Discussion: Credit Card Billing Issues
By
1_800_Spines,
Posted on: 2007-08-30 11:53 in ALL ACCESS Gameplay Technical Issues Bugs
I've had occasional problems with various credit cards and various banks, but never a problem with the Discover Card. I originally got it 'by accident' since I had a Costco membership through work and they only took Discover (then - now they only take Amex).
When I was building my first computer (the first one I built, not the first one I owned), I had to jump through a few hoops imposed by the vendor (Newegg) since this area was rife with fraud but everything went smoothly. About once a year or so, when I make a particularly large purchase or an out-of-town one, I get a call from Discover's fraud department within the hour to double-check.
It just seems to me that credit cards issued by big banks tend to have more problems because, generally, the banks don't care. Both Discover and American Express have never given me any problems and both have nice account management tools on their web sites.
I charge everything I possibly can on the Discover card, including my CoH membership, several other monthly membership fees, my Teamspeak server, my groceries, my gas, etc, etc. The only problem I've EVER had is that some places just don't accept Discover.
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This is why I'm staying with my bank in California. It's fairly small (only a few western states, instead of the whole US like WAMU or Chase or BofA). I've had to change accounts once due to 'check cloning' where someone got hold of a deposit slip and used the MICR numbers at the bottom (plus my preprinted name and address) to create their own checkbook based off of my checking account. That was bad. But even with an 'identity fraud' flag on my account, I've never, knock on wood, had a problem with online transactions to my check card.
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I've tried three check cards and a credit card, through four different institutions. I called two of them to make sure that there wasn't anything blocking charges from NCSoft and was assured that there wasn't.
None of them will go through.
What should I do?
@CrashTofu
What is the plan of action when NCsoft tells you to call your company's fraud prevention department, and your fraud prevention department tells you to call NCsoft? I can have a monthly account, but I can't transfer a character? I've bought a lot from NCSoft including CoH/V upgrades and several Guild Wars games, but just now this is happening.
It all seems really absurd, this making me running in circles, but I'll run it, I suppose. I'll be calling NCsoft tomorrow and opening some sort of support ticket.
Anyone else deal with this war and won?
I have a question. I know this is NOT a forum where official technical/QA support is available, but I'm having logging issues. It seems after i paid my account around 7am est to reactivate it, I can log on to Live, but not test. Has anyone had this problem or have a link to billing support?
Test normally takes 24 hours to propagate account reactivations over to it. Not sure about weekends however.
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I might have some advice for people having issues.
I've just had an issue myself where my card was denied by NCSoft. I called my credit union and they explained that my card was denied for "suspected theft" or something to that effect. They verified my billing address and suggested I call the number on my back of my card to explain that it is in fact not stolen.
I called them, and was transfered to their security department, who verified my billing address for my card as being strangely formatted, and not matching the format of the billing address that my credit union had verified (probably for the checking account, not the card). Using the address as formatted like the security department said I was able to attempt my reactivation with success.
This was with VISA, but I assume other credit card companies would be able to do the same thing.
The only problems I've ever had was when my check card expired and I didn't change my info to update the new card.
But in light of all these problems, can we get lifetime memberships please?
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Yeah i use to use mastercard for this game but now mastercard won't work cause it dosen't trust coh anymore so iam forced to buy game cards except that you devs changed the name of the card and i didn't know till later and that they are very hard to find, stores use to have them all the time, but now i have to go to a far away store to get some and they don't always have them, so please start shipping more play nc game time cards to stores.
Just to add to the array of stories about experiences with banks...
Just to start, I had received phone calls from Wells Fargo before about the CoH charge (since I pay for two accounts)... I thought that was all well and good, since they actually called.
But last month, I switched to the 6-month payment on one account in anticipation for issue 11. The day before it was charged, I had made a rather large purchase on a PC I was building for a friend. That charge went through just fine and dandy, so I thought all was well...
On the same day it was charged, I had ordered pizza online from a place I won't mention. Apparently, their system somehow screwed up, which gave them the incorrect mailing address (It wasn't my end, I had the reciept to prove it). So, the bank's system flagged my account as possibly being used in fraudulent activity because I'd made a large payment on parts for a PC, then had a non-US charge occur, and then had the pizza charge which was supposedly to the wrong address. To top it all off, the guy on the phone wouldn't let me fix the problem over the phone because I couldn't remember my "password", for which he never gave me a hint. I had to drive to the bank and wait for over an hour to figure this all out.
It was just last month when this happened. I hadn't realized that occurences were as extensive as this thread seems to indicate.
I have 4 accounts. one for myself, one for my husband and two for my 3 boys (ages 12 (with my supervision) 17 and 18) to share. The last couple of months have been ridiculous. My credit card that I have used since release of CoX has been refused repeatedly, after calling stores for time cards I found 2 time cards but do I really want to take that 1 hour drive, no I don't. So I decide ok I will pay my son monthly and he will use his CC, it gets refused, we both use Wells fargo bank and this is a CC/Debit card and so now here we are talking to people that have no idea what they are doing trying to get the cards to work.
The problem I see here, is that when this does come up 1. NCsoft isnt delivering enough game cards out there that is reasonable to get. Best Buy, Circuit City said they don't sell enough of them so they only carry a limited quantity, Wal-Mart only carries WoW game cards, imagine the frustration when you finally call a Best Buy and it is over an hour drive, there has got to be an easier way to fix this problem.
Today I was able to reactivate my main account, but when I went to reactivate one of the kids accounts it was refused. *pulls her hair out*
So here I go again with hours on the phone.
Here's my long story...I went through about a week of run-around with billing and NCSoft on an account which will celebrate its 36th month soon. I had previously been set to renew every three months, but got the "your account has been deactivated" email at the time it was supposed to renew. I logged into the account, saw that it had indeed been deactivated and that my "credit card on-file" information was gone.
Call #1 to the credit card company - nothing strange on record, no weird attempts at charges, etc. No change of billing address or anything out-of-sorts, plenty of available credit.
Tried to renew online using both my VISA and my debit card, and no go. In the meantime, the support ticket has been opened, escalated, reviewed, and I am told to contact my credit card company because a charge was refused. Huh?
Call #2 to the credit card company - "hmmm that's weird, it looks like there were four authorization attempts made, each with the amount of $0.00, by a company called RBS."
Call #1 to NCSoft - "NCSoft uses a third-party credit card company to process its transactions (called Bibit). Once the card is 'refused' this company puts it on the 'no-use' list, and you can't reactivate your account using it." (Hence the elimination of all card-on-file information when I logged on to check the account.) And then I was basically told that they couldn't handle anything dealing with this third-party company who they use, and that I could go ahead and still use game time cards; this was instantly shot down by me, because I have two valid and working credit cards with lots of available credit - why should i have to do that, and not be able to use the character transfer/rename options? I asked for the supervisor, and he said that he/she would call me that afternoon. Which didn't happen.
A little online research confirms that these four zero-amount authorizations are indeed related to my renewal...Bibit is owned by the Royal Bank of Scotland. (RBS)
Call #3 to the credit card company - this time a good old chat with the Fraud Prevention people. Who basically said that they would take any authorization attempt, provided that the company would not send an amount of $0.00. They also said that unlike a lot of other cards, they don't require you to set a permission with regard to online games, nor do they consider any charge suspicious just because it comes from overseas.
A couple of more round-and-rounds with the support ticket, in which i provide the authorization numbers and the times/dates that Bibit tried. Even contacting Bibit directly results in the "you have to contact the merchant directly" email.
Eventually it did get sorted out, and I got a message from NCSoft billing management saying that they had contacted their 3rd party and that my card would once again be allowed to be used. But a couple of things stuck in my craw...
- is it absolutely necessary to use an overseas billing company, especially when a number of people have received what their credit cards considered suspicious charges?
- And why the heck would an authorization attempt be made by a legitimate billing company for a zero amount? In the words of my credit card company, "we would have authorized the transaction, but there was NOTHING TO AUTHORIZE. The amount was zero."
- how is it that it always becomes a great big game of hot potato, "not my fault," pass-the-blame with NCSoft tier 1 billing support? My first phone call amounted basically to "there's nothing we can do, but hey you can buy timecards." Why is it that you always need to seek a higher authority in order for your complaint to be read/replied to, without getting a cookie-cutter response?
- I've noticed in this thread, and others, that the ones getting hit with this a lot are people who have been with the game and renewing for a while...in my case, three years. So what is going on lately with NCSoft/Bibit billing that is causing all the trouble?
All in all, a frustrating situation. But I did renew, this time for a chunk of six months. But rest assured, I kept the support ticket number and all the emails - so that when/if this problem pops up again in six months' time, I can be forewarned and forearmed...
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I had been thinking about transfering another character but after my first go round with the chracters successful transfer and the deactivation of my Credit card due to suspected fraud from the trasactions. Imagine my surprise when I am in the middle of nowhere and my card does not work after an NC Soft transaction.
From reading here it does not sound like NC has fixed this at all and I run the risk of another deactivation because of this.
I say NC because it seems their is something wrong with the way they are transacting this. I buy stuff all the time online and never have I had this kind of trouble.
It looks like I will be waiting longer.
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im worried now, 6months ago my billing was denied by my CC for all these reasons. If your card is denied 3 times in 1 day you must wait 24 hours before you can try again, and if you try before 24 is up it will auto deny and restart your 24 timer. Prior to this i was billing monthly, but this was frustrating so i opted for a 6month lump. Well my next biiling is Feb 7, last time i wasn't able to renew for 4 days. If i miss double XP for this man ill be ripped.
Ok i tried to transfer a toon. It say requested. Then it says Payment could not be accepted for your order. Then Payment by credit card was requested, but without any card data. WTH??? maybe it was answered before but IT CHARGED $9.99 to my account with no transfers????
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Ok i tried to transfer a toon. It say requested. Then it says Payment could not be accepted for your order. Then Payment by credit card was requested, but without any card data. WTH??? maybe it was answered before but IT CHARGED $9.99 to my account with no transfers????
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Lol, it better not be charging the card because I've run that failed transaction about 50 times in a row this evening, trying to get a character moved. My billing history on the main site doesn't record anything going through, luckily.
I am trying to get an answer to a critical petition on the support site. I think the transfer/rename is broken for everyone atm. 
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It only charged me once thank god
Wow, I haven't had issues as severe as multiple billings or my CC company going ape on me, but I am having issues trying to transfer a character.
I had to recently change the CC # on my account (thanks to someone getting a hold of it for fraudulent charges). The new CC has been billed, yet every time I try to do a transfer, it tells me I have no credit card on file. Which is funny, since NC has billed it without any hassle.
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Wow, I haven't had issues as severe as multiple billings or my CC company going ape on me, but I am having issues trying to transfer a character.
I had to recently change the CC # on my account (thanks to someone getting a hold of it for fraudulent charges). The new CC has been billed, yet every time I try to do a transfer, it tells me I have no credit card on file. Which is funny, since NC has billed it without any hassle.
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You have to enable having a credit card on file for anything other than subscription billing.
Look in Billing Summary.
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Wow, I haven't had issues as severe as multiple billings or my CC company going ape on me, but I am having issues trying to transfer a character.
I had to recently change the CC # on my account (thanks to someone getting a hold of it for fraudulent charges). The new CC has been billed, yet every time I try to do a transfer, it tells me I have no credit card on file. Which is funny, since NC has billed it without any hassle.
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You have to enable having a credit card on file for anything other than subscription billing.
Look in Billing Summary.
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No kidding, I guess when I updated the card info I didn't click that box. I was too caught up thinking it was a technical issue since I made a transfer on my 2nd account with no issues to double check something like that.
Thanks for getting me cleared up on this!
My debit card just got deactivated after two character transfers last week. This is going to be a real pill if the same thing occurs when I want to buy character slots.
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OK... I know this may be a silly question or two. I am a 42 month vet and have paid with my debit card from day 1. Decided to transfer a character and got ' no credit card on file". WTH?? I didnt take it off file. Anyway? Once your card information goes by by how do you reenter the info? Do you have to cancel and reactivate the account? I cant find a place for credit card info anywhere in account management. Not under summary, profile or billing info... All I got from the help search was how to reactivate but my account is not deactivated..... HEeeeeellpp!! 
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OK... I know this may be a silly question or two. I am a 42 month vet and have paid with my debit card from day 1. Decided to transfer a character and got ' no credit card on file". WTH?? I didnt take it off file. Anyway? Once your card information goes by by how do you reenter the info? Do you have to cancel and reactivate the account? I cant find a place for credit card info anywhere in account management. Not under summary, profile or billing info... All I got from the help search was how to reactivate but my account is not deactivated..... HEeeeeellpp!!
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Having the same issue, says I have no credit card on file when I never changed it. Went to buy character slots and was unable to and it won't let me add a card back into the account.
so i figured a master account was just an account covering the different games.i didn't know you could add mutiple coh accounts on the same master account.i have 3 master accounts right now.2 i was able to reactivate.i try to reopen the 3rd and it says too many accounts on the same credit card.
no stores in my area have game cards.i called every walmart every best buy,curciut city,every gamestop and all 8 or so ebgames,the small game stores,fyu,game cavern,game xchange,kmart,target,and my son's friend across the street who sells everything he gets.no one has any cards.
i emailed support on the ask a question option.maybe they will merge the 3 accounts onto the same master account bill.no reply so far but maybe things will work out.
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Banks should work with customers, not against them, in their fight against credit card fraud and identity theft. When banks begin working against customers by making it difficult or impossible to allow legitimate charges to go through, it's really crosses the line of being cautious and becomes paranoia.
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I <3 my credit Union. The Staff know me and my family by name. They have picked up on fraudulent use of my card in the past, and left me messages at home, then at work, alerting me to the fact.
Smaller is better for service in this case.
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