fao goa (subscription)

[Cadelin]

Why do people keep thinking this is a mistake?

How much extra cash must they make from people not realizing they are on auto renew?

All it requires is an overly long EULA and a difficult to use subscription website and they make a significant amount of money from customers that probably won't be coming back anyway.

 

[Boggy]

My point is; DONT TOUCH MY SUBSCRIPTION SETTINGS!! if this is the way they want to keep making money.. how about get origins up for some extra..

Agreed. I felt the same on reading the email. Now, if the email had given some justification and not left me to think "I bet they're hoping to squeeze a few months from people who don't get around to cancelling it," I mighta felt different. But they didn't bother to do that.

I see this blowing up really badly if website errors ever hinder people trying to cancel auto-renews.

Gonna go read the terms and conditions and work out if they are actual legally sound. One of our statutary rights in the UK is that silence cannot be deemed as acceptance of a contract, and terms and conditions are never able to infringe your statutary rights, whether you click "I agree" or not.

 

[Frozenheart]

At least they emailed people to tell them, they could easily have just let it renew ... too lazy to disable it?

 

[Boggy]

At least they emailed people to tell them, they could easily have just let it renew ... too lazy to disable it?

Yes, and fortunately for me, GOA have never been given the right to tax laziness.

 

[AngelHeal]

nice to see any reaction on this within 24 hours of goa btw...


oohh wait.. they didnt reply yet..

 

[Wai]

Just checked mine and my girlfriends subscription, and both were on automatic.

Seriously thinking of packing the game in now tbh, I set it to manual after the first payment and then checked it to make sure it was still manual a day later and both were. Now for some unknown reason they flag it to automatic and the email doesn't even say they did it, it just says that you can automactically renew if you want by using one of the payment methods.

Daoc, lets be honest, at the best of times was not run very well (felt like chimps were running it alot of the time), I woulda thought after all the mistakes made in the past with daoc and more recently with the release of this game that Goa would have everything working perfectly :/

 

[Muylaetrix]

damn, i`m happy that after my initial month ran out i stood by my decision NEVER EVER AGAIN pay anything online and waited for the gaming cards to arive in the shops. ok, i coulnd`t play for like a week.

GOA, this is BAD !!!

 

[tazzbe]

Also checked...same thing here.

I put it back to manual...hope it stays that way. But tbh i had same prob with my WoW account i haven't logged in since a year...seems my account was re-opened 2 months ago for a 3 month sub. of course sending an e-mail about this didn't do anything since they don't even reply after 5 times.

Think it's fairly easy to see when people lost interest in a game...if i didn't log in for a year...i think it's clear i won't renew all of a sudden.

Anyway...hope they FIX this asap in WAR...it's waisted money if you don't plan to play anyway.

 

[Downanael]

Man,this is such asshole move from GOA that for sure.

 

[Mr_Grumpy]

They did it before and theyll do it again. Its not a mistake. They reactivated dead accounts in DAoC once and people only found out when they got their cc statements through with a new goa fee on them.

Cant trust em to do anything right except balls up. It'll be the character and item database next.

 

[Dukat]

They did it before and theyll do it again. Its not a mistake. They reactivated dead accounts in DAoC once and people only found out when they got their cc statements through with a new goa fee on them.

I had this - when I started DAoC I didnt have a credit card, got my parents to put it on thiers and paid them the cash.

I quit DAoC in May 2006(i think it was 06 anyway), a year later my parents suddenly get money going out of thier account, at which point I no longer had my subscription login. I emailed GoA about it with various different pieces of information proving who I was but they refused the stop the payments. This carried on until my parents changed thier account (for other reasons), by which time I had paid for a year of DAoC I didnt ask for or want and couldnt use.

It'll be a cold day in hell before I ever give CC details to GoA again.

 

[MagnusGOA]

Subscription status

Good day!

Some players have indeed had their subscriptions switched to automatic renewal although they haven't actually asked for this. This is an error and we've escalated it to involved teams and it's naturally a top priority issue. For now, I'd advise anyone who has received this e-mail to log in at war-europe and make sure that their subscription status is what it should be.

Apologies to those who are affected by this; this is not how we intend to do business and we'll make sure it's rectified as soon as possible. I'll have more info on this tomorrow.


-Magnus

 

[Frozenheart]

Thanks Magnus although it took around 20 seconds to disable it on both mine and my hubbys account

 

[AngelHeal]

Good day!

Some players have indeed had their subscriptions switched to automatic renewal although they haven't actually asked for this. This is an error and we've escalated it to involved teams and it's naturally a top priority issue. For now, I'd advise anyone who has received this e-mail to log in at war-europe and make sure that their subscription status is what it should be.

Apologies to those who are affected by this; this is not how we intend to do business and we'll make sure it's rectified as soon as possible. I'll have more info on this tomorrow.


-Magnus

Well, I know this is ur weekend aswell, and this may be a bit uncalled for butta..

messing with peoples money, is not just an error is it? Specially since it happend befor to people at a other certain game you were running for us.

Anyways, looking forward to the 'more info' u are giving us tomorow.
Or will that date be prosponed aswell?

[edit: i know you (hopefully) have nothing to do with this magnus, but you are kinda the person to talk to GOA from our pov]

 

[ramathorn]

I'm just glad I never went past my first month and they dont have my details on file. This company will never get another penny from me, they should be ashamaed of how they do business.

 

[Naffets]

This is shocking really, and I somehow doubt this being an error. There is no way the subscription database decided to set itself to auto renew all players with credit cards...someone was given the order.

Anyway. What about players that don't frequent these forums? I see no news of this on the website...though in fairness, I guess a realtime chronicle of mistakes would be embarrassing.

Apologies for the tone of this post, I'm truly shocked thats all, thankfully GOA don't have my CC details

 

[Fatload BoysDoCry]

I was shocked when Mythic continued to do business with GOA for WAR, after the abysmal service they provided with DAOC. We were given assurances by comical ali himself (Requiel) that they had learned from past mistakes and a new dawn was about to shine on GOA's gaming service.
Little did we know that GOA's new standards were based on the level of service provided by NTL's indian customer services department. In a recent report GOA said they were still hoping to achieve that level of service by Christmas.

Fast forward 6 months and its the same rubbish from the same cretins. I'm just waiting for Requiel to come here and wave his hand at us whilst muttering "Your subscription hasn't been renewed....these aren't the errors your looking for".

I went against my better judgements and bought the EU version of WAR, if I ever came back to this indie WoW game it would be under Mythic. Although it will be interesting to see if GOA publish some subscription figures in the next month or two after ripping so many people off.

Hopefully Mythic can put GOA where they belong, on the unemployed list

 

[Muylaetrix]

if it wasn`t for the little money worth of a subscription, this could imply law suits...

noone is going to court over 12 euro * a number of months

in court, this could close down goa !!!

this is scandalous !!!

keep in mind that companies like visa or american expres might consider this bad enough to take goa to court.

i don`t even think porn sites have the guts to do stuff like this.

 

[Nate]

You don't even know if anyones been charged yet. Less pitchforks please.

 

[Aiteal]

To the castle!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Not a nice bug, but bugs happen
I can accept that

Tbh, Magnus, what's annoying is the vague wording of the email
and the confusing wording of the subscription page

I think you could have saved alot of justifiable annoyance and bad blood on your customers side with a clearly worded email that explained the situation and warned players to check their settings and explained exactly how to reset the auto-renew option.

I appreciate teh problem may have arisen after the email went out
But there's nothing stoppping you sending out a follow up email now with a little red flag

 

[Raven]

You have to wonder how many people have bought the game, decided its not for them and cancelled their sub, put the box/disk/sub info in the bin/back of a cupboard/under a pile of junk to never be thought about again. How many of these don't check their bank statements for every last £10? GOA could make an absolute fortune from what is essentially theft while increasing subscription figures. No wonder they have no idea how many are playing on the servers when they are messing up in such a simple area.

GOA need to check to see when and how the accounts in question were switched over and reverse it, they then need to refund the cards that have been charged immediately, they need to fire whichever chimp made the mistake, he and the "flash guy" can share a leaving party. Saying "oh sorry, won't happen again" is not really good enough.

 

[Cylian]

déjà vu

same thing happened in DAoC. If you cancel, check your account in half a year if it's not suddenly set to auto-renew again.

And the email is not even about your account being set to auto-renew, but about the payment methods that -can- be used with auto-renewal.

 

[Boggy]

Good day!

Some players have indeed had their subscriptions switched to automatic renewal although they haven't actually asked for this. This is an error and we've escalated it to involved teams and it's naturally a top priority issue. For now, I'd advise anyone who has received this e-mail to log in at war-europe and make sure that their subscription status is what it should be.

Apologies to those who are affected by this; this is not how we intend to do business and we'll make sure it's rectified as soon as possible. I'll have more info on this tomorrow.


-Magnus

Anyone can make a mistake and we don't get to choose where, so can be in account management as easily as anywhere else.

I guess my only suggestion would be to put you in charge of sending out the customer emails. If I had initially received one saying what you just said, I would have felt fine about it.

 

[Naffets]

Anyone can make a mistake and we don't get to choose where, so can be in account management as easily as anywhere else.

I guess my only suggestion would be to put you in charge of sending out the customer emails. If I had initially received one saying what you just said, I would have felt fine about it.

I see your point, though I'd have felt the same to be honest, rather annoyed. Imagine if you got a letter from your gas supplier informing you that by mistake, £12 worth of gas had used itself in the pipe leading to your house. (Physically impossible, Surely?) You'd still be annoyed about it? No?

Perhaps thats a bad analogy, or you're just a genuinely patient person, but I'd be annoyed all the same. I like to have some degree of control over my outgoings, particularly where credit and debit cards are concerned.

I think this thread (Or one with less bitching) needs making a sticky so any newcomers are aware that their auto subs may well have turned itself on?

Oh, wait, it's on the website now! wooo. Mistake?! Doesn't seem that way...

This sort of behavior is the same dodgy business practices that Time Computers used (Google for the scandal if unsure) and is rather shitty if you ask me. Never thought another business would treat its customers like Time did, but heyho...we'll all live im sure...

 

[AngelHeal]

I just wonder what rating goa would give themselve from customer pov

 

[legar]

same here.. my account was allready billed ahead last month (couple days before it ended i went to cancel and it was allready rebilled WTf.

And just now it has been re-enabled.. thank god for this topic and showing me

what a bunch of @$@$#

 

[AngelHeal]

Good day!

Some players have indeed had their subscriptions switched to automatic renewal although they haven't actually asked for this. This is an error and we've escalated it to involved teams and it's naturally a top priority issue. For now, I'd advise anyone who has received this e-mail to log in at war-europe and make sure that their subscription status is what it should be.

Apologies to those who are affected by this; this is not how we intend to do business and we'll make sure it's rectified as soon as possible. I'll have more info on this tomorrow.


-Magnus

.....so far for the more info today...

fail

 

[TheBinarySurfer]

Have to say Magnus, while this isn't your fault and from my lurking you seem to be a pretty good community manager/liason/whatever we're calling it now.

However the hits just keep on coming from GoA don't they? Server loading problems, beta key problems, queues, population problems, subscription problems, server crashes, zone crashes, and now this (i'm sure i missed a few out).

I'm also pretty confident that no single one of these problems has cost GoA huge numbers of subscriptions. However i'm sure that added up together you've lost a lot of potential players due to the fact that GoA just keep on finding Banana peels to slip up on time and time again.

I think people aren't particuarly bothered that it's from a different Banana every time - the point is as a company you end up sprawled on your arse looking silly again, and again, and again.

 

[Salvion]

I did also get the goa email and did only read it casually but during work i got an strange feeling that maybe they haid intended to turn my acclount on to AUTO without my approval or asking for it, so this morning when i get home from work i checked, and sure enough it was set to auto renewal

I am really chocked!! this is very seriouse and i will not accept this!

 

[Fast]

Not this shit again. Theft.