If you remain LM-17'd after this whole ordealFollow

File a fraud claim with Visa/Mastercard/Whoever your card holder is.

I know that at least Visa will most certainly refund you *some* if not all of any money sent to Squeenix, while taking it upon themselves to legally prosecute them for the money and then some.

You may not get your account back, but you'll at least get your money back, and i wouldn't be surprised if someone files a class action.

I haven't been banned (yet), but if they do, i'm not gonna think twice about calling up my back and back-charging them 2 years. I could use the $300.

I haven't been LM-17'd. I'm just saying, if for whatever reason the ban hammer hits my mole-hole randomly (cause they seem to be playing a game of blindfolded whack-a-mole), i'm gonna get my $300 back and probably go get **********

just sayin.

How do you know they would do that? Sounds unlikely they would refund money when it's not the credit card company's fault.

OP: Doesn't work like that.

If you get LM-17'd they can't continue charging you. It's not like SE is going "HAHA you can't log in to cancel your content ID's have fun paying us for eternity!". Once you're banned your content ID's are suspended and thats the only thing you're ever charged for when a billing cycle comes. You could complain that you're being "cheated" out of your money if you payed for a whole month and get banned a week in but it is fully within SE's legal power to do so.





It's not that characters have no value, it is the fact that you have absolutely no legal claim to that value. You agree when you play the game that SE owns every single thing about your character that is stored on their servers. You're not paying a monthly fee for your character, you're paying to access the data they own stored on their servers.



What the... am I missing some correlation between getting banned and anything at all in that situation? It's really absolutely nothing at all like that.

If you wanted to make any sort of airline comparison to getting banned you would have to make up some bat **** crazy story like... you're taking a flight that requires a connection and as you're switching planes you have to go back through a security check and oh wow they suddenly find out you're on a no fly list and don't allow you on board or refund your money because you're a dirty terrorist.

I'm assuming he's going with the lackluster security route.

Ugh, analogies. There should be a filter that whenever the phrase "it's like when" is typed, everything after it is replaced by "insert irrelevant, idiotic analogy here". Let me go on the record and say that for the most part, the people here are pretty smart. They can pick up on your point without your analogy.

That being said, the fact that SE keeps such a stranglehold on the value of the characters is to combat RMT. It's their fail-safe to keep people from selling their accounts on E-Bay.

To the OP: You're an idiot. You willingly paid for the months of service. Yes it sucks that you got banned for no reason. Unfortunately your only recourse is to tell others about your bad experience, and to hope that they will not purchase any other SE products in the future. But you're telling people to commit fraud.

Try using some proper terms, then. You said "held hostage", which obviously has nothing to do with the situation you're talking about.

There's a huge difference between this and dramatic license. When you refer to an airline, then say "hostage", you have completely changed the context of your statement.

Which is obvious by the responses you received, who all thought you were talking about actual hostages.

/endderail

Edited, Sep 1st 2009 11:47am by chewzer

You're right, except I'm not aware of any cases where SE has billed a banned account. The OP is talking about trying to go back and dispute all previous charges against a banned account, which is fraud.

I can see this working if you get LM-17ed or hacked, and you have to pay a month or two while they waste time 'investigating'. I would demand those months of non-play back.

I haven't, however, heard of a case of someone's account being locked under investigation, still drawing monthly fees, and then denied from them in the end.



This would probably only fly on legal technicality. Either its your account or you were incorrectly charged for six years and never noticed, but if SE is adamant that it was never your account and doesn't allow transfers of ownership, you're damn right you could get your money back.

Edited, Sep 1st 2009 12:08pm by Raelix

Yes (most, anyhow, GPL is nice at times) and yes.

There is also truth to this. Unfortunately it is far from settled law. My understanding is that there have been rulings both ways on EULAs in a variety of circumstances. It may very well be possible for a player find a sound legal argument and successfully sue a game publisher, but I think it's safe to say the publishers are not exactly shaking in their boots. And anything less than a serious (and expensive) legal endeavor is probably an exercise in futility - which is exactly what the publishers are counting on.

Edited, Sep 1st 2009 4:10pm by VxSote

Anything you use on a monthly service has your CC info. A company like SE probably realizes that if they were to try it, they'd easily be @#%^ed by lawsuits for doing it. Worrying about them charging you is a complete waste of time.



Every game's ToS is pretty much a list of things you can't blame them for. They're not treating you like sh*t, they're offering you a service with rather fair restrictions. You don't see them using the "we can ban you for nothing" clause almost ever.



Edited, Sep 1st 2009 5:36pm by Overburn