April Subscription Fees Waived Due to Server DowntimeFollow

Mar. 25, 2011 19:00 [PDT] From: FINAL FANTASY XI
April Subscription Fees Waived Due to Server Downtime

Due to the temporary suspension of the FINAL FANTASY XI game service, customers with active, paying subscriptions as of March 2011 will not be charged monthly FINAL FANTASY XI subscription fees ($12.95 + $1.00 per additional Content ID) for the April billing cycle. Below is a list of important notices for affected customers.

[Important Notes]
* Only customers who paid subscription fees for March 2011 are eligible. Customers registering new accounts or reactivating accounts in April are not eligible.
* Fees for any additional Content IDs purchased from April 1, 2011 onwards will not be waived.
* Any charges aside from monthly subscription and additional Content ID fees (e.g., expansion purchases, etc.) will not be waived.
* Customers who closed their accounts during March will be eligible. However, you must reactivate your account before the end of April; since subscription fees are only being waived for the month of April, we recommend you reactivate early in order to reap the full benefits of this offer.

Allakhazam. You're first place for re-re-re-re-re-re-regurgitated news. =D

Don't quote me on this, but I believe if you reactivate now, come when SE would bill you in April, they'll bill you for the reactivation of your account, but since you're still counted as a paying subscriber for the April subscription fee waiver, you won't be billed for April. Basically rather than being double billed for the time you played in March and for the month of April as per how it would be normally, you'll just be billed for March.

Your account has been closed due to unpaid fees resulting from declined authorization on your credit card. You can reactivate your account by paying these fees with a valid card.
Pay fees now?
(LM-21)

Many people are having the same problem, the registration server is down.

As I posted in this thread already:

http://www.playonline.com/ff11eu/polnews/news20578.shtml

Updates
Apr. 3, 2011 05:00 [GMT] From: PlayOnline
Registration Server Maintenance (Apr. 2): Follow-up 2

This is an update regarding the previously reported extension of Phase 2 of the PlayOnline registration server maintenance.

We regret to report that the currently on-going PlayOnline registration server maintenance will be extended for an as of yet undetermined amount of time.
We will issue a notification as soon as additional information is available.

We deeply apologise for the repeated extension and any inconvenience it may be causing.

Okay, so I was totally billed for April.

Was the free month SE's idea of an April Fool's joke?

EDIT: To clarify, it's just a few bucks, so it's not a huge deal; I'm just a bit annoyed at the "Hey, free month!" followed by the "lol jk"

Edited, Apr 4th 2011 11:56am by Mikhalia

I think the deal is more along the lines of, make a mistake and bill half the playerbase and hope most don't catch it or complain. Nice way to get some good PR (not charging cause they offered no service) while still actually getting some money out of it's players.

Square are masters at abusing their payment system, they overcharge quite frequently and it's only fixed if you complain. If you don't notice or complain they get free money, hell they will even ban you if you get unjust charges reversed via your bank.