As I had mentioned earlier on this blog, I have recently stopped playing LOTRO. So today I went and officially canceled my account, however while doing so I saw no option to remove my CC and billing information from their system. Having been a victim of random charges by unsaid company in the past I wanted to remove my info so that my subscription would not accidentally be restarted. Seeing no way to do this from Turbines website, I contacted support, who basically said,
You either keep your CC information in our system or the game that you PAID for will no longer work, ever.
At first I was confused, so I asked him to explain and sure enough he confirmed what I had thought. The full transcript of our chat is in the image to the left.
Now there are 2 things wrong with this policy.
1) You are treating your users as criminals. This is inline with what the video game, music and movie industry have now been doing for years. Treating customers like criminals in a desperate attempt to prevent data from being copied or in this case sold to another user.
2) You are holding my CC information as hostage. If I cancel I can never play the game again without going and purchasing a new copy and if I don’t my CC information stays in your system. As any gamer will tell you, there comes a time when perhaps you wish to replay a certain game and should be able to. You did PAY for it. I’ve done this with dozes of games, Starcraft being the last as I got nostalgic when talk of SCII started.
What Turbine is doing is completely unacceptable. If I decided in a year to start playing again I have every right to without leaving my CC information in there system for said year. After all I might never decide I want to play again and my CC info will remain there forever since most likely I would have forgotten by then.
In the transcript above you will notice that a Supervisor was going to call me. He did, about 10 mins after the chat to my surprise, however my phone was on vibrate and on my bed so I didn’t hear it. I did reply to the ticket opened by the Supervisor and receive a reply that basically said the same things as the support rep. However he did add some more info.
- If you remove your CC information your account will be permanently disabled INCLUDING any days remaining on your account. Again there logic is beyond me.
- Trying to replace your CC info with a Game card will not work, since you have to remove your info first, your account will become dead.
So basically once you enter your CC info Turbine gets to keep it or they take away your game, WITHOUT refund. Whats next for the gaming industry? monitoring the number of installs? Oh wait there already doing that too!
No related posts.
You have no recourse in the US aside from making a public stink (which you’ve done quiet well thus far) as they are not in violation of any regulations, however if you live in Europe you can probably cause them a world of grief because EU privacy laws are pretty sticky for companies attempting to retain customer data for any length of time. Good luck.
I like it! It keeps fools from selling their accounts.
/duh
I’m amazed how hard Turbine seems to work to piss their customers off.
Better Business Bereau.
I posted a link to your article and asked the question about CC information, this is what I got from Yeti (customer service)
This has been stated in the past and is correct. If you remove the credit card from your account, it does permanently deactivate the account. You can change it to a credit card, but manually removing the card from the account will deactivate the account.
If this is an issue, we do recommend looking in to the use of Pre-Paid credit cards. Not only does this help protect you from any security risks on your computer while passing information over the internet, but it also allows you to easily restrict your subscription time. >
I avoid or minimize the risks by doing the following:
Using a prepaid game card or a CC that I use only for internet purchases. The cc has a very small limit ($500) and it’s through a credit union that provides excellent customer care.
Using a pre-paid game card isn’t really a solution unless you do it from the beginning (otherwise later when you try to remove your CC info and use a prepaid card your account will be deactivated). However, most people won’t realize that it’s an issue until after they try to remove their info. Way to not serve your customers, Turbine.
That’s a misleading title. They are just giving you a choice based on what they think works best on controlling proliferation of characters.
I think the biggest problem I have with this blog is that you think you own the game after you purchase it.
This isn’t a stand alone product. You have to rent space on their servers and in most rental situations you don’t own anything. Sure you own the box and the software that comes with it but you don’t own your character which exists on their server. If you could transfer all of your character informaton like completed quests, etc to your computer then I would agree with you that you own it. In this case you don’t.
Ask your CC company to issue you a new card and number (they change the last four digits). While it doesn’t resolve the privacy issue, it prevents fraudulent charges.
Then if/when you want to play again, update with the new number.
I’m of the opinion that we do more than cause a stink. Maybe it’s time for the first ever video game BOYCOTT! If they can’t serve us the way we pay to be served, then we should cut their pay. They will either respond in our favor or find new jobs! It’s about time these companies that hide behind firewalls come to pay for the outrageous business decisions that they make. Maybe if you get a small list of users who threaten cancel their accounts at a prescribed time if Turbine does not oblige, then you can get the ball rolling on the MMORPG revolution, finally proving that the customer is always right! You don’t have to completely disrupt their service, simply enough to let them know that your voice matters. I think 50 accounts would do wonders.
Also, mutantmagnet how is the title misleading? If a company refuses to allow a person to delete their billing information what does one call it? If we do own our privacy, why do they believe that they own the right to share in that ownership?
[...] Monday about Mil’s attempt to get CS satisfaction, Mike from MMO Crunch passed me a link to his frustating experience with Turbine. I have recently stopped playing LOTRO. So today I went and officially canceled my account, however [...]
WillE, they are allowing him to remove his CC info. The problem is that if they remove it they guarantee to delete all of his character information and not allow his version of the game to work.
Deleting his character is their call to make but to threaten to prevent the versioin of the game he paid for to not work is extortion. Turbine should be slapped with a lawsuit just for that but Turbine didn’t say they own the CC info according to this article.
Could this policy have something to do with the lifetime subscriptions? This is the first MMO, to my knowledge, to have a lifetime sub, and it sounds like the first to not allow CC information removal. Are these two things related?
this is NOT the first MMO to offer lifetime subscriptions
I have 2 Turbine accounts. One for DDO and other from LOTR. I cant even delete my info,or change it on either account. I beta tested LOTR have had it for 3 years havent played in a year. Its rediculous. Then to boot I notice on my bill Im actually paying SOE! Sony! Ugh. They make sure its real easy to upgrade but try and find out how to cancel. You call them then you start getting telemarketers you never heard from till after talking to them. Greedy @#$4 thats why I quit everquest Sony just pumped the expansions out,for 30 bucks a whack. If Sony has thier hands in it its doomed
If they make it complicated enough to unsubscribe most say oh Ill get around to it next month… like i did a year ago. Then threaten to kill your account so you will keep paying for something you dont play. Actually there arent near as many people playing either game as are paying for them. Its really a cheap shot,its dishonest I will spread the word. Turbine will never get my money again or for that matter Blizzard,WOW is now owned by SONY too. They are monopolizing the industry like microsoft did! Ok Im on a rant, lol sorry When are they gonna have ENOUGH money??? Is there enough? lol
They actually just billed me after not playing for over a year!! Some how my subscription just started back up and I didn’t have to put a code in or anything for my card. At this point I don’t care if they delete all my characters as long as they can’t just bill me $15 out of the blue!!! That should be criminal. Said something about “Pre-Ordering” or something. It’s BS!
Edit to my post on July 31st.. SOE charge on my statement was actually for Free Realms that I had cancelled 6 months prior… Thats another story..