Warhammer Online Users Repeatedly Overbilled

TheSpoom writes "A screw-up in EA's Warhammer Online billing system has resulted in many players being charged upwards of 22 times for a one-month subscription, filling bank accounts with overdraft fees and the Warhammer forums with very angry players, who are discussing the issue quite vocally. EA has said that refunds are in progress and that '[they] anticipate that once the charges have been reversed, any fees that have been incurred should be refunded as well.' They haven't specifically promised to refund overdraft charges, only to ask customers' banks to refund them once the actual charges are refunded. They seem to be assuming banks will have no problem with this."

Comments

Where's my computerized credit card?

[Anonymous Coward]

I probably left it in the glove compartment of my flying car.

I thought that, by now, we would have computerized bank accounts with asymmetric encryption, so that I can write a shell script and put it in a cron job to automatically send the $20 monthly payment to my MMORPG provider. The electronic pseudocheck would have a date, a recipient, an amount, and an RSA digital signature. It would prevent mistakes like this, as well as most credit card fraud.

Until we get this system (never), just don't tie your bank account to anything. Use your credit card for everything electronic, since you can always dispute the charge.

Re:Where's my computerized credit card?

[A nonymous Coward]

Two weeks? You were without your own cash for two weeks and think that is perfectly acceptable?

The worst that happens with a credit card is it hits a credit limit and won't accept more charges. Maybe some automatic charges are denied because of this, but you can probably put them on a different card in the meantime and not really lose anything but some hassle. Meanwhile you dispute the bogus charges and the merchant loses and gets a black eye with real financial encouragement to do better: they pay more for credit card purchases due to their lousy track record, and if their lousy track record gets too lousy, they lose all ability to accept credit cards.

Contrast this with a debit account, where your own money is gone, you are guilty until proven innocent, and the merchant's only incentive to not do so again is losing your business.

Now maybe you are the kind of anal freak who checks your checking account balance and transactions every hour; you might catch malfeasance quick enough to undo most of the damage. But most of the rest of us only check it when we withdraw cash from the ATM or make a deposit. Once a week if we are lucky, once a month when the statement comes otherwise. That's a long time to not know about missing cash.

Re:On a related note

[Achromatic1978]

My millionaire aunt got hit with a 50 dollar fee once and she was talking to the one of the VPs of the bank. Try asking for escalation when you have less than 100 bucks in your account.

Perhaps yes, perhaps no. My wife had an issue with a US Bank credit card that she almost never used, with only a $500 credit line on it. She was late, got a fee which overlimited her, and got a subsequent fee for that. They reversed both, told her to make a payment, $x. Turns out $x was a little small and three days later she was reassessed those fees, as the computer didn't view $x as the minimum payment.

US Bank's credit card department wouldn't entertain the error as being even worth investigating. In their mind, the fact that they had "courtesy waived" fees previously meant that they wouldn't again. They wouldn't accept that we weren't asking for a courtesy waiver, but that although we appreciated it, we were asking them to investigate their error (and had it been shown that my wife was in the wrong, would have accepted it).

No dice.

Even our local branch manager spent 90 minutes on the phone with them with us in her office, but she held no sway.

My wife said "fuck it, we'll pay, and close the account".

I told her I had one last trick... I wrote a letter explaining this, explaining our frustration, the goodwill it had destroyed, years of loyal, though small customer... I had my wife sign the letter, and I addressed and mailed it to US Bancorp's Executive Vice President and Chief Credit Officer. My wife? "What's the point? They won't care."

Two weeks later, she got a phone call from him, apologizing, offering to reimburse all fees and give her account a $200 credit as a gesture of regret... very little to them, but they could have done a lot less...

No offense, but that's one thing I hate

[Moraelin]

No offense, but I _hate_ people who stop to make conversation with a clerk while 20 people queue behind them with other problems. I remember spending an hour in line when I had an actual problem, because half the people in front of me were trying to chat up the clerk about the weather or about their kids. And half of those didn't even have any reason to clog a clerk's time instead of using the ATM in the hall.

And then there are those who'll try to chat up the cashier at a checkout line at the supermarket. Usually even I can tell that that cashier isn't interested, and is just spewing more mono-syllabic responses than the stereotypical husband, but some old lady just won't shut the fuck up with trying to start a chat anyway.

I always figured out that those must be just some lonely people, but if it's just trying to treat a corporation like real people... here's a thought for them: see those people behind you? Those are real people too. Just a thought.