WG EU fail: T-Mobile false gold promotion

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Source: Glos Wielkopolski news portal

Hello everyone,

it is not often that WG EU fails make it past the forums, but when they do, it’s usually something special. In this case, it concerns the Polish community. Today, on Glos Wielkopolski news portal, an article came out about the following event. I will try to translate from Polish (a mixture of google translate and the fact that I am Slavic and Czech isn’t that far from Polish, but feel free to correct any mistranslations).

The article by Krzysztof M. Kaźmierczak is called “World of Tanks: Financial scandal in popular tank game?”

“Polish fans of the record-breaking game “World of Tanks” feel cheated by a promotional gold (virtual currency) sale offer. This is the first dispute over consumer rights in the history of the game. Some users already have filed a complaint to Polish consumer-protection authorities and legal lawsuits are predicted. The game producer denies all complaints and one of the players, who took legal steps already, was already punished.”

Well, at least that’s what the title says. From what I understand what happened:

Polish players were in the last week offered the following deal: if you pay for your gold (for certain amounts) via SMS mobile payment for T-Mobile users, you will get 40 percent extra gold bonus for the usual amount of money. Those who did that however did not recieve the bonus. Of course this led to some frustration and one player sent a support ticket. The support staff told him there has been a misunderstanding, he did not recieve the additional gold, but (in good WG EU traditions), the offer description was stealth-changed from “you get 40 percent gold extra” to “you will get 40 percent more gold in comparison to SMS payments” (thanks to the Polish guys on FTR FB for translation and explanation).

To be absolutely clear, here is an explanation from a Polish user (native speaker) S.C. (thanks, mate):

“It’s all about T-Mobile special offer (you know, if You order gold by SMS, and your mobile provider is T-Mobile, you get more gold). Polish players feel like beeing robbed, ’cause of sudden change in the offer. First version said, that when you order gold, you will recive amount listed on the page (eg. 1940) and “40% more”. It didn’t worked, players who were in T-Mobile recived only 1940. When butthurt started, someone from Polish WG staff changed the text on the page for something like “you will recive 1940 gold (for the same cash as earlier), which is 40% more than normally (for other people, not from T-Mobile)”.”

Here’s the picture of the offer and how it was changed:

brekeke

Even I, a non-Polish, but Slavic person can see how the Polish might have been misled. The first part quite openly states “40 percent more gold”.

Needless to say, this got the players pissed and this was fuelled by the WG staff statement that the players were guilty themselves, because they misunderstood the wording of the offer. As huge shitstorm emerged, legal threats were raised and it all resulted in a real legal complaint to the EU Consumer Center by a player called “sombredaddy”. I can’t imagine this going anywhere, given the fact WG can afford very, very good lawyers, but it is a symbolic gesture.

Another great day at WG EU office…

77 thoughts on “WG EU fail: T-Mobile false gold promotion”

    • Well, it was CLEARLY written that you get 1940 gold for 39.99 zlotys. WHAT YOU SEE IS WHAT YOU GET.

      • As I understand it (interpreting the translation, I don’t speak Polish myself), 1940g is 40% more than what you get by default for X amount of money via SMS- but the special event description said that you would get 40% extra *on top of the 1940*. Now, if you had considered/used SMS purchases before, you might have remembered that X amount of money gets you less than 1940g (1940 actually being 40% more than usual), but if not, there would be no way you would know that, and you would thus expect the ~2700g as advertised, as WG originally stated.

        • Sorry, but if it was misleading, then it’s because somebody turned their brain off after the ‘ 40% more’, unless the ‘at first’ part of the screen was worded differently than on the screenshot. I mean, come on, it’s pretty clearly written – ‘You will get 40% more gold than the standard rate’. Of course, WG damage control is pretty clearly a big fail, but other than that it’s stupid people being stupid.

        • It goes like ‘You will receive 40% more gold instead of the standard value’. Yeah, it’s neither clear nor professional, but after all ’1940 gold for 39.99 zł’ is ’1940 gold for 39.99 zł’… Just give it a little bit of thought. If you were to receive more, you’d see it…

          • Ah, I thought the article explicitly said that you would receive 40% more than 1940.

        • It was basically “Buy it and get 40% extra!”
          Then the standard “let’s edit it and no one will out” WG EU strategy happened and it got changed into “Buy it and get 40% extra compared to other SMS offers” (aka the operator doesn’t steal your money).
          Quite misleading if you ask me.

  2. Huh? It’s a T-mobile promotion yet you only get 40% more gold if you don’t use their service? After the edit.

  3. I always hated dealing with cases like this (not that my line of work is anything like this, but you get what I mean). This is why I always have at least three different people read over any contracts that I write.

      • I dont know… but WG EU just have so many fails when it comes to events, missions, news… on their homepage… Always some “small” mistake. And all because they never read before posting… Who is in charge there? A blind monkey? O.o

        • You know you are insulting innocent monkeys? :(
          It’s just a human not being able to do what he is paid for….

          • Not to sound overly Critical of WG EU but I think a whole lot of them need to be fired, remember the debacle at gamescon, with streaming errors and code errors. It’s clear they don’t hire employee’s of standard IQ if it’s one debacle after another.

            I remember that WG was Hiring People around the states and various other regions for the Japanese WG branch, hopefully it’ll be a better team then the EU one.

      • WG and proofreading…. pigs flying, hell freezing over and still no proofreading to be had by WG sorry :trollface:

  6. They should change it to say “you will get 40 percent more Stalin inscriptions in comparison to SMS payments.”

  7. I dont know whats worse, this false advertisement or the fact that polish people can just get a gold discount that non-polish people couldnt get.

    • This “discount” is still more expensive than paying for gold normally. So unless you buy gold exclusively by SMS (and why would you do that?), this offer sucks.

      • AngryBanana can you do the maths?
        paypal: about 0,0034 Euro/1gold
        t-mobile sms: about 0,0051 Euro/1gold
        so this is not a special offer at all and only ppl that can not pay in other way should buy it

        • I could have done the maths, but I didnt :P
          Very well then, thought it was an actual discount, my bad.

  11. Another day in the WG EU office Them guys cant even do their job and its not exactly hard to proofread a small document

  12. And now WG will spend couple thousand euros on lawyers instead of giving out worthless virtual gold to few people who felt cheated.

  13. TBH – first version, after quick reading was missleading – you could think that you will get the gold mentioned in payments page and +40% more. But – after looking at prices and thinking for a moment it was quite clear, that this 40% is already included. “Just” some non-competnent language usage by WG – bussines as usual.

    • Sorry but i have to disagree with you. I am polish native speaker and i read the first description and it’s meaning is highly ambiguous. If you know the background about the special T-Mobile offers and know that their are already 40% better then the competitors you can interpret the sentence both ways. If you do not know about it the usual and normal first interpretation would be you get 40% more gold on top of the listed amount.

      Was WG straight lying or posting something wrong? No. Was it highly confusing and ambiguous? Yes.

      I frankly have no idea about the specific laws and what lawyers can make out of it but it’s imho certainly bad for WGs reputation and PR how they handle the problem. Why not just change the wording of the offer to correct the ambiguity, like they did, appologize for the whole mess up and just give all customers that ordered before and complain the 40% more gold. Not like such gesture would cost WG something. It’s after all just a few bits on their servers, nothing that has real life value. Everyone is just human and can make mistakes but how you handle them is important.

      • I’m Polish too :)
        As I wrote – at first I thought that this offer gives 40% more gold than the ammount printed. But then I checked other offers and prices and was almost sure that this 40% is already included.
        Any way – the text WAS MISSLEADING – it sholud be clear from the start what you get!

        • As you said you had to double check it and make a background research to be able to realize the 40% is already included. Usually people just read the advertising and buy stuff. Most of them doesn’t want or don’t have the time to do any researches and imho neither should they.

          But generally we agree it seems. WG made a mistake in the wording of the advert but that’s not such a big deal. Shit happens and everyone can make a mistake. They way they are handling it tho is far from good.

  15. Well, that’s quite strange.
    “You just have to choose between offers available only in T-mobile: 39,99, 49,99 or 69,99zł offers. Thanks to that you can acuire +40% more gold instead of its standard amount.”
    “You just have to choose between offers available only in T-mobile: 39,99, 49,99 or 69,99 offers that already contain 40% more gold in comparison to other SMS offers.”
    By the way, this text is stylistically messed up (not only in this particular sentence!), as if it was written by someone who definitely is NOT Polish.

    • In Polish it actually has a bit sense. At least more than usuall. But we have much other stuff that is translated even worse than google translator. Not long ago we got end of event on Thueseday (when it actually ends on Monday), we got ‘enemies killed’ (that was label for ‘damaged coused by spotting’) and many more mistakes like discount on premium tanks 50% (in game was 30%) and so on…
      I always have to compare event texts with english versions and I’m really suprised if there is _nothing_ wrong =)

  16. Not the first time.
    In Polish edition of boxed “WoT: Roll out”, you got two codes – invite one (2000gold, garage spot, week of premium and FCM36 Pak40), and bonus one (3 days of premium and 1000 gold).
    However, on the box cover, the “bonus code” was described as “use it in first place if you didn’t play WoT or invite your mate”, suggesting it is the one for new players.
    So many people playing WoT bought it for FCM package, and ended quite dissapointed, to say it in most polite terms, as they couldn’t use it.

  17. What I don’t really get is, why are people buying gold via SMS anyway? You can’t use it unless you’re at your computer, where you can buy it anyway at normal rates. I could see if gift shop packages were available that you wanted to snatch up, you could buy them via mobile browser after charging…but the gift shop is cash-only.

    Yea, the wording is terrible in the offer, WG is at fault for that, and players are at fault for not spending a moment to lock their brains fully in an upright position. But can someone explain to me, why are people (apparently quite actively) screwing themselves by buying gold at higher rates?

    • various reasons

      if you have i.e. A mix offer (basically a prepaid with a phone in a bundle with an obligation for loading x-amount of cash to the prepaid) you often do not have on what to spend these money

      same go with some standard phone contracts where you may have i.e. 60 zl per month to spend whatever you like

      standard prepaid – many operators have a short term offers when they will give you ectra 50 percent and so, so in fact you are spending less..

      allegro – polish ebay :-), selling gold via it is in theory illegal, but common, and i can assure you that there are some smart people there i.e. Buying the prepaid load without VAT (outside of tje EU), following operatr promotions, have wholesale discounts on the loads and so on

      some people are bad at math, some kids want to spend their money this way

      this is not the best cost efficient way, But it may be with proper promotions..

      i regret war thunder is not using phone payments

  18. “The game producer denies all complaints and one of the players, who took legal steps already, was already punished.”

    Wait, what? So someone decided to take legal step and got punished for that? How? What for exactly?

    Also, wouldn’t the act of punishing someone for the legal attempt be punishable by itself? Like, denying someone (or rather trying as hard as possible to discourage) the right to consult the authorities about who is right in the dispute?
    And if WG is not to be blamed (cough) and thus has nothing to fear from any lawsuit why would they attack players trying to prove otherwise?

    • He was punished on WoT forums. He started a topic in which he posted advices how to take legal actions for people who felt cheated. WG EU stuff banned his account, closed the topic and moved it to archive because it “caused unnecessary tensions”.

    • They could have let the guy go through with his complaint and maybe get a slap on the wrist about bad marketing, but this might actually make things worse for them. If it’s true, which I somewhat doubt.

  20. Looks like another “False Advertisement” (after lies about premium PZ-4) and cheating of customers become daily bread for WG

    Im very proud that i never put my money to this company full of cheaters

  21. I don’t know who the heck is running the WG EU marketing and what not office, but they are laughing stock. Seriously, if anybody is reading these comments from WG headoffice replace these incompetent smucks.

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  27. Hmm, German portal has a deal atm where you buy 2 times the same package of gold and get the 3rd of the same time for free.

    Lets see how this turns out :3

  28. On website https://worldoftanks.eu/payment/ choose poland, there is info about sms payment that says 1940 gold for 39.90 pln (pln is polish curency, its about 10 euro), there is no info about special offer, bonus or discount.

    I’ll translate what was written on t-mobile special.
    “… thanks to this offer you will receive 40% more gold instead of standard amount…”

    Since standard offer, acording to payment site, is 1940 gold, you could expect 2716 gold.

    Now you know why players feel cheated?

  29. Reading about WG fails i am so happy that i didn’t vote for wot in golden joystick this year

  30. You feel cheated by Wargaming incompetence? Stop giving them money. Simple.

    also, after th Stalin issue, one would think that at least some Poles would stop funding assholes like SerB that was openly insulting them…

  31. you know making a mistake is one thing. Sure, if the people who make them are not punished, and are allowed to make more of them, that says a lot about the company. The problem here is how these idiots have AGAIN stealthy change information on the website without a notice, that…that is beyond bad.

    what would a normal company do? Punish the ones responsible, announce that they made a mistake, and give the extra 40 percent to the people who bought gold before the announcment, and change on the website. Simple? Not in a soviet company, which employs spineless morons at the EU office…

    • Amen brother. Making some mistakes is just human … even if doing it again and again does look bad but the way they handle them is just a PR nightmare. Not like giving more gold to all the people that ordered before the text was changed is going to cost WG anything in real life.

  32. Where is the +40% Gold? Lost in translation… I think somebody used Google-translate (as usuall) and not double-checked before publishing. Typical WG-EU fail of community amateurs :S

  33. Fails after fails,how long they can keep up like this,i mean come on,1 or 2 mistakes are fine but it’s continuing infinitely,i’m wondering what will be the next ? Will they hire a guy walking down on the street just to prove that they have enough employee to run things out smoothly.

    Communication between offices are weak,misleading messages at different portals,almost a mistake at every event (especially CZ portal) these are horrible,communication with players is …..

    I feel bad for Polish players and Czech players now.

  34. Let me ask you ppl

    For what you need to buy anything from WG?

    I have T10 in my garage and I never pay a shit to WG and Yes Im able to play without premium accont or without premium tanks and still be in plus.

    Now you have gold ammo/ gold expendabless for credits so why you need to pay anything to WG????

    You can have T10s and you dont need anything to buy for real money

    • You are right you don’t have to but it does make your game play a lot more comfortable. Premium account for example reduces the amount of farming you have to do to finance your high tier and allow you to buy high tier tanks a lot easier. With time being the limiting factor for a lot of players a lot of them rather works one hour longer and play some money to be able to play the game the way they like it instead of being forced to grind

      Additionally if no one at all pays for the game it will be closed at some point. WG is not a charity.

  37. This isn’t the US

    your lawyers can be expensive as fuck and you’ll still perish in court.

    Ask Berlusconi.