Crown Store Gifting Update – October 2023

BahometZ · September 1

And why wouldnt people resort to nefarious acts to get around a broken system? When legal means are denied, illegal means arise.

agelonestar · September 1

This is a broken solution for a problem that was obviously very limited in nature. Instead fixing the problem, ZoS implemented a solution that patently doesn’t work.

I have an account that I play infrequently (I have quite a few accounts, originally as I was a fairly big trader in-game, latterly because I wanted my own guild bank storage).

The account originally qualified for crown store gifting, so I would pay subs and gift items to my main account, which I play more frequently. This worked for me, as it allowed me to keep the crafting bag on this account without wasting my money on crowns that I couldn’t use. Now, after the change in policy, I can’t get crown store gifting re-enabled because I’m not “engaged enough in the community”. I can’t be bothered with raising dozens of tickets like so many others here - I simply cancelled subs and don’t play the account. It still counts towards my guild bank.

I can’t help but think that it’s ZoS that’s losing out here. Bonkers.

Elsonso · September 1

agelonestar wrote: »

This is a broken solution for a problem that was obviously very limited in nature. Instead fixing the problem, ZoS implemented a solution that patently doesn’t work.

The process is definitely not optimal. As a short term means to address their problem, I can certainly see standing this up while a more permanent solution is created. A year later, it seems that what should have been a temporary solution is the permanent solution. Makes no sense to me. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

jsharrad_ESO · September 2

virtus753 wrote: »

jsharrad_ESO wrote: »

No luck so far.

240825-002161 • Gifting
Waiting on agent
240826-002229 • Gifting
Waiting on agent
240823-003221 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240819-004556 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240817-002732 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240816-002928 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240815-002553 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240814-002377 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240813-003108 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240812-002594 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240811-004026 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240810-002585 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240809-002526 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240808-004401 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240807-002228 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240806-002571 • Gifting
Ticket closed as duplicate
240614-005210 • Gifting
Answer Provided

Spamming Support daily is likely not going to accomplish what you are looking for.

I stopped opening them daily and was just updating the same ticket, however, they are encouraging this with the latest response I got on the ticket I was leaving open -

Greetings!

Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Team.

If you would like to re-apply for gifting please create a new ticket. This ticket is closed.

Regards,
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

tauriel01 · September 10

Alright, so I posted in the general forum about the situation we have in my household. It was shut down because this thread already exists. That tells me if I want any kind of resolution, I need to post the request here. Well, here it is:

My husband used to play the game. Over a year ago he lost interest and went on to greener pastures. However, he neglected to cancel his sub. His account stacked up over 34,000 crowns before we rectified the situation. We'd like to get at least SOME value out of that misspent money by gifting stuff to my account. However, no matter how many times he submits a ticket/appeal, he gets the same copy/paste response. Just the canned language about having to be active online, in a community, whatever. For about a month now he's logged on each day, interacted with NPCs, mobs, taken the daily log in reward. Still no. Not active enough apparently. This vague, mysterious "active" concept ZOS customer service keeps quoting is beyond frustrating. He's demonstrated it's a real account. He even offered to just have the crowns moved from his acct directly to mine. He begged to have someone higher up in the management chain look at the situation and consider it fairly. Still no. This is getting ridiculous at this point. How long does he have to keep logging in before you'll allow gifting to me? Tell us what, exactly, he needs to do to reach this invisible bar of "active" so we can finally put this thing to bed.

jcaceresw · September 10

tauriel01 wrote: »

Alright, so I posted in the general forum about the situation we have in my household. It was shut down because this thread already exists. That tells me if I want any kind of resolution, I need to post the request here. Well, here it is:

My husband used to play the game. Over a year ago he lost interest and went on to greener pastures. However, he neglected to cancel his sub. His account stacked up over 34,000 crowns before we rectified the situation. We'd like to get at least SOME value out of that misspent money by gifting stuff to my account. However, no matter how many times he submits a ticket/appeal, he gets the same copy/paste response. Just the canned language about having to be active online, in a community, whatever. For about a month now he's logged on each day, interacted with NPCs, mobs, taken the daily log in reward. Still no. Not active enough apparently. This vague, mysterious "active" concept ZOS customer service keeps quoting is beyond frustrating. He's demonstrated it's a real account. He even offered to just have the crowns moved from his acct directly to mine. He begged to have someone higher up in the management chain look at the situation and consider it fairly. Still no. This is getting ridiculous at this point. How long does he have to keep logging in before you'll allow gifting to me? Tell us what, exactly, he needs to do to reach this invisible bar of "active" so we can finally put this thing to bed.

Similar issue with me but with ten accounts. I already gave up and stopped all my ESO+ subs.

Sentano · September 10

AngryPenguin wrote: »

The solution is simple. Everyone who does not automatically have crown gifting enabled by default should be sure to never buy crowns, either directly or via ESO+.

If ZOS doesn't want your money, don't give it to them.

That's a good idea, I'll tell every friend the same thing. But the people here already all have crowns and they are the ones who are screwed.

Kallykat · September 11

tauriel01 wrote: »

Alright, so I posted in the general forum about the situation we have in my household. It was shut down because this thread already exists. That tells me if I want any kind of resolution, I need to post the request here. Well, here it is:

My husband used to play the game. Over a year ago he lost interest and went on to greener pastures. However, he neglected to cancel his sub. His account stacked up over 34,000 crowns before we rectified the situation. We'd like to get at least SOME value out of that misspent money by gifting stuff to my account. However, no matter how many times he submits a ticket/appeal, he gets the same copy/paste response. Just the canned language about having to be active online, in a community, whatever. For about a month now he's logged on each day, interacted with NPCs, mobs, taken the daily log in reward. Still no. Not active enough apparently. This vague, mysterious "active" concept ZOS customer service keeps quoting is beyond frustrating. He's demonstrated it's a real account. He even offered to just have the crowns moved from his acct directly to mine. He begged to have someone higher up in the management chain look at the situation and consider it fairly. Still no. This is getting ridiculous at this point. How long does he have to keep logging in before you'll allow gifting to me? Tell us what, exactly, he needs to do to reach this invisible bar of "active" so we can finally put this thing to bed.

I'm in almost the exact same situation with my husband's account.

jsharrad_ESO · September 12

tauriel01 wrote: »

Alright, so I posted in the general forum about the situation we have in my household. It was shut down because this thread already exists. That tells me if I want any kind of resolution, I need to post the request here. Well, here it is:

My husband used to play the game. Over a year ago he lost interest and went on to greener pastures. However, he neglected to cancel his sub. His account stacked up over 34,000 crowns before we rectified the situation. We'd like to get at least SOME value out of that misspent money by gifting stuff to my account. However, no matter how many times he submits a ticket/appeal, he gets the same copy/paste response. Just the canned language about having to be active online, in a community, whatever. For about a month now he's logged on each day, interacted with NPCs, mobs, taken the daily log in reward. Still no. Not active enough apparently. This vague, mysterious "active" concept ZOS customer service keeps quoting is beyond frustrating. He's demonstrated it's a real account. He even offered to just have the crowns moved from his acct directly to mine. He begged to have someone higher up in the management chain look at the situation and consider it fairly. Still no. This is getting ridiculous at this point. How long does he have to keep logging in before you'll allow gifting to me? Tell us what, exactly, he needs to do to reach this invisible bar of "active" so we can finally put this thing to bed.

This is the exact situation I'm in. 2 months of denials so far.

Vyle_Byte · September 18

I wonder if anyone who has ever asked for gifting to be enabled on their account has actually gotten it enabled. It seems shady [snip] to me that even accounts like mine, which have been around since beta and never left for an extended amount of time, wouldn't have already been enabled. Is ANYONE even allowed to gift? lol Im just baffled.

It denies me and tries to tell me that I need to be apart of an in game community before I can apply. What? Firstly that's [snip] and not fair to people who don't want to be a part of a community. Secondly, I AM. lol I am a member of one of the biggest trading guilds in ESO and have been for 9 years. I log in every day. I sell things, I buy things, I pvp, I delete toons, I make new ones. I am in 5 guilds, 2 of which are my own, one of which is BBC trading guild, I am in a guild of an official ESO streamer. Sometimes I spend hours just standing around chatting, sometimes I level lowbies just because I love playing this [snip] game, dolmen runs... after 10 years Im still doing dolmen runs. I mean COME ON ZOS HOW [snip] ACTIVE AND APART OF THE COMMUNITY DOES ONE HAVE TO BE?

[snip] I don't even care that much about gifting. ITS THE PRINCIPLE OF THE THING ZOS. All the [snip] time and money spent on you and your game to get denied something like gifting and the reason for it just makes my head explode.

[Edited for Conspiracy Theory and Misinformation and Cursing and Profanity]

twev · September 18

jsharrad_ESO wrote: »

tauriel01 wrote: »

Alright, so I posted in the general forum about the situation we have in my household. It was shut down because this thread already exists. That tells me if I want any kind of resolution, I need to post the request here. Well, here it is:

My husband used to play the game. Over a year ago he lost interest and went on to greener pastures. However, he neglected to cancel his sub. His account stacked up over 34,000 crowns before we rectified the situation. We'd like to get at least SOME value out of that misspent money by gifting stuff to my account. However, no matter how many times he submits a ticket/appeal, he gets the same copy/paste response. Just the canned language about having to be active online, in a community, whatever. For about a month now he's logged on each day, interacted with NPCs, mobs, taken the daily log in reward. Still no. Not active enough apparently. This vague, mysterious "active" concept ZOS customer service keeps quoting is beyond frustrating. He's demonstrated it's a real account. He even offered to just have the crowns moved from his acct directly to mine. He begged to have someone higher up in the management chain look at the situation and consider it fairly. Still no. This is getting ridiculous at this point. How long does he have to keep logging in before you'll allow gifting to me? Tell us what, exactly, he needs to do to reach this invisible bar of "active" so we can finally put this thing to bed.

This is the exact situation I'm in. 2 months of denials so far.

Besides the fact that one gets robotic/canned denials that don't even address the details in the tickets, for the first 6 to 12 times one submits a ticket, (there's the backlog time issue where it can be a week between submittals and responses) before a human being reads the remaining tickets.
All one has to do is read the text of the denials to see that most of the tickets were never read by an actual person.

In common practice, companies have been known to use that tactic to weed out the users who are determined for resolution from those that give up easily and never have to be addressed by an actual person.

Sometimes its just hard to out-wait the canned response bot who doesn't get discouraged or bored.

yourhpgod · September 21

Add an option for the NEW expansions to be gifted. Nothing like going to the expansion and seeing a greyed out button.

joergino · September 21

Chapters can only be gifted from outside of the game. You can buy a serial and give it to a friend. Since they are no DLCs, they cannot be gifted for crowns, obviously.

Cherryreo · October 4

Good day.
@ZOS_CouchTato
@ZOS_Kraken
@ZOS_Icy

I've been playing ESO for over 1y with 2.5k+ played hours,also bought months of ESO+ and some crown packs.I tried to submit the application but always got refused.
That's kinda confusing cause I don't know why my account is not up to standard.

Here's my ticket number: 241002-000057

Thank you very much.

Lady_Lindel · October 5

'Hi @Sturmir. We have been pretty clear that we will not be providing any additional criteria regarding gifting qualifications as bad actors have tried to use those qualifications in order to try and process fraudulent actions. While we understand this is frustrating, we are not trying to disrespect customers, but rather reduce the harm that is being done by bad actors.

This is a ridiculous argument.

I have been playing this game for a number of years, have spent lots of money on this game, crown store purchases as well as expansions in differing accounts. As someone who has things to do beside playing this game, I stopped playing for a large chunk of time this year. Coming back to some of my several accounts I noticed one had acquired 15000 crowns. Great I thought as I had a new account for the newest expansion I could spend some of those on gifting stuff to my brand new account.

I have gifting enabled on other accounts so was quite surprised to find it was not enabled on that one. I did a support ticket but no, no gifting will be enabled. I find your responses arrogant and short sighted. Your explanation seems to me to be punishing good players for the actions of the bad. In what world is that acceptable. So needless to say I have cancelled the sub to that account. It is a shame that after all these years you as a company still can't get customer service correct.

jsharrad_ESO · October 10

twev wrote: »

jsharrad_ESO wrote: »

tauriel01 wrote: »

Alright, so I posted in the general forum about the situation we have in my household. It was shut down because this thread already exists. That tells me if I want any kind of resolution, I need to post the request here. Well, here it is:

My husband used to play the game. Over a year ago he lost interest and went on to greener pastures. However, he neglected to cancel his sub. His account stacked up over 34,000 crowns before we rectified the situation. We'd like to get at least SOME value out of that misspent money by gifting stuff to my account. However, no matter how many times he submits a ticket/appeal, he gets the same copy/paste response. Just the canned language about having to be active online, in a community, whatever. For about a month now he's logged on each day, interacted with NPCs, mobs, taken the daily log in reward. Still no. Not active enough apparently. This vague, mysterious "active" concept ZOS customer service keeps quoting is beyond frustrating. He's demonstrated it's a real account. He even offered to just have the crowns moved from his acct directly to mine. He begged to have someone higher up in the management chain look at the situation and consider it fairly. Still no. This is getting ridiculous at this point. How long does he have to keep logging in before you'll allow gifting to me? Tell us what, exactly, he needs to do to reach this invisible bar of "active" so we can finally put this thing to bed.

This is the exact situation I'm in. 2 months of denials so far.

Besides the fact that one gets robotic/canned denials that don't even address the details in the tickets, for the first 6 to 12 times one submits a ticket, (there's the backlog time issue where it can be a week between submittals and responses) before a human being reads the remaining tickets.
All one has to do is read the text of the denials to see that most of the tickets were never read by an actual person.

In common practice, companies have been known to use that tactic to weed out the users who are determined for resolution from those that give up easily and never have to be addressed by an actual person.

Sometimes its just hard to out-wait the canned response bot who doesn't get discouraged or bored.

The bot won. I gave up and the wife quit too.

Elsonso · October 12

Lady_Lindel wrote: »

'Hi @Sturmir. We have been pretty clear that we will not be providing any additional criteria regarding gifting qualifications as bad actors have tried to use those qualifications in order to try and process fraudulent actions. While we understand this is frustrating, we are not trying to disrespect customers, but rather reduce the harm that is being done by bad actors.

This is a ridiculous argument.

It is. Security through Obscurity focuses more on obscurity than security.

If they can't say what they are doing, then it is likely what they are doing isn't as good as they think it is.

martinjon · October 20

ZOS_Kevin wrote: »

Following up on Studio Director Matt Firor’s message last month about the current and future status of Crown Store Gifting, we are moving forward with re-enabling this functionality for eligible players at the account level. In this post, we will detail what to expect.

In September, we temporarily disabled Crown Store gifting due to a rapidly growing issue of “bad actors” using various fraudulent means to amass crowns without paying for them, then using them in turn to sell Crown Store items to players for real-world cash outside of the game client. That said, we recognize that gifting is a meaningful part of our community, and we are in the process of manually re-enabling Crown Store gifting access for select players who meet our specific criteria. This work will be complete tomorrow, October 11, during the maintenance window from 09:00 AM ET to 12:00 PM ET.

Gifting eligibility is determined by an evolving list of factors including but not limited to the account being at least 180 days past its first login and previous engagement with in-game features. You may check if you have access to gifting in-game via the Crown Store as well as via your billing history page in the ESO account center. If you have access to Crown Store gifting, you will see “Allow Crown Store Gifting” in your billing history. If you try to send a gift via the in-game Crown Store and do not have access, you will see a “Gifting Locked” pop-up message. Please note that we are exploring better ways to display this information in-game in the future, such as updating the Gifting Tutorial.

If you do not have access to Crown Store gifting after it is re-enabled on October 11, 2023, and wish for a review of your account, please visit https://help.elderscrollsonline.com and submit a Customer Support ticket. Please choose the Billing / Purchase / Code category then Platform > I have a question about a sale / offer > I want to send gift items from this account.

We appreciate everyone’s understanding and patience while we get this solution up and running. Multiple teams have worked long hours to evaluate the best technical solutions that we could stand up in a reasonably short time, while also prioritizing the Crown Store gifting player experience. We are dedicated to continuing to explore ways to make this better and reduce fraudulent activity in ESO. Thanks again for being a part of our community and for your continued support.

Dear Kevin, I submitted a ticket and rejected my request for a gift, I have been actively participating in the game activities, I don't understand why I refused my request, I feel that the robot's reply is OK, could you please verify my ticket 241018-000729 Thank you

shadyjane62 · October 20

I have reached the stage where after ten years, something has to give. I have tons of money in game and would like to spend it on crowns. Other games have mechanisms for gold conversion and auction houses but here we get some very dangerous methods to doing business.

This is my last year subbing, I have no intention of leaving game, I will just no longer support it monetarily.

Elsonso · October 21

shadyjane62 wrote: »

I have reached the stage where after ten years, something has to give. I have tons of money in game and would like to spend it on crowns. Other games have mechanisms for gold conversion and auction houses but here we get some very dangerous methods to doing business.

This is my last year subbing, I have no intention of leaving game, I will just no longer support it monetarily.

It isn't as painful as people make it sound.

crappyjazz1964 · October 22

I'm really tired of the non-support, copy and paste approach to tickets. I'm also in a situation where my wife no longer plays but is not allowed to gift her crowns to me, an active player who plays everyday. She doesn't play because she became ill with a chronic disease and is not able to.

I, too, plan to unsubscribe and not buy crowns until this company tries to manage its systems better and treat customers as human beings.

Elsonso · October 22

crappyjazz1964 wrote: »

I'm really tired of the non-support, copy and paste approach to tickets. I'm also in a situation where my wife no longer plays but is not allowed to gift her crowns to me, an active player who plays everyday. She doesn't play because she became ill with a chronic disease and is not able to.

I, too, plan to unsubscribe and not buy crowns until this company tries to manage its systems better and treat customers as human beings.

Whatever pain ZOS is responding to with this process can apparently only be countered by refusing to buy Crowns or ESO Plus. If enough do this, ZOS will have more incentive to address this debacle they have created.

Arunei · October 29

Holy cow this is still an issue all this time later?

@ZOS_Kevin You guys are going to need to just let people know what the criteria are. Trying to claim you can't because of "bad actors" is frankly a very poor excuse (and I say you as in royal you I don't mean you specifically).

There's absolutely no way someone can fake certain criteria like needing to be active for x amount of months, needing to interact with the world for y amount of hours, needing to do z amount of non-repeatable quests. Someone can't fake making 20 or 30 CS purchases. Someone can't fake literally any criteria that would be put in place.

Even if they could fake one or two (let's say having 20 people on your friends list, or you need to be in two guilds, and someone trying to get around stuff buys a bunch of accounts to put them on the their friends list or make a few guilds with them), it would a) likely be something that could be easily caught (CS could check when those accounts were made) and b) wouldn't let them get around the other criteria anyway.

Ardaghion · December 5

I put in a request for gifting and was denied with the boilerplate response. I've been playing on Xbox since 2017 and switched to Steam just less than a year ago. I was in a few guilds on Xbox and then PC and was pretty active at times but I did take significant time off for a while. So, being denied doesn't surprise me.

I would guess that not being active in a guild now and playing on and off doesn't show the commitment to the game they want. I only have 178 hours playing on Steam so far but almost 3800 hours on XBox. I haven't been active on Xbox for some time.

I just bought 9 additional accounts during the recent BF sale and would love to use the Crowns I have on my main account with ESO+ to get some DLC and other items for those other accounts. I'm loathe to buy Crown packs for those 9 accounts as it could add up quickly.

I retired early due to health issues and my wife was let go, along with many others, due to a private equity buyout. So we can't be the whales we used to be, I'm shocked to see we spent nearly $5000 over all those years.