Question Regarding Bans on Compromised Accounts

[Gramboozle]

Hello,

I am wondering why Square Enix's account recovery process is so abysmal when an account was compromised. My husbands account was compromised last thursday, and they did nothing but spam malicious links in chat for an hour, and then logged off, soon after my husband was able to change his PW and recover his account (without ANY notification to the subscribed email)

After recovering his account he was able to play as normal for two days, and then suddenly a total account ban, probably due to report for the hackers spam.

Now because of that the account is banned, and we are not able to recover any of the subscription time or game payment. How exactly is this legal business practice? They are still charging us...even though the account is suspended, while they "take their time to investigate the issue."

Customer support around these issues are a widely complained about issue (if you can even get a hold of anyone), and I am looking for answers. We have given this company thousands of dollars over several years, and not an OUNCE of professional assistance has been received. This is unacceptable.

What else can we do?

[Kes13a]

you can really do.. nothing.

This is completely in the domain of customer service and they have to do the investigating before anything is done. what that investigation entails is known to them. and they need to check all their boxes, it sucks, but unfortunately, most cases of accounts being compromised are self instigated. I know doesnt help much, but they do have to make sure before they remove the banned status.

moral of the story is, do not go to external links where you enter your information.

[Gramboozle]

Totally understand they have a process to their investigation, but they shouldnt be charging us for playtime when the account is unplayable while they complete whatever investigation they need to do.

We cant even get into the account to pause or cancel the payments...and if/when they recover the account, that lost playtime is not compensated. That is literal theft.

Regardless of how an account is compromised, a business should not be charging for services that are unavailable to the client. ON TOP of ignoring customer communications regarding the problem, and making it incredibly difficult to even get in contact with someone.

[Valkyrie_Lenneth]

Totally understand they have a process to their investigation, but they shouldnt be charging us for playtime when the account is unplayable while they complete whatever investigation they need to do.

We cant even get into the account to pause or cancel the payments...and if/when they recover the account, that lost playtime is not compensated. That is literal theft.

Regardless of how an account is compromised, a business should not be charging for services that are unavailable to the client. ON TOP of ignoring customer communications regarding the problem, and making it incredibly difficult to even get in contact with someone.

Suspended accounts can't pay for a subscription AFAIK, so you should be charged future months when the cycle rolls around.


And they don't refund current months, that's just not a thing that happens.

No company I know of refunds a current month on software subscriptions if you lose access to the account.

[Gramboozle]

Suspended accounts can't pay for a subscription AFAIK, so you should be charged future months when the cycle rolls around.


And they don't refund current months, that's just not a thing that happens.

No company I know of refunds a current month on software subscriptions if you lose access to the account.

Except the sub renewed TODAY and the account has been suspended since Saturday, so they definitely are charging us while the account is suspended.

[Caitlinzulu]

why didnt you stop the auto renew option in mogstation? or is access to that blocked too?

[Greyhawk]

You will have to contact support directly about it. There's nothing that can be done on these forums, let alone them even reading things here.

[Gramboozle]

why didnt you stop the auto renew option in mogstation? or is access to that blocked too?

yeah we are blocked out of everything, mog station included unfortunately. They said if the account was 'terminated' that would cancel the payment, but since its 'suspended' the account info just remains...so we are SOL apparently...i just dont see how that is legal...it really blows my mind.

[Gramboozle]

You will have to contact support directly about it. There's nothing that can be done on these forums, let alone them even reading things here.

As helpful as your comment is. I am fully aware of the process to contact customer support, that was obviously the first thing we did, my purpose for posting here is to ask if anyone else has had this problem...how was it resolved? Is it common practice for this business to continually charge players even after suspending their accounts, and why are WE as consumers allowing this unethical and likely illegal business practice to continue?

[Arazehl]

The only thing you can do is wait and be patient for your rollback. If you reported it as a compromised account than they will ban the account until such a time the owner can show proof of ownership and reclaim it. For them to even do the rollback, the account owner can't be logged on at the time of rollback. This process can happen between 7 to 10 days.

As far as reimbursement of down time in game, the fault doesn't lie with SE when it comes to who's to blame for the compromised account. They are not the ones who followed the link and logged you in. They want to keep you and others in the same situation as a customer however, so they will rollback your character before the account was compromised. So you should count your lucky stars that a company will do that much for you and learn from it. Spread the word to others about this phishing practice, so they don't fall victim too.