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S-E employees stealing and reselling accounts: confirmed
**** QUICK RUNDOWN OF EVENTS ****
* In October 2003 I started my account, paying and playing through October 2004, at which time I stopped my service and stopped payment.
* In October 2007 I received an email with for the "Return to FFXI" thing they're doing and looked into restarting my account.
* It was discovered that my account was under new billing and a new address, and that this information was shown to be the only information ever used on the account. I was advised to check with my bank.
* After doing so, I confirmed that their information was not correct, but further that I was billed for service for the month of November even though I had already quit.
* After recontacting S-E they advised me to contact my local police, and they'd work with them to recover the account.
* After hanging up on the detective working on the criminal case repeatedly over the course of a week (theft of property [i.e. the license], theft of service, credit card fraud) I went in to the PD, called S-E myself, and then after reaching the right person handed my phone to the detective. The person essentially laughed at the detective and told them since they are in California they don't have to abide by warrants from Washington state courts ... then they hung up.
* I contacted S-E to get the address to their customer [dis]service manager and was told that I shouldn't bother with trying to recover my account and should steal someone else's instead. This particular jack-off call center flunky was named Daniel (last 4 of his employee ID: 3330).
* I forwarded a six page letter to S-E customer service, legal dept, and a copy to the head NA offices in LA. This letter contained copies of my manual's reg code page, my driver's license, and a detailed report with information from my bank listing payment details including their reference numbers. Four days later I get a callback with them expressing concern over the situation and that they'd investigate it. The guy that called me was their head of Customer Buggery: Micah Bravo.
* After a week, he proudly proclaimed that they discovered that more than one person had used the account at varying times and sent me a link to their ToS. The level of education it must have took for him to come to that insightful conclusion must be immense ... either that, or he read my letter.
* Another week later, I was informed that the account was closed because it was determined that the account had been transferred to a person other than the original owner.
**** THE DAMNING EVIDENCE FOR S-E ****
What is screwy here is that the following are fact:
* Never, had I ever used any "third party software" on this machine. In fact, it was a dual box Windows XP/Gentoo machine that had on its WinXP install nothing other than FFXI, Norton AV, and Ad Aware. I never so much as browsed the web on that machine, as I had a laptop handy right next to the computer. All non-FFXI computing was done in Gentoo because ... well, Windows effing sucks.
* Never, had I ever given my login/password to anyone. It operated in guest mode at all times, so not even my login was stored on the system. On the few occasions I allowed a family member on, I would log them in then turn it over to them.
* Nobody outside of my household had access to my personal and billing information other than Square Enix employees.
* Nobody outside of Square Enix employees could have altered their records.
When you cancel a credit card payment cycle through POL it will remove your number from the system, so that an end user can't access it that way. The only way to access that information is through their billing center's history.
**** WHAT I KNOW HAPPENED HERE ****
Some time before the end of October, a Square Enix employee accessed my account and renewed payment on my card. After it was charged for the month of November, billing was changed. At this point, I don't know what happened to the account. The character that was stolen was at that time Valarie from Hades server, a 75 RDM. There is a post in the alla Hades forum from last year saying how that toon is someone's favorite RDM [wtf, though was one of the breadcrumbs along the way to figuring out the whole story]. I found a youtube video (might come back and edit in a link if I can find it again) containing my toon running around in dynamis with a large group. FFXIAH shows that character as being active as of July this year, but since the account is still active this assclown is still out there somewhere on my account, having presumably world transferred and name changed, be it the crook in S-E that stole my account, or this piece of garbage that bought it from them ... well, at least until the account was closed today.
**** SUMMARY ****
Every day you see posts of people having their accounts mysteriously stolen. Some of this is third party, some is people stupid enough to share their information. Many have no explanation at all, and it is my theory that someone inside S-E's billing department is supplementing their income by stealing and selling accounts.
At the time my account was stolen it had about 60 million gil on it and 120 million gil in gear. If the gear was dumped at half cost to the auction house the gil could have been sold to RMT in the range of five figures (from my research in google caches and a few phone calls gil was sold at $90-150ish and resold at $300-500ish per million at the time). Whether my account was targeted or I just got unlucky is probably never going to be known.
**** THE MORE YOU KNOW ****
If you are a previous, current, or prospective member of this service, you run a serious risk of losing your character at any time. When talking to this Micah Bravo guy he didn't seem surprised at all by the speculation that one of his people was doing this. This all seemed to be old-hat to him. Your account means nothing to them, nor does your customer loyalty.
More disturbing are the things that get stolen that are more important than your account: your credit card information and enough personal information to give one of these guys a running start at full blown identity theft. I was lucky: due to a move I canceled that bank account in December of 2004. Had I not, perhaps the jag-off that stole my account might have bought themselves a new computer to run it on, but I guess I was lucky. Even still, I now have to go through all my previous credit reports to see that they didn't do anything else altogether like buy an RV or set up a credit account at the nearest Nevada brothel.
This could be you in this situation tomorrow. Just be aware of what's going on and be careful. At the least, I would STRONGLY urge everyone that has ever used this service to put a credit lock on their credit records through the major credit companies (such as Experian, Transunion, etc) so that in order to start a credit account in your name they need to contact your provided contact number first. People that get away with criminal crap like what they're allowing at S-E tend to branch out eventually due to greed: don't be a victim.
Anyway, cheers! Who would have thought trying to enjoy a couple random months of good-old times would put me through a month and a half of hell, but that's the way things go with this company.
I am filing reports with the WA State Attorney General's office tonight and the LA BBB tomorrow. These actions at this point will do no good: but hopefully can result in some sanctions that would spur S-E into giving their billing department an enema and save a couple of you the same kind of bullsh!t that I'm going through now.
Common question: why did I even bother going through all this to recover my account? As long as it was out there, my personal information was still vulnerable through whoever could login to my POL account. Further, it was my account: even through the psycho legalbabble of their ToS, it clearly states that I am entitled to a license and that is what buying that box on the shelf consists of ... that license is real property. By the time I was filing legal paperwork with the police department I had decided that I'd never pay one red cent to these bastards again after this, but I pushed to reclaim my account because it was the right thing. Closing a customer's account because of criminal acts by a member of the hosting company is beyond bad customer service: it shows a blatant disregard for their customers that goes beyond anything I have ever even heard of from any other company.
**** EMAILS FROM MICAH BRAVO ****
#1 (a week ago)
This email is a follow up to the conversation we had earlier this week. At this point the only update I have for you is that we were able to verify that this account was transferred between 2 individuals, which is a violation of our user policy. We are currently in the process of investigating this matter further. Be advised that Square Enix policy for such issues is to close the account. I understand that you actually wish to retrieve the account for personal use; however we currently have no process for restoring a character under these circumstances. While we are currently reviewing our policy to see if we need to revise it for scenarios such as yours, unfortunately we will not be able to fulfill your request to restore it back to you for personal use again at this time. For a full description of our user policies, please visit the Play on Line website. You can also contact me by replying to this email.
#2 (today)
At this time I do not have a further update. I will let you know if a process becomes available that will allow you to recover the account in question for your own use. Based on the information we currently have we will be closing the account altogether. I hope this clarifies the situation for you.
Micah
-----Original Message-----
Can I get an update as to what is happening with this situation, please?
---------------------------------------------------------
They really are so full of themselves, and have so little disregard for us, that they expect us to sit around while they play God with our property, both through the license to their software and the way they're allowing their employees to commit credit card fraud. This wasn't a case of a misbehaving customer, this wasn't a terms of service violation: this was criminal acts by their employees. I've spent over 800 minutes on the phone with their call center and representatives this month, and after filing my complaints tomorrow I'm done with it all, and will never do business with these dirtbags again.
Square Enix, you can eat my arse.
* In October 2003 I started my account, paying and playing through October 2004, at which time I stopped my service and stopped payment.
* In October 2007 I received an email with for the "Return to FFXI" thing they're doing and looked into restarting my account.
* It was discovered that my account was under new billing and a new address, and that this information was shown to be the only information ever used on the account. I was advised to check with my bank.
* After doing so, I confirmed that their information was not correct, but further that I was billed for service for the month of November even though I had already quit.
* After recontacting S-E they advised me to contact my local police, and they'd work with them to recover the account.
* After hanging up on the detective working on the criminal case repeatedly over the course of a week (theft of property [i.e. the license], theft of service, credit card fraud) I went in to the PD, called S-E myself, and then after reaching the right person handed my phone to the detective. The person essentially laughed at the detective and told them since they are in California they don't have to abide by warrants from Washington state courts ... then they hung up.
* I contacted S-E to get the address to their customer [dis]service manager and was told that I shouldn't bother with trying to recover my account and should steal someone else's instead. This particular jack-off call center flunky was named Daniel (last 4 of his employee ID: 3330).
* I forwarded a six page letter to S-E customer service, legal dept, and a copy to the head NA offices in LA. This letter contained copies of my manual's reg code page, my driver's license, and a detailed report with information from my bank listing payment details including their reference numbers. Four days later I get a callback with them expressing concern over the situation and that they'd investigate it. The guy that called me was their head of Customer Buggery: Micah Bravo.
* After a week, he proudly proclaimed that they discovered that more than one person had used the account at varying times and sent me a link to their ToS. The level of education it must have took for him to come to that insightful conclusion must be immense ... either that, or he read my letter.
* Another week later, I was informed that the account was closed because it was determined that the account had been transferred to a person other than the original owner.
**** THE DAMNING EVIDENCE FOR S-E ****
What is screwy here is that the following are fact:
* Never, had I ever used any "third party software" on this machine. In fact, it was a dual box Windows XP/Gentoo machine that had on its WinXP install nothing other than FFXI, Norton AV, and Ad Aware. I never so much as browsed the web on that machine, as I had a laptop handy right next to the computer. All non-FFXI computing was done in Gentoo because ... well, Windows effing sucks.
* Never, had I ever given my login/password to anyone. It operated in guest mode at all times, so not even my login was stored on the system. On the few occasions I allowed a family member on, I would log them in then turn it over to them.
* Nobody outside of my household had access to my personal and billing information other than Square Enix employees.
* Nobody outside of Square Enix employees could have altered their records.
When you cancel a credit card payment cycle through POL it will remove your number from the system, so that an end user can't access it that way. The only way to access that information is through their billing center's history.
**** WHAT I KNOW HAPPENED HERE ****
Some time before the end of October, a Square Enix employee accessed my account and renewed payment on my card. After it was charged for the month of November, billing was changed. At this point, I don't know what happened to the account. The character that was stolen was at that time Valarie from Hades server, a 75 RDM. There is a post in the alla Hades forum from last year saying how that toon is someone's favorite RDM [wtf, though was one of the breadcrumbs along the way to figuring out the whole story]. I found a youtube video (might come back and edit in a link if I can find it again) containing my toon running around in dynamis with a large group. FFXIAH shows that character as being active as of July this year, but since the account is still active this assclown is still out there somewhere on my account, having presumably world transferred and name changed, be it the crook in S-E that stole my account, or this piece of garbage that bought it from them ... well, at least until the account was closed today.
**** SUMMARY ****
Every day you see posts of people having their accounts mysteriously stolen. Some of this is third party, some is people stupid enough to share their information. Many have no explanation at all, and it is my theory that someone inside S-E's billing department is supplementing their income by stealing and selling accounts.
At the time my account was stolen it had about 60 million gil on it and 120 million gil in gear. If the gear was dumped at half cost to the auction house the gil could have been sold to RMT in the range of five figures (from my research in google caches and a few phone calls gil was sold at $90-150ish and resold at $300-500ish per million at the time). Whether my account was targeted or I just got unlucky is probably never going to be known.
**** THE MORE YOU KNOW ****
If you are a previous, current, or prospective member of this service, you run a serious risk of losing your character at any time. When talking to this Micah Bravo guy he didn't seem surprised at all by the speculation that one of his people was doing this. This all seemed to be old-hat to him. Your account means nothing to them, nor does your customer loyalty.
More disturbing are the things that get stolen that are more important than your account: your credit card information and enough personal information to give one of these guys a running start at full blown identity theft. I was lucky: due to a move I canceled that bank account in December of 2004. Had I not, perhaps the jag-off that stole my account might have bought themselves a new computer to run it on, but I guess I was lucky. Even still, I now have to go through all my previous credit reports to see that they didn't do anything else altogether like buy an RV or set up a credit account at the nearest Nevada brothel.
This could be you in this situation tomorrow. Just be aware of what's going on and be careful. At the least, I would STRONGLY urge everyone that has ever used this service to put a credit lock on their credit records through the major credit companies (such as Experian, Transunion, etc) so that in order to start a credit account in your name they need to contact your provided contact number first. People that get away with criminal crap like what they're allowing at S-E tend to branch out eventually due to greed: don't be a victim.
Anyway, cheers! Who would have thought trying to enjoy a couple random months of good-old times would put me through a month and a half of hell, but that's the way things go with this company.
I am filing reports with the WA State Attorney General's office tonight and the LA BBB tomorrow. These actions at this point will do no good: but hopefully can result in some sanctions that would spur S-E into giving their billing department an enema and save a couple of you the same kind of bullsh!t that I'm going through now.
Common question: why did I even bother going through all this to recover my account? As long as it was out there, my personal information was still vulnerable through whoever could login to my POL account. Further, it was my account: even through the psycho legalbabble of their ToS, it clearly states that I am entitled to a license and that is what buying that box on the shelf consists of ... that license is real property. By the time I was filing legal paperwork with the police department I had decided that I'd never pay one red cent to these bastards again after this, but I pushed to reclaim my account because it was the right thing. Closing a customer's account because of criminal acts by a member of the hosting company is beyond bad customer service: it shows a blatant disregard for their customers that goes beyond anything I have ever even heard of from any other company.
**** EMAILS FROM MICAH BRAVO ****
#1 (a week ago)
This email is a follow up to the conversation we had earlier this week. At this point the only update I have for you is that we were able to verify that this account was transferred between 2 individuals, which is a violation of our user policy. We are currently in the process of investigating this matter further. Be advised that Square Enix policy for such issues is to close the account. I understand that you actually wish to retrieve the account for personal use; however we currently have no process for restoring a character under these circumstances. While we are currently reviewing our policy to see if we need to revise it for scenarios such as yours, unfortunately we will not be able to fulfill your request to restore it back to you for personal use again at this time. For a full description of our user policies, please visit the Play on Line website. You can also contact me by replying to this email.
#2 (today)
At this time I do not have a further update. I will let you know if a process becomes available that will allow you to recover the account in question for your own use. Based on the information we currently have we will be closing the account altogether. I hope this clarifies the situation for you.
Micah
-----Original Message-----
Can I get an update as to what is happening with this situation, please?
---------------------------------------------------------
They really are so full of themselves, and have so little disregard for us, that they expect us to sit around while they play God with our property, both through the license to their software and the way they're allowing their employees to commit credit card fraud. This wasn't a case of a misbehaving customer, this wasn't a terms of service violation: this was criminal acts by their employees. I've spent over 800 minutes on the phone with their call center and representatives this month, and after filing my complaints tomorrow I'm done with it all, and will never do business with these dirtbags again.
Square Enix, you can eat my arse.
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