Scammed by GOA

sauna

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 20, 2004
Messages
7
Hiya, some may remember me from before, I ran the daoc-moviesite http://baf.mine.nu and played mid/prydwen and hib/excalibur since beta. I had planned to not come back in any form to this game, but something has made me wonder if it's even possible to quit or get any refund for stolen money from such companies as this one.
To get some background you have to read the Rightnow info where it all began.
It begins from the bottom and up, included is accountinfo on how it looked before this began and how it looks now, "Status: Closed" hasn't changed which I guess is good (?) but nonetheless there's an extended month given to me.
Like any other time when you renew your subscription there's a mail from GOA that explains that your account is renewed and you have been billed accordingly, this time my bankaccount was simply deducted 12 Euros and nothing more was said, account still closed, no subscription and after asking what was going on I was given a free month because of a technical error and when I asked if I could get reimbursed they explained they don't reimburse customers unless there's been a technical error . Crystal clear, huh? The entire Mensasociety of France is apparently employed by this company.

I also tried getting in touch with a GM but same silenttreatment as from Rightnow.
So why take it to this board then, you might ask. Well, I'd like to see if anyone else has had this problem and if I can get out of this "Blood in, Blood out"-situation without expecting my bankaccount to be continously deducted for something I didn't buy or if the only solution is to contact the authorities. Sure, 12 Euro is nothing, it's really not about that even tho the money could have gone to other things, it's the privacy and principal of the thing. Is this company so moneyhungry and deaf to it's customers (this one a faithful one since day 1) that they're ready to screw over people whenever they can?

Regards,

sauna
 

Ctuchik

FH is my second home
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
10,459
sauna said:
Is this company so moneyhungry and deaf to it's customers (this one a faithful one since day 1) that they're ready to screw over people whenever they can?


by the looks of the links, yes... :(

hope u get it fixed
 

Chimaira

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Jan 21, 2004
Messages
4,462
ive been auto billed myself. goa refuse to even speak to me.
as i still play I dont gave it to much thought
and I notice 2 days ago that one of my accounts had been set to auto renewal AGAIN (HI DIDNT THIS GO AWAY AFTER PRYDWEN GOT HACKED?)

Anyway I hope u get sorted. and if it happens to you
it sure can happen to everybody else

Goa scams, fekkload of hacking emails and daoc accounts atm

Daoc Europe is falling if u ask me

Humble Regards
 

Deadnala

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 3, 2004
Messages
678
Chimaira said:
and I notice 2 days ago that one of my accounts had been set to auto renewal AGAIN

Well i noticed the same when i checked the end date of my account...
 

Baldanah

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 7, 2004
Messages
78
Your not the only one to have money taken without authorisation .

I've had it happen once , and then an attempted second time .

First time , turns out my account was renewed on a " Technical Error " and i was given a free month because of it .


The last time , i managed to catch " Bibit " ( not GOA although Bibit are their payment collectors ) trying to take a second set of payments from my account , 3 days after my current subs had already been payed and taken .

Now i managed to stop it this time , and when i contacted rightnow , i got a mail back telling me if i have any problems with my " invoices " to contact Bibit .
 

Korax

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 9, 2004
Messages
335
Happened to me too once, but I thought I just forgot to turn of auto renew when it happened. This is the part where GOA has crap customer service.


Chimaira said:
Daoc Europe is falling if u ask me

In what way is this gonna make Daoc Europe fall?
You think a few hacks, scams, late updats, server crashes and poo customer service is going to make people quit? Mabye a few odd people, but not even worth mentioning imo.
 

burg

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 14, 2004
Messages
162
Korax said:
In what way is this gonna make Daoc Europe fall?
You think a few hacks, scams, late updats, server crashes and poo customer service is going to make people quit? Mabye a few odd people, but not even worth mentioning imo.

Yes, unless daoc addicted.
 

Damini

Part of the furniture
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
2,234
Send a copy of all correspondence to the Registry, and to Watchdog as well (if you are UK based). If enough people do that, maybe you can get some articles written and get the fear of god put into them. One person can be ignored, if you get ten or more letters sent then people will start paying attention, and everyone knows that this has happened to more than ten people.

This problem has been going on for MONTHS, and just from the threads I've read on here and on Barrysworld, you're talking at the bear minimum hundreds of Euros from people, and if this is happening throughout the DAoC community in all different Euro servers then imagine the unauthorised income it is generating each month? It's all very well when Kemor or someone comes and personally intervenes when somebody is publicly eloquent enough to rock the boat, but this is happening to so many people and not all of them get it resolved in a mnner to their pleasing. It's extremely unprofessional for a company to have an ongoing fault like this for months and months, although uncannily it means they earn more money, so it begins to look more fraudulent and less unprofessional as the months go on.

Write some very clear and precise letters, detailing all correspondence from them and from you, to http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/contact/index.shtml

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/62/index.html

If enough people get angry enough without hitting capslock, then hopefully things can finally get sorted.

Best of luck.
 

Cavex ElSaviour

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 26, 2003
Messages
212
afaik its BIBIT who is fucking up. they used to double bill me aswell. Then again, altough GOA isnt making the mistake they are responsible and they should be blamed for taking such an incompetent company to do their billing system
 

Amadeus

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 7, 2004
Messages
75
Good advice from Damini. What I dont understand (it has never happened to me by the way) is that this same problem has been going on for MONTHS. A company is illegally charging peoples credit cards.

1. Why havent they fixed this technical problem. If a company I worked in was illegally charging its customers, heads would be rolling and it would not continue for as long as this fiasco has.

2. Why hasnt anybody taken legal action against them? If this happened to me, the first thing I would do would inform my bank that someone had illegally been charging my credit card and request their fraud department to look into it. I would also look into taking them to whatever the equivalent of the small claims court in France. Along with this, Id be sending off emails to watchdog and other consumer focused organisations.

Im just dumbfounded that Im still seeing this illegal action happening to people months after I read of the first case. Regardless of whether its GOA or BIBIT who has the 'technical problem', I think its about time GOA issued a statement as to what on earth is happening here.
 

Brannor McThife

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 30, 2003
Messages
100
Maybe you shouldn't have put this bit "...gave ownership to #daoc.prydwen to others..." in... knowing as how GOA love IRC for cross-realming an all, [sarcasm] and we all know how your lordship loved to run YOUR channel and KB people for whatever whim struck you [/sarcasm]
As was mentioned above, this isn't directly GOA's fault, but that doesn't mean they aren't part of the problem. However, simply not getting a reply from Kemor does not mean you are being ignored, that said, I wouldn't blame him.

:flame:

-G
 

Khalen

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
200
Thought payments and such is being done by some other people who GOA hired (or whatever).
 

Dook

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 19, 2004
Messages
460
Brannor McThife said:
Maybe you shouldn't have put this bit "...gave ownership to #daoc.prydwen to others..." in... knowing as how GOA love IRC for cross-realming an all, [sarcasm] and we all know how your lordship loved to run YOUR channel and KB people for whatever whim struck you [/sarcasm]
As was mentioned above, this isn't directly GOA's fault, but that doesn't mean they aren't part of the problem. However, simply not getting a reply from Kemor does not mean you are being ignored, that said, I wouldn't blame him.

:flame:

-G

Why is that relevant to the situation?

/me points Brannor in the direction of his cave
 

xxManiacxx

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Jan 25, 2004
Messages
3,042
Have also been auto-billed by GOA. And I have never and will never have auto renewal on.

Sent an e-mail to them but havent got an answer. This was like 2-3 weeks ago


:puke: GOA
 

Korax

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 9, 2004
Messages
335
xxManiacxx said:
Have also been auto-billed by GOA. And I have never and will never have auto renewal on.

Sent an e-mail to them but havent got an answer. This was like 2-3 weeks ago


:puke: GOA
They do put auto renew on automatically afaik, but the thing is, after turning THAT of, they put it back on.
 

tilde

One of Freddy's beloved
Joined
Dec 23, 2003
Messages
44
Have you checked that the payment was due to YOUR account? You might have evil friends if you get my point :(

Otherwise if its possible, you might could ask your bank to contact GOA's account management, because this is a common issue, so it could well indeed be GOA's fault.
 

Eleasias

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
1,094
ROFL @ Brannor brining his childish whine to this thread, so what if you got kicked, you seem like a whiny retard to me.

And on the subject, how is it possible GOA has been letting this happen for so long? Never happened to me but I'd defo be angry if it did, quitting is hard even without them opening your acc without your permission o_O
 

sauna

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 20, 2004
Messages
7
Brannor McThife said:
Maybe you shouldn't have put this bit "...gave ownership to #daoc.prydwen to others..." in... knowing as how GOA love IRC for cross-realming an all, [sarcasm] and we all know how your lordship loved to run YOUR channel and KB people for whatever whim struck you [/sarcasm]
As was mentioned above, this isn't directly GOA's fault, but that doesn't mean they aren't part of the problem. However, simply not getting a reply from Kemor does not mean you are being ignored, that said, I wouldn't blame him.

:flame:

-G

You're a sick, sad and twisted person.
Check how many times I actually used my authority in the channel me and my guild started and check that versus those that I gave ops to, so please fuck off.
It isn't GOA's fault when it says "2004-01-22 WANADOO/DAOC -112 SEK" on my bankreceipt?
I guess you just would love it to have you bankaccount deducted continously and just smile away at your beloved GOA and GM's who you couldn't possibly be brownnosing more...
 

sauna

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 20, 2004
Messages
7
tilde said:
Have you checked that the payment was due to YOUR account? You might have evil friends if you get my point :(

Otherwise if its possible, you might could ask your bank to contact GOA's account management, because this is a common issue, so it could well indeed be GOA's fault.

This is an excerpt from my banklog:
2004-01-21 WANADOO/DAOC -111,34 -74,46 Utförd
2004-01-21 SOE(EUR) STARWARSGAL -132,51 36,88 Utförd

Utförd = Completed in swedish for those that didn't know.
It's the exact same text that has been in the banklog everytime I ordered another month of daoc-gametime, the only difference is now I didn't order it and don't want it.

But why the silenttreatment, why doesn't anyone on GOA continue to try to work this out and explain what I can do about it except just sue them (if that is possible). There's absolutely NO reason for GOA to stop talking to a customer who find himself being illtreated, covering their ears and going "BABABABABABAAAAAAAA".
Thanks for the tip, I'll check with my bank on what can be done.
 

sauna

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 20, 2004
Messages
7
BAAHHHHHHHHH WTF...

2004-02-23 WANADOO/DAOC -111,36 914,81 Utförd
2004-02-20 BMAT 656110 8078 2225 -400,00 1.026,17 Utförd

They're continuing to deduct money, even tho there's "Status: Closed" and no subscription.
I've never had it on auto-renewal either since I don't always know if there's gonna be money in the account, can't they just shut the fucking thing off? Noone on GOA or WANADOO is answering any emails or Rightnow-messages, is really the only way to pay more money to get a new card?
 

Ardrias

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Dec 29, 2003
Messages
478
You should tell Skattmasen and SÄPO to go demand your money back! imo :(

Or as someone else said, contact the bank. Can block certain companies from deducting etc :eek:
 

SoulFly

Can't get enough of FH
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
2,803
This is a winner in court, if you mention to them that you will seek up a legal advisor and proceed from there, I am sure they will refund your money before you say wine & cheese.

This's just pathetic from GOA. Such company.. Mythic made a mistake by choosing them to run the servers. LOL describes their service.

Hope you get your money (generalizing).

-SF

edit: Also, they will end up paying all the legal charges, so :I
 

Damini

Part of the furniture
Joined
Dec 22, 2003
Messages
2,234
I have an idea. Someone set up a website, and then get all other people who have had problems with being charged without permission to contact you. Get a running tally on the front page - number of people charged without permission, amount of money taken so far, refunds finally awarded. Host all the unhelpful correspondence, and people's stories. Don't let it get into slagging wars, no FU GOA RAAAH crap, just a civil yet determined effort to not get ignored, and give other people somewhere to come to and discuss this problem.

If GOA are hiring this company, paying them for the services, and profitting from the money taken, then it IS their responsibility, especially as they decide whether or not to allow the refund.
 

sauna

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 20, 2004
Messages
7
I've reported the incident to both swedish IT-police and konsumentverket, I guess it's a slow process and meanwhile I have to cut my CC (costs me 150 SEK to get a new one) or get my bank to deny their request for more cash.

This is a case of a rich Robin Hood robbing the poor and unemployed of the little money they have, laughing in their face and then just going deaf/silent/blind to their cries as to why. Sick..
 

sauna

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Feb 20, 2004
Messages
7
SoulFly said:
If sauna won't put up a webpage, I can do that :x

Sure put one up and I'll supply you with all the info I have, including where they admit they're at fault but won't do anything about it.
 

Pitspawn

Fledgling Freddie
Joined
Jan 4, 2004
Messages
63
Had an ancient dormant account autorenew and billed on 16th Feb 2004 for no reason...I never had any intent on renewing that account yet they did it anyway ...

Trading standards might be pleased to hear of this shit tbh.
 

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