Hellgate: London Subscribers Report Extra Charges, Restricted Access to Membership Benefits

liquescent

http://www.shacknews.com/onearticle.x/49823

Following activation of the service after a lengthy post-launch downtime, many subscribers to Flagship Studios' optional Hellgate: London membership program are reporting massive problems with the system, including mistaken credit charges and unavailable access to promised content.

Most alarming among the issues, many users claim they have been charged the monthly $9.99 subscription fee multiple times within the span of a few days.

"I could sum this up as the worst online gaming experience I have ever had," Shacknews reader Tyro described to us. "I applied for a monthly subscription. I then noticed I was charged two times on 11/03 $9.99, one time on 11/04 $9.99, and one time on 11/05 $9.99."

Other users have only been billed once, but find themselves unable to use the service they've paid for.

"I checked the account pages on both web sites," wrote Mayella_EU in the support thread. "It doesn't show I have a subscription. Yet my credit card was charged."

Further compounding the issue, Hellgate customer support has been slow in responding to complaints according to many of the unhappy subscribers. A 392-post support thread on the official Hellgate: London forums has cropped up following the closure of the temporary billing/subscription forum.

Shacknews has contacted Flagship, but has not yet received a comment at this time. Hellgate community managers are aware of the issues, and promise an update on the situation soon.

Tmacattack

Only affecting EU accounts. Forgot to clarify.

Syncrosonix

i've been charged multiple times as well and i'm in the united states. i've gone to cancel my account three different times now. after doing so, i go to check, and it says "cancellation pending". i then wait an hour and it's back to "good standing."

JennysMind

I paid for my subscription a few days ago and everything went smoothly. I'm still checking every day to make sure. It's been ok with me.

Obviously there were billing problems from lauch and it never got fixed, at least well enough. The bugs aren't that bothersome to me, at least it's not hurting me financially and altough can be annoying will probably get worked out. Just from posters having problems here and the problems Ping0 had with billing at launch. My guess is that it is total chaos and people are actually getting financially hurt by this. That is what makes me angry. Add to that the call center is in India and that is amplifying the problem. I know I have a problem understanding the accent so can imagine how frustrating customers are by this. I'm also guessing it's hard to get through in the first place. HG:L staff better get this right and apologize. Plus set right the customers who are going to get hurt or I am going to be right in line warning people not to purchase this game no matter how good I think it is. Of all the complaining about the game, That's mild compared to mishandling people's money. This is the biggest nightmare that could possibly happen.

Edit: You know what's pissing me off more is that I'm a Founder's Club member and I could very likely get the shaft. If FSS stops the bleeding by suspending subscriptions who is going to want to subscribe when it goes back online. I still feel that FSS is passionate about their game. Unfortunately they weren't ready to release the game and cut too many corners. It looks like it may come back to haunt them. This boggles my mind considering they came from Blizzard, a company that doesn't release a game until it was ready. I know WoW had it's problems but I think Blizzard was ready as they could be. They just didn't expect the rush and they started working on the problem right away and notified their customers what was going on.

The billing issue has made the launch of HG:L a really bad start. I wonder how much EA had to do with this? This could be amplified by FSS not making a public statement soon and trying to sweep it under the rug. The billing issue has only popped up on one site so far. But I'm betting this will be full blown very soon. I should have known after they shut down the billing at launch.  *sigh*

 

JennysMind

Billing Resolutions

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After burning several drums of midnight oil, we have resolved all current billing issues with our payment processing partners. We’ve completed our payment reconciliation process and players that were incorrectly billed will see paybacks credited to their credit card accounts in the next few days.

We apologize for the inconvenience this has caused, although it impacted just 3% of people that requested to become subscribing members. There is also approximately an equal amount of players whose subscription status has been approved, but their cards were uncharged as we did not process their payment until the issues were resolved.

Again, we’re sorry to those of you who were affected by this.

-The Hellgate: London team

Rayana

Sorry to say, but my problem isn't resolved at all.

ThomasN7

Nothing new here. Every game has billing issues. In everyday life there are billing issues. Unfortunately this happens from time to time. On the official forums there is a number you can call. Perhaps you can call and have this corrected. Good luck !

Rayana

Originally posted by SaintViktor


Nothing new here. Every game has billing issues. In everyday life there are billing issues. Unfortunately this happens from time to time. On the official forums there is a number you can call. Perhaps you can call and have this corrected. Good luck !

It's a number in the US, and I'm from EU and want to play on EU server. Besides, the phone number doesn't work well. I hear they get some Indian help desk on the line, and they can hardly understand their English, and they just drum up some prewritten texts.