Terrible Payment System

[Razor]

did you even read the link?
I am not naive, I have read and started to see what type of company this is, that is why I said save everything related to your cancel, if you have proof that you canceled your account, you can do something if they charge your card later. This is the main problem, that people think they can not do anything. I am taking measures to take action if I have to later, by saving all my info related to canceling this account.

Well I apologize if I misunderstood your original post as it appeared to me you were defending ClickandBuy with an argument of that since their website says you won't be charged with or without cancellation that they are credulous. My point to you still remains though: regardless of what their website says and whether or not you even have proof of cancellation: they still can(and have) abuse your information and with a slew of "beware: scam" flags posted all over the internet and a persistant F rating from the BBB I do not trust them.

Also: only the first couple lines of my post were in response to you, the rest was just general information I was posting.

[Chocobits]

Well I apologize if I misunderstood your original post as it appeared to me you were defending ClickandBuy with an argument of that since their website says you won't be charged with or without cancellation that they are credulous. My point to you still remains though: regardless of what their website says and whether or not you even have proof of cancellation: they still can(and have) abuse your information and with a slew of "beware: scam" flags posted all over the internet and a persistant F rating from the BBB I do not trust them.

Also: only the first couple lines of my post were in response to you, the rest was just general information I was posting.

Not really defending ClickandBuy here but BBB ratings are a joke. All you have to do is pay the accreditation fee and all your negative complaints get magically resolved and you go from F to B+ or higher. SE's BBB rating before accreditation was a D I believe.

[Starflare]

This is a huge issue that should be addressed before FFXIV goes back to the pay to play model. When your payment process is as convoluted as this one - you run the risk of scaring off some people.

The game is already on an uphill battle, no need to make it worse.

- Kurokikaze

[Razor]

Not really defending ClickandBuy here but BBB ratings are a joke. All you have to do is pay the accreditation fee and all your negative complaints get magically resolved and you go from F to B+ or higher. SE's BBB rating before accreditation was a D I believe.

EA Games is not accredited and maintains an A+, which is impressive considering many of their games having very controversial content. Accreditation likely improves ratings less because money is changing hands but more because now that the BBB has permission to closely monitor the company inside and out they need to keep their act in shape.

Even without BBB's evaluation, when such a large number of people express deep concerns over a company's credibility, there's usually a fairly good reason for it.

This is a huge issue that should be addressed before FFXIV goes back to the pay to play model. When your payment process is as convoluted as this one - you run the risk of scaring off some people.

The game is already on an uphill battle, no need to make it worse.

- Kurokikaze

Hopefully SE notices this as soon as XI officially begins billing through clickandbuy. Also, even if wasn't scaring off anyone, it still excludes many players from countries that are not able to even use clickandbuy.

[KaiKatzchen]

I was thinking about this yesterday...

I remember back when FFXI came out on 360, one of the reasons I heard it took so long was because SE didn't want M$ charging it's players for gold service... so in essence paying twice for the game to be able to play it.

I know SE is also having problems with M$ at this time, last I heard it had to do with M$ wanting 360 servers to be separate from everyone else. If they were universal, then they wanted people to pay for 360 service to access the game.

I don't know if this is 100% correct... but I do remember SE saying they didn't want people to pay more for FF than their month fee.

Now we have their own hired "billing company" wanting to charge a 5.9% processing fee every time they pull money out of our account (if you don't use Euro or GB Pound) every month. I know it's not a lot of money (even though it's obvious the company has issues due to stories here) but still... it seems kinda odd that SE would go from 'no our fans won't be charged anything more than OUR fee' to letting their own billing company that they hired charge their fans.

Yeah even if the game is 15.00 a month, at 5.9% that's only .89 cent's a person per month... less that 12.00 a year in fees.

But... if we have (and lets make it a realistic number) 200k people playing.

.89 x 200k = 178,000.00 in charges per month that this company is taking for people to play the game.

178,000.00 x 12 = 2,136,000.00 a year in fees so FFXIV players can play this game.



Seems like a lot of money that SE is allowing their fan base to pay extra to play FFXIV... and that's just at 200k. What if the game got up to the roughly 500k FFXI got to at one point.

.89 x 500k = 445,000,00 a month.

445,000.00 x 12 = 5,340,000.00 a year.


So while it seems a small about per player... when looking at the over all picture, that is a lot of money to be taking from a fan base per year just because people want to play and pay their monthly fee. Especially since in some countries C&B is their only option, so they have no choice BUT to pay these fees if they want to play.

I know SE said on the FFXI forums they know people are frustrated and they are looking into more options. I am very excited for them to actually do this and see what other payment options they can come up with.

Personally I'd love to see (and these are just alternate ideas)::

FFXIV Gaming Cards that you can buy at game stores.
FFXIV Game Cards you can order online at the SE store that can be used in any country.
Direct pay to SE themselves using our CC/Debit Cards.
I know some want Paypal and while I don't use it, others would like this.

...and I am sure others have ideas. I guess I'm just frustrated because it just seems like more and more fees to play this game. At last we heard this is what the set up is (unless they are gonna change it)

Price per month
+
Price per Character (which I don't think any MMO does anymore. I'd rather they just cap us at 2-3 characters per player for those who like multi-characters and let us just have them and RAISE the month fee from 9.99 to like 14.99)
+
Price per retainer (last I heard them say only the first retainer was free... maybe now it's the first two?)
+
Now if you have to use C&B there is a 5.9% fee to process the payment.

I can't WAIT to see what other payment options they come up with... and please help the people who have only C&B or no payment options at all!

[Chocobits]

I hadn't thought of it like that before. That's nearly as bad as the money SE will make off of forced excess Crysta. On the other hand, if SE loses 50,000 players/potential players/retired players that won't return because of this move, that would be a loss of $750,000 per month, $9m per year. Even if it was only a loss of 10,000 players, that would amount to $150k/month, $1.8m/year in losses. And that's not including future lost revenue from boycotted products and bad publicity.

I think we're being underestimated again. Seems to be the time of the year for it. Remember that time SE charged full price for that really terrible game they released this time last year? That didn't go over so well either.

What better way to commemorate the anniversary of screwing your fans over.. by screwing your fans over.

Oh and I'm still curious: I know Yoshida pulled a 180 and moved the focus of the game off of being leve-centric. Is he also backpedaling on that whole "regaining the players trust" thing?

[Catapult]

And that 2 million dollars is lost to the banking system. SE doesn't see a cent of it.

In fact, they would lose a similar amount again themselves in any attempt to transfer it from the UK to a Japanese bank account.

Wouldn't it make more financial sense to pay directly to Japan in the first place? I mean sure, we'd still be paying international transaction fees, but SE would get an extra 2 million a year out of us, which they could use to lower the subscription cost making the international fee moot (or better fund their games - their pick).

Hang on, I'm using logic again...

[mysterytaru]

Oh and I'm still curious: I know Yoshida pulled a 180 and moved the focus of the game off of being leve-centric. Is he also backpedaling on that whole "regaining the players trust" thing?

What, exactly, does Yoshida or the rest of the Dev team have to do with the payment method SE has selected? Care to explain that? Here's a hint: Nothing. At all.

[SilvertearRen]

What, exactly, does Yoshida or the rest of the Dev team have to do with the payment method SE has selected? Care to explain that? Here's a hint: Nothing. At all.

Doesn't mean he can't at least pass this on to the brass...

[mysterytaru]

Doesn't mean he can't at least pass this on to the brass...

It's already been stated that this has been done in an official reply from a com rep on the matter. You've already been told that SE is aware of the complaints and is looking into it. Chocobits trashing Yoshida like that isn't helping your cause.