deadwinston wrote: »

UPDATE - I have received a response offering some explanation and a refund for the $15.98 crown purchase. A real, feeling human has finally seen my support ticket.

@Nyladreas Thank you so much for getting the right eyes on this.

The Elder Scrolls Online Team response on 01/15/2020 01:05 PM
Hi There,

Thank you for contacting The Elder Scrolls Online Team. My name is Brad and I am an Escalations Agent here with the Support Team.

I am sorry for the confusion on this matter, and that it has taken so long to resolve. I would like to try to explain.

The fees that financial institutions charge are extremely expensive. In addition to the charge itself being reversed, they charge a substantial fee. While I am not privy to the exact numbers, a cursory Google search would support the claim that they range from $20-$100 per item that is charged back. So in a case like yours, not only would we have lost the cost of the item, but we would have been charged an additional ~$50 on top of it.

For this reason, we insist that any refund requests go through us, not the bank. This could have been all handled within 24 hours if it had been done that way.

The next best solution would have been to reverse the chargeback, then have us do a conventional refund. That way, everything gets resolved, and no one gets fined.

With bank chargebacks, we get fines, the account gets banned, and the only ones that come out on top are the banks, so naturally, we'd like to avoid that at all costs, especially over something as easy to resolve as a double charge.

In regards to the idea to have you purchase some Crowns, I believe that was an attempt to work around the fact that you were unsuccessful at reversing the chargeback, essentially recharging you for something of similar value, since the original item is no longer on sale, but it seems to have gone a bit sideways. I am not satisfied with how it has turned out, especially since this all started with something outside of your control, so I have gone ahead and refunded that item.

The $15.98 from the Crowns has been refunded through a normal refund, and the $13.98 from the double charge was refunded a while back by your bank. I believe all outstanding issues have been addressed, but if I overlooked anything, please let me know.

Best Regards,

Brad - Escalations
The Elder Scrolls Online Team

1:51 PM (4 minutes ago) to Bethesda
Brad,

That is great to hear. This is the first time I've felt like a human being was on the other end of communication here. I really appreciate you reading through it and offering the refund.

I now understand the issues with chargebacks and what can happen, but nobody spells that out. If it's such an issue, the credit card companies really shouldn't make it as easy as clicking a button to get refunded for a double charge. I will never make that mistake again.

But, when I called the credit card company, they said they couldn't reverse the chargeback unless your processor followed the dispute procedure to say it was a legitimate charge. They put a note on the chargeback that I told them to reverse it, but I guess when I sent that information to support it never happened on your end. I spent 25 minutes with them trying to get it corrected. Then your support system people waited 13 days to get back to me.

So, I am happy to have the refund coming, that resolution is great and makes up for the time I've spent trying to get this issue resolved. But my feedback here would be the large gaps where there was no response on my ticket. I'm sure the only reason I've been escalated and gotten a good outcome is because of a forum post about the issue. I wish that a real person like you could have been on this from the start or it was something that I could have talked to a human being about.

If I had to grade the support I've received, your resolution handling was A+, but the support process up until today is a definite F.

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So thank you for everyone involved in making this right. @ZOS_GinaBruno A thousand praises to you if you got it done. I'm not 100% sure who it was. Thanks to Brad in Escalations.

I'm finishing all this up on lunch and need to get back to work, so this is probably the last I'll say on the matter. I still think a system where a ticket can go 7 days and 13 days with no response from support is broken. Locking an account out for a total of 29 days over a mistake that is very easy to make is unacceptable. The inability to talk to a real, human person on the phone is frustrating.