The following statement appears on a website called Rip-Off Report (http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff163197.htm).
Submitted: 11/3/2005 11:27:54 AM
I pre-ordered City of Villains so I could get the two day head start bonus. So I payed $50 for the pre-order and retail combo. I go to play for the two day headstart and it won't let me in. I call their customer service. After two hours of waiting, I finally talk to someone. They proceed to tell me that I have to buy City of Heroes to be able to participate. I then went out and bought City of Heroes which sot me $40. Come back and update my PlayNC account with it. Go to log in, now it says that my billing account has expired. I call up again, after waiting around an hour, I talk to someone. They proceed to tell me that I have to be subscribed to City of Heroes to participate. Ok, so I get a credit card and subscribe to it which cost me $15. I go to log in and it isn't working and still tells me my billing account has expired. At this point, PlayNC customer service is closed and so I go to bed. I wake up in the morning and its finally working. I play for 2 hours only to get kicked off and to be told that my Pre-Order key is invalid. I have spent 4 days fighting with them and they finally apologized for the inconvenience and said that they would send me a new CD key within 24 hours and would delete the old ones. They proceeded to delete my City of Heroes & City of Villains CDkeys off my account. It has now been 3 days and they have not issued me new CDkeys. Upon calling PlayNC, they claim they have no record or history of me to be sent new CDkeys and that my account was terminated for using a fake CDkey. The catch is, that I bought the CDkey from them. HORRIBLE COMPANY!
Matthew
Morris, Minnesota
U.S.A.
My question is actually about the response given by the so called "employee":
Rebuttal REBUTTAL employee
Submitted: 11/15/2005 7:13:31 AM Modified: 11/15/2005 7:13:31 AM
NCsoft Response
Greetings Matt,
My name is Chris Freeman. I am the Customer Service Manager at NCsoft.
I would like to discuss this issue with you further.
Rather than spending cycles debating how long your hold times or what you indicate our reps have said, I would prefer to get your issue addressed to the best of my abilities.
Our intent is to provide a fun and exciting environment for our customers, not leave them feeling ripped off.
You can contact me directly via email at
cfreeman at ncsoft.com.
Please supply your PlayNC master account name, 20 digit serial code and registered email address.
Chris - Round Rock, Texas
U.S.A.
The “employee” rebuttal requests that the user send him his account name, serial code, and email address to his own email address. According to PlayNC’s security FAQ (http://support.plaync.com/cgi-bin/plaync.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=993), PlayNC does not recommend giving information like this out. On this page they even explain that with someone’s account name and email address, a malicious user can gain access to their account. PlayNC and NCSoft ALWAYS (on the official forums, FAQ’s, help guides, etc.) encourage users with problems to contact support directly, and if need be ask to be referred to a higher tier of support and to NEVER trust someone who says they’re an employee and asks for this information unless they are replying to a specific ticket.
Something else I noticed about this particular report was that the consumer was complaining about billing problems with his account. Don't ALL billing questions go to PlayNC, not NCSoft? The "employee" lists his email address as an ncsoft.com address.
The other red flag to me was the location the "employee" gave for himself. I know that Round Rock is close to Austin, but wouldn't an employee give Austin as his location to avoid confusion?
Again, let me emphasize that I'm not trying to put NCSoft in a bad light here, I just would like some clarification about this "employee" response (yes, I know it was submitted 8 months ago) so as to ensure that players are not scammed or phished out of their accounts.