Who Do I Think I Am??

This one's about a scamming scammer.

THE PROMPT: "Write an experience where you were scammed by a transaction. How do you fight with it?"

Ok, let me hit you off with NY State Law regarding the use of gift cards. Basically, they're non-refundable, they're not supposed to expire, and I believe you're not penalized for not using them after X-amount of time. Fair enough.

A certain video-gaming empire that shall remain nameless (because they don't merit the promotion) has several games available to play for free on a certain, large-scale social networking website. However, in order to advance faster in one of their particular games, you have the option of paying for add-ons to the game. I don't consider myself the gaming type (unless it's Rockband and you put a mic in my hand), but I do enjoy playing this one game in particular. It's a nice way to relax and unwind after the day is through.

Even playing daily for a little while, I wasn't advancing fast enough for my liking. I decided to start paying a little here and there to move up and add to my experience. The game provides you different payment options: credit card, social networking credits, and the parent company of the game itself even had its own gift card, made available to fine retailers everywhere. There's a gift card out there for damn near everything these days .

Rather than be tempted to blow all my money on a weekly basis by attaching a credit card number to this game (and as a warning, I should let you know that a lot of these games actually store your credit card info, in the event that you'd like to use your card at a later date...that's a scary thought. I'm ok with Apple storing my credit card info when I want to purchase music from iTunes, but a social networking site? ) I opted to go the easy route and buy one of the parent company's gift cards. $25, added enjoyment, everyone wins!

Until the day....wait for it....wait for it...this wildly successful gaming franchise made the decision to stop honoring their own gift cards. After I had already purchased one. No warning, nothing...and of course, as per NY law, I had no recourse at all. I emailed the "support staff" to explain my situation, and within a day or two they credited my game's account with the appropriate $25 worth of virtual currency. Problem solved...and I'm happy.

A day or two later, a new "payment option" showed up in their system. They had decided to go with a 3rd-party payment system, or, essentially, a different company that you could buy a gift card from to use to purchase more "virtual currency" for this game or other games as well. Sweet! Yeah, well...that lasted only a couple of months until the same thing happened again. Bought a card, and they had removed the area within the game to add the card.

I emailed support again and explained my issue. Only this time, they gave me a complete runaround. "Restart your computer." "Reload the game." "Uninstall and reinstall the game." "We'll escalate this to another level of attention." "Clear your cache." And my favorite, "Read the forums regarding this game to solve your problem." Why are you a support staff at all when you're basically telling me to do something I myself along with many other members of this game's community already do on a consistent basis?

After about a week of going back and forth via email about this, they apologized...and credited my account approximately 5% of the $20 I paid in the first place. Five. Percent. Of $20. Which made me triple-times .

What did I do? What any normal consumer would do. I went to every forum and help group associated with this game and lit the company up, from post to post. In the end, it got me nowhere else, but at least I got it out of my system and exposed them as money-grubbing cheats. Yeah, I know it's only $20, but $20 is $20, ya know? I've also pretty much stopped spending money on this game...occasionally I'll put $20, but the game doesn't even take my Visa debit card (which came from my employer and is now how I get paid every two weeks...so there's money on it, but they just don't take it), so I've gotta beg the missus to let me use her card if I absolutely need to keep my spot in the game.

And I know what you haters out there are gonna say..."Why would you spend that kind of money on a free game?" Hey, I don't tell you what to spend your money on. WDC is a free site, but how many of us have paid memberships? I'm not blowin' $20 every week or two on coke. I'm not goin' to the strip clubs every weekend. I don't need the latest, greatest sneakers that are out there. Bills get paid; dinners get made. Don't judge me.

Sorry....thinking about this whole situation has fired me up again.

MUSICAL BREAK:

Great song to not only sorta tie into the entry but take my anger down a notch, but not so far down into whiney-baby territory. One of my top-10 favorite bands, fo' sho'.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkFdbdQLaNk&feature=related

VITAL STATS:

Thanks for stopping by...like it, hate it, care to share? Leave a comment! By the time I press save I'll have hit 1300 views, so say hi so I can thank you for coming and wasting a few minutes of your day with me . And if Facebook sent you over here, leave me a comment there too! Us attention whores like to know who's spying in on us and from where.

I'd stay and play around a little longer today (it's well overdue) but with about an hour or less left in my shift at work today I was asked if I'd come in at 5:45am tomorrow instead of my customary 8am time slot. Suuuuure...not like I sleep anyway! So I'm gonna preempt my activities tonight in hopes that I can get to bed at a decent time. I love me some "go in early, go home early" business!

That's all I've got for today...like my man http://www.jimrome.com/ says...GOODNIGHT NOW!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9HNgqQVHI_8