Square Enix's GTC Problem - No Gift Option

[HyperiusUltima]

This is getting ridiculous now.. More 'solutions' that come at the absolute detriment of players that consume a product in a perfectly reasonable way.

How long is their ban duration?

They had the 10 days treatment, they’ve got a couple days left on the ban but it’s certainly a problem they’re going to have to face eventually because anti-consumer practices suck, even if they’re trying to crack down on the fraud that may actually be happening.

[Kaurhz]

They had the 10 days treatment, they’ve got a couple days left on the ban but it’s certainly a problem they’re going to have to face eventually because anti-consumer practices suck, even if they’re trying to crack down on the fraud that may actually be happening.

10 days?!?

Isn't that near enough an indefinite ban?

[HyperiusUltima]

10 days?!?

Isn't that near enough an indefinite ban?

No - but it’s definitely strike 1. I think strike 2 is a month and 3 is full on account ban.

[Wyssahtyn]

square enix making bad decisions? say it isn't so

[SongOfTheWind]

So SE got money for card and banned the player to actually use that money? How nice

[Nero-Voidstails]

isn't the ban permanent if not explain and fought against?

[HyperiusUltima]

isn't the ban permanent if not explain and fought against?

No. I suggest you go look up the slides that Yoshida used back during Stormblood(the ones talking about the “three strike rule” to get an understanding of how they police their game. I can’t look it up right now because work, but I’ll try to dig for it this afternoon.

[Catwho]

Yeah, it sucks that they've resorted to this, but it's because of stolen credit cards that they tied them.

What was happening was:

* Someone hacks a Lodestone account that isn't being used with email and password because they did not have 2FA
* Someone uses that Lodestone account to purchase the time cards using a stolen credit card
* Those cards are then sold on the black market for a discount price
* The person whose CC was stolen notices the fraudulent charges and issues a charge back against SE
* The CC company is forced to refund the money, and SE is left holding the bag AND gets a nastygram from the CC account
* Only the RMT hackers/thieves profit off this

SE's solution to this was to tie the email accounts on the Lodestone together with any purchased time cards.

OP is right though. Another solution is to add gift card time as a direct option on the Lodestone. My understand why the gift options were already limited to certain items and limited to friend's list only was specifically so friends could continue to occasionally gift each other things on the Mogstation, but RMT hackers could not buy items in bulk to resell. (Minions, mounts, outfits, etc were popular RMT sales options.) Since a character can have multiples of, well, time cards, there isn't any reason to lock it out. Maybe for direct time card purchases, limit it to friends that have been on your list for more than 90 days, to prevent RMT from adding people to the hacked account's friends list.

In the meantime, OP, you're better off sending a friend a straight up Visa gift card in physical mail and telling them to use that to purchase their own game time using their own account.

[SongOfTheWind]

You don’t need Lodestone account to buy a time card. It can be purchased without login from SE store…
That’s why the situation is ridiculous. Their systems got triggered as the code was used for account with another email than the one which was used for the digital code purchase delivery.