Oh Please not again (smacks head against wall)

[Reznet]

constructive comments please. this dialogue is still in progress

------------------------------------------------------------------------

from: xxx@xxxx.com

registration username: xxxxxxx

game username: xxxxxxx


I paid the first month of my account on 30/7/04 and
did not want automatic renewal but couldnt see on the
account site how to turn it off or on.

i therefore assumed it didnt exist/wasnt turned on.

i have now been billed for the period starting
tommorow (30/08/2004) which i do not want.

i am informing you of this today (29/08/2004) and will
happily delete all my characters to prove to you that
i do not want to play the game anymore for the moment.

i would like to be recredited with the money you are
going to take out or preferably i would like you to
stop the payment.

the speed at which you sort out this will dictate
whether i play one of your games ever again.

yours sincerely,

nigel griffiths


-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear customer,

If you wish to terminate the "Automatic Renewal", please go to the section "account" on the official http://camelot-europe.goa.com/fr/home.php; one week at least before the end of your subscription period.
Enter your SUBSCRIPTION login and password, then click on SUBSCRIPTION, chose "none" and validate.

We will be at your service for any further information.

PS: We remind to you that you are the only one to do it. there will be no refunding. Any started period is due.

Regards,
---------------------------------------------
European Dark Age of Camelot Customer Support



-------------------------------------------------------------------------

re: xxxxxxxxx

I am afraid that my subscription account would not let
me turn off the subscription on 29/08/2004 as "billing
was in progress" a day before the subscription was due
to be renewed.

I even have your email sent to me recording the date
and time i sent this information to you informing you
that i did not want the subscription. i am afraid that
saying to me "Any started period is due" is not
correct in this circumstance, as the period had not
started.

rather, the ineffectiveness of your website denied me
the option to cancel it before the gametime started.

I will take the matter up with my bank, i hope this
does not cost you more money than the subscription is
worth.

yours sincerely,

xxxxx xxxxxxxxx

------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[Raven]

could contact your bank and tell them to refuse it

 

[Reznet]

good idea but unfortunately it was a switch payment with the 3 security digits, so the bank has to allow the payment as it is authorised.

only once the payment went out, could i contact them and file it as a dispute, which i am doing at this exact moment.

 

[Reznet]

i am never playing this game again. unless someone else pays for it

 

[SevenSins]

Gutted m8, it's pretty shite they do this auto-renewal by default stuff, and they've only been pulling it off since what, 7/8 months?

Not sure if changing policies like that all of a sudden is legal, sure as hell is getting them more cash than they would otherwise though.

They should really change it the other way around: Do you wish to set your account to Auto-renewal?

Would clear up a lot of problems, but maybe then GOA would go Bankrupt from not being able to leech from old/empty/quit players accounts

 

[harebear]

I had the same problem yesterday. Got an email saying my bot which I didnt wanna use anymore had been activated :/

 

[Alan]

Its pretty simple now... when you pay for a month (two months or whatever) your subscription enters the autorenew function so you never have to worry - if you want to turn this off then re-visit the subscription page tyhe 2nd day and set it to -none-

When a payment is in progress, or a change made it looks like you need to wait around 24hrs before changing anything else.

Only ever had one problem when my CC expired, but that was resolved the following day, Im not saying the system is perfect, but its better than most others ive tried.

 

[Reznet]

if you only want one month you have to buy that month, log out and then relog into your account to turn off the auto renew.

its the system best suited to catching people out, and not a system that a company that really cared about its customers would use.

they would realise it was a problem and remove the automatic function, but its a sad fact it makes them money and thats what motivates them.

anyway, doesnt look too promising but good work on this not becoming a flame-fest, afterall ive wasted too much energy on this already.

word of warning to others really

 

[living]

or u could play for free *hint* *hint* and i truely swear that i did not cause this bug to happen on purpose

 

[Tareregion]

had my account renewed for 3 months today, even though i don't intend to play for the next 8 months <o/ well done goa! 2 fucking years and they still didn't sort it.

 

[Jpeg[LOD]]

threaten to sue em imo .. ive sen a few people CANCEL there subs and apparantly goa STILL take money out of there acc.

when the day comes i cancel my subs come. if they take money outta my account they will have a letter from my solicter in there postbox

 

[Kami]

Have cancelled on my accounts twice now, both times it worked perfectly well. I would say that the newer pages aren't as easy to use as before (thought that was the point) and would be nice if you had a confirmation email sent to you when you cancel. That's standard practice for most companies.

 

[Vepo]

They did this to me back in the days I used to play in Albion. It only happened the once, but I informed my bank which put a block on them (Debit Card) and the bank refunded my money back to my account.

I'm sure the bank filed for fraud against GOA, but sure if it ever happened though.

 

[Khale]

Never wait till the last moment... Same with people who live in the town/city they go to school they are the ones who are always late and the ones coming from a few kilometers are always on time. You don't need to wait till your account is almost finished to cancel it. Once you paid for a month you get the full month it doesn't cut you off if you don't wanna pay anymore at the time you want no more... (at the time you change the subscription)

Never had any problem with it...

 

[Daedalus]

I'm pretty sure it's buggy. My account got autorenewed while I actually did turn it off last time I renewed my account. I even took note of it and somehow it got set back to autobilling magically.

I don't mind though, because I wanted to play another month, but they need to investigate this because it does reek of fraud.

 

[Fana]

I am a lawstudent soon to graduate and i can tell you one thing: Negative contract binding, such as what GOA are trying to do (i.e. sending you something that you havent asked for and then charging you for it) is not legal in sweden, nor is it in the anglosaxon legal tradition. Im not sure what french law says about it though. Ofc it gets more complicated as you have been in a contractual arrangement with GOA in the past, but since you have clearly expressed your intent to terminate that contract there should be little room for them to manouver on. It doesnt matter that you have not kept to the precise procedure that *they* have proscribed - Law is above any contract and you *cannot* enter into an agreement wherein the rights of a consumer are voided (i.e. such a contract is not legal in the aspects voiding those rights, as to protect people that arent skilled in law from agreeing to worse conditions than they have a right to).

That beeing said, the best thing you can do is, as some have said, to immedietly contact your bank and tell them to block the transaction and/or refund the money as its been illegaly taken from your account. If GOA then complains you tell them to make a law case out of it. As a precaution, if you are sure you dont want to play again you can inform your bank that under no circumstances are money ever to be deducted from your account by BitBit/GOA ever again, thus preventing any future autorenewal from affecting you. Most banks/cc-companies should be able to provide this service.

Threatening to make a law case of it yourself (as ive heard many do when in this situation) is pretty pointless, as they never actually do, dont even know how to start if they really want to, are by no means guaranteed success, will take ages to resolve and cost alot more than its worth (altho for exactly the same reasons GOA wont try to go further themselves if you simply stop the payment).

Wish GOA would change their system, so that these situations could be avoided.

 

[Reznet]

I received this reply from GOA today. its written alot friendlier than the previous email which is something i suppose.

i have cancelled my switch card anyway just to be sure.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hello again,

You wanted to turn off the subscription on 29/08/2004 and the invoice was captured on the same day that's why there is no refund nor a way back.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

Regards,
---------------------------------------------
European Dark Age of Camelot Customer Support

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

[IainC]

Just a point. We can't terminate someones subscription on the strength of an email request.
This is why we have a secure webpage for managing your subscription.

 

[Damon_D]

HEHE yeah when it works..........

 

[Run0ff]

Pff Removed no wine

 

[punchy]

Report your card as lost/stolen. GOA attempts to debit with invalid numbers. No cash for them. This doesn't address the money they already stole from you (and I would consider it theft, it's not too disimilar to card fraud is it? ) but stops them debiting money from you because you forgot to press the correct buttons in the correct magic sequence...

Have you tried cancelling during a full moon, or perhaps a planetary conjunction?

 

[living]

ya or do like the rest of us and play for free.. sigh :>

 

[harm]

Had one of my inactive accounts being renewed like that without being aware of it at all. Once I suspected something was wrong, I discovered that I've been paying for it for three months. Think it's also about three months since last time they "accidentally" switched on everyones auto-renewal.

Guess I'll have to enter my inactive account's sub pages every other month from now on, making sure it's turned off at all times.

 

[Cyfr]

I wish goa would auto renew my account, would give me such joy to report it as theft

 

[Reznet]

some points:

GOA are using a system that confuses the customer. any system that lets you pay and automatically assumes you want auto renew and doesn't let you change it for 24 hours is confusing. when i checked the same day as i paid, it didn't show any future payment feature so i assumed it wasn't on.

GOA have made no effort to find a way to refund me. they dont care that i was billed when i didnt want to pay and will tell me "we couldnt reverse it that late" and "once it goes through the billing process we are helpless" or "we cant respond to emails, you must use the accounts page".

GOA don't care that i'm an honest customer who has made a mistake/been misled by their billing system. its my problem. there will be no refunding.


and i guess GOA wont care that there is no chance they will ever get a cent of my money ever again. goodbye buffbot account and goodbye nf ranger. it aint happening.

 

[Juj]

LOL i see GOA are keeping up the high standards of customer support that we are accustom to

 

[Ctuchik]

LOL i see GOA are keeping up the high standards of customer support that we are accustom to

they did in your case. now crawl back under the rock where u came from.....

hows that law suit comming btw? got the balls to acually go thru with it?

 

[Cyfr]

Why can't they refund you? You said you didn't want the service before the service was supposed to be enabled and you havn't used the service.. I see no reason why there shouldnt be a refund.

 

[Meduza]

Just a point. We can't terminate someones subscription on the strength of an email request.
This is why we have a secure webpage for managing your subscription.

So when he contacts his bank to cancel the payment, what will ur actions then be ? Try again ?

 

[tolshock]

GOA autorenewed my acc once too. probably at the same time as everyone else got their accs autorenewed...

I have never used autorenewal, I pay for each period as it comes... So I sent them a message via RightNow a few mins after the mail that said it had been renewed had arrived.
The scroll-thingy where you choose to cancel the autorenewal was gone and the verifaction button was grayed out, so I couldn't do anything to stop it...

Anyway, I told GOA about the problem. 5 days later I got a reply where they admitted they had screwed up, so they offered me a refund for the unwanted renewal period. Oh, and the dropdown-box where you choose how many months you want to pay for was back after I got the refund.
I fail to see the difference between my case and the other cases where they have autorenewed other accounts...