Guild Wars 2

Josh XT.6053:

From GM Jayhawk:
“We can look into refunding your Guild Wars 2 HoT Ultimate Edition purchase. Please note that the code that you are requesting a refund for will be permanently disabled. If you registered the code, all features, including game access, will be removed. If you haven’t used the code, the code cannot be registered.”

Since the “code” is automatically registered when you purchase it, your account access gets removed – aka banned.

That is a load of crap or poor customer service. They have the ability to unlink your account and not ban it. We how much they value customer service.

Still no gems and there is 18hr 37min left on the sale.

That’s not what it says, at all. It says the ‘code’ (HoT access) will be disabled. You will not be able to access HoT content.

If you need further information, update your ticket and ask, specifically.

Good luck.

Hey devs, could you indulge Ultimate edition buyers with a 72 hours extended period for the anniversary sales? There are nice things on the store that I’d like to buy, and I figured out that I may as well buy the Ultimate edition because it’ll be roughly the same price.

But then I saw this thread. There’s no way I’m not going to risk 100$ if I’m not sure I’ll get the gems in time to buy what I want to get.

If it’s too complicated to add extra sale time for specific players (UE owners) just add 3 days to the sale. You’ll make everyone happy and you may get more UE sales from the people like me who are holding back because of this issue.

It’s just virtual items, I don’t see why those absolutely have to leave the store on Sept 1st.

“If you registered the code, all features, including game access, will be removed.”

Including game access will be removed. The code is automatically registered to my account so what I am reading sure does sound like it.

It’s been over 48 hours now, still no gems…

thank you for the feed back.
Hope to get my gems before the items i want are gone…

Gaile Gray.6029:

JEM.3574:

Gkitten24:

Things like this leave a bad taste in my mouth. I haven’t bought the ultimate edition so am not affected, but there should never be an excuse for making loyal innocent players have to pay the price for criminals. Not cool Anet, not cool.

You could have at least let those who don’t yet have their gems reserve sale items for, say, I dunno, how about 72 hours?

Mhmmm…it’s not like Anet cannot take back the items if the sale was counterfeit. Furthermore, if the sale was counterfeit they are going to remove HoT from my account and ban me! So, what’s the difference in letting me have my gems to purchase the items. Makes no logical sense at all.

Of course it makes sense. Imagine you’re a fraudster. You “buy” the Ultimate Edition using a stolen CC. You get the gems, buy items, sell them to innocent players to “wash” the gold, use the gold to acquire other items at which time the stolen CC is identified and the account is banned. You don’t care, because you’ve lost nothing and in fact have profited from the illicent activities. We can’t simply “take back” the gems because they’ve been used to acquire items that then go to innocent players. And those people are unwittingly impacted by scurulous behavior on the part of the fraudsters.

As far as the “reserving” the sale items, I am happy to pass that along. But I want everyone to be clear about how nasty RMTers and other fraudsters can be, and how many innocent people can be swept up in activities in which they engage. It’s not a simple “take back the gems” but any means at all, as I hope you now can see.

Thank you for passing along are suggestions and feedback.

I understand and do see the implications of the purchasing gems with a stolen CC could impact the other players in the community. It’s just frustrating that many of us have used our same PayPal account we used 3 years ago or a CC that has been used multiple times for purchases and we still get shafted because of fraudsters.

JEM, I think what that shows is they aren’t keeping records of our payment info. Hopefully it means that its being saved in the Purchase Gems panel is client-side. Anyway, I prefer that they don’t have a database full of direct connections to players’ bank accounts against which to check current purchase requests. Hackers do happen

Donari.5237:

JEM, I think what that shows is they aren’t keeping records of our payment info. Hopefully it means that its being saved in the Purchase Gems panel is client-side. Anyway, I prefer that they don’t have a database full of direct connections to players’ bank accounts against which to check current purchase requests. Hackers do happen

Very true. There is a positive and negative to it. Personally, I would rather have them NOT store our payment information in a database in the event of a hack, i.e., Target, Sony, etc.

Gaile,

One thing you could do is introduce the notion of a gem “reserve” which would be uncleared gems that you purchase. These would be available immediately for reserving items in the store. The items themselves would not be delivered until the fraud service clears the gem purchase and the reserve gems become fungible gems. This gives people the immediacy that they demand. I would be bothered far less having to wait 3 days for my purchases to clear fraud and be delivered than I am bothered by not having immediate access to the buying power itself.

double post by accident.

Gaile Gray.6029:

We consider you a valued customer, but your payment information (CC, bank, whatever) is something we don’t ping until and unless you wanted to make a purchase. At that time, it’s a “fresh start” for buying and for that reason, I don’t think we’re in a position to conclude, “Aw, that card was fine last month and three months ago — no problem!” That’s why even a long-time customer with splendid credit, using the same card, would have a delay. Heck, I work for ArenaNet, and I bet I’d have a delay, too.

I sure understand that the fact we have a take this measure “just in case” is a bit frustrating. If there was a way to eliminate the delta between purchase and delivery, I’m sure we would. But I saw a chart the other day about payment fraud and my hair about stood on end. The fraudsters were having a major impact, and measures had to be taken to protect everyone involved, from our billing provider to innocent players to, well yeah, us, too!

Sincere thanks for working with us, and for understanding the necessity of this step.

Thank you for the explanation.

I was wondering: is the 72 hour deadline concrete? Has anyone taken more than 72 hours to get their gems? From the timestamp on my purchase confirmation email, my 72 hour waiting period will be done ~2 hours before all the limited time things leave the store, so if it holds to the 72 hours then I should be alright on the sales, but I’m slightly worried that there might be some kind of delay and I could miss out.

Thanks to Gaile Gray for the clarification on everything. It’s nice to get responses from ANet employees, and I completely understand and respect the need for the 72 hour waiting period.

Edit: Spelling is hard.

Anahlia.8906:

I was wondering: is the 72 hour deadline concrete? Has anyone taken more than 72 hours to get their gems? From the timestamp on my purchase confirmation email, my 72 hour waiting period will be done ~2 hours before all the limited time things leave the store, so if it holds to the 72 hours then I should be alright on the sales, but I’m slightly worried that there might be some kind of delay and I could miss out.

Thanks to Gaile Gray for the clarification on everything. It’s nice to get responses from ANet employees, and I completely understand and respect the need for the 72 hour waiting period.

Edit: Spelling is hard.

I hope you get the gems right when it expires!

I just checked the timestamp of my email it it’s not until 9:09PM. 9 Hours after the sale ends.

None of that helps the fact that we paid our money and are going to miss out on sales that we paid the extra money for the expansion to get in on..

I’d like to add my voice as well. I’m in the same situation – want to purchase sales items but don’t yet have my gems. Soon I’ll have to go offline for sleep, and when I wake up everything I wanted will no longer be on sale.

I suppose I should have known that “could take up to 72 hours” means exactly what it says it means. The only thing I thinks I can do is cross my fingers and hope that the gem delivery goes though. I perfectly understand why these measures need to be done but its still a rather distressing none the less.

Anahlia.8906:

From the timestamp on my purchase confirmation email, my 72 hour waiting period will be done ~2 hours before all the limited time things leave the store, so if it holds to the 72 hours then I should be alright on the sales, but I’m slightly worried that there might be some kind of delay and I could miss out.

Just got my gems at ~65 hours after purchase. Good luck to everyone else, hope yours come sooner rather than later!

Anahlia.8906:

Anahlia.8906:

From the timestamp on my purchase confirmation email, my 72 hour waiting period will be done ~2 hours before all the limited time things leave the store, so if it holds to the 72 hours then I should be alright on the sales, but I’m slightly worried that there might be some kind of delay and I could miss out.

Just got my gems at ~65 hours after purchase. Good luck to everyone else, hope yours come sooner rather than later!

Congrats! I logged in and my gems are there. I’m not sure what time I received them. However, from the time of purchase until now it’s been 58 hours.

Good Luck everyone as well. I hope you receive them!

EDIT: I just check my game mail and received a note from Anet stating my gems have been delivered. The mail is 3 hours old, so it took a total of 55 hours to receive them.

That GM replied back to my ticket informing me that my account won’t be disabled – that was just worded poorly. I’ve decided to keep it even though my Gems still haven’t arrived – 6PM EDT today will make 72 hours for mine. I’ll miss out on all of the sales thanks to this stupid delay though..

As a side note, you guys need to add that in to tell people that it will take up to 72 hours to get the gems BEFORE they submit their payment for the ultimate edition. Had I known before purchasing it, I would have just paid for the $50 version and bought $50 worth of gems separately…

Josh XT.6053:

As a side note, you guys need to add that in to tell people that it will take up to 72 hours to get the gems BEFORE they submit their payment for the ultimate edition. Had I known before purchasing it, I would have just paid for the $50 version and bought $50 worth of gems separately…

It actually does say it about a line above the add to cart button but most don’t actually expect it to take that long.

Wish there was more time for the Wing’s sale…. Still waiting to get my gems from the UE upgrade. “le sigh”

Yep, always good fun to drop a hundred bucks on a Saturday only to miss out on a sale that ends in the middle of the day on MONDAY. I am ALL ABOUT not getting to buy the things I wanted to with the gems I paid for and can’t have.

I lost the itens that i wanted to buy from the anniversary sale because of this 72 hours delay bullkitten. Already asked for a refund and i’m not playing this game anymore.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

We had an e-mail and live discussion about this, and here’s what I learned: The best thing for you to do in cases like this is to reach out to Customer Support to discuss the situation. In many cases, they will be able to assist.

Distrust.

It contradicts what you have said here:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Edit: I should point out that most sales are not of the one-day-only type, so these cases are not the norm. Still I’m writing an e-mail outlining the suggestions. Thanks for the input, and do keep in mind that IF the team were able to do something in the future, it would not be able to make it retroactive to the current sale.

You have made it pretty clear that any measures taken will NOT be retroactive, which i can read as: if you lost the sales, you lost the sales. What now? Wait for the refund and invest my time/money into something else.

I’m also in the “bought Ultimate on Saturday after the release date announcement, intending on using gems on sale items” boat.

I have had a ticket open regarding my concerns on gem delivery time vs. sale duration since 22 hours before the sale ended. I also still haven’t got my gems yet, and the sale ended almost 5 hours ago.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Pedroso.4603:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

We had an e-mail and live discussion about this, and here’s what I learned: The best thing for you to do in cases like this is to reach out to Customer Support to discuss the situation. In many cases, they will be able to assist.

Distrust.

It contradicts what you have said here:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Edit: I should point out that most sales are not of the one-day-only type, so these cases are not the norm. Still I’m writing an e-mail outlining the suggestions. Thanks for the input, and do keep in mind that IF the team were able to do something in the future, it would not be able to make it retroactive to the current sale.

You have made it pretty clear that any measures taken will NOT be retroactive, which i can read as: if you lost the sales, you lost the sales. What now? Wait for the refund and invest my time/money into something else.

Retroactive, in this case, meant retroactive to a previous sale. Retroactive to yesterday’s items is entirely discussable!

Wow, can i have some hope then?

I also bought the Ultimate edition right after PAX announcement for the gems to buy Account Jump Start. This is the response I got from customer support:

Hello XXXXXX,

Thank you for contacting Guild Wars 2 Support Team.

Unforunately, there’s no way for us to speed up the process on the gem delivery for the upgrade neither are we able to offer such items at a discounted price once the sale is over.

We truly appreciate your comprehension towards this matter, let us know if you have further questions.

Regards,
XXXXXXX

My disappointment level: very mild

I’m gonna buy the item(Account Jump Start) anyway. Hope ArenaNet will bring all the sales back on the last day like Steam generally does it!

Edit: This is what I had sent:

Hello,

I bought Heart of Thorns Ultimate Edition so that I can get some gems that I can use to buy Account Jump Start gem store item during the sale. It’s been around 36 hours since the purchase and I haven’t received the gems yet. I have since then read that it can take up to 72 hours for the gems to be added to my account. I have also read that the discount on Account Jump Start item will be gone on September 1st! Is there any way I can reserve the item at discounted price so that I can purchase it once I receive my gems? Thanks.

I bought another HoT expansion, the Ultimate edition this time, for the 4k gems to use on the sales. Unfortunately, I did not read that 72hr fine print and the gems never arrived in time. Luckily, I had some to gold to convert to buy some items but, not half what I wanted to. Guessing they’ll be another big sale come Wintersday. It’s only 3.75 months right?!?!?!

ugg…. a 3.75 month wait

Gaile Gray.6029:

Pedroso.4603:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Pedroso.4603:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey all,

We had an e-mail and live discussion about this, and here’s what I learned: The best thing for you to do in cases like this is to reach out to Customer Support to discuss the situation. In many cases, they will be able to assist.

Distrust.

It contradicts what you have said here:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Edit: I should point out that most sales are not of the one-day-only type, so these cases are not the norm. Still I’m writing an e-mail outlining the suggestions. Thanks for the input, and do keep in mind that IF the team were able to do something in the future, it would not be able to make it retroactive to the current sale.

You have made it pretty clear that any measures taken will NOT be retroactive, which i can read as: if you lost the sales, you lost the sales. What now? Wait for the refund and invest my time/money into something else.

Retroactive, in this case, meant retroactive to a previous sale. Retroactive to yesterday’s items is entirely discussable!

Wow, can i have some hope then?

Sorry, Pedroso, I don’t know your exact circumstances, but I do encourage you to go ahead and get in touch.

This is the response that i got (i asked if it was possible to sell me again the 25 BL keys promotional pack and Rox’s Quiver).

“GM Pizza Daddy (Guild Wars 2 Support)

Sep 1, 07:11

Hello Gabriel
I’m sorry to say that we have no control over the 3 day lock on getting the gems from the ultimate edition. As far as the keys and quiver we can not grant items that were previously for sale. I apologize for the inconvenience. If you have any further questions or concerns feel free to contact us. Have a great day and Adventure on!

Regards,

GM Pizza Daddy
Guild Wars 2 Support Team
http://help.guildwars2.com/"

Opening a ticket right now to ask for a HoT refund.

Guildmates claim to have gotten their gems instantly. That $10 gem order I did earlier went through immediately. The full $99.99 posted together on my credit card with the earlier $10 fully posted to my credit card yesterday at the same time. As in the full finalized credit card company wants you to pay them transaction, not a temporary transaction. One day after post still no gems.

And every contact with support apparently has a 12 hour delay. Nothing but four letter words right now. So much for being interact with a human being to resolve an issue. ArenaNet managed to take what they would want to be a routine event (giving them money) and making it stressful with this stupid delay combined with a time limited sale.
You just turned gems into a source of stress instead of instant gratification. Good game. Here I am waiting watching the gem sale tick away wondering if ArenaNet is trying to screw me out of the $20 worth of gems for the full Account Jump pricing for something completely out of my control.

Has anyone managed to successfully get kitten refund by reducing the tier or a full $100 HoT refund without the account being terminated as a punishment for daring to demand the product paid for actually be delivered?

Grithan Soulforge.5726:

Guildmates claim to have gotten their gems instantly. That $10 gem order I did earlier went through immediately. The full $99.99 posted together on my credit card with the earlier $10 fully posted to my credit card yesterday at the same time. As in the full finalized credit card company wants you to pay them transaction, not a temporary transaction. One day after post still no gems.

And every contact with support apparently has a 12 hour delay. Nothing but four letter words right now. So much for being interact with a human being to resolve an issue. ArenaNet managed to take what they would want to be a routine event (giving them money) and making it stressful with this stupid delay combined with a time limited sale.

You just turned gems into a source of stress instead of instant gratification. Good game. Here I am waiting watching the gem sale tick away wondering if ArenaNet is trying to screw me out of the $20 worth of gems for the full Account Jump pricing for something completely out of my control.

Has anyone managed to successfully get kitten refund by reducing the tier or a full $100 HoT refund without the account being terminated as a punishment for daring to demand the product paid for actually be delivered?

And there is a clause when you buy that says the gems may take up to 72 hours to arrive. ANet is not in any trouble if they decide to wait until the payment fully clears at all points along the trip from your account to theirs as long as that does not exceed 72 hours.

Excuse me for wanting the same customer experience that other people have gotten. You know… actually receiving the fully paid for product and being able to take advantage of sales instead of random delays that many others didn’t have to experience for no fault of my own.

Well I’m rather torn. On one hand I understand this decision in regards to the fraudulence, on the other I’m fuming becAuse I sold some of my stuff on eBay for the sole purpose of getting money to buy the ultimate edition. Which I would have pushed off but I rushed to (my detriment) assumed benefit of being. Able to take advantage of the sale. I did message support and they said they couldn’t do anything. So I feel like it was a bait and switch on anet’s part. I can’t tell you how much I was fuming when I saw the silver fed salvage omatic and was unable to get it even though I bought the expansion a day before. I would be very grate ful if give. Some sort of means to access items from the sale with the gems that I technically bought during the sale but was unable to use.

Grim.9438:

Well I’m rather torn. On one hand I understand this decision in regards to the fraudulence, on the other I’m fuming becAuse I sold some of my stuff on eBay for the sole purpose of getting money to buy the ultimate edition. Which I would have pushed off but I rushed to (my detriment) assumed benefit of being. Able to take advantage of the sale. I did message support and they said they couldn’t do anything. So I feel like it was a bait and switch on anet’s part. I can’t tell you how much I was fuming when I saw the silver fed salvage omatic and was unable to get it even though I bought the expansion a day before. I would be very grate ful if give. Some sort of means to access items from the sale with the gems that I technically bought during the sale but was unable to use.

not to say it was an intentional bait and switch but a notification like “we are experiencing a unusually high number of fraudulent purchases at the moment so gems are more likely to be delivered towards the latter end of the 72 hours we apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.” Would have been nice and probably would have affected the sales this weekend.

Also to clarify mine was purchased 10am central on sunday

Grithan Soulforge.5726:

Excuse me for wanting the same customer experience that other people have gotten. You know… actually receiving the fully paid for product and being able to take advantage of sales instead of random delays that many others didn’t have to experience for no fault of my own.

You do realize that it’s bad for the game’s economy for there to be fraud. Gold sellers who have access to stolen credit cards buy Ultimate and then turn those 4000 gems into gold. Gold which they then sell off to people who buy items off of the TP. Sending the gold to innocent accounts. ANet can’t take the gold away from the innocent accounts who acquired the ill-gotten gold for selling an item they got through no wrong doing of their own.

So when they started seeing the marked increase of fraudulent purchases of HoT Ultimate, they put into place a safe guard to help reduce the number of ones that are successful. Even if they had paused the sale of HoT Ultimate, the moment they resumed it, the fraudulent purchases would have increased again.

That being said, if they knew the limit was in place, they should have adjusted the anniversary sales to at least be 4-5 days per item in case someone like you decided to buy HoT Ultimate because you were going to buy gems anyway and might as well get them 50% off. Or found a way to do something like layaway where you put aside the item for X price and pay it off later (give a time limit even, say 5 days, to keep everyone from laying away everything to pay off when gems they converted from gold).

I will not argue that the 1 day sales were a smart thing to continue with if they had no way to help those who purchased HoT Ultimate due to the sale and missed out due to no real fault of their own.

Those responses from Support are very troubling. Honoring promotional pricing due to extenuating circumstances, is something that honest businesses do every day.

What’s the underlying issue? There’s clearly no technical reason for it. Are the Support people simply not empowered to do the right thing?

Hey Gaile,

I too bought the ultimate edition thinking that it would allow me to partake in the sale and use my gems. I even went and bought more gems personally to utilise in this sale.

I have now watched the things I wanted cycle out of the sale and I’ve still yet to receive the 4000 gems.

So just to clarify, if I contact support they might be able to help me?

This has been incredibly frustrating for me. Theirs nothing more galling than watching a timer countdown, knowing that you should have the currency to buy it as you’ve paid the money for it, but still be awaiting the currency being moved into your own account.

So just to clarify: I should just contact support?

Kind Regards

Salome

Phibes.4128:

Gaile,

One thing you could do is introduce the notion of a gem “reserve” which would be uncleared gems that you purchase. These would be available immediately for reserving items in the store. The items themselves would not be delivered until the fraud service clears the gem purchase

Splendid idea, but seems like something that would require significant engineering work on the back end.

I got the ultimate edition because of the gem store sale. Guess I should have read the forums before that.

Just throwing my two cents in that the wait is highly annoying and missing the sale is disappointing.

Gaile’s faith in Support’s ability to make this right, was evidently misplaced.

I just got a reply back from them on my own situation (a more complicated one, since I also could not buy Gems in the normal manner either), and was told that the Support team “doesn’t have a way to interfere on what the developers intended mechanics”, as if I asked them to gift me a precursor instead of just asking them to honor a promotional price.

I am extremely disappointed by this.