Issues with Account not recognizing purchase

sabin78ub17_ESO

So looking around here it looks like we are not alone, so I wanted to get a more official full thread going about this.
Full details below, but the short version is this:
Issue where purchase is made for game (Imperial edition only, or have others had issues as well?) and that purchase shows up on your bank account. You recieve a confirmation order# email from zenimax, you may even be able to play for a day or 2. Then the account reverts/something errors on their end, and your account no longer recognizes that you have purchased the game. Thus, no valid game licence= no setting up of subscriptions, and being completely unable to play the game. Issue I believe is related to account->purchase information not getting connected correctly.

That is the short version, here is the longer version, complete with the difficulties in reaching a human to talk to in customer support.

Original issue was noted on forums, during early access several accounts that bought the game during early access had a delay in being able to play. My wifes was one of these. Servers came down at some point for patching, and when they came back up the issue was fixed. ~2-3 days later(April 5th is when we found it), issue returns. On logging into "account" settings, find that you cannot follow the link on "billing history" without getting an error 500 page. When logging out and logging in with my account, this works perfectly. Comparing the 2 accounts pages, find that my working account shows imperial edition purchased in upper right corner. Find the "broken" account has "
ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE
Member Since February 28, 2014
ACCOUNT STATUS
DOWNLOAD
Download PC client
Download Mac client" (image is not the same, and has no details about purchase. Am still unable to load bill history on her account.

At this point, we did get some progress, as at some point (april 6th) as someone incredibly helpful at customer support sent the following:

"Response By Email (Crystal) (04/06/2014 03:55 AM)
SSSSALUTATIONS!!! My Name Is Crystal and it is my pleasure to assist you!
Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Team.

This is to inform you that I have reset your account and activated it. Try it again and let me know if it resolves the issue. We are deeply sorry for the time it took to assess the issue you experienced and will be available 24/7 for anything else you may need. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience you've experienced thus far and hope that the reset applied will resolve it."

This has been the only point in this fiaso that we were able to log on to her account at all. This was still not a perfect fix, as at this point, it seemed confused about the version, so while she had a character created with the imperial bonuses (khajit in the ebonhart pact) she could not make any new characters with these bonuses, and she couldn't purchase the imperial horse. However, at least she could login and level the character she had already made, or create one with the standard faction rules. At this point I believe we had some free game time from the initial ticket (4/6) of ~3 days. The account reverted AGAIN on 4/8/2014. Once again, she was unable to even login and play. Account still showed no purchase, and billing history still giving same error. Concerned as we used the same credit card, thinking maybe it got mixed up, I double checked my bank statement, and still found that there were 2 distinct 79.99 purchase on it, one from much earlier(mine) and hers which shows as posted on 4/2 (though she was able to login after buying it on 3/30, assume just a delay in bank processing and whatnot) WE opened numerous additional tickets between 4/8/2014 (~9PM Central) and now (4/11/2014, ~6PM central) All of this seems to me to be an obvious case of the purchasing system not being associated correctly with the account for some reason, so in all tickets I have referenced the purchase order confirmation emailed from zenimax initially, so there wasn't any worry about me trying to scam free time or a free account or anything like that. Every ticket since 4/8 has been answered with "we are escalating this to the high elves" or some other jargon, which if I wasn't so frustrated with the entire issue, I'd probably find fairly amusing/clever. With the seriousness of the issue however, the combination of poor responses (though Cyrstal above deserves some credit as being the only one of ~8 different people who replied, who actually helped the issue temporarily, hopefully this gives some positive feedback to her for that) and large amount of time between responses, with no luck in getting through phone support. (we tried calling ~3 times, one of them she waited on hold for 2 hours before getting a voicemail, and the other two times it just disconnected after ~1.5 hours) and no responses to our requests for callback (which span back as early as the initial issue on 4/5) the total effect is simply frustrating. I'm wondering if we would have had this fixed by now if I had simply asked for a refund, and purchased the game a second time.

Again, sorry for the rant, but this is a serious issue, and the poor responses/time between responses over a full week makes both of us feel as though it is not receiving the level of attention/effort that it deserves. Scanning through the forums, I found at least 2 others who are having similar issues, but did not post in as much detail. IF you have had similar issues with billing/purchasing the actual game please POST on this thread. If this is a systemic issue, I would like to draw attention to it. The other 2 posts I saw both referenced imperial edition as well, so I am unsure if it is specific to that version, or if anyone has seen this in the regular version as well. I'm guessing (I have a casual background in programming/math logic so I'm usually pretty decent at troubleshooting computer issues, though I don't have a ton of experience in network communication) that the issue is stemming from initial high traffic of everyone purchasing the game at once and the communication/transfer between the two systems (purchasing -> account) not working correctly. I don't know if someone needs to look up the purchase manually, and manually apply it to the account, or what if a team is trying to program a larger fix to do more accounts at one time, but it would be nice to hear actual details of what the issue is, and what is currently being done to fix it, instead of "we are unable to assist you, and have elevated your concern to the high elves..."

The funny thing is, for ME personally, this has been a smooth launch. I had one major issue in the balreth quest early on, and a few that I had to try 2-3 times to get unbugged, but generally this has been smooth for me. It is just trying to help my wife get her account setup correctly so we can play together than has be so frustrated.

Anyone that has managed to make it through my novel without ts;dr, I salute you.

Please post related issues, and if anyone from Zenimax is looking through this, please add your perspective/thoughts here! I am currently on the phone as well, trying to get through to a person again.

Again, thanks for taking the time to read, I would really like to know how many people are having this issue/what is being done about it. And certainly if anyone from zenimax capable of fixing this issue would get in touch with me, I would be willing to perform ritualistic animal sacrifice to the deity of your choosing for the assistance...Most likely though I would just like to draw enough attention to the issue to get an official fix underway, so if you have the same issue, PLEASE POST.
I'd be happy just to get her game access again until the root cause is fixed, but that might be because in my opinion the races of Tamriel are Nord, Dunmer, and assorted filth. She likes the kitties though, and still wants to play with us in Ebonhart...

-AshenShugar, for Lyleith who is unable to post here... see you in game.

kell1744_ESO

I'm having the exact same problem. I purchased the digital imperial edition on 3/30/14. Then on 4/6/14 I signed up for the 180 day subscription. I got back an email confirming I was signed up for the 180 day subscription. Then on 4/24/14 I got an email saying that my account had expired and it was not even over the 30 day free trial period. So I checked with my bank and there were no charges for the 180 day subscription. I only had the charge for the digital Imperial Edition. It was then that I submitted a customer support request. I got a call 24 hrs. later on Friday 4/25/14. They wanted to say that this problem was because the bank denied the charge. But my bank did not. They did not ever receive any charges for the subscription and the bank said the problem must be with the ESO billing side of things. The CS person said I should just have to click on "manage subscription" but it is not available. I told them that the way my account screen looked it looked like I never purchased the game. Clicking on "Billing History" gives me an "ERROR 500", "We're sorry, the page you're looking for cannot be found." CS requested a screen shot of my account, and I sent that. After waiting another 24 hrs with no word from them I email CS again. I find out Saturday that they never received that email with the screen shot. On Saturday 4/26/14 a different support person said they put in "Redeem Code" for me for my account. I checked and I could still not get into the game and my account still looks like I've never made any purchase. I wrote back telling them this did not fix the problem. Then they said they would forward my incident to the "specialized team who can help you further". I did not get any emails from CS today on 4/27/14. So I'm going on DAY 4 with no solution to this problem.
Here is some more information about my account. On the right side my account looks like this:
ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE
Member Since July 12, 2013
ACCOUNT STATUS
DOWNLOAD
Download PC client
Download Mac client

So to summarize my problem is this:
-I can't get into the game.
-My account looks like I did not purchase the game.
-I can't click on any option to manage a subscription.
-Clicking on billing history creates an error 500.
-On the right side I don't see any purchase and there is nothing listed by my account status.

So I'm having the exact same problem as sabin78ub17_ESO wife is having with her account.

At this point I'm very disappointed in CS. It is taking too long between emails to hear from them. It has taken too long to get moved to level 2 support. Its taking even longer for level 2 support to address my issue. CS did not receive my email with the screen shot of my account that they requested. I did not like that one CS person was trying to say the problem was because my bank denied the charge. Maybe ESO billing system is showing this, but my bank shows no blocked charges from ESO. I am also upset that I was cut short by 4 days on my 30 day free trial due error in my account.

Puddha

Having the exact same issue Kell, except I have only heard back once from CS just to say "sorry for the inconvenience, we're looking into it soon."
I received an email off of them to say my subscription had expired too, which I found odd since I had been playing since early access and should still have a few days remaining.

After finally getting into my account after a few errors, I have checked my billing information and at the bottom my game has apparently been REFUNDED to me without my consent or warning. I have not received any money into my account as of yet and not sure at the moment if someone has hit the wrong button or picked the wrong accounts to refund.

Unfortunately, multiple emails have been bouncing back to me, and when they finally don't... well I haven't had a response yet so we'll soon see. 3 days without a response is a bit of a joke I think but we'll soon see.

kell1744_ESO

I'm going on DAY 6 of not being able to play ESO because my account appears as if I never made the purchase. CS continues to tell me they are working on my problem. But they are not pro-active in giving me any updates. My last contact from them was on Monday April 28th, 2014. Here are snippets of what they wrote me the other day: "You issue is still being looked into, the delay is because of a large influx of support requests.", and "Please don't take the delay as a sign that we do not appreciate you being a part of our community. We are working very hard to resolve issues like yours for other players, and we will get this worked out at our earliest availability."

Puddha

Finally got responded to after multiple emails and posting my own thread to see if I could get the mods attention.
The issue with mine, that sounds similar, somehow stemmed from a ban that was lifted from my account which subsequently refunded my account back to me (after 2 weeks??) and they basically said the money is on its way back to you and the only way to continue playing is to re-purchase.

Did you get hit by a ban at any stage? If so, that may be where the issue is coming from.

kell1744_ESO

CS has said nothing about a ban at all to me. I've not had any email or message about a ban either. I did read some that there were accounts that got banned by accident last week. The day I got the account expired notice I had not even played the game in 3 days. I still had 4 days left on my 30 day trial period. I'll write to them again to find out what is going on.

Puddha

My suggestion; post a new thread, try and get as many people's attention as possible. The longer it stays on the front page, the quicker the moderators will respond and send your problem through the right channels for a quick response.
And dont try the call back option, the level of support for this issue is above the call centers rights to deal with.

kell1744_ESO

Hi Puddha,
I did post a new thread last night. I see today that it was removed. Up till now I've been very patient. But being ignored now for 3 days and having my legitimate post being removed from the Customer Support forum covering this very same topic we are talking about here is a bit upsetting. I was also cut short 4 days of my 30 day play period of the Early Access Digital Imperial edition. I wonder if they counted the 5 early days as apart of the 30 days? If so then that would then probably be 29 or 30 days of play time. So I will post it again today.

kell1744_ESO

I will add that I quit getting the Error 500 on April 30th. So I can now open up my billing history. I've suggested to CS that they attempt to manually enter in for to redeem an access code to see if that will bring back the option to "Manage Subscriptions". They tried this before when I was getting the error code 500 when opening Billing History. But I think its worth a second attempt to see if it will now fix my problem. I've requested some feed back for two days but still no word back from them. So this is now DAY EIGHT of me not being able to "Manage Subscription". Its like still I never purchased the game even though I can now see I did inside of the Billing History.

Also I'm quite certain I've not done anything to get banned. I've never received any notice. This still does not rule out that maybe someone put in some information that got me banned into my account.

kell1744_ESO

I found my lost discussion on this. Here is a link to a new thread where I will see if I can find others who have had this issue. I've also included a screen shot of my account showing that I don't have the "Manage Subscription" option.
http://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/discussion/92062/unable-to-manage-subscription#latest