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.