Crysta expired

[Liam_Harper]

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.

[GeminiReed]

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?).

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.

[Sotaris]

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.

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.

[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.

[GeminiReed]

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

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.

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.

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.

[Moonlite]

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

[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.

[Packetdancer]

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?

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.

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.

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.

[Moonlite]

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.

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.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

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.

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.