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Online subscriptions: Holding people hostage.
Meiz
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
Isn't it odd that you can find everything at your fingertips in order to sign up for a service online and for some reason, they happen to omit an option to actually cancel that very same subscription.
Wouldn't it be great if someone in the government passed some sort of law against this? Well, your pleas have been heard the is if you're in Illinois.
Article:
http://kotaku.com/5032004/illinois-law-spurred-by-final-fantasy-xi-cancellation-issues
I just spent 20 minutes of my life canceling my bloody X-box Gold membership because Microsoft gives you every convenience to sign up but none to cancel it. Sorry, I don't play Halo or anything else considering I can play TF2, for free.
I just hope that this forces companies to update their sites without pulling some regional only bullshit.
Wouldn't it be great if someone in the government passed some sort of law against this? Well, your pleas have been heard the is if you're in Illinois.
TheTaku wrote:Provides that an Internet gaming service provider that provides service to a consumer, for home and personal use, for a stated term that is automatically renewed for another term unless a consumer cancels the service must give a consumer who is an Illinois resident: (1) a secure method at the Internet gaming service provider's web site that the consumer may use to cancel the service, which method shall not require the consumer to make a telephone call or send U.S. Postal Service mail to effectuate the cancellation; and (2) instructions that the consumer may follow to cancel the service at the Internet gaming service provider's web site.
Article:
http://kotaku.com/5032004/illinois-law-spurred-by-final-fantasy-xi-cancellation-issues
I just spent 20 minutes of my life canceling my bloody X-box Gold membership because Microsoft gives you every convenience to sign up but none to cancel it. Sorry, I don't play Halo or anything else considering I can play TF2, for free.
I just hope that this forces companies to update their sites without pulling some regional only bullshit.
Meiz on
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The majority have the cancellation option very visible in your account options; usually right next to the payment and credit card info.
The only subscription service I've ever had problems canceling was a web host I had for several years. When I decided I wasn't using it anymore and wanted to cancel it literally took me 3 months to get them to finally cancel it. It was insane. There was no contact number; their "Live" operators didn't exist, I got no help from the forums and the customer service e-mail constantly just ignored my e-mails. There was no "cancel" option anywhere in any of their menus, and you couldn't just remove your CC info either.
Luckily it was pretty cheap; but it was sad because prior to that I had great experiences with them for the time I used the service (about 4 years total). They were prompt in getting servers back up or fixing any problems you might have with the service; the host was fast and cheap.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
It needs to be like the Wii system. You put in the number when you go to buy points. Every time. When I run out of subscription time, drop me to silver, don't cancel my account because I have a CC# on it instead of only using prepaid cards. Seriously, who the fuck designed that system?
Now, obviously I had agreed to open a subscription somehow, or they would have been doing something illegal. But I never did find out how, since I never would have willfully accepted the subscription, and I definitely never chose a payment plan. They told me they could only refund the past month, but I was pretty pissed nonetheless, since the whole thing went completely over my head.
Of course, I had no problem cancelling the subscription, but I can't fathom how it got activated in the first place. And I don't know how I missed the first payment on my credit card notice, either. The whole thing was very surreal, since I'm always very careful about online payments.
And guess what they do? Plead with you to stay.
Seriously, I should just have a cancel button on the xbox. Making me call you just pisses me off.
Get a politician to solve that problem and I'd be happy as a pig in mud.
That's pretty much industry standard with any MMO with a trial.
You put in your CC info when you start the trial and unless you explicitly take action to cancel it before it subs it will charge you.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
I've paid triple what I should have. But I got a lot of free months with promotional codes and press shit.
Why is World of Warcraft brought up. Cancelling your sub could not be easier for that game. It is literally one button on their website under your account page.
I hope that's not 1&1
But I've played tons of MMO trials over the years, and they've all ended automatically after the allotted time. CoH is the only one that kept going. Just a few months ago I played Tabula Rasa, which is also a NCSoft game, and it didn't pull that shit.
Oh god, that was SO fucking annoying. I got emails once a month nagging about resubscription to Gold, yet they never dropped the accout to Silver and just locked it up.
Also, man, you guys make me sure i never want to have a damn Xbox 360
Wait, what the fuck?
If you have a gold account and pay with a credit card you can't just go back to Silver ever?
I don't even bother to call them. If I'm on the automatic subscription and I know I want to cancel soon, I just go buy a time card, put in the code, and it drops me down to that instead. Once the time runs out, it doesn't automatically renew my subscription.
But fuck I hate their system. I have three cards, two that are dead, stuck on my account. They won't let you fucking delete them. They're such assholes on the phone about it, too. I can delete my information on the other systems, so why can't I on the 360? It's probably one of the only things I really loathe about their service. If they fix that, then everything would be bloody God damn dandy.
I think you can drop it to Silver if you -specifically mention and constantly re-state that you want to be dropped to Silver-
otherwise they interpret "I want to cancel Gold" as "your account gets canceled and you can never sign into Live with it ever again ahahahahahhaa"
Unless you go back to Gold? Or is it actually deleted?
Because I bought XBLA games with that thing. A fuckton of them. And I demand to be able to play them offline.
Man, the same exact thing happened to me. Somewhere along the way, I ended up changing the plan on the credit card, which ended up also changing the number. Months later, the e-mails start coming in that the service is trying to renew but failing. Since I barely ever used it anyways, I figured I'd let it run out, where it would drop to Silver and then, considering all the stories about Live and credit cards, I'll just stick to prepaids. The entire sequence of events was just hair-pulling.
The gamertag can no longer log into Live. I'll get an error saying there's a problem with the account, and to go to the account page and deal with it. Except when it's locked like that, you CAN'T fucking access the account page, either through the dashboard or online. It errors out every time. Then, later down the line I decided to buy a prepaid card when I wanted to go online again. Once again though, when the account is locked like that, you can't put in any codes. My initial state was one of pure hatred, because now not only can I not add prepaid time, I've also wasted my goddamn money because there's no way I'll be able to return the card. Fortunatly... everything had a happy ending. After calling in and explaining the problem, they worked everything out. Apparently when the account is like that, they just lock it down so you can't add time and screw things up more (it was some bullshit story pretty much). But either way, they just put the account back to Silver and then had me punch in the code, then everything was golden.
So now, my Live account billing is strictly on prepaid cards, and the only credit card number they have on file is now non-existent. So I shouldn't be having any more retarded problems like that again.
As for this law... it's about time. While the nature of it coming into play is questionable - mainly in that cancelling FFXI was really easy and NOT the chore they made it out to be - it's great that it exists. The only thing shitty now is that it specifically says "video game subscriptions", when it should be generalized to ALL online subscriptions.
Are you paying with prepaids or a credit card? If it's a CC, it won't "end", it will just auto renew itself until you specifically call in and tell them not to. If for some reason the system can't do the renew, then they just lock the account and you'll never be able to log into Live until you again call them.
In fact, I'm actually not even sure what will happen if a prepaid account runs out. Whether it will drop back down to Silver or not. But no, your account will not "end". It's the inherint stupidity of the system.
...just click the video, dude.
"Are you not using it because you work too much"
"For fucks sake how is that any of your business? just cancel the fucking account already"
Is I believe the sentence that finally got it cancelled =\
FFXI isn't hard to cancel really. But it's fucking convoluted. You have your Playonline account and then your content ID's for FFXI, maybe even Tetra Master, and it can be a little confusing knowing which to cancel to have them stop charging you. Particularly if you're not someone who regularly spends time with online games and maybe got XI because it had FF in front of it.
On the other hand contrary to the problems said person in the articles had with their phone support; I had great experiences with POL support when I had to call them for whatever (finding my account, finding an old character, etc). I might have had to wait on hold, but really, what customer service line doesn't have that?
I agree though, wholeheartedly, it should be an absolute requirement to have some sort of online cancellation option, if there isn't one. There's no good reason, Live is a good example, to ever have to call and deal with customer service to cancel an online service.
I honestly hope this forces MS to add (if it's not there already) some cancellation option into the new dashboard. I don't intend to cancel my Gold account anytime in the forseeable future, but if I want to I don't need to deal with customer service.
Also I agree about the CC thing and how Live stores it compared to the Wii. Some of us don't have a lot of self control when it comes to moon bucks. It's too easy to say "oh, it's only 200 points, I don't even have to enter my CC stuff." You just click 2 buttons and money is spent.
I know there will be a new option in the new dashboard to remove your CC info but I doubt it'll be something like an auto-remove every use. It'll just be to clear the info to add a different card.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
The fast way used to be (when I was going through 2 months on OXbox Live) was to say "I'm cancelling because of the mod cheaters on Halo 2".
Should I go back to Gold ASAP before my account is formally subdued?
A couple of times they asked me "Are you sure a family member, like a brother, wife, or daughter does not want to use this account?"
- The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (2017, colorized)
My Backloggery
Answer with "Hmm, my wife and daughter might want to use it, she's pretty into gaming."
See if it makes them pause for a moment
I never did any of em...
Answer with "My free loader room mate is playing with it you choose comvince him to pay for it"
I didn't have to do a survey (at least not that I remember) when I quit WoW. Are you sure it wasn't optional?
I don't think it could really qualify as a "survey". It's a question. "Why did you quit?". And if you choose "Other" they want to know why.
Origin: Galedrid - Nintendo: Galedrid/3222-6858-1045
Blizzard: Galedrid#1367 - FFXIV: Galedrid Kingshand
Microsoft has crappy customer service.
I have never ever ever heard of this bullshit from any other service. Every MMO I've played had a big fat "CANCEL" button in an obvious place in the account control panel.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
AOL has a bad history of this too. It's actually pretty common to require a phone call to cancel anything.
MMO's seem to be ahead of the pack, I assume because the volume of cancellations/subscriptions is so high it wasn't economical to run a call center for them.