wrong region activation code

I recently decided to start playing again after a long break, not that I played much before but some friends were coming here so I decided to follow. I purchased a heavensward code but unfortunately for me for some reason I was in the NA shop not the EU shop I didn't even know there were two shops I didn't even know this stuff was region locked to be honest, I thought it odd the shop didn't list my country but I purchased anyway, confirmed and plugged the code in only to find it didn't work, as far as I understand once a code has been unlocked there are no refunds because they have no way of deactivating a code. Cant there be a simpler process for all this I see many others have fallen victim to the same thing, my question is, what exactly am I supposed to now do with a code i cannot use.

Try contacting customer service and see if they can exchange the NA code for an EU one. I'm not positive whether that's something they can do or not, but it's your best chance.


And I don't understand either why there's region locking even when we're going to the same platforms run by the same company. I can understand China being separate, since it's run separately by Shanda Games and access to SE's JP/NA/EU servers doesn't give access to SG's Chinese servers and vice versa. But SE gives the same access to all its direct customers across JP/NA/EU.

I could even sort of understand region locking purchases due to competition between different divisions of the company. (Though I don't think it's really good for the parent company to have so much internal competition that the product itself becomes less useful.) But I can't understand permanently region locking accounts, especially given the fact that the owner of an account may not always live in the same region anyway.

The region locking is even more aggravating if you use a console since it has to match the region of your PSN account or things start getting complicated. I use a Japanese PSN account on a Japanese PS4 and had to make a separate UK account to be able to buy the game here. I know this is exacerbated by Sony's restrictions but it makes me a little anxious as a former PS2 FFXI player (IIRC only Japan got the full set of expansions on PS2 for that game).

I believe that S-E Europe and S-E USA are effectively separate companies so they'll probably have to refund you for the original purchase and then you can buy it again from the EU store. I cannot imagine a situation where they would refuse to do this since it's entirely their own fault that their company is so confusing. I'm sure you've worked this out by now but just in case (or for the benefit of other readers in the same position) I can confirm that their customer services team is usually pretty helpful.