Guild Wars 2

Dear Arenanet,

I recently submitted a ticket as my account was hacked and items/gold were stolen.
Having found out that items/gold cannot be restored I asked about how one would go about a refund for my collectors edition (as I can’t find any info on return policys/refunds) since I purchased it from Zavvi.

A few days later I got the following E-mail

“We have processed a refund for order number 25968263. A £64.99 credit has been applied to your PayPal® account and should appear within the next 2-3 business days.

The serial code associated with the transaction that has been refunded will be disabled."

While I appreciate the fast refund, I didn’t actually want a refund. and DO NOT want my account disabled.

Further more as I purchased my collectors edition from Zavvi and my wife purchased directly from gw2.com I think it is in fact her account that will be disabled as the refund transaction ID for PayPal is for the purchase she made on 10 Apr 2012.

I don’t know if when a serial is disabled if that means she loses everything on her account and if she does she is going to be furious.

So just to sum is up:
We can both currently log in. No Problem.
I DO NOT want mine or my wife’s account disabled.
I have an unwanted amount of £64.99 that I need to return to you.

Please hurry, as I have no idea what further consequences a disabled serial has.

First up, I’d like to make clear that I’ve no idea what actually will happen. This is only a guess from my side and my suggestion to you!

1. Both the collectors edition & digital deluxe use the same type of key as they both have the same IG benefits. The only real difference is that the collectors edition comes with physical goodies.

2. Once the serial is disabled, the account will most likely still be there (speculation) and will simply rander inactive. This is most likely the same process as with account that didn’t got the retail code applied after the pre-purchase code. Since the solution for such accounts was to simply apply the retail code, this may work for you.

Final thoughs / suggestion:

Once one of the two accounts get disabled, there are 2 things you can do.

1. Wait for ArenaNet and see if they can’t help you out. There is obviously a chance that all stuff gets deleted / can’t be restored, however then either ArenaNet nor suggestion 2 can help you. Or they can restore it and you send the money back.

2. You close the ticket and try to restore it yourself. Given that my initial speculation was correct. Then you can simply restore the account yourself. Aquire the digital purchase code from http://buy.guildwars2.com and apply it to your account. Then (if my speculation from earlier is correct) your account will simply unlock itself and you can play again. Just as when someone would apply the retail code after the pre-purchase code as I wrote earlier. (Or wait for ArenaNet to see if they can do anything, but you may remove stuff with this step as well. I don’t think you can actually, but warnings are always good)

Piece of advice, if you don’t actually want a refund, don’t even ask a question about it from CS (in a support ticket about hacked account no less), they probably have so many tickets to go through that a representative saw the mention of a refund and just processed it without actually reading the ticket with much thought.

The refund policy states that ANet will only issue refunds for digital copies purchased directly from them, for all other refunds you need to contact the original retailer. Zavi probably would refuse a refund of the CE though, since it is not like they can resell it… lot of stores don’t accept refunds on (opened) PC games at all, unless there is support for that from the publisher in case of broken copies etc.

For a 3rd party retailer a refund would involve a lot of leg work, because they can’t directly disable serials, so they would have to first get the serial on the account disabled through ANet and then probably contact the publisher to get compensation for the refund. Well, this would be the process in the case of a faulty product, but MMO’s are a stingy subject, as things like hacked account does not constitute a faulty product and the basis for when a refund is acceptable course of action is debatable.

Well.. so far both accounts are still active. Although still no reply from Arenanet.