So subscribed for year, terminated auto-renewal - no SC cash?!

I don't see any change to the website page, where are you looking?

Regardless of being warned or not, this is an incredibly slimy business practice. SOE is counting on the fact that we enjoy this game so much we'll overlook such things. That may be true now, but if there is ever a competitor to PS2 (and I'm sure there will be at some point if it is successful), consider me gone. These kinds of anti-consumer mechanics are weighed in every decision I make about an SOE purchase.

Let's look at a consumer's decision tree shall we? Let's assume our friend Chuck purchases a 12 month subscription. He's got a stable job, his girlfriend doesn't mind him playing games, and he doesn't foresee any major changes in his life. He is quite sure that he will still be playing the game 10-11 months from now.

Possible outcomes if he has auto-renew on:
1. Chuck decides after 12 months that he still enjoys the game, and he still doesn't foresee that changing. The auto-renew doesn't even affect him. Positive outcome.

2. Chuck decides that he still enjoys the game, but he probably won't spend another whole year on it. He remembers the auto-renew is coming, disables it and renews for 6 months instead. Positive outcome.

3. Same as 2, except chuck forgets about the auto-renew and he is charged for another whole year even though he only wanted to pay for 6 months. Negative outcome - Chuck loses ~$55 to SOE or has to go through the hassle of trying to get a re-fund when he realizes he's been tricked.

4. Chuck decides after 12 months that he's done with the game. He remembers to turn off the auto-renew. Positive outcome.

5. Same as 4 except chuck forgets about the subscription. Negative outcome - Chuck loses $120 to SOE, or has to go through the hassle of trying to get a re-fund when he realizes he's been tricked.

Possible outcomes if chuck doesn't have auto-renew on:

1. Chuck decides after 12 months that he still enjoys the game, and he still doesn't foresee that changing. The subscription ends and he is asked if he wants to renew. He says yes. Positive outcome.

2. Chuck decides that he still enjoys the game, but he probably won't spend another whole year on it. The subscription ends and when asked to renew, he chooses the 6 month option. Positive outcome.

3. Chuck decides after 12 months that he's done with the game. When asked if he wants to renew, he declines (or does nothing). Positive outcome







As you can see, forcing auto-renew on it's customers can *only* be bad for those customers and good for SOE. No wonder they do it! Still, that behavior is only marginally better than being beaten up because you forgot to pay your protection money. No consumer who has choices would choose SOE due to their business practices. The only reason PS2 is successful is because there is no competition. These business practicies ignore that there will come a time when PS2 has competition, and the other guys only have to provide an equal product and *not* do ****** business practices in order to gobble up SOE's customers.

Is it really worth it SOE? Is it worth killing your company at some point in the future just to milk an extra $50-$100 out of somebody?

Smartest thing you've said yet..Snap

In what way was Chuck "tricked" by setting up a continuous agreement (which we all likely do... I certainly don't manually pay my phone, ISP, etc bills each month) and leaving it set to auto-renew?

No one is being forced to auto-renew, they can choose to do so for an additional benefit.

Just like no one is being forced to sub, they can choose to do so for additional benefits.

If you claim one is "forced" then logically you must believe the other is too.



You act as if it's shocking for an MMO's subscription to have an auto-renew. When the reality is most subscriptions, whether MMO or otherwise, will default to auto-renew. At least, that's been my experience. I imagine different countries do it differently.

Probably because at this point it's a giant hate circle jerk serving no purpose.

Out of interest, to which benefit do you refer? The benefit of not having to manually renew or the benefit of getting 500SC per month?

Because if you mean the latter, some of us didn't choose to auto-renew for the 500SC benefit because we were lead to believe that the 500SC was included in the price of the subscription, that it was a membership benefit (as stated on the membership puchase page both in game and on the web store) and not an auto-renew benefit.

They ain't forcing anyone to do anything, just a cheaper price and extra sc if you choose to autorenewal for a year, how hard is that to understand?
And it's no big dilemma if you misunderstood the terms of what you were buying, they already said they would reword it, cut them a break if they didn't do it right away to please you....
SOE is great, no problems at all with them, and many people are posting here about how great they have been about CS responses and refunding sc items bought by mistake.
Just because your confused, and it's obvious that's often, owell..I think a bad business model starts with you, learn what your buying, the guy even said in the first post that he knew it was a renewal bonus but he cancelled anyway, because he didn't want them to have his info...

SOE didn't change the contract, he did, he lost the bonus but still wants it anyway...owell

Because these kids have nothing better to complain about..The guy choose an option, changed his mind, now he's whining and crying about it....he want's his cake, wah wah where's my bonus anyway, I'm special, I get what I want, wah wah, cut me a break, he broke the deal, not them, they were kind enough to respond
Never take responsibility, they want everything their way, whiny little spolied brats, and I'll bet my account it was his mom who wanted him to cancel it, and now he thinks he's entitled
Thus endith the lesson

Was just about to say the same.

Because the only logical reason for it (especially when talking about 6 month and 12 month subscriptions) is to force customers to pay for something they don't want. As i demonstrated above, not having auto-renew is *only* a benefit to the customer. There is no situation where a consumer would say "damn, I wish I had set that yearly subscription to auto-renew!" There are many situations where consumers will curse and say "why did I forget to cancel that damn subscription!" Therefore, it only exists to trick customers into paying for an extra year of service that they don't want. If it was truly there for the convenience of the customer, it would come in the form of a question 1 week before the subscription expires, "would you like to renew right now? yes/no." That system would never result in the customer paying for something they don't want, and would be exactly as convenient as an actual auto-renew system as it is now.

You don't have to be forced to do something in order for it to be a slimy business practice. Let's say the only grocery store within a 20 mile radius is owned by a guy who loves to troll/rag on people. He gets his kicks out of making up names and humiliating his customers unless those customers pay him an extra $5 when they check out. Are those customers forced to pay his toll? No. Are those customers forced to shop there? No, but it may still be better to be humiliated than to drive an extra 35 minutes to get groceries. This situation includes a slimy business practice and the customers are in no way forced to do anything, but that doesn't make the business practice any less detestable.

I understand most subscriptions default to auto-renew (as I pointed out above, it can only be good for the companies and bad for the customers, but can easily be blamed on the customers for not remembering). However, this is the first time I've ever encountered a company dangling a carrot to entice you to walk into a potential mistake.

I prefer auto-renew. That's why I do in fact auto-renew my subscription.

You may prefer to not auto renew. But by definition you are choosing to manually renew or not renew. It's you choice.

I suggested alternatives to using your main account as a payment method, a pre-paid debit card would work fine without exposing your primary bank account to fraud. A credit card used for nothing but use online where you have security concerns would work almost as well (yes fraud could occur, but your bank will refund it and as long as you don't need the money between the date that the fraud occurred and the date that the refund is applied it's no real problem - and the whole point of a credit card for this is so that you know you won't need the money for anything else).

And if you read my posts you will see that I fully agree that the wording needs to be changed... has anyone ever disagreed with that? There's no need to keep arguing this point when no one disagrees!

Solafide you are the one behaving like a child here.

You lost your argument several posts back and since than have resorted to making stupid remarks. Just because you don't comprehend or choose to ignore the problem, doesn't make it any less of a problem.

I didn't 'change my mind' - I was mis-sold something - a fact bourn out by the fact that SOE were willing to refund my subscription and their acknowledgement that the purchasing page is misleading and needed to be changed.

Neither of which has yet happened.

My mom by the way is 75. She is english, I call her mum. She has long since stopped telling me what to do. In fact it tends to be the reverse these days as you will probably find out when you eventually grow up. The cost of the subscription means nothing to me. What irks me is that SOE are blatantly mis-selling either through poor management or heaven forbid, intentionally. I prefer to assume the former, and hopefully they will fix the respective pages soon.

Until that time, I will happily educate the ignorant.

In 12 months and 1 day the person who buys a 12 month sub without an auto-renew will find himself in a queue.

He will have to take the time to make another payment.

Perhaps you think that everyone pays everything manually, but I prefer convenience. I don't want to be bothered with reminders and questions, I want to say "take the money each month - you handle that, I'll handle playing".

It is not as convenient to have to click yes every month as it is to set it up once and do nothing. It's 1 more action required each month (or each billing cycle).

How hard is it to make a note of the sub if you want to cancel it at a later date? When I play an MMO with a sub I don't just "forget" I have a sub when I stop playing, I cancel it until I get the urge to play again. And all that without a reminder, and without manual payments.

A completely different situation with no parallel in the actual situation?

Pointless, no relation to the discussion at hand.

More realistic example, keeping to your shops idea, is a supermarket who offer an optional service of providing a discount card. The more you spend the more discount vouchers you get.

In this situation, are people "forced" to spend more than they want to because they simply must have every benefit possible?

And, as I pointed out above, you are wrong. I like auto-renewals. I don't want to pay manually or be asked for permission to take the payment each month. I just want to play the game. My auto-renewing subscription provides exactly that.

Thanks for clarifying. It's just that some here seem to think I was the fool for not realising auto-renew was part of the deal. t would not surprise me if that last sentence gets quoted by one of them quite soon

> has anyone ever disagreed with that?

There are several that have disagreed that there is even an issue, either because they are unaware or they just don't want to acknowledge it. It is those people I have been responding to in the main.

Ok SOE has known about this "error" on their webpage and the ingame store for nearly a week.
Why has this not been fixed by now? Once SOE was made aware of this it should not have taken more than a few hours to fix it.

Since they are still not updating the information one must assume that this is intentional.

Too many dumb people here. Just ignore them imo.

Or, maybe, there is a purpose.

I, for one, am glad for this thread since it provided information that I was unaware of.

I do not like shady business practices and it bothers me that so many customers allow businesses to engage in activities that are, at the end of the day, against themselves. Too many people just shrug their shoulders and allow businesses to get away with shady things. This, in turn, causes businesses to expand their anti-customer activities.

This is one of those activities. There is -no- good reason for SoE to tie the 500 SC a month to having to have a reoccurring payment plan active from a customer's point of view. From SoE's point of view this is great since many people just leave pre-authorized payments going due to it being a 'hassle' to cancel.

What is worse in this situation is that SoE doesn't even reveal that this 500 SC is tied to the reoccurring payment being clicked as active when setting the framework of the purchasing deal in two of its purchase systems. This is misleading and extremely bad from a customer's point of view - basically, SoE is presenting something to the customer to get them to pay money and then not delivering on that initial intent.

There is, apparently, one method of going through the purchase process for a premium membership that -does- show that 500 SC is tied to having an actively selected reoccurring payment method. While I do not agree with the premise of doing this if it is clearly stated then, hey, it's the agreement and you know what you are buying. As such, while I wouldn't do it myself, I am okay with a company offering that kind of incentive to a customer. In some ways it balances out the benefit to the company (people forgetting about the pre-authorized payment) to the customer (by offering them something in ADDITION to what they originally thought they were going to get - a bonus).

However, in this situation, SoE doesn't appear to be doing this as per the responses from their Customer Server Representatives and this is bad.

If a person goes through the purchase process for obtaining a premium membership through the Planet Side 2 page or through the game itself they are NOT informed that the 500 SC that is listed as part of the premium membership is not actually part of the premium membership. And that, right there, is the crux of the issue.

SoE says a Premium Membership includes 500 SC per month for as long as the membership is active. That's fine. You cancel the membership, you don't get 500 SC per month after the membership period. That's what is described.

However, this isn't the case according to the SoE representatives. Instead, that 500 SC that one thought they were getting as part of the membership isn't part of the membership it is an additional bonus that is tied to maintaining a reoccurring payment plan on file regardless of the length of the payment period. This is bad. This isn't something customers should just 'accept' and say.. okay, no problem. That fact that this is -not- clearly laid out at the proposal phase of a purchase is very shady. This means that SoE is intentionally attempting to deceive a prospective customer into purchasing something with misleading and false information. That's very bad.

What I think happened is this: The original idea was to have a premium membership include 500 SC per month as part of the membership. That's what was given to the marketing team who put together all the pages describing what you would get in your premium membership.

Then, someone tossed out the idea that they could tie the 500 SC to a reoccurring payment plan so they did this as well. They put in a note in for when someone removes their reoccurring payment to let them know that they would lose the 500 SC BONUS. Due to miscommunication and crossed wires, customers who are subscribed via an active reoccurring payment plan are currently only receiving one of the two 500 SC amounts.

As it stands now, a customer who has a premium membership should be receiving everything listed under premium membership features PLUS an additional 500 SC bonus if they purchased the premium membership via a reoccurring purchase plan.

However, I do not think that SoE meant to do this.

And so, I check this thread regularly and keep it alive because I think this is important information for people to be aware of.

As an aside, I see nothing wrong with adding an additional check-box to a subscription purchase that says something along the lines of: "Remind me a week before the subscription period renews with a purchase option." That way the people who want a reminder get one and those who don't, don't get a reminder. Simple, clean, and customer friendly.

All I'm wondering is why the OP is so secretive about his credit card and acting like it's national security. Why can't you just let it stay on file for a year and remove it at the end of the year if you feel that strongly?

I mean if you paid for a year this year is it really going to break the bank next year? Your logic is pretty ridiculous and all over the place. Sony isn't just going to steal the cash from you at the end of the year. You had the option to cancel November 2013 and remove the information then.

It really is your fault for being so ready to have a knee-jerk paranoid reaction as if Sony is waiting to embezzle all of the money they possibly can from your card.

I feel like this is your first subscription to a game, because most don't even offer a subscription incentive. You're basically paying $5 a month for a year and whining that they will auto-renew if you're too dumb to cancel 12 months from now.

I wouldn't leave my CC info on file with SoE either - they've been hacked before and, chances are, they will get hacked again. For many services the way that the company identifies a 'true' customer is through some easily obtained information (such as full name and address) and then the last four digits of the credit card on file.

Since SoE stores credit card information with the last four digits exposed this means that hackers can gain access to various different things about a person such as email accounts (goggle uses the above noted security authorization process to reset passwords), banking information (when used in conjunction with other information), credit card information, other game accounts, various subscription services, phone, etc etc.. in other words, there is a lot that can happen when credit card information becomes compromised.

Some people want to reduce the risk of such things happening. So, they remove their payment information from being stored on services.

Second, it isn't a reaction to potential embezzlement, it is a reaction to being offered one set of 'products' for a purchase and then, after making the purchase (or at the last step of a purchase - as can happen in one of the purchase methods), discovering that isn't what was purchased. That's a shady and bad business practice that should not be accepted.

Explain to me how its ridiculous for someone to not trust a third party (especially Sony) to store their financial information.