Felarrond wrote: »

Dolenz wrote: »

Every subscription MMO I have played, dating all the way back to Everquest in 1999 has given free time and every single one of them asked for CC info on day one.

This is nothing new and your rant shows just how little you know of the history of MMOs

What IS new about this is that they do the auth for the full price of the subscription, and don't tell you about it when you setup the transaction.

Inudstry standard is a 0.01 or 1.00 verification charge to prove your credit card is valid.

And we're not simply talking $15 some people setup 6 month subscriptions that's about $80 that dissappears out of their accounts for days with a lot of banks. I set mine up on thursday, and the money is still frozen in my account and I'm with one of the biggest banks in the States.

What makes this a big deal, and potentially considered a fraudulent charge by banks, is the fact that nowhere on their Transaction pages does it say a hold is placed against your account, or in the e-mail you get. In fact they go so far as to assure you no charges are placed against your account until your 30 days are up.

The money comes back, sure, but for some of us that's the better part of a Benjamin gone for almost a week at the beginning of a month when most people pay other bills... and the pages we signed up on said it wouldn't happen.

That's why this is a huge deal to me. Imagine the people that did this before ZoS took the time on the forums (which NOT everyone reads) and got a 6 month sub that still can't pay a major bill because $80 is frozen in their account, or the people that have overdraft charges because of this or subsequent charges.

It's not the amount that matters, it's the practice that it's a shady business practice to not inform customers (even illegal in many states or countries) that they're placing a hold against their account.

Bottom line, not only did they go against industry standard with their pre-auth being full amount, they used bad business in not getting customers informed consent.