Guild Wars 2

While I chose not to participate in this event due to the horrid amounts of unacceptable lag in the previous one, I can definitely understand why all of you would be absolutely livid. I sincerely hope ANet will compensate all of you who’ve literally been cheated out of the loot you worked hard for. They’ve really dug themselves into a hole with these buggy/laggy/one-time-events that, more often than not, a huge chunk of the player base has trouble even participating in (and in this sorry case, even those who’ve participated are out of luck).

I have literally lost count of how often I’ve gotten “An error occurred finalizing your purchase.” thrown in my face when attempting to purchase gems. I know what the Payment Risk Management System is, so I know why this error occurs and why it exists, but it’s gotten to the point where I can’t even purchase over 4000 gems without being flagged. I’d like to request a 24 hour window to make gem purchases since your team has been doing that for other customers who are having the same issues. I’ve legitimately purchased hundreds of real dollars worth of gems ever since release and it’s frustrating that my account is repeatedly limited due to a faceless, flawed automated system. The limits themselves are absolutely ridiculous when compared to how expensive in-game items are. 4000 gems, when converted to in-game currency, cannot even buy more than one piece of tier 3 culural armor. Hypothetically, if someone wished to buy a full set of tier 3 cultural armor, there’s absolutely no way they can do that within the same day without the PRMS blocking them from purchasing enough gems to do so. This is a problem.

Lisa,
[Incident: 121113-000437]

I just got logged out with the same message, so you aren’t alone. I have e-mail authorization active and haven’t received any e-mails, so I’m pretty certain this error is on ANet’s end.

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.

Incident: 120909-006156

My “in progress” ticket is 8 days old now. Please respond with something. Anything.

This “An error occurred finalizing your purchase.” message keeps popping up whenever I try to purchase gems, and there’s nothing wrong with my PayPal account. I’ve called. I’ve checked. The error is entirely on your end. I’d like to know exactly what’s going on. I’ve read through this thread and a lot of people are angry with the same exact issue I’m having, yet their tickets are going unanswered (or even worse, closed without a response). Apparently there’s something called a Payment Risk Management System you guys have set in place that’s probably causing all of these legitimate customers from purchasing gems. If this is the case, let me be one of many to tell you this is absolutely insulting and unnecessary. Within the time frame I’ve started this ticket, I’ve been blocked, unblocked, blocked, unblocked, and blocked again. What is the point of that? Check my transaction logs and you’ll see what I mean. If there’s a limit on how many gems users are allowed to purchase within a certain time frame, you need to let us know instead of keeping us completely in the dark. If your system thinks I’m making fraudulent purchases, why unblock me at all? If your system is comfortable enough to unblock me, why keep blocking me after I make a few gem purchases? Please get rid of this payment risk management system. PayPal and credit card companies already have established systems set in place to detect fraudulent purchases and identity theft. The system on your end is obviously not working, and it’s punishing, infuriating, and framing a lot of innocent people who simply want to play the game and give you guys more money. I understand you guys may have this risk management system in place to help with the workload, but it’s clearly doing the opposite. If anything, it’s merely deterring a handful of bad guys while catching thousands of innocent customers in the cross fire. Please respond with something. We’re tired of being unfairly labeled as frauds, then being completely ignored. I’ve played many MMOs, and this is the first time I’ve felt like customer support has failed with how they’re handling support issues. A business can’t keep hiding behind “We’re busy, we’ll get to you as soon as we can.” forever.