Guild Wars 2

Same here. It seems to happen to everyone atm, the store is really unstable. Hope my items are just delayed.

TwilightStorm.7159:

Well, finally. I’m able to buy gems, without a time frame. Somehow the issue is fixed!

Perhaps but perhaps not…. consider the following:

Customer XX via CSS Web 09/15/2012 12:47 AM
Hello I tried to purchase using same info for paypal – same email address – same way – same everything! Funds are in paypal so no cc was involved. I was declined AGAIN!

Reply: Thanks for contacting us!

I apologize for the delay in our response; we have an unusually high ticket volume which we are working through as quickly as possible.

In reviewing your account, I can see that I am able to override your purchase restrictions for 48 hours. Please make your purchase within this time frame. If you are unable to make the purchase within that time, you may need to contact us again.

If you still experience issues, please let me know.

Thanks,
Erik
NCsoft Account Support

Customer: (ME)
I appreciate the “window” but I do not appreciate why it is necessary. What exactly is going on that I have to have a window opened to me to hurry, rush, or quickly buy virtual currency from you? I dont understand and would really like to be relieved of this hassle.

Reply: Response Allen via Email 09/18/2012 03:02 PM
Hello Diva,

We have implemented new purchase limits to help prevent fraudulent credit card use. These limits restrict the number of codes which can be purchased for each product per household and/or credit card used within a certain timeframe. For our purposes Gems are considered to be serial codes.

This is a system-wide security measure. Trying to purchase past the limit on a different or new account will result in the same error.

Often, these issues are temporary and you will not have the problem in the future. Unfortunately, we cannot disclose the exact limits of these restrictions because that would defeat the purpose of trying to preventing fraud.

We apologize for whatever inconvenience this may create.

Regards,
Allen
NCsoft Billing Team

Customer reply: Thank you for this explanation. I appreciate the preventative measures in place “in case of” issues that can and do arise with the publishing of MMOs. There has to be something in foundated though that allows “active purchasers” to increase their limit or lessen their security measure in some way. Being able to buy one day for say $30 and then two days later going back to purchase $50 and find that you are flagged is unnerving.

As a consumer we are being forced to “wonder.” Wonder if there is an issue with our personal credit accounts or paypal or did someone hack us or something! That seems to be cruel and unusual punishment to an innocent person whose only intent is to spend money with your company.

As for my issue – is my account free to purchases again? And, if it is and becomes flagged for whatever reason how long of a wait must I endure (again) til it is free?

The end…

I hope this information helps “some” because I feel it will stop a lot of the speculative comments in this thread (including mine) and perhaps offer more resolution type of suggestions. Given the issues presented in my correspondence what can be done to appease both sides here?

My case has been open for days not even a pep
120912-003472

I have 10 gems and cant spend them will.

My case number is 120915-006156. I too, can no longer purchase gems. I have been waiting for several days now with no response at all. This is incredibly intolerable. To be treated as if I am a criminal is not the kind of thing that makes one want to continue playing this game.

Still have no gems but money has transfered to your hands. Reference #’s

120915-005483
120918-000381

Would like resolved or going to have the charge removed by bank.

DarqueDiva.8032:

TwilightStorm.7159:

Well, finally. I’m able to buy gems, without a time frame. Somehow the issue is fixed!

Perhaps but perhaps not…. consider the following:

Customer XX via CSS Web 09/15/2012 12:47 AM
Hello I tried to purchase using same info for paypal – same email address – same way – same everything! Funds are in paypal so no cc was involved. I was declined AGAIN!

Reply: Thanks for contacting us!

I apologize for the delay in our response; we have an unusually high ticket volume which we are working through as quickly as possible.

In reviewing your account, I can see that I am able to override your purchase restrictions for 48 hours. Please make your purchase within this time frame. If you are unable to make the purchase within that time, you may need to contact us again.

If you still experience issues, please let me know.

Thanks,
Erik
NCsoft Account Support

Customer: (ME)
I appreciate the “window” but I do not appreciate why it is necessary. What exactly is going on that I have to have a window opened to me to hurry, rush, or quickly buy virtual currency from you? I dont understand and would really like to be relieved of this hassle.

Reply: Response Allen via Email 09/18/2012 03:02 PM
Hello Diva,

We have implemented new purchase limits to help prevent fraudulent credit card use. These limits restrict the number of codes which can be purchased for each product per household and/or credit card used within a certain timeframe. For our purposes Gems are considered to be serial codes.

This is a system-wide security measure. Trying to purchase past the limit on a different or new account will result in the same error.

Often, these issues are temporary and you will not have the problem in the future. Unfortunately, we cannot disclose the exact limits of these restrictions because that would defeat the purpose of trying to preventing fraud.

We apologize for whatever inconvenience this may create.

Regards,
Allen
NCsoft Billing Team

Customer reply: Thank you for this explanation. I appreciate the preventative measures in place “in case of” issues that can and do arise with the publishing of MMOs. There has to be something in foundated though that allows “active purchasers” to increase their limit or lessen their security measure in some way. Being able to buy one day for say $30 and then two days later going back to purchase $50 and find that you are flagged is unnerving.

As a consumer we are being forced to “wonder.” Wonder if there is an issue with our personal credit accounts or paypal or did someone hack us or something! That seems to be cruel and unusual punishment to an innocent person whose only intent is to spend money with your company.

As for my issue – is my account free to purchases again? And, if it is and becomes flagged for whatever reason how long of a wait must I endure (again) til it is free?

The end…

I hope this information helps “some” because I feel it will stop a lot of the speculative comments in this thread (including mine) and perhaps offer more resolution type of suggestions. Given the issues presented in my correspondence what can be done to appease both sides here?

I have just received an identical reply in regards to the same issue. I understand vaguely what they are trying to do here – but the problem remains for me – without any idea as to when this restriction ‘rolls over’ and what sort of purchases result in my account being flagged I have no way of planning out future purchases.

That I would even have to plan out purchases in order to avoid an automated restriction system in the first place is pretty gosh darn annoying. To make matters worse, Anet are unable/unwilling to let us know what the parameters of this secret restriction system actually are, meaning we’re as much in the dark as a Chinese gold seller.

All of this I could have stomached without too much complaint if I had been freakin’ well told about it in the first place. That I had to spend a week back-and-forthing with support and googling obscure, (to me), terms to find this thread is simply not good enough. A simple email explaining the whole shindig would have saved me a fair bit of irritation and the support guys would have had at least 1 less ticket to deal with.

120906-003330

So after going back in forth with support they finally gave me a 48 hour window to buy gems. Well it’s about time for me to go back into my cell again until they let me out. I couldn’t get support to tell me what triggered the high risk flag on my account. I told them it must be racial profiling. They still couldn’t say. Sigh…

Still can’t buy gems with Paypal.

Let me set a few things straight as I’ve had numerous dealings with ArenaNet/NCsoft in the past—specifically having to do with Guild Wars 1 back in February of 2012. Keep in mind at this time it was very easy to get a response from someone at ArenaNet —usually within the first 24 hours.

I was unable to purchase a few vanity items in Guild Wars 1 so I opened up a ticket. I tried to make purchases with several credit cards from two different banks. After going back and fourth with NCSoft Support they indicated that my account had been flagged by their “Fraud Management System.” Should this system deem necessary it will flag your account based on various criteria and will refuse all financial transactions on your account.

===

From NCSoft Support

To protect our customers, we have implemented a Payment Risk Management System to detect possible unauthorized transactions or account use. When you receive a message stating that your purchase was declined due to “Risk Management.” This means that something about your transaction is being perceived as high risk by our system.

===

Recently I tried to make a purchase and my Bank failed the transaction because it was a transaction from Texas. I called them got the issue fixed so I could make purchases from NCSoft; however, I’m unable to make purchases of any sort i.e. Paypal, Credit Card, Debt Card, etc. I’ve even tried to make purchases from entirely different locations. REF# 120912-000702

Anyone who is unable to make purchases of any sort has likely been flagged. The only way that you’ll be able to make purchases from here on out is contacting support and waiting for them to unflag your account for 24 hours so you can buy gems. In Guild Wars 1 this wasn’t a big issue as I’d open up a ticket and I could buy whatever I wanted once they approved it. With Guild Wars 2 and the sheer number of tickets they have to go through you are looking at 2 or 3 week turn around times on being able to purchase gems. This is all a result of this system which you literally cannot get off of. Trust me, I escalated to the highest level I could and they told me to hit the bricks.

===

Response from Me:

I received a similar e-mail last time and opening up my account for 24 hours isn’t a viable solution. I don’t have this problem with any other online vendors. I’d prefer this continue to be escalated and the issue resolved—I don’t want a 24 hour patch. I intent to purchase several other items on my credit card and I also intend to purchase Guild Wars 2 and whatever online content you have available. I don’t want to contact you every time I make a purchase. Can’t we just remove this safely feature? It’s causing more trouble than it’s worth.

XXXX
Response Steve S. via Email 03/06/2012 04:38 PM

Response From NCSoft Support

There is no option to remove the Risk Management system from your account as it is not associated with your account. The Risk Management system is built-in to our billing system. Any new authorization will be reviewed by our security features.

Creating a temporary window to assist you with completing purchases is the most we can do for you. You would not be receiving the Risk Management messaging if there was not something about your purchase attempts that was considered high risk.

Regards,
Steve S.
NCsoft Payment Review
Customer XXXX via CSS Web 03/08/2012 07:42 PM
Steve

===

Guild Wars 2 is a great game and I believe the development team has done a fantastic job; however, the support team is quite honestly seems understaffed and incapable of handling and or prioritizing issue effectively.

This is a complete failure by AreanNet’s Support, their billing team, and outdated billing infrastructure. You would think a company that has a great game in which people want to give them their money would have a system in place that was better than what was available in Guild Wars 1.

Diz

#120919-002783

Trying to buy gems with paypal.
“An error has occurred finalizing your purchase”
sometimes buying via credit card will work.

Tried to purchase some xp boosters from the gem store. Gems deducted, no boosters.

#120919-003622

As everyone else is saying, about two weeks ago I purchased the Primeval Armor via Gems that were traded for Gold and I haven’t received my armor since. The person I talked to on Support said that they said that they’re working on resolving the issue and that the items will be delivered shortly. It’s been almost 2 weeks now and I still haven’t received.

I thought that maybe since I did it early on it was just gone or something, so I tried to make a smaller purchase via Gems traded with Gold for just a crafting booster and still no luck.

[Incident: 120909-005594]

haveing troubles with gem payments with credit card

getting credit card approval failure… put in a ticket 1 week ago and have heard nothing back… manged to buy gems through paypal for now but i want to be able to use my CC instead…

[Incident: 120910-003104]

[Incident: #120919-005070]

I’ll add as much information as possible.

Bought 800 gems for 3g 2s~ at 4:56pm GMT on 19/09/12. I then proceeded to buy a second character slot i clicked confirm, it deducted the gems and i character selected out. Upon character selecting out i still found 6 slots and no 7th. I have tried logging out and a computer shut down and they have not resolved the issue.

After reading the post from dizlegion, I have come to the conclusion that there might not be any hope for us. Sadly for this company, it means no hope for it as well. By ensuring that we, the customers, are unable to make any purchases, they ensure that they will get no revenue. They have essentially, in a rather Darwinian way, culled themselves from the MMO market.

I just spend 800 gems to buy an extra character slot, but the character slot didn’t show up.

Incident: 120919-005625

I purchased a crafting booster. Took my gems for TWO. But I got neither.
#120919-005721

Heya. I bought a Character Slot Expansion today, but I didn’t receive it. My account still got billed for 800 gems, and my Recent Purchases show that I did buy the CSE, but I don’t have it when I log out and access the character selection screen.
Reference #: 120919-004890

Right before the servers crashed due to the login server issues, I bought a crafting booster. For about a minute nothing happened, then I saw the -150 gems flash up. Yet no mail was received (and still no mail) with the booster.
Incident: 120919-002944

cant buy gems with card approval failed

incident number is #120919-000905

120908-000409

Bought “Black Lion Salvage Kit”, never received it and never got gems refunded.

GW2 facebook page states they were doing some work on their billing systems so hopefully they are addressing this issue (even though they’ve never publicly acknowledged the issue!).

Sangrivane.4360:

GW2 facebook page states they were doing some work on their billing systems so hopefully they are addressing this issue (even though they’ve never publicly acknowledged the issue!).

Dount count on it, it sounds like the same thing they did, was it yesterday?
A small thread about an error with paypal appeared and a mod showed up and said they thought the issue was fixed with the maint.
It wasnt.
They need to publicly acknowledge the Issue, and apologize to those of us that have been affected by it.
17 days and counting now since it affected me.

I purchased gems Fri 9/14 and received notice that my card failed but yet I was charged for the gems. I opened a ticket on 9/15 and as of 9/19 all I have received in information was to register with the support site.
Is anyone else having this issue? Where you’ve paid for the gems but have not received them or any response from GW2 support?
I have a reference number (120915-001667) and the status just says “updated”.
At this point I just don’t know what to do to either get my money back or get the gems I’ve paid for. Any ideas out there?

I purchased gems Friday 9/14 and received the message my card had not gone through but when I checked with my bank the money had been taken out that same night. On 9/15 I opened a ticket about it and as a response all I’ve been told was to register with GW2 support site. I’ve received a ticket number (120915-001667) and the status just says updated.
Is anyone out there having this issue? You’ve paid for the gems but have not received them? At this point I don’t know what to do to get a response from GW2. I’d like to either get my money back or the gems I tried to buy in the first place.

Purchased 5 Fine Transmutation stones on 9/19 1 am PDT, gems were deducted but never receive it in mail.

Incident number is #120919-004082

Ticket #: 120909-006156
Submitted: 11 days ago
Still getting ""An error occurred finalizing your purchase." when attempting to purchase gems via PayPal.

Dear NCSoft Billing team,

I realize you’ve implemented a Payment Risk Management System to protect customers, but it’s also causing a lot of upset. At the moment, its efficiency is comparable to a guard dog doing its job too throroughly to the point where it’s also attacking the mail man, the girl scouts, family guests, and the friendly neighbor who merely came over to treat you to lunch. But what do I know? I’m just a number whose voice is probably going to be lost in a vast sea of other people who have problems just like I do. For all I know, this payment risk management system is too deeply engrained in the clockwork, and you guys can’t do anything about it beyond shrugging your shoulders and giving us a temporary reprieve (if we complain enough, and if you decide to get back to us at all).

“Unfortunately, we cannot disclose the exact limits of these restrictions because that would defeat the purpose of trying to preventing fraud.” – Allen, NCsoft Billing Team

So here’s a question…
What’s stopping the real frauds from getting in contact with one another privately to share information on how many gems they’ve purchased before being flagged by the PRMS? It would only take a small team of them to get a good estimate of what these super-secret limits are, and I don’t think it’s within NCSoft’s power to silence people. If someone is determined enough to steal peoples’ game accounts and credit card information, they’re likely wiley enough to find the PRMS as nothing more than a minor setback. Meanwhile, thousands of innocent users are being completely ignored after playing by the rules and giving NCsoft a considerable amount of clean, honest-earned money.

Why isn’t this issue being addressed publicly? I, and many others who are now incapable of buying gems, would be more than appeased if NCSoft just highlighted the official responses they’ve been giving to the customers they’ve already gotten back to. It would be as easy as saying something along the lines of…

“We have implemented a new system that limits the number of gems users can purchase within a certain period of time. We apologize for not being able to disclose what these limits are since that would defeat the purpose of preventing fraud, but we feel it necessary to inform our customers publicly to prevent legitimate customers from being flagged by this system. Despite our support team working tirelessly to respond to support tickets since launch, we admit this was a slight oversight on our part for not releasing this information sooner.” – example

Instead of customers feeling ignored, they’d at least know there was sonething larger at work and WHY. You can’t reach understanding by plugging your ears and going ‘la la la la.’

Whoever is in charge at NCSoft is making a terrible error for continually keeping silent about this matter. The longer you keep customers waiting for a response when real money is at stake, the more likely some of them will assume the very worst. One of the more popular rumors is… “They’re stopping a lot of people from buying more gems because they’re afraid of gem prices inflating too quickly.”
Even if this crazy rumor were partially true, there’d still be no real reason to be quiet about it. People would understand. We’d rather have a limit to the amount of gems we can purchase than to play an MMO with a completely busted economy.

I understand you CSRs are probably having a nightmare at your jobs lately. If I were in your position, I’d take any reason I could to lighten the load. (e.g., the Payment Risk Management System)
What few of you there evidently are surely makes the workload even worse. I do not envy your team right now. I had a chance to do customer tech support for an internet service provider as a job once. I’m glad I didn’t ‘qualify.’

TLDR; If you can’t get rid of the PRMS, the least you can do is let the public know it exists. It really says something about customer support (or lack thereof) when a handful users have to take it upon themselves to pass out official information regarding this issue.

Sincerely,
A rather disheartened customer who’s been trying to purchase gems via PayPal using the same exact e-mail address she signed up with, and the same one she used six years ago for the collector’s edition of GW1.

Earlier this week I tried to purchase gems with my credit card, kept getting the “Card Approval Failed” error and thought I’d try with a debit card instead. 2 days later I tried with a debit card and continued to get the “Card Approval Failed” error. I submitted a ticket on the issue 3 days ago when debit wouldn’t work, and haven’t gotten a response yet. Reference number is [120918-001048].

Likewise most other people here Im unable to purchase gems, this is really frustrating as I had specifically waited to purchase more this week, I have made ticket but no help yet, I just hope they don’t take too long, this is really wrecking the experience for me.

Reference Number : 120921-000320

I like how you make changes to the Support site, and now my login and password no longer work. And the reset link doesn’t work either.

My tickets :
120918-000381
120915-0054833

Are still not resolved regarding my money being taken out of my bank account and no gems provided. Tomorrow is the deadline if gems aren’t there im disputing the charge, been 7 days.

Purchased one 300 gem Black Lion Salvage Kit from the gem store. The 300 gems was deducted from my 700 gem balance, however the kit was never delivered. It has been nearly 6 hours. I would prefer that my 300 gems be returned to my account balance. Thanks.

For those who have not received you items in the mail, you should try deleting some of your mail. My mail box did not show up as full (9/10) but when I deleted some of them a mail with my items popped up after a few seconds. Just something to try before sending a ticket.

On 9/19/12 I attempted to purchase some gems with ingame gold.
The first attempt did not go through so I tried it again.
That attempt failed also.
Later in the day I noticed I was missing the exact amount of gold that I used to make those purchases, however I did not recieve the gems.

#120921-001183

card approval failed #120921-003865

Folks, I just wanted to tell you all, don’t give up hope. The people here at Arenanet have managed to fix my problem and allow me to purchase gems again. They are definitely working on this! Hopefully they will be able to get to helping the rest of you soon as well! To Arenanet, I will say, thanks and keep up the good work!

Just a regular customer here that want to buy some gems. The gem store has been rejecting me for 6 days or so.

Ticket reference: #120918-005485

I’ve been trying to order gems since earlier this week without success. Incident #120922-000914 – card approval failed or Error! {"type": “orderModel:error”}

I re-opened a ticket of mine so I can hopefully buy gems again. 120902-002922. Any word on when they can fix this permanently instead of these 48 hour lifts?

Is the Gem store still down? I keep getting

“Card Approval Failed, Please check your details are correct and try again or if this keeps happening please contact support”

My details are correct, I used the same card a while ago.

My ticket: 120922-004717

Cannot purchase gems from store
120916-002108
Updated
09/16/2012
Blocked/Suspended Account
120916-002086
Updated
09/16/2012

Please give me a 24 hour buy period, thank you.

need another 24 hour buy time for gems please.

incident number: #120921-003865

I’ve tried purchase via paypal and card; the paypal transaction wouldn’t go through, and I was advised to contact the vendor (i.e. NCSoft), the card transaction prompted an error screen. I went through the process of opening a ticket, but haven’t received even an acknowledgment message. This is sort of frustrating given that I’m trying to give them money for services.

Spent approximately 52 silver coins to buy 150 gems. Lost the silver coins and did not receive the gems. This happened on the evening of 9/21 at the same time that there were issues with the login servers.

#120923-000137

Ticket # : 120922-003023

Exchanged Gems > Gold just as the login issues happened. I got disconnected half way though the process. When I was once again able to login, Gems were missing and no gold was received.

If someone would be able to look into this for me it would be much appreciated.

-Klem

so late afternoon, purchase gems…then sometime in the evening I had to repurchase more gems however my credit card approval failed….as this is very fustrating and attempted to check if there was a spelling mistake which there was not…I am hoping that my card was not charged for the 10 times of attempting thinking it might have been a bug or something.

I understand frauds happen but thats where all the pertinent info including the fact that all mmo companys have access of what IP addresss transactions is used when logging into game and when purchases are made, so this whole crap of to avoid fraud is nonesense as all Arenanet has to do is check if said credit card is used on said customer ip address would be safe to say your the person owning it not a hacker or frauder….

But as always just another customer with an issue with purchasing gem and having a credit card failed though game had a record of my credit card information.

Please fix this bug issue…thanks

bought a gem card, when I enter the key in game it gives me the message “The code could not be redeemed. Please check your code and try again. If you continue to recieve this error. please contact customer support.”

My ticket: 120923-001949

Can’t buy any gems. Just gives me a generic “Our system sucks and we hate you” error. Also cannot buy additional copies of the game, gives the same error. This happens regardless of the payment type I use (PayPal or CC). I bought gems earlier this week without a problem, but now, nothing. What gives???

120923-000057

#120923-003604

Once again, unable to purchase gems with credit cards and paypal accounts (approval failed). I’d like to put in a request to please be lifted from the ‘blocked’ list so I can throw my money at you guys!

Tried to purchase gems with gold during the TP outage on 19th.. Nothing happened, but during the next night my gold I was trying to use disappeared from my inventory. Didn’t get gems though..

#120923-004381
I purchase $20 worth of gems (1600). The gems showed up successfully after purchase, and each time I confirmed purchases, it subtracted the correct amount from my total. However, I have not received any store items in the game mail at all today (9/23) for my purchases. The 4 items I purchased do show up in my purchase history (2 packs of BL keys, 1 pack mini pets, and 1 dye pack), but no items have been sent.

As a side note/bug report, this all started when my buddy and I both tried purchasing $10 worth of gems (which we have done several times on previous days), and it wouldn’t let us. However, when we both tried the $20 option with the same method of payment (credit card), it went through just fine. Very curious.

It’s just frustrating to not know when it’s safe to use the BLTradingCo and when it’s bugged out. I hope I’m able to get my missing purchases soon. Thank you! #120923-004381