they ended up with my money in the first place They took my money without giving me anything.

And I now stuck with these, and I have no clue how to go about getting this money back.

May 22, 2012 Point of Sale - Visa Debit VISA DEBIT RETAIL PURCHASE ULTIMATE PAY $53.56
May 22, 2012 Point of Sale - Visa Debit VISA DEBIT RETAIL PURCHASE ULTIMATE PAY $53.56

What in the world was the problem with my credit card in the first place? No other online game, online store, or store period has had problems with it. I used it just hours ago, so I know it's not frozen and I know it's not out of funds. Why is the error message so vague and unhelpful? (Please confirm the status of any relevant options and then try again.). Lastly, who do I go about calling to get my money back ? >:| 106$ taken from my bank account with nothing to show for it doesn't exactly leave me very impressed. Do I call SE, or do I try to call this random company and hope they don't screw me over? If I do a chargeback on my CC, is that going to cause me to get banned like so many other members with CC problems have in the past?

[RAIST]

Error 601 is usually a communication error of sorts. Most often when this happened while setting up credit card drafting, it was because security was blocking the background postback to the user's browser, not necessarily that the transaction did not get through to your bank.

Ulitmatepay should have a log of the transaction having taken place, and you have evidence of the payment through your bank. If you don't get an email soon from them with a redemption code, I would try contacting them first. Note that you are actually dealing with the Playspan people for Ultimatepay, as this is the vendor contact link from their main site: https://developer.playspan.com. Here is their customer support FAQ page: http://ultimatepay.custhelp.com, or you may be able to get assistance also here if you have issues at the Playspan portal. When submitting your question, make sure to note the time stamp for when the CC/Debit was billed so they can track it down. If that line of contact fails, then you should be able to go through your bank and get the charges reversed--but it might take a while for it to actually process.

For future use, I would suggest you go directly through Playspan instead. Ultimately, that is the company handling the transaction for UP in the end, might as well go straight to the source. They have a way to just put your CC number in directly there to buy the codes (or you can use PayPal and various other methods as well). The problem isn't necessarily that the third-party is "shadey"---it's more that there are too many points of failure in the process because it is slingshotting the process through third and fourth party handlers the way SE has it set up through the SE AM system.

Alternatively, if you have someone local that carries the cards you can just buy them that way (Walmart, CVS, Gamestop, 7-Elevens, Blockbuster, Walgreens--lots of places carry them). Redemption in SE AM is the same whether you buy the code online or get it off the back of a physical card. You can look for local sellers here. Note if you put in a zip code to get a map of stores in your area, you might have to adjust the zoom level to see the pins on the map. For my area, they are spread out all over the place and it was zoomed out real far, so I had to zoom in to see them.

[Calipso]

Sorry, guess I'll clarify. Error 601 came off SE's website when I tried to add my credit card. The money from my bank account is from playspan, who specifically told me that my credit card was declined. Going straight to their website to try to add UP got me the same results.

[RAIST]

Error 601 is not typically an error from processing a credit card, but rather an issue with the communication between instruments conducting the transaction, often when passing verification/status codes to the endpoint server (like sending a confirmation number to display on your screen afterwards, updating a payment flag at the vendor's site, etc.). This could be failed authentication between servers, an xml error (or other syntax issue with other scripting being used), a downed database connection--basically, something didn't respond or provided an invalid response during the process.

Specifically during certain paypal transactions, 601 error is described as: "Cybercash Query Error". This can be tripped from various things like a malformed query, stalled data connection, etc. Considering you were using Paypal, this may very well be the situation. One device failed to query another succesfully in the process. This is what was happening recently when people were trying to use the new CC method. Browser/system security was preventing communication during the verification stage and tripping the error. People facing this issue resolved it by doing things like turning off Adblock or otherwise whitelisting the blocked servers involved in the process.

It appears your transaction was still going through with the VISA system (Playspan is owned by VISA, UP is Playspan), but the postback to either UP or SE failed This may very well be an issue with either the UP side or SE's systems and actually nothing to do with your card or your account. Again, 601 errors are typically communication errors, and not processing errors. Need to get them looking into what happened on their end to see if they got a better error message in their logs that they can go to SE with and try to get it resolved.

[saevel]

Ran into this issue before. Ended up having to call Playspan and have by card + SE account put on a white-list of pre-approved accounts for transactions.

What's happening is that while your CC company is approving the transaction and posting the amount as a pre-charge (not complete charge), Playspan's own transaction security gateway is tripping on your account. It doesn't like ~something~ about the transaction details. Either it's the IP address / location your buying from, the location your sending money too, or some combination there-of. From my experience SE's own purchase system is faulted as well, it'll decline anything that looks slightly abnormal.

So your CC company is fine, but it's all the BS security gateways in-between that are causing the problem. After a week or so those pre-charges will drop off your CC statement as they were never completed (bank released funds, target company never accepted them). Your best bet is to contact Playspan directly and work with them, they have outstanding customer service.