Crysta expired

Greetings. I got a email from SE saying my 9000 crysta has expired. Does anyone know is possible to get them back? I never heard such thing before. It is ridiculous as bank saving expired.

A quick google finds this.

https://square-enix-games.com/en_EU/.../crysta/charge

EXPIRATION OF SQUARE ENIX CRYSTA
Square Enix Crysta remains valid for 2 years from the date they were purchased and expires* at the end of the final month. For example, if you purchased Crysta on May 10, 2017, it would expire on May 31, 2019.

* Please note that each Crysta purchase has its own expiry date.


You can try talking to customer service. I'm not sure why it has an expiration.

This is why I make a point of only buying crysta when I need it, instead of letting it sit.

And this is why I'm glad I'm using Steam for payment and not using Crysta.

Good luck seeing if you can recoup some of the cost of it, sucks that it happened =(

Oof. Hope you can get that back OP, that's a big chunk.

I hope the best for you OP, but honestly knowing SE and their customer support they're just gonna tell you "Lmao shoulda read the fine print! Sod off!"

Out of all the threads that should blow up here, this should, because it's kind of asinine that a digital currency would expire.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

A quick google finds this.

https://square-enix-games.com/en_EU/.../crysta/charge

EXPIRATION OF SQUARE ENIX CRYSTA
Square Enix Crysta remains valid for 2 years from the date they were purchased and expires* at the end of the final month. For example, if you purchased Crysta on May 10, 2017, it would expire on May 31, 2019.

* Please note that each Crysta purchase has its own expiry date.


You can try talking to customer service. I'm not sure why it has an expiration.

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marketing tactics to force you to use it, create FOMO and to disassociate it with actual legitimate currency. ex. you have 900 crysta and want to buy fantasia. Fantasia costs 1000 crysta or $10. You have a choice to either top off your crysta or pay $10 USD. Most of the time people will simply top off the crysta, additionally spending more in the process, because there is already "money" and most believe that they will use any remainder in the future. Everyone does it and personally I find it BS but living in Canada sometimes its just better to buy crysta. I personally call this practice as "grooming" because they want to lock you in and screw you out the butt.

hopefully you can get that crysta back cuz that is a lot of glamours and mounts

2 years of validity are not that short and reading the sales conditions is... usefull.

You can ask a refund but... don't place high expectations.

I added 3k crysta two years ago for the subscription, cause I can’t always remember to pay the bill. I never expected such ridiculous things. How can a currency expired? I just two years?

How did you buy 9000 crysta and never use it in two years?

It's not a currency. SE is not a bank. It's only a pre-purchase. As every purchase, you have a refund right. Two years is rather generous.

It's closer from a pre-paid card and pre-paid card have expiration date (six month? one year?).

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Originally Posted by shantani

I added 3k crysta two years ago for the subscription, cause I can’t always remember to pay the bill. I never expected such ridiculous things. How can a currency expired? I just two years?

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You have to be sure to read the terms and conditions when you purchase Crysta. They set the rules, they can do what they like with it as it is their own proprietary currency.
Unfortunately thems the breaks. You have no recourse available to you.

You bought Gift Cards and didn't spend them.

So putting aside all the annoying victim blaming and smug TOS posts.

I think the actual reason it expires has something to do with Japanese law and how they treat virtual currencies, with a bit of digging I found that Bethesda did something similar with expiring currency only just for Japanese residents: https://www.reddit.com/r/RAGEgame/comments/c6ielb/bethesda_puts_an_expiration_date_on_virtual

I didn't read in detail when I googled the laws, but skimmed and from the sounds of it they have a lot more upkeep to do on the currencies, so I figure because of that it starts to be less cost effective to keep the currency around longterm. But that just makes me wonder more why you're allowed to by so much crysta in the first place if it's just going to expire.

I've also never bought the stuff before so I don't know how clear or blunt it is that your currency will expire eventually.

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Originally Posted by Bellsong

But that just makes me wonder more why you're allowed to by so much crysta in the first place if it's just going to expire.

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I can't even buy crysta (option doesn't exist in my account) so I'm not sure, but from my understanding after reading the info about it on support page - can't be crysta also used for paying for things like transfer, retainers and optional items? If that's the case, then it not having a low limit makes sense, since SE can't really know if you're going to use your currency only for subscription or for additional services as well.

Why would you buy 9000 worth of crysta then not use it? Boogles my mind.

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Originally Posted by Eldevern

It's not a currency. SE is not a bank. It's only a pre-purchase.

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Originally Posted by shantani

I added 3k crysta two years ago for the subscription, cause I can’t always remember to pay the bill. I never expected such ridiculous things. How can a currency expired? I just two years?

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They want you to spend it. Like a gift card has a expire date. Same thing basically.

Ouch, that sounds painful.

All you can do in this moment is contact customer support and hope for the best. I find it so strange that currency can have an expiration date..

Crystals deteriorate over time if they aren't polished

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Originally Posted by Jin-

Crystals deteriorate over time if they aren't polished

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Their magic deplete :D

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Originally Posted by shantani

I added 3k crysta two years ago for the subscription, cause I can’t always remember to pay the bill. I never expected such ridiculous things. How can a currency expired? I just two years?

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Hi, game card keys could be something for you. With a game card you can play for 60 days so you do not have to buy them very often. And if your account expires then you can get a new key maybe 15 minutes later via e-mail. It's way less trouble than expiring crystals. :)

Cheers

I can sympathize, the correct thing for Enix to do would have been to send an email a month earlier saying your Crysta will expire soon.

Sure, they can squeeze a negligible bit of cash this way from people who forget, but it's a poor way to treat your customers, which in turn is bad business. The email should be changed to an advance warning. Even in game houses get that.

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Originally Posted by Eldevern

It's not a currency. SE is not a bank. It's only a pre-purchase. As every purchase, you have a refund right. Two years is rather generous.

It's closer from a pre-paid card and pre-paid card have expiration date (six month? one year?).

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Well if this transaction happened in the US it would likely fall under the FTC's 2010 rulings on gift cards which state 5 years minimum. OTOH they are allowed to charge monthly maintenance fees after one year of inactivity. Consequently most major US retailers' cards do not expire.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/pres...holiday-buying

That said the OP's world is showing as Zodiark so they'd probably have to figure out what consumer protection laws govern their jurisdiction.

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Originally Posted by GeminiReed

Well if this transaction happened in the US it would likely fall under the FTC's 2010 rulings on gift cards which state 5 years minimum. OTOH they are allowed to charge monthly maintenance fees after one year of inactivity. Consequently most major US retailers' cards do not expire.

https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/pres...holiday-buying

That said the OP's world is showing as Zodiark so they'd probably have to figure out what consumer protection laws govern their jurisdiction.

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I'm sure SE could argue it's not a giftcard though.

Anyhow, in Sweden (not sure in rest of EU) it's up to the business owner to determine the expiration date and if none is stated it's by default 10 years. The common expire date is generally 12-24 months here.

If the business goes under the gift card is basically terminated/cancelled.

I wonder how this works for the international market? Whose laws apply? In my country gift cards/certificates/points cannot expire unless the company becomes insolvent. If the company is offering them they are not permitted to take any kind of service charge or to allow them to expire. I have some of those gift Visa cards, gotta be five or six years old and they are still valid. I expect the laws of whatever country SE decides is most legally favourable to inhabit apply so it just goes to show one must always read the fine print, and the House always wins.

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Originally Posted by Sotaris

I'm sure SE could argue it's not a giftcard though.

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ObIANAL (Obligatory I am not a lawyer)

They can make any argument they want but the trick is convincing a judge to see it their way. Most prefer to avoid setting new precedent so if it quacks like a duck, etc.

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Originally Posted by Arrhin

I wonder how this works for the international market? Whose laws apply? In my country gift cards/certificates/points cannot expire unless the company becomes insolvent. If the company is offering them they are not permitted to take any kind of service charge or to allow them to expire. I have some of those gift Visa cards, gotta be five or six years old and they are still valid. I expect the laws of whatever country SE decides is most legally favourable to inhabit apply so it just goes to show one must always read the fine print, and the House always wins.

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The fine print can only go so far though. There are certain things it can't enforce particularly stuff that runs counter to consumer protection laws. Another good example is GDPR.

In the US, gift bank cards (Visa) have different rules than store cards.

Which regional laws apply depend on a lot of factors but if a company has too many violations of local statutes they may face fines or an order cease operations in that region.

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At any rate the discussion has prompted me to check if I had a balance left (I did) so I burned most on a character rename that I've been meaning to get around to doing. While losing almost $15 isn't as bad as losing $90 it would still be pretty irritating. Now I need to figure out what to do with the rest of it.

So I had 1000 crysta left from ARR. When we had to go through that weird 3rd party and couldn't use your credit card. This was even pre cash shop. But 1000 wasn't enough for a month sub when they switched back to credit card. So after reading this thread I tried to use it to buy an emote last night since under 1000 crysta. It worked for me. So I am not sure how they decide expired and not expired

Can anyone explain to me why you would need to buy crysta in the first place since you can just outright buy everything on the store? You have the same payment options either way so I don't see the advantage.

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Originally Posted by shantani

I added 3k crysta two years ago for the subscription, cause I can’t always remember to pay the bill. I never expected such ridiculous things. How can a currency expired? I just two years?

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My understanding is that it's not technically a currency, but functionally a gift card. And gift cards expiring after a certain point is 100% a thing; here in the US the law behind gift cards differs from state to state (some allow it to expire after two years, some after five, some only if the gift card balance is under a certain amount, some allow any expiration date provided it's printed in sufficiently large font on a physical gift card, etc.), but them expiring at all is definitely a thing. Unfortunately.

Which does not make this particular scenario suck any less, mind you.

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

Can anyone explain to me why you would need to buy crysta in the first place since you can just outright buy everything on the store? You have the same payment options either way so I don't see the advantage.

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PayPal, usually, at least so far as I've seen. You can't buy your subscription/timecards or such with PayPal directly, but you can buy it with Crysta, and (since the Crysta system is separate from FFXIV itself) you can buy Crysta via PayPal. I have a friend living in the UK for several years for work, and her credit cards still have her parents' US address. The Square-Enix systems do not like a UK account having US credit cards and so the anti-fraud stuff refuses to accept them. (Which, honestly, is fair.) So she gets her game-time paid for via Crysta using PayPal, until her time in the UK is done and she moves home.

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Originally Posted by Darthgummibear

Can anyone explain to me why you would need to buy crysta in the first place since you can just outright buy everything on the store? You have the same payment options either way so I don't see the advantage.

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So crysta is a leftover system when either the CC companies or SE didn't want to deal with each other. They had this really weird convoluted system through a third party. The crysta was also in weird amounts that did not match subs or the game cards you used to buy crysta that is why I had a few leftover from when SE and CC decided to play nice again. Why anyone would still be buying crysta I have no idea.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

So crysta is a leftover system when either the CC companies or SE didn't want to deal with each other. They had this really weird convoluted system through a third party. The crysta was also in weird amounts that did not match subs or the game cards you used to buy crysta that is why I had a few leftover from when SE and CC decided to play nice again. Why anyone would still be buying crysta I have no idea.

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Yeah, 1.0s subscription buying was a pain. We had to go through some sketchy site to buy it since they couldn't directly take sub payments.....

Crysta is a remnant of that.

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Originally Posted by Valkyrie_Lenneth

Yeah, 1.0s subscription buying was a pain. We had to go through some sketchy site to buy it since they couldn't directly take sub payments.....

Crysta is a remnant of that.

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Yeah but your earlier link of expired would have applied to me since it has been well over two years. Curious how they work expired. I think the OP should just try to buy whatever they can and see if it works anyways. SE doesn't have the best designed store it might still work.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

Yeah but your earlier link of expired would have applied to me since it has been well over two years. Curious how they work expired. I think the OP should just try to buy whatever they can and see if it works anyways. SE doesn't have the best designed store it might still work.

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Well, that link is for the EU, the NA site doesn't mention it at all.

So it may be different depending on region, and also when the crysta was purchased

The problem is, there is no warning when you go to the “add crysta” page. Nothing tells you it going expired in two years. Nobody knows it going to expire.

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Originally Posted by shantani

The problem is, there is no warning when you go to the “add crysta” page. Nothing tells you it going expired in two years. Nobody knows it going to expire.

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I still don't even understand why anyone would buy Crysta, let alone 9000 of it that goes unused for 2 years. All it does is add a completely unnecessary step to any purchase or subscription that you could instead just pay for directly.

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Originally Posted by Darkstride

I still don't even understand why anyone would buy Crysta, let alone 9000 of it that goes unused for 2 years. All it does is add a completely unnecessary step to any purchase or subscription that you could instead just pay for directly.

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I had to think about why 9000. My guess is 6 months is easily over 9000. But the two years, has me confused.Two years ago plus a free month would put it at shadowbringers. My theory is either they played shadowbringers and decided to take a break. Or maybe bought a collected edition and disliked it. But now that the game is all hyped and not much else to play they want to come back.



Maybe I am the weird one. I never prebuy game cards or time unless I am sure. Even then I wait till I get the notification last day you need to pay us. But some people get so excited and buy ahead and regret it. I am actually more curious about the situation that led to this since NA seems to not be part of expiring system.

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Originally Posted by shantani

Nobody knows it going to expire.

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I'm an exception then. I did know. Never buy something wihout reading the conditions is a thing everyone should do. Never "imagine", never "suppose", always check before purchase.

What the hell, an expiration date on account currency used for purchasing game time? That's pretty damned bogus. I mean, crysta was a stupid system in the first place, but way to make it low as well.

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Originally Posted by Moonlite

So crysta is a leftover system when either the CC companies or SE didn't want to deal with each other. They had this really weird convoluted system through a third party. The crysta was also in weird amounts that did not match subs or the game cards you used to buy crysta that is why I had a few leftover from when SE and CC decided to play nice again. Why anyone would still be buying crysta I have no idea.

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Crysta are still required as SE still does not offers neiter a direct account debit option (which is very common in the EU) nor a paypal option. People without credit cards (a lot of people in the EU don't have those) need this payment option.

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Originally Posted by TalithaSolarien

Crysta are still required as SE still does not offers neiter a direct account debit option (which is very common in the EU) nor a paypal option. People without credit cards (a lot of people in the EU don't have those) need this payment option.

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True many people in the EU do not have credit cards but the vast majority have debit cards that take funds directly from their bank accounts.

I can't speak for rest of EU but in Sweden we mainly has a Debit card from MC or Visa. But you don't need crysta to pay for stuff - you can just enter your card info and get billed that way.

So generally speaking, if you can purchase stuff online with your debit card, you can pay your subscription on mogstation no issues.

I used to have to use Crysta when there was issues between my at the time bank and SE and was solved when i changed bank.