Account address issue has STILL not been acknowledged by Square.

[Razraptre]

The reason for not being able to change the address is largely the same reason why you can't on Steam, Nintendo, Apple. Payment providers don't allow non-US addresses when they are in USD.

That's not entirely correct. Steam, Apple and many others (Google, Microsoft, Ubisoft, Blizzard etc) all allow you to change regions. I know because I had to do this when I moved countries a few years ago. Sure you may have to update your payment provider too, but if you've actually migrated then this isn't really an issue.

Not allowing users to change their region seems to be more of an East Asian thing - Nintendo, Sony and Square Enix don't have this feature at all.

[MyouRi]

That's the problem. Because the payment processor refuses to accept US dollar payments unless the card has a US billing address. That's what I've been saying. Even awful Paypal does this. God help you if you have USD bank accounts outside the US, the payment processor will be "nope, you are in the EU, you pay in Euros" or "nope, you are in Canada, you pay in Canadian Dollars". That's the purpose of this "feature". It's likely that they even use different banks in different regions to minimize the currency exchanges.

I'm actually not sure that that is the only problem, in EU at least. I've seen some say that they have had issues with the new payment processor even when they've tried to use Euro currency bank card from country Y after registering euro currency-using country X.
Additionally there a quite a few countries in the EU that do not use Euros (Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Hungary, Poland) etc. that are not charged in their local currency, but in Euros by Square.
So I would not be surprised if the currency issue that you have in NA is not applicable to EU, or at least not applied unilaterally.

All Square Enix has to do to fix this is allow users to use any payment card they have, and select the currency to charge it in. That solves everything. Ignore address verification as long as the name, card number and expiry is correct. When people go into a physical store, they are not asked to verify their address with the cashier/self-checkout. If it's the same payment card they've been using for the last 14 years, why the sudden incompetence? Did "Square Enix" get a better deal from another payment processor, who happens to be sorely incompetent (see the VISA Debit issue), or is it simply they are trying to "protect" accounts from using stolen credit cards/gift cards/prepaid cards from foreign countries?

Yes, if they want to use address verification as a 'security' feature then they have to not implement it so half-heartedly. I'm still shocked that no one that was even a little bit familiar with their account management system couldn't see that this was going to be a huge problem. Was nobody consulted?!

There is no reason to tell players they need to make a new account.

100% agree. Absolutely shocking customer service and such a disservice to the people that have supported the company for so many years.

[Edmund_Blackadder]

I had this exact same issue, due to my RL job previously. The only option I had in the end was to create a brand new account for UK, buy the game again, re-sub and level again from scratch. But hey, at least the story made it worthwhile. 'T'was a grand, glorious dream we shared'.

[MyouRi]

I had this exact same issue, due to my RL job previously. The only option I had in the end was to create a brand new account for UK, buy the game again, re-sub and level again from scratch. But hey, at least the story made it worthwhile. 'T'was a grand, glorious dream we shared'.

It sucks that that was the only option you were left with in the end.

I am just not ready to abandon an account I've used to support the development of this game by subbing for thousands of days and buying optional cosmetics. All of which most of us are happy to do, because we love the game. We just want to be able to continue playing it, it's not a crazy ask really.

And yet here we are, still no response or acknowledgement from Square after a month.

[Bissonnettzi]

Yeah this is stupid it's like the concept of moving country is absolutely alien to square.

[Kamatsu]

However, countries like Australia, which must register to European accounts (to the best of my knowledge) are now being locked out because surprise, their address is "European" but their payment is not.

Just wanted to confirm this fact, unless changed since I registered - Australian accounts are classified as European. This has meant we get charged in Euro, or at least have been up till now at least - my last sub payment went through and was charged in Euro, not Au$ or US$.

I have to admit, this whole address drama hasn't hit me yet... but I'm sure it's sadly a matter of time till it does. I have stayed off buying anything from the store due to this having not been resolved yet... and dread every time my recurring sub payment comes up for renewal, cuz I'm sure one of these days it'll say "Payment failed" and I'll be locked out due to account address issues.

Yes, this also means I have not pre-ordered DawnTrail either. Why would I give them $60 Au$ I sadly feel like I'm likely to lose my account due to their changing payment processors? Pffft, sorry... I'd rather wait a few months to see if they ever resolve this before buying it (assuming it is fixed).

As for the whole buying the game yet again - nope, not going to happen. As much as I like the game (~3.5K hours played, and who knows how much spent on the shop)... I will not be buying the game again if my account gets nuked due to the new payment processor having issue with my address. I will not give them any more money, knowing there's likely a chance it'll possibly happen again... so yeah, pffft to that. I'll just remember all the good times I had... rather than trying to catch up to where I am now, with everything I've done... and all the stuff that I wouldn't be able to get again either.

[Sgt_Thud]

This topic needs to stay pushed to the top. We are weeks from an expansion release and SE still hasn’t even acknowledged this issue or given any hint they’re trying to resolve it.

Players shouldn’t have to give up accounts with a decade+ of play just because SE can’t be bothered to allow change of country. Especially when this wasn’t a problem until a month and an half ago. I’m sure people like me have friends unable to play and this is probably the absolute worst time to suddenly lose your partners in play.

GMs or community managers or someone needs to get this in front of Yoshi-P because after how transparent he and the devs have historically been it’s utterly baffling and frankly infuriating that they have said nothing.

[Brynne]

Suggestion: maybe have a cooldown after you have changed your country so that you can't change it again for some time? I don't know, because I don't know what the issue is with changing your country... You should be able to do this, and I'm really sad for the people who are frustrated by this issue and unable to continue their subs.

[Sgt_Thud]

I feel like once a year would be reasonable if the concern is people just changing to get better pricing or something.

I’m also seeing some Australian players are affected while others are not and I’m not sure what is causing this difference? Wouldn’t Australian addresses be lumped under EU regional accounts since that’s what they were directed to sign up as and that hasn’t changed, to my knowledge.

[Absurdity]

This is mostly correct, however Blizzard doesn't let you change region. I.e. if your account is EU, and you move to US, your Blizzard account will always be EU and you can't change it. However, inside that region, you are correct in that you can change country.

I have no idea if this has changed in recent years but with Blizzard it was a weird case of your account being entirely locked to that region, not just in terms of payment. If you for example had an EU account you couldn't even access the US servers.