on top of this, they actually did take $15 from my account today for a monthly sub, plan on taking another $15 on may 4th.. When exactly are we meant to get this 30 days of game play we paid for with the game purchase?

Sounds like a call to the ACCC is in store Zenimax.

I asked them the same thing on their customer support email thingy. They replied to me with this
"Greetings fellow warrior,

All players are required to set up and choose a subscription plan at starting.
The 30 days of free game time are granted to all players who fill out their billing information and select a subscription plan. A player will not be billed for that subscription until the 30 days of free access has expired.

If a subscription charge is showing up on your billing statement it is only a temporary pre-authorization charge to verify the funds are in the account. This is a pending charge that will fall off your account after a few days, but could take up to a full billing cycle to fall off depending on your bank. No funds for the subscription will actually be taken out of the account until after the first 30 days.


Warm Regards,
Jaime
The Elder Scrolls Online Team"

If you log into your online banking, i'm sure the transaction still says "pending", if not, welp, sue em

dladendorf wrote: »

A player will not be billed for that subscription until the 30 days of free access has expired.

You know.. I might be just really really tired. But is that worded right? "You will not be billed for THAT subscription until... " So after the 30 days of free access they will bill you for that mouth?

The 2 day grace period (standard practise with newly launched MMO's) is simply to give people a little more time to obtain a game code so that they can continue playing uninterrupted.

It isn't compensation for downtime during early access and it isn't giving us a free days as I understand it so it will still count down from April 4th.

The $15 has been explained. The money isn't actually taken, although it will be unavailable to you for a while.

It's wrong for Zenimax to use the full amount to authorize. It shouldn't be more than $1 (£/€), but it's too late now.

I don't like the way Zenimax has handled a few things, but I think they are essentially staying true to what they claimed. I've been playing MMORPGs since the first EQ, so I've learned my way around these kind of systems a bit. As far as I can tell, they're doing what they said they would do, but perhaps they haven't explained everything to their consumers quite as well as they could have. Assuming I'm correct, entering your retail code now is, I believe, where you went wrong.

They did extend the deadline for activating early access accounts -- I'm still playing on mine without having entered a retail key or set up billing, etc. The key point that they may not have made entirely clear is that once you enter that retail key and set up billing, that triggers the 30-day free period and sets up the billing cycle. In order to get the 'extension' on your early access time, you have to hold off on entering that retail code until the day you want to kick off the cycle.

As for charging your account $15, according to what they've said, that should just be a pre-authorization 'charge' and not a real debit to your account. Unfortunately, it almost amounts to the same thing, as it effectively freezes those funds until your bank clears it. But you will still retain that money. Most places I've seen just do a $1 pre-authorization so as not to inconvenience the customer quite as much. (It doesn't really mean anything to verify that they have a specific amount in the account, IMO -- that money could be spent before the next billing date rolls around anyway. So a single dollar to verify that the account is valid should be enough. That's just my own opinion, of course. The bean-counters at ZOS may feel otherwise.)

Anyway, hopefully that explains how this has all come to be -- I know it's not much consolation for you, having already activated your retail key. Hopefully the CS folks at ZOS will work with you and tweak your billing date back to Sunday, but that's up to them and their business practices.

Good luck!