Guild Wars 2

I guess to start this off I need to acknowledge that this issue is partly my part for not being as savvy as I could be about waiting for promotional pricing. But basically here is what happened for me and why I am frustrated with the refund policy.

TL:DR – I bought the game as a gift for a friend before it went on sale, felt respected but also was led through a lot of barriers to end up getting a lukewarm solution to the complaint I sent to GW2 Support. /TL:DR

I have owned GW2 since its original beta. I have made gem purchases for myself and friends as gifts and a way to support the company because I really enjoy the game.

On Jan 10th 2015 I purchased a gift copy for my friend in the assumption that something cool would be happening in the near future and I wanted him to play it with me. I paid $39.99

ANet has released pricing for a promotion this weekend at $9.99 for the same product.

I asked their support team if I could get a partial refund or if they could offer me some other sort of reparation knowing that many companies I have dealt with in the past offer price matches if the price changes within a certain time frame. Usually 30 days or something like that.

I was treated with respect but all of the responses I received were fairly cold, automated and felt like I was being punished for trying to give a gift.

The basic response is that I could get a refund but I would need to completely cancel and block the old account and then purchase a new copy. I agree that this is a somewhat reasonable response and many companies out there would not even give me the time of day if I asked but I still feel like if we are that close to a true solution why bother with the red tape at all?

I understand that the underlying purpose of this policy is to disincentivize returns and allow the company to retain more profits from people who are unwilling to go through the red tape but it just feels backward to me.

I feel like it would waste less time and resources on both our parts to come to some sort of agreement on this issue. Instead, by following the policy strictly the company causes 3 different help representatives to spend an hour each responding to my complaints (not to mention complaints of others) AND they get nothing to show for it except potentially bad PR.

Again, I do not believe this reflects poorly on the representatives but more so on the company which they represent. Customers who have poor service experiences tend to spread the word about it more readily than good news. I use to think of myself as an advocate of the game but after being treated this way I am not sure I can advocate in the same way in the future.

I will continue to play and enjoy the game, and I know that it does count for something that they are willing to refund me at all but it still just leaves a bad impression on me that the reps had to be as strict with the policy as they were. A little leniency to make logical and beneficial judgement calls I think would go a long way.

That is just my opinion but has anyone else had other experiences? Am I wrong entirely for thinking this way or am I misunderstanding something?

Thanks for listening to me blab about it.
~ShortieXV

Um, no? At the time you purchased the game, you were fully willing to spend said amount, and gave it away as a gift. I’m guessing that your “friend” fully enjoyed the game for the past 2 weeks. If Anet didn’t have a sale, you probably wouldn’t have batted an eyelash, and there would be no problems.

What we have here is a person who doesn’t understand how sales work. Promotions are a dime a dozen in the real world. There’s always deals for when a company wants to expand sales. And when it comes to price matching, each company has their own discretion on what type of policy they’ll allow for partial refunds. If Anet had a policy to refund each and every account whenever a sale occurred after such a long time frame, they’d be spending more time than the few minutes it took to deal with you (it doesn’t take an hour to copy and paste responses). Think of it this way: You bought milk 2 weeks ago from the market, and today there’s a 50% off sale. You consumed the milk already, and now want a refund. Does it make sense for the market to give you your money back?

Anet’s customer service has to deal with a lot of problems. You got an answer from one person, then it got escalated to another, and then another. Sounds like your typical chain of command for dealing with appeals. You weren’t happy with the policy, and it’s understandable that you’d want to vent. If they gave you the refund, that’s great. But if they don’t, you should go off declaring “bad PR” for something like this.

Maybe it is just me venting about it.

I get what you are saying about consumable goods like milk but I guess I just felt it was different for other products and services. All of my experiences with refunding has been on the point of sale rep side of things with physical items like chairs and computers and phones and stuff. Even items with services attached to them like a cell phone have had a price guarantee (for my company it was 14 days) that as a sales person I always appreciated because it makes my life easier than just telling someone no or having to jump through hoops like a complete return and cancellation just sell the same product again and satisfy the customer.

As I said, they did a lot to help resolve the issue and I appreciate that they have a way to approach this kind of situation in the first place. What was most frustrating is just that it felt very close to what I thought would have been a great solution but was prevented from being great because the support person on the other side of the transaction was strictly bound.

Thanks for helping me get my head around it though.

That’s just life. Once I bought a power supply that came with a $10 rebate. The next day a $20 rebate was offered instead.

I didn’t pursue the $20 rebate because I did not buy it on the day that rebate was offered. See what I’m getting at?

You shouldn’t expect them to give you any kind of refund when you didn’t buy the game when the promotion was offered.

You might have saved yourself the ‘hours’ it took to correspond with the CS Team, had you perused the forum (with Google, of course), and read what the policy and usual actions taken by the CS Team have been in the past in regards to returns and promotional pricing.

Glad to hear it was resolved to your satisfaction, though.

Please welcome your friend to Tyria on behalf of all of us! Good luck.