Buying codes for other people

Is it weird that I was almost word for word with my description before I looked it up? lol

Nah. I've just been visiting this forum too long. lol
Question come and go and I'm sure I've looked it up before, which is why I knew where to find the source so quickly as well.

I'm not sure about the booster packs. The thing is, when you buy from a 3rd party, you are given the full Product Code, which can easily be transferred and applied to any account you want, so if you bought one, you can just give the number to your friend, and they'd apply it.

When buying things from the game's online store, it's automatically linked to your account when you buy it. You aren't even given the full product key until after you apply it to one of your game accounts and they send you the confirmation e-mail for your records.

Like I said, I'm not sure how any of the booster items would be available through another source, but I suppose it might be possible. One thing you might try instead is getting them visa gift cards or something so they can buy the code themselves.

Maybe you could get some preloaded Visa cards so they could get their own?

Yeah, really. I wanted to get my sister a couple of months, but I cannot find any game time cards locally.

I was hoping that like on TotalFark, they had a "Sponsor"-type option, but alas, they do not.

I do understand fraud prevention, but there are methods with which they could prevent it.

For instance, for my banking, I had to create 5 or 6 questions, and answer them. Then, the bank asked me 5 or 6 generic questions (like, mother's maiden name), which I had to answer. Every time I log in, it cycles one of the 10 or 12 questions at random. For the questions I wrote, a few of them are extremely difficult to guess (like, '30th word on page 12 of the oldest manual at work?')

Pain in the butt, but I appreciate the security measures

Thank you, Champion.

For gifting time, try buying cards from Amazon.com

AE edition can let them choose Magic or Tech packs, if they don't ahve those, and give a free month.

I 100% agree. This is one thing that has really bothered me about the game for quite a while now, the complete inability to gift add-on items to someone else. I really think that NCsoft is missing a sizable revenue stream on this one.

I don't want to give someone a Visa gift card. If I'm holding some sort of contest, that's really weird. Plus, most of the times I've wanted to gift CoH stuff to someone else, I've wanted to be guaranteed that it was used for CoH stuff. Also, there's a surcharge for every Visa gift card I've ever seen. That's money I don't want to spend, money I shouldn't have to.

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. Will credit card fraud happen? Sure. But everyone else I know of has figured out how to deal with it. Stores like Amazon undoubtedly have a much higher rate of credit card fraud, yet they seem more than happy to let me gift stuff to other people. Shoot, they've even gone out of their way to make it stupidly easy to encourage me to gift stuff to other people.

Also, let's assume the worst-case scenario, that someone steals a credit card number and buys an expansion pack. Okay, here's the thing. Once it's billed, the person who's card it really is will deny the charges. NCsoft is out the cost of the expansion pack. But unlike a store like Amazon that ships physical products and thus sustains tangible losses, the virtual goods in City of Heroes cost NCsoft absolutely nothing to produce. Even if a thousand expansion pack codes got accidentally released into the open and there were no way to track them, it's not like NCsoft has lost any raw goods or sunk any manufacturing costs.

I mean, think about it. Even if, under a wild, contrived scenario, they released a Mutant Expansion and allowed it to be gifted, say 500 people did so and 1000 codes were fraudulently obtained and were untraceable. What's the big deal? Sure, there are 1000 more people in the city who have the stuff than should have, but it's also 500 more codes sold that wouldn't have been before. Net effect: more revenue! (And that's generously assuming that the 1000 codes are untraceable. In reality, it would be trivial to associate the codes with card numbers so that if, later, someone reports the charge as fraudulent, they could simply write off the charge and disable the code.)

The existing philosophy reminds me a lot of the music and movie industry in trying to lock down all of their stuff. Given the choice between $1 billion dollars in sales with $500 million in piracy, or $500 million in sales with no piracy, which would you rather have? Personally, although I don't like piracy, I'd take the $1 billion in sales. I feel like NCsoft is making the same choice. They'd rather forgo the revenue (and goodwill) that would be generated by allowing us to gift items to stop some finite amount of credit card fraud instead of accepting that some fraud will happen--fraud that can be easily rectified at no cost to the company--and increase their own revenue. That's pretty boneheaded.

Plus, this is another thing that I think is stupid. If you look at the store items page (example: Magic booster), it explicitly states, "Includes: A serial code for account upgrade." There is nothing on that page or at the point of sale indicating that you cannot transfer it to someone else. If you actually order it, though, you will in fact not receive a serial code. If you press the issue, you will be told that your choices are either a refund or to apply your purchase to your own account. I have escalated this to both support and to community reps that what is listed in the NCsoft online store could be considered fraudulent. I was pointed to the support article linked above. My problem is that the limitation on the serial code is not indicated anywhere during the purchase process. This smacks of a classic bait-and-switch, where what they're offering is not what you get. Even if they don't change their policy, they need to make it clear on the NCsoft store pages that purchased items can only be applied to your own account, not directing people to a support article after the purchase is made.

Fraudulent is a loaded term, and I'd be willing to say you wouldn't stand a chance trying to claim it was in a court of law, for example. Misleading? Sure. Erroneous? Yup. But fraud implies intent, and I have a hard time believing for a moment anyone there is intending to get more of your money than they deserve. The simple fact you were offered a refund is more than ample proof of that.

Implying it's fraud or a bait and switch is unnecessarily antagonistic. You may not like the system (for the record I don't either), but that doesn't make it illegal.

The issue is credit card fraud - it's easy to buy something on a card. Once you get involving refuted charges, etc, it gets costly (in time and money) fast.

Because you are assuming that that $5000 (with 500 processing fees) makes up for cleaning up $10,000 worth of fraudulent charges over 1000 entries.

It's not an issue of someone coming up with a random code generator and getting lucky - if someone managed to "guess" a code and an issue came up, the person without Proof of Purchase is the one out in the cold.

It's fraudulent in that I have documented proof that they are aware of the issue and they have made a deliberate decision to continue to make an offer that they know is incorrect. It's bait-and-switch in that they are offering something that is described very clearly--a serial code. There are no limitations specified on said purchase, which implies that it is transferable. Only after you purchase this item do you find out that what you are getting is, in fact, not a serial code; that there is a rather significant limitation on what you've purchased that they did not inform you about during the purchase process.

The offer of a refund under those conditions is rather moot. It's like if Wal-Mart puts an ad in the newspaper saying that they have 60" LCD televisions for $199 with no qualification or limitation listed. You go down to the store and they tell you, "Oh, that offer is only good if you buy this $2000 Blu-ray player also." The fact that you haven't lost any money in the ordeal doesn't make it right, and there most certainly have been court cases that retailers have lost over this.

They need to add a disclaimer, plain and simple. Something like a "*purchased item is not transferable," or "*may only be applied to purchaser's game account" would do nicely. Or better yet, actually give us the serial code that is offered. I have money. I want to give it to them. Where's the problem here?

If credit card fraud is really that big a deal, then I'd even be willing to live with some kind of compromise. Let me send a money order. Or implement a system where good-standing customers for over a year have their cards cleared for charging as much as they want and receiving transferable serial codes. As it is, it's rather silly.

It's a fine line between the text "implying" and the reader "assuming".

You do get the full serial code. After the code is applied you are sent an email containing the full code.

Which makes your false advertising comparison fail (I've dealt with those kinds of things on both ends of the fence. I know what you're trying to get at.)

I agree, though, a note mentioning that it is NOT transferable to any account other than the purchasing master account would be a good move.