Early Access code - Wrong Region

[Romikemi]

SQEX made the mistake in the recent past of allowing people to unknowingly create accounts in systems designed for a region other than where the account holder lives. They're paying dearly for that in bad publicity because they've hit a subscription billing mega problem.

They're looking ahead to the monthly billing systems going live, and they've got EU-based players who have inadvertently created NA-based accounts that cannot be billed from Square Enix America systems, and vice versa, without causing a major finance and accounting tangle. So they have to come up with a way to get all the accounts migrated to the right regional systems and operating companies.

The complexity SQEX faces in their systems and why they can't issue out of region codes is because this is a P2P transaction problem that they have one day to sort out or face a wall of noise much bigger than 30 page threads.

[Kazielle]

SQEX made the mistake in the recent past of allowing people to unknowingly create accounts in systems designed for a region other than where the account holder lives. They're paying dearly for that in bad publicity because they've hit a subscription billing mega problem.

They're looking ahead to the monthly billing systems going live, and they've got EU-based players who have inadvertently created NA-based accounts that cannot be billed from Square Enix America systems, and vice versa, without causing a major finance and accounting tangle. So they have to come up with a way to get all the accounts migrated to the right regional systems and operating companies.

The complexity SQEX faces in their systems and why they can't issue out of region codes is because this is a P2P transaction problem that they have one day to sort out or face a wall of noise much bigger than 30 page threads.

Your post gave me shivers.

Sounds absolutely terrifying for everyone involved.

Some people got Euro keys. GMG decided to be "clever" and give you keys based on your IP address. If you were not overseas on vacation or business, or were not masking your IP when you purchased from them, you *should* be ok.

If you were inadvertently assigned a Euro key though, GMG will not refund or exchange, and SqEx will tell you there is "nothing" they can do. After a 5 hour wait in the support queue. Also, no amount of re-entering the 18 digit key for redemption on the SE site will produce an NA 20 digit key since you technically actually bought a Euro key. GG.

I'm a GMG 'victim' too, though I feel SE is most at fault for allowing any of this to happen in the first place. I don't know where I'm supposed to go from here. :\ I hate how much stress this has generated for me in the last couple of days. It's just a VIDEO GAME. This shouldn't be so hard! Normally I wouldn't let it get to me but.. I've been waiting eagerly for this game for months, and a bunch of my friends are set and ready to go. They're not all going to wait for me, so I'm going to be way behind if this isn't fixed in time :\ So frustrating. I don't remember the last time I felt so disrespected as a customer.

[Eder]

I'm a GMG 'victim' too, though I feel SE is most at fault for allowing any of this to happen in the first place. I don't know where I'm supposed to go from here. :\ I hate how much stress this has generated for me in the last couple of days. It's just a VIDEO GAME. This shouldn't be so hard! Normally I wouldn't let it get to me but.. I've been waiting eagerly for this game for months, and a bunch of my friends are set and ready to go. They're not all going to wait for me, so I'm going to be way behind if this isn't fixed in time :\ So frustrating. I don't remember the last time I felt so disrespected as a customer.

Kazielle, you should be able to get a preaccess code quite easily to get into the early access, there are so many people with "spare" keys, then sort out the retail key next week (either ideally by SqEx or by trading). The only problem is if you are in NA and have inadvertently signed up for a EU account... that would mean paying subs in Euro dollars which would suck... The only way out of that is to try and convince SqEx to change your account from EU to NA, and, well, I would have more hope about chocobos flying to be honest...

[Eder]

SQEX made the mistake in the recent past of allowing people to unknowingly create accounts in systems designed for a region other than where the account holder lives. They're paying dearly for that in bad publicity because they've hit a subscription billing mega problem.

They're looking ahead to the monthly billing systems going live, and they've got EU-based players who have inadvertently created NA-based accounts that cannot be billed from Square Enix America systems, and vice versa, without causing a major finance and accounting tangle. So they have to come up with a way to get all the accounts migrated to the right regional systems and operating companies.

The complexity SQEX faces in their systems and why they can't issue out of region codes is because this is a P2P transaction problem that they have one day to sort out or face a wall of noise much bigger than 30 page threads.

The problem stems from the fact that companies need to segregate the playerbase on region because of funding for the support centers and also because of an inequity in fees charged between regions (US prices and subs are usually among the cheapest, and in a true free market everyone would be buying from US).

This debacle has been compounded by their website redirection problems, and lack of tools for support staff to actually do any region changes, even when it's clear there is a problem. Not to mention they must be hiring all of 2 people to man the phones and chat support, as the 5 hour long queues can attest...

This is still a Japanese company though... customers are probably a lot more tolerant over there, and HQ is probably most concerned about pleasing the homeland playerbase first before attending to any other problems.