An excercise in frustration with GOA

[Oro]

Last Saturday (27th March) I logged on and all the cash bar 99g was gone from my main character. As far as I recall, I had over a plat. Not a lot compared to some, but hard earned while levelling. BUT I'm not infallible, may have done something dumb without realising.

I tried to log an incident with Right Now but then got told my account details were invalid. I tried all combinations of login and subs IDs and passwords to be sure but even when I was trying this I was fairly sure it wouldn't work: I could still access the GOA subs pages. I could still log into the game, so my account wasn't quite as invalid as Right Now would have me believe.

Pretty worried at this point as it seemed I had some kind of account problem and the possibility that it had been comprimised. I don't share passwords with anyone under any circumstances. I do not store the account details in a Yahoo or Hotmail account. I run up-to-date anti-virus and use both software and hardware firewalls. I don't even allow stuff like ActiveX to run on webpages and so forth without prompting, just in case.

The only avenue I could find was to email GOA using the subs email address as it did seem to be an account related problem that I couldn't get into Right Now.

No response. I've emailled them again. Still no response (other than the automatic reply to say it was received). Not even a response to say something like "Use this other address" etc. I asked for confirmation of passwords, which even if the other part of the email was non subs related, THAT part was.

Well last night I dinged 50 (yay me) and this morning I tried to log on and got told my account had expired. Fair enough, first month after buying the game is over. Irony is there was an email telling me it had run out. Hint: GOA, send these emails before the account expires, customers like that kind of thing

So. I log into the subs pages to get the ball rolling there. Log in fine but it doesn't accept my card. Hmm ok, maybe I entered the details wrong. Try again. Next bit isn't GOA's fault - my PC crashed during the editing. However now when I try to access the subs page I get told the account is being processed.

There is no point in emailling GOA (as I get no response) and I know I won't be able to get into Right Now because of previous experience and the fact that the account is now closed.

Oh happy days.

If the fact that I couldn't get support was related to me being on my first month, this is pretty damn shocking. This is the time I bet when most people actually are more likely to hit problems and need help if they are totally new to the game (I'm not, but I am just starting out here).

And now my first month is over and I can't even choose to keep playing.

Its VERY hard right now not to just rant.

 

[old.Whoodoo]

Nice non-whinge post for a change, rather refreshing to see.

As for your cash, the missing 1p, thats a weird one, no answer there.

For billing you did the right thing, emailing subscription***@***goa.com normally does the trick, shame on them in this case.

As for RightNow, you should get into this using your game user name and pass, although there seems to be a trend lately of new accounts not getting access.

One thing I will say regarding the billing tho, I knwo there is a kind of time out on that system, if you fail to complete the transaction in a certain time, the web site will lock the acc for so long to help stop hacking attempts or breaching your security. From memory I think it locked for an hour or something.

Email address was misspelt anyway but we don't really want email addresses posted like this, so remove the stars Jup.

 

[yaruar]

Last Saturday (27th March) I logged on and all the cash bar 99g was gone from my main character. As far as I recall, I had over a plat. Not a lot compared to some, but hard earned while levelling. BUT I'm not infallible, may have done something dumb without realising.

I tried to log an incident with Right Now but then got told my account details were invalid. I tried all combinations of login and subs IDs and passwords to be sure but even when I was trying this I was fairly sure it wouldn't work: I could still access the GOA subs pages. I could still log into the game, so my account wasn't quite as invalid as Right Now would have me believe.

Pretty worried at this point as it seemed I had some kind of account problem and the possibility that it had been comprimised. I don't share passwords with anyone under any circumstances. I do not store the account details in a Yahoo or Hotmail account. I run up-to-date anti-virus and use both software and hardware firewalls. I don't even allow stuff like ActiveX to run on webpages and so forth without prompting, just in case.

The only avenue I could find was to email GOA using the subs email address as it did seem to be an account related problem that I couldn't get into Right Now.

No response. I've emailled them again. Still no response (other than the automatic reply to say it was received). Not even a response to say something like "Use this other address" etc. I asked for confirmation of passwords, which even if the other part of the email was non subs related, THAT part was.

Well last night I dinged 50 (yay me) and this morning I tried to log on and got told my account had expired. Fair enough, first month after buying the game is over. Irony is there was an email telling me it had run out. Hint: GOA, send these emails before the account expires, customers like that kind of thing

So. I log into the subs pages to get the ball rolling there. Log in fine but it doesn't accept my card. Hmm ok, maybe I entered the details wrong. Try again. Next bit isn't GOA's fault - my PC crashed during the editing. However now when I try to access the subs page I get told the account is being processed.

There is no point in emailling GOA (as I get no response) and I know I won't be able to get into Right Now because of previous experience and the fact that the account is now closed.

Oh happy days.

If the fact that I couldn't get support was related to me being on my first month, this is pretty damn shocking. This is the time I bet when most people actually are more likely to hit problems and need help if they are totally new to the game (I'm not, but I am just starting out here).

And now my first month is over and I can't even choose to keep playing.

Its VERY hard right now not to just rant.

I had a number of problems when trying to pay for my accounts from home. My credit card and switch card were both rejected. After about 4 weeks of speaking to a goa employee via rightnow (was quite helpful in all honesty) it turned out the billing company thinks my IP address is that of a russian con artist and has blocked all transactions from it. Which is news to me.

Oh forgot so say. My solution was to pay from work. In future I'm going to have to proxy my payments to get them to work

 

[Archeon]

Hint: GOA, send these emails before the account expires, customers like that kind of thing

That only applys to people running on the free month, when you start paying your subscription you get 1 weeks notice before your account runs out.

Sad to hear about this though

 

[Oro]

Whoodoo, spot on with the account lockout it seems. Can register now.

 

[Chrystina]

That only applys to people running on the free month, when you start paying your subscription you get 1 weeks notice before your account runs out.

wrong, all you get is an email as soon as it IS expired (if you have set it to manual renew) and you get no warning ... got one during a long Sidi raid once, heh ... makes you pray for not having to relog or going ld

 

[punchy]

So you could in theory blag loads of free time by paying manually for one month, then leaving your char logged in permanently once the month expires (praying that you don't LD)

 

[Archeon]

wrong, all you get is an email as soon as it IS expired (if you have set it to manual renew) and you get no warning ... got one during a long Sidi raid once, heh ... makes you pray for not having to relog or going ld

You sure? I've got little under 2 years worth of emails that would prove otherwise - maybe i'm just listed as a 'super-valuble' customer and as such get treated better than everyone else

 

[Blondy]

You can change your subs now aslong as the email address registered is the same as yours.

 

[Dracus]

Same here...i get a "warning" email 3-4 days b4 it runs out

And punchy...it wont work ive actually tried it(not on purpose). I alt-tabbed to see i had received the mail sayin my account was closed, altho i was online at the time...i thought what the hell and kept playin...after 4'ish hours i went LD for no apparent reason (i never LD, at least not at the time in question )

Imo that mustve been an automated, cut off, from goa but whaddou i know...

/Dracus

 

[Flimgoblin]

subscription email won't reply to things like the 1p problem (note that on the RIghtNow page where it mentions the email it has:

Important ! Only registration problems and loss of passwords will be checked, all other problems sent to this email will be ignored !

RightNow is for that, strange you can't login: it should be your current GAME login and password for RightNow.

things like billing problems the subscription email _will_ respond to - however given it sounds like you've locked your account into a transaction lock I'd give it a day (or a few hours) and then try again

 

[Chrystina]

You sure? I've got little under 2 years worth of emails that would prove otherwise - maybe i'm just listed as a 'super-valuble' customer and as such get treated better than everyone else

I never ever get any kind of warning email. I normaly notice that subscription is due by trying to login and get the "Account closed" message and then check my emails and find the usual "account terminated" mail (from the same day) ...

 

[Oro]

Flim, as I said, I had no other channel to GOA available to me that I could find on their website and as part of the email did actually ask for the passwords to be sent out again so I could double check I wasn't being a twit.

I got precisely zero response in a week and I couldn't even log the original problem because I couldn't get into the only channel that GOA give us to log problems.

I've got a feeling that because there was more in the email than just "Send passwords kthxbye" someone saw an oppertunity to underachieve that they couldn't pass up

 

[Thegreatest]

So you could in theory blag loads of free time by paying manually for one month, then leaving your char logged in permanently once the month expires (praying that you don't LD)

Won't work cause you will get kicked out of the game after some time

 

[Ormorof]

As for RightNow, you should get into this using your game user name and pass, although there seems to be a trend lately of new accounts not getting access.

neither of my 2 accs passwords worked with rightnow, yet when i asked them to send me the password they were EXACTLY the same as other ones but they worked fine

 

[Margaret]

For a while, to get into RightNow, I had to use my subscription username and my game password. It's fixed now, though - but I found that pretty odd at the time.

 

[chretien]

If you have another account registered to the same email address only one of the accounts will be able to access rightnow. Someone mentioned this recently ina similar thread.

 

[Oro]

Didn't know that, but actually have only one account registered at the email address I am using.

 

[Legott]

You need an exercise in style!
http://www.exercisesinstyle.com/