Star Wars The Old Republic:
Worst Customer Service and On-line Financial Transactions, EVER
WARNING FOR ALL ASPIRING JEDI, SITH, AND MANDALORIANS:
SWTOR ( http://www.swtor.com ) is a MMPORG game with fantastic detail and depth in the Star Wars universe. It is also, without a doubt, the worst experience I have ever had with an on-line billing system for a game, and with hours on hold waiting to talk with Customer Service.
My son plays this game, and I watch him do it, and of course provide the funding. Unfortunately, their system to buy "Cartel Coins" is probably the worst ever, having been broken for over a month now. Furthermore, their promised game cards, which could get around their worthless credit card heist system, have yet to show up at Game Spot stores, as has also been promised on their website.
As far as their credit card heist system, BUYER BEWARE. If your account gets stray electrons that mess up a single byte of information, then trying to add different payment options fails (such as adding your Pay Pal, different credit card, etc). The only way to see if it works is to try making a purchase, which I did with the CS rep several times, and on my own while on hold for roughly the length of the Star Wars movies (combined) it felt like.
You call Customer Service, thinking that they can fix it... and listen to 30-60 minutes of the same boring Star Wars music and stupid messages about being in a que, and laughable messages about how they are improving their Customer Lack-of-Service (haven't yet, from a user perspective!). Finally a polite guy took my credit card info, and entered it, so that it works, and purchase finally went through. Lack-of-Customer-Service rep tells me the account is automatically locked out for 24 hours after a purchase, to prevent re-purchases. Hmmm - that is wierd. Why would that be necessary?
But the account is finally functional, a purchase was made. Yaay - problem solved, right?
WRONG. Over the next day, all of the failed transactions were submitted to my Mastercard account. Instead of a single $39.99 charge, I have around $300 of charges. Pretty good money-making scheme.
So then I call Customer Service. Hours on hold, to get told that you have to call during Central Standard Time business hours and talk to an business office account billing droid-person-something. Here's the kicker: YOU CAN'T CALL THEM DIRECTLY, YOU HAVE TO GO THROUGH THE CONSTIPATED CUSTOMER SERVICE QUES!
Well, since I actually work for a living, it isn't easy to sit on the phone all day right away. Nevertheless I called today about 4pm. About 40 minutes of waiting into it, I got a human-sounding guy who told me the same as the last guy - talk to billing during business hours, put me back in the same interminable waiting. Now it is 5:23pm, and the business office is undoubtedly closed, and I am still on hold.
This game is technically well done, but the implementation of their credit-card heist system is criminally negligent, and reflects badly on Lucas Arts, Lucas Films, George Lucas, Electronic Arts, and Disney now, which is a real shame. I don't much care what their excuses are; if your billing system is stealing from people, then it should be shut down until it works, and just let people play for free other than their monthly fees. How hard can that be?
For now, all I can say is BEWARE SWTOR ( Star Wars The Old Republic ) unless you want your credit card ripped off. For me, I am calling Mastercard to dispute the charges and have them removed. And I removed the credit card from SWTOR, of course.
I hope others aren't ripped off like this or worse. In 2012, it is a shame that a neat game is compromised by a cheap billing system.
