So I contacted SE on Monday and they got back to me today. This is what they said:


Dear Customer,

Regarding your request for billing support. Please find your answer below.

Error 401/406/601 means that there is a security block preventing the transaction from going through. It may be an issue with the bank, incorrect billing information, or too many rejected attempts. Once the Error is triggered, it will place a 24 hour hold on the account. You will need to wait 24 hours before trying the card again.

Keep note, if you keep trying before the cool off period is over, it will reset the clock. So please refrain from trying until the 24 hours have passed.

Thank you for contacting the SQUARE ENIX Support Center.

Here is my reply:

Hello and thank you for your response!

I know it is as important to you as it is to me that Square Enix continues to thrive and produce great games that people want to purchase (maybe even moreso to you since I merely enjoy the experience as a customer whereas you make a living off of it ). I am concerned that the current billing system is driving many people away from this game, some just temporarily and some permanent. Customers whom are willing and in most cases even eager to pay for your services are being road-blocked by this billing system. Because of this, a significant amount of your revenue is being lost. I know you guys are doing everything you can to increase revenue so the business can be successful, and updating this billing system would definitely have a direct positive effect. These revenue increases may even enable SE customer service representatives to have more frequent pay increases! Can you put in word to your management that some reforms to the billing system are much desired by the community? There are a great deal of people having this problem. Please take a few minutes to skim over this thread:
http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxiv/t...de-401-and-601

Note that this has been going on for over a year. Most people for the past year were able to get around this error by simply using ultimate pay. However once that dropped off this past month, now credit card is the only option. I think I heard that you guys are adding Paypal as an option which is very exciting and would also act as an alternative band-aid to ultimate pay for this ongoing issue. Billing system updates might already be a priority for you guys but I just want to give you some customer feedback so that hopefully it can be prioritized higher or possibly even first since once you are able to fix this then you will recover a great deal of lost revenue.

Here is a summary of some recurring suggestions that I saw in that thread based on roughly 1000 people having this issue:

1. Add Paypal as a payment option
2. Show all of the data being sent to the global collect company. I noticed that when we input information it does not require us to put our name, but only our credit card info.
3. When there is an error, include in the error message that there is a 24 hour hold*. Most people are going to try again a few times if it doesn't work right away.
4. *Change the 24 hour hold to something like 5 or 10 minutes. 24 hours is a little steep. And the 30 day hold for multiple failed attempts is extremely unforgiving at best.

I'm sure there are other good ideas as well but this seems like a great start that would at least fix this issue. Thank you for your consideration and I look forward to seeing your updated user friendly billing system!

Regards,