This is for real and confirmed by me. A non troll lol : So I got off the phone with SCEA. apparently, FFXIV ARR version that you bought is supposed to be available to "repurchase" with your refunded money tomorrow morning at 5 AM PDT. I wound up just upgrading to the Collector's Edition and it's now working perfectly. I didn't even bother deleting the client from my HD. Just checked the services list and noticed an unexpired early access and unexpired Collector's Edition while the Standard Edition expired today.

Hope this helps.