Let me begin by saying that I have been a huge SE fan since the first Final Fantasy game came out a quarter of a century ago. Final Fantasy XIV was my first experiment at playing an online Final Fantasy game and the gameplay experience has been wonderful.

That being said, SE has some major issues in other portions of their gaming system. The billing system is extremely buggy, the support page is both difficult to navigate and uninformative, and the account management system is difficult to navigate AND lacks an intuitive interface.

I have greatly enjoyed the last month of playing FFIV. I even set up an automatic renewal so that I could keep playing. When I got some time this weekend to play, I logged in and it tells me “No valid or active service account is available to play FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Real Reborn. Proper registration through the FINAL FANTASY XIV: Mog Station is required.” So I log into Mog station to see what is up. I know I set my account to auto bill my card. I even got some emails a few days beforehand warning me that it was gonna bill me. Sure enough, Mog Station says my account is kaput and needs more dough. I was really confused, so I decided to check my email. I found an email from 2 days prior.

"Thank you for using the Square Enix Account Management System. This e-mail has been sent to inform you that an error occurred when processing payment for FINAL FANTASY XIV: A Realm Reborn. As a result, automatic renewal has been suspended for your account."

Which was confusing, but I had hope! Further into the email it states the following:

"To reactivate automatic renewal, please proceed to the Account Services page in the FINAL FANTASY XIV: Mog Station."

So I go to the Account Services page to reactivate my automatic renewal. There were no links that said “Reactivate account” or “Unsuspend account” or anything even remotely similar. When I went to “Confirm Account Status” It showed that yes, I have an account, and no, it is not active. Because apparently the payment processor SE uses has major issues actually processing payments and couldn’t take my money. (Note: I attempted to use both a credit card linked to a flush bank account AND a platinum MasterCard with a $10,000 limit. Neither were successful) I went ahead and attempted to “Register” my card and renew my subscription through the secure Square Enix portal. I also attempted it directly through Mog Station. I repeatedly got errors. I thought maybe it was my ISP or the computer, so I tried it from someone else’s house, who uses a completely different ISP and a different computer. Nope. I would go all the way through the process, and then I would get errors, which brings me to the next issue:

The billing system concerns me greatly, because all I received was cryptic error messages (Error 401, Error 406, and “Site under Maintenance”) every time I tried to reactivate my account. I got these trying to renew my subscription and when I was trying to purchase Crysta. Messages like the following:

"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: 406)"

And then I called my bank to ask if I have been charged. It turns out that every single time I went through the process and received this error, I got a $1.00 preauthorization charge on my account. They said that the preauth charges were approved, but then when the data got sent back to MasterCard, it somehow doesn’t make it to the company doing the preauths. Mind you, this was for a $14.99 monthly subscription, and I went through this process multiple (more than 7) times. I was sincerely hoping I didn’t get $105-$150 in “single month” billing charges on my card two days later. Fortunately, at the time I had more than sufficient funds to pay for these multiple transactions even if the full charge went through, but the big question was, why did the automated system fail to notify me that a charge had gone through on my account?

I enjoy SE games, but if their software is so buggy that it does glitch charges to my bank account and fails to notify me, then it is far too great of a risk to purchase their products. It is a known fact that people in general may complain and overall they will forgive many things, but when it reaches the point that you start screwing with their money, it becomes serious.

Even with the billing issues (which are egregious), the final and worst flaw, (and what will sink this game if it is not fixed), is the product support. From the reviews that I have read, once a person is able to actually speak/chat with a live representative, their problems are usually resolved very quickly. The big bottleneck is the inability for the customers to actually get into contact with the representatives. That is not a problem with the workers, that is a problem at the management/corporate level, and it needs addressed.

What type of Multinational Corporation only has product support for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, with no contingency for issues like billing, fraud, and accounting system problems? Especially when the product is a paid service, intended to be used 24/7 AND relies on corporate enterprise infrastructure to function? This results in customers being able to receive support less than 25% of the time that the product is actually available for use. Not a pretty picture. I’m not saying they need to make themselves available for every singly whine and complaint from users, but all it would take to alleviate much of the frustration is to have 24/7 online chat reps available to resolve serious complaints like Billing and Account issues. And they seriously need to look into expanding their Customer Support hours. Customers, by their nature, have money. Most customers get their money from jobs. Or if they don’t that money comes from kids who get it from their parents. Kids have school and most parents have jobs between 8 am and 5 pm. Most employers get pretty ticked off if their employees are playing MMORPG’s while they are at their jobs, so that means that most people don’t play the game or notice issues that need resolved during those times. Coincidentally, those times are close to the only times that SE Customer Support reps are available.

To wrap things up because I am tired and my ADD is kicking in overtime…

These issues, if left untreated, are a death knell for an online community. If a person does a search for “Square Enix Customer Support rating,” the first results should not be pages like this:

http://www.customerservicescoreboard.com/Square+Enix 35/200 satisfaction rating
http://www.gameskinny.com/atzns/squa...pport-failures Eloquent, yet scathing
http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/...ry/square-enix A lot of bad press, and no rebuttals

And I don't even have words to describe what I have read on this particular forum thread.

I am sorely tempted to polish this up a bit and email it to as many Square Enix employee email addresses I can find, or barring that, maybe the bbb or something. I am just about to the "I have handed these guys the better part of a grand over the last 20+ years, I'm not giving them more" but the USERS need resolution, and the solution is that SE needs to address these problems, pronto.