Used GRACE in Free to Play 1 week window, now account FROZEN?

[jooo]

As the topic says, I bought in game 4x GRACE and used them on all of my 4 accounts, now they’re all FROZEN even though I activated (Used) GRACE’s ingame from GMI.

After the free to log week was over, it says now:

“Error - Not paid
Your account is not paid for or has been blocked.”

Why it is frozen when I used GRACE? Problem with the free to play window promo Anarchy Online had? The promo was still on when I used it, did that cause a problem and the GRACE didn’t record and add 30 day game time? It’s obviously very annoying to have used so much credits to buy & use GRACE’s and can’t even play after that, of course this sucks big time especially when this happens to a player who is coming back after long break - this is not the way to get and keep players coming to AO.

Anyone else have this problem? I contacted support but no answer for 3 days, hope the lost days get compensated if they ever happen to fix this. Thanks.

[Psithief]

I have had similar problems. I believe Funcom’s billing system doesn’t understand the concept of a free week very well at all.

[Psithief]

Getting in queue for the Live Chat seems to work best, as you skip everyone else that has non-payment issues.

[jooo]

Thanks, will try that.

[Liralen]

Returning player too, and I have had nothing but trouble from their billing issues.

On one account I was double billed for a 3-months sub, due to me using my Paypal account. I keep the payment for it updated, so thought it was fine to use for resubbing to AO.

Wrong. AO no longer accepts Paypal, yet there was no way to know that from the screens I saw.

So I created a new payment method, and tried again. And got billed twice. Still unresolved. As if I really intended to sub for 6 months by subbing twice for 3 months.

On another account, which is probably more relevant to your issue, I also got the “blocked, not paid”. It is a froob account, but now in the payment history, it shows that the account was paid in June 2002. Unlikely, for a number of reasons, ranging from it was hard times then to the fact I only created the froob account to make a trader to replace my husband’s trader, who he created in SL, which didn’t exist until 2003. Plus I had neither the bandwidth, PC capability, monitors, or even inclination to two box in 2002 (lots of people playing then, no need, including my husband and friends from EQ).

But I rolled my eyes and thought whatever, I’ll pay it for a month (not grace, real money) just to get the stuff off the trader, since she was holding lots of excess gear.

That was 2 days ago, and I still cannot access that account. Take a look at your account, and see if they did something funky in January of this year, like some audit gone wild.

Anarchy Online has the sloppiest billing I’ve ever seen in an MMO, and I’ve been playing MMO’s since Everquest was in beta. Oddly enough, I’ve probably played The Secret World/Legends more than AO, although I started playing AO a month or so after release (until EQ friends gave the thumbs up that it was playable, which it wasn’t at first), and have never had a problem in TSW/SWL, while billing problems are chronic in AO.

Sad thing is that I was considering paying real money to buy Grace, plus some interesting things in the cash shop, but I won’t now because of their sloppy billing app.

[Liralen]

Let me know if that works.

Although it would piss me off if does, versus trying to work through their system.

And this is not about non-payment, but payment charged. Double-charged in one account, and payment made in another case, but can’t be played.

[AndyB]

This should be fixed now. If you logged in during the free week and purchased GRACE, but found your account still frozen after the free week ended, please check again. If you still can’t log in but are certain you should be able to, please contact customer support. Thanks!

[Liralen]

I just wanted to report that all of my billing issues have been corrected now, through the usual channels. It was more confusing than usual since I have 5 linked accounts, but GM Yowie was very nice and helpful, and most importantly, fixed all the issues.

An unintended consequence of freezing one of the accounts is that I decided to reactive a very old SL only account (kinda froob plus SL account). I expected to pay full price for it since I heard they had stopped the program, but was pleasantly surprised to find it still at the $5/mo rate. So I’ll probably keep that one active, since I’ve never found Alien content that was solo-able.

[jooo]

Thanks for the fix. Now it works like it was supposed to. HOWEVER due to this issue on AO’s end, I lost 4 days in game time from the GRACEs, that is only thing to complain (lost paid days more than 10% of what I basically paid for) but not a biggie.

[Melz]

I was told this was intentional as your account is marked as frozen during the week. Not overly picky as I could of had 12 accounts active instead of 6 but we can’t all have it in one silver spoon.

[AndyB]

Hey there, sent you a DM.