The Joys of Wargaming EU – Premium Shop Edition

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Hello everyone,

let me present you another fine mess from the Wargaming EU kitchen. As you know, this weekend, we had a competition here on FTR and we had one winner. It was not the first competition here, as you probably remember, if you are here for a while and this is the first time I encountered this issue. After the winner was announced, I logged on to my main account (Silentstalker) and wanted to send the lucky winner his gift. Logged into the Premium shop and…

prob1

No problem so far. Switching to gift mode.

prob2

Okay, something’s missing. Specifically, the options to pay with Paypal and with a regular credit card. I was like “what the fuck” – tried to relog, didn’t help. Switched to my secondary account I use for forum posting (SilenstalkerCZ), didn’t help. The credit card payment option was still missing. At this point I was kinda confused – this is not the first time there was a competition. Not even a month ago, I had a competition, where I gave out a Super Pershing plus some other stuff – no problems back then.

At this point, I asked a Canadian friend, Okinoshima, to try the premium shop out on EU server with his EU account. Same result. So, this is some weird shit – I asked Edrard to use his EU account to check this out. Same result. Mind you, both Edrard and Oki are as nice and impeccable people as they come, they never had any problems in this.

I logged to my US account to try it on US server. No problem, credit card available. Fine. I logged on my RU account to try RU premium shop – same result, credit card available (in fact, not so long time ago, I was handling some giveaways for Edrard from my RU account, everything worked fine).

Well, what do you do, when everything fails? Read the fucking manual Write a support ticket.

Here is the ticket I wrote today.

ticket

The answer was polite, but pointless.

ticket2

The fact Mr.Vos is a fan is nice, but doesn’t quite solve my issue of being included on some fucking blacklist. How come Wargaming puts a “security block” on a player that never had ANY issues at all? Malice or incompetence? And how come support service cannot fix it? And what about Edrard, why can’t he send gifts on EU server either?

Either way, I reopened the ticket to ask again, the answer was pretty much the same. In case you are new here: “investigating the situation” is an euphemism for “fuck off”.

ticket3

So, makes me wonder how many people ended on the blacklist aside of me (and if it was me, what was really the reason). I can openly say that I NEVER had a single problematic transaction, no chargebacks or any such stupid shit. Also, I wonder how much money did WG lose on this “security option”, since it adds random people. Or perhaps it wasn’t random at all? You know, WG EU…

Either way, now I am pissed because in order to award that tier 8 prem I will have to either rely on someone else or use one of the stupid kiddie stuff like pre-paid cards.

*sigh*

Another fine day at the EU server. Oh yea, nice truck guys.

124 thoughts on “The Joys of Wargaming EU – Premium Shop Edition”

  1. If it means anything to you, i’m prepared to send the T8 prem tank on your behalf.

      • …I think it’s about your IP, which is obviously blocked&blacklisted by WG…

        Just keep fucking their mouth, SS, they deserve much worse than a “malice blogger”.

        • Nope. It is a security feature, and a damn reasonable one.

          On EU we had a plague of events that a “nice, friendly person” gifted someone else (whom he really “liked”) a gift, expensive one. Paid with credit card. And after acceptance, revoked the payment – so the gifted person had to pay for his own “gift”, someone had to.

          I can gift via revokable channel any item that is cheaper than the sum of the money I actually spent on WoT. I am unable to do so, when I select something more expensive. Would seem to work as expected.

          • Well, that makes sense. I thought something like that from the second reply.
            The question here would be if SS has ever bought such an expensive tank from WG before.
            I mean, prices between Tier 8s aren’t that different, and there was no problem with the S-Pershing…..

          • The case you explained is happening because of the excessive idiotic behaviour of general European people… Anyways, I think it’ll be better if WG discontinues selling such “gifts” like this, instead they can make something where you can “buy” a “gift” then give it away after paying for it.

            For instance, imagine it like giving away some of your premium shells to a friend after buying them… Sounds silly? Yeah, I know. But, here’s a trick, after buying this gift, it’ll be stored for your account, which you can redeem it for yourself or give it away to somebody with a charge. (In example, I bought a JgTig 8.8 for 50$ as a gift, then I gave it away to a friend by paying 2$ more.)

      • A Pre Paid is the absolute BEST method to purchase online goods.
        The most that can be stolen is the balance on the card.

        I have had an instance in which $13,000 USD was charged to my credit card, and it took a year to get the money back.

        By loading exactly the amount you want to spend, you both limit your spending, and limit the ability of the FUCKING criminals out there to get your hard earned cash.

        • Prepaid is just too much effort.

          I use pre-loaded credit card (I set amount of cash available on it via my bank account internet access, and then pay via Paypal. So even if somebody would get access to my card, he won’t be able to steal more, than I have on it.

          Using this combo for few years, never had any payment problems.

        • You really should switch banks. I deal with CC fraud daily at work, it usually takes a few days – a week at the most – for victimized cardowners to get their money back. The bank takes the loss unless the owner of the card wrote the number + expiry date + CVV in a public toilet or something like that. Might be different in the US (if that is where you have your USD), but it can’t be that bad?

          • i have a visa credit card from bank of crap america.
            * a real credit card as in not linked to a bank account like a debit card that pretends to be a credit card.

            i was charged like 2k last year when someone from target bought something from england. weird no?

            didn’t have to pay for the fraud.
            thats how real credit cards work.

            If you don’t qualify for a real credit card because of whatever, i hear the american express prepaid cards SERVE has the same policy.

    • if you really want to send a T8 premium tank for someone, my login is gyeprefos_jf :) thx ^^

  2. LOL, i am on the black-list as well, but the funny side, however is not only didn’t i have a single problematic transaction, but not a single transaction at all.
    I (or anyone else) has NEVER EVER payed a single cent on my account.
    The only transaction was that i got some gold gifted from a friend, and that’s all

    • Watch this one! I have never bought any gift for other player, but somehow I am on a black list to, interesting thing is that only for the 99€ gold package!

        • All I ever got was some gold from Duxter, never purchased anything, I don’t have any issues with support stuff, I never recieved any “negative points” (whatever they call them).

          Hell, I haven’t even played the game for good 2 months.

          Blacklisted apparently for … reasons.
          Not like WG are ever going to see any money from me, but still.

  3. It blocks it for me too.
    Perhaps we should all file tickets and flood the system.. Wrong of me I know, but if they got a few hundred tickets someone MIGHT actually take a real look at it.

    • I am also blocked for no reason. I have never used a premium shop so I haven’t noticed that, but this is damn weird.

      • re-read the second reply, it isn’t a blacklist, its a whitelist that means you cant gift using refundable methods until you have spent a stack of money and get whitelisted. Given all the stories of fraudulent activity on EU lately, this sounds like an entirely reasonable response to remove the huge problems being caused.

  4. Just tried the same process as you Silent, and it shows paypal for me in the gifting process. Mess up system…

    • For some reason, i do not. I am still able to send gift ( I am ofcourse an EU player )

      • I have the option to use credit cards and paypal but I wonder, SS, do you have any idea about how much money you’ve spent on WoT in total? There is a mention that says “until you’ve reached a certain threshold”, which I assume is code for “give us enough money and we will let you do this”.

      • Just had a look at it. Still have the options credit card/pay pal when trying to send a gift. So it seems they truly have an (automated) blacklist. Very nice, isn’t it? Especially when people get thrown on it, that never did anything wrong, furthermore have been and still are (or at least would like to be) paying customers. Not so smart move and blatant fail by WG, I’d say.

        • Well, after reading some other comments and possible explanations for this, I may be wrong and it’s not WGs fault. Whatever it is, this case is proof that it can be bad for their business. Because, SS actually wants to give them money and just isn’t allowed to (or at least he’d be forced to do it the inconvenient way, which doesn’t make a customer very happy).

      • Nope, I’ve just checked if I can give someone FCM – both credit card and PayPal payments are available. It seems explanation “account spent some money on his own stuff = account verified and trusted” is working in this case.

        But there is another fuckup – text of FCM’s description is in Czech. OK, I can read it and understand but this is not the language I have set on my account. WG EU at its finest.

        • I send a thing about Czech Fcm in english or even polish site language a…. idk , when i bought mine FCM. One or two month ago.

      • Same situation here. EU server, never had any problematic purchase / gifting – still no option for gifting through credit card payment.
        One of my friends used to buy WOT stuff by me sending a gift to his account through credit card payment and he paying me personally, since he never have had a credit card – now this is over… I doubt he will buy anything from WG ever again. :)
        —
        edit: I don’t know what is their so called “payment limit” – I bought few thousand gold now and then, a JT 8,8 for myself and a T34 for my buddy as a gift. I’m a good player, never broke any rules, if this means something… Hell I can’t be a better player / customer than this!! :D

      • as stated before system seams to be like this:
        U can only send gifts for the amount of money u spent on yourself.
        at least that is how it looks to me, threshold might be different.
        mfg eX
        PS: just buy urself the tank, i bet u can gift it afterwards!

      • i am good, i reached the page where they ask for card details, and paypal was there too (both for me and with “send as a gift”)

        i think i might help with this if you can’t solve the issue ;)

        alex

    • Surely not the case. I just logged in to check it out, and both the credit card paypal payment options are there for me, regardless of how expensive package i chose to send as a gift. Mind you, i do spend a good bit of money on buying premium stuff really often… so… it sounds nasty, but the mentioned threshold,,. what if it works the other way around? As in, you have to spend a specific amount of money buying stuff for your own account, ( could make you a trusted buyer ) before the system lets you gift using those payment options. Of course, just a theory, and i’m probably completely wrong.

      • Yep… I think this is a viable explanation. I also used to spend a lot of money on WoT (I’m done with that now. Haven’t spent one penny since last summer) and I can use whatever option I want when paying for gifts.

        Both SS’ friends are not from the EU server so they haven’t spent money for their EU accounts. See the connection?

      • Well, when they say “certain threshold”, I suppose you are right. At least I understand it like that as well. What else could it mean than “a certain amount of money spend”? ^^

          • actually scratch that. Tried a alt account with vpn. And it denied me the gift option of cc and paypal. interesting.

  6. My gift shop picture from LT:
    [IMG]http://i62.tinypic.com/wjbb5g.png[/IMG]

  7. The Credit card and the Pay-Pal payment option disappears for me too, but only at the most expensive tier 8 tanks or other expensive bundles. If I want to send some cheap tank as a gift I have all the payment option listed. Very interesting WG, very interesting….

  11. This issue has nothing to do with you being on any blacklist. I’m not sure why more hasn’t been made of this issue, but Wargaming has had its accounts in Cypress frozen for failing to file their taxes. When this happened it started a chain reaction with some of the payment processors, as they have reclassified Wargamming’s fraud risk to a higher tier. That’s why you had the issue with trying to purchase a gift with those payment methods. It’s one of the things Wargaming was prodded into changing to keep the payment processor happy.

    Over the weekend there was an issue with the NA server not redirecting to Paypal when you tried to use it as a payment method. Same basic cause but much quicker resolution in that case.

  12. Czech for easier comprehension of SS (to avoid confusion):

    Vypadá to jako nějaký preventivní blok proti zneužívání dárkový možnosti. Dokud nenakoupíš za nějaký menší obnos, tak nemůžeš poslat nikomu dárek přes lehko zneužitelné možnosti (účet, PP). Já už jsem něco nakupoval (Chi-Nu Kai, Excelsior a nějaký prémko), takže tu možnost poslat gift přes obojí v obchodě vidím. Tipuju, že většina hráčů to ale bude mít naopak.

    Jen pro upřesnění jak chápu poslední tobě poslaný ticket od supportu.

    • Security is always annoying. Until some shit happens, it will be always “useless”

    • V pořádku, to beru, problém je, že já jsem toho nakupoval i celkem hafo jako dárky (tedy relativně, ten Super Pershing třeba).

      • Je otázka, jestli to se počítá do nakoupeného obnosu (protože to by nezastavilo ten spam, pošleš lidem pár dárků menších a pak plynule přejdeš na posílání osmičkových tanků “zadarmo”).

        Nejsem tedy schopný zkontrolovat jestli jde s novým účtem posílat lidem třeba menší věci přes PP nebo ne, takže to je spíš takovej dohad…

      • mas zadanu ochranu konta pomocou telefonu ? mojmu kamaratovi tiez nezobrazovalo tieto moznosti… ked si zadal zabezpecenie telefonom, zacalo mu to fungirovat…

  15. Silentstalker, please read carefully last answer from support.
    As I understand it’s not that they have something against you.
    It looks only that after every credit card payment (for “send as gift” option) EVERYONE has to wait certain period of time till credit card payment will be available again.
    It’s just safeguard – for me it’s even understandable, but I think threshold should be adjusted to do not impact standard customers.

    • For me that doesnt sound like WG…
      does: lets make our players have to wait for a while to buy another tank for someone (WG: to give us more money for tank) else, sound like WG?
      i would think more of:
      WG: YAY someone is spending money again moar moar give us moar!!!

  17. I have the credit card option. (in fact all options available)
    and i already had several transactions.

    seems to be quite random!

  18. I’m able to send EU gifts, not on the blacklist. Which is nice since i tend to do a lot of store transactions.

    • Perhaps because you do a lot of transactions it tags you as low risk.
      Or, perhaps this is them saying “If you use your card more for yourself, these options would open up for everyone”…. I have seen it before, so I wouldn’t put it above any company!

  19. Interesting, I have had a lot of transactions and even have made mess with gifts (send to wrong person and wanted to get back and had to post a lot of info so that they could verify my identity) and some other minor stuff, but still have ability to purchase through credit cards and paypal :D

  20. I’m actually sure it’s not specific people being blocked, but a general block for everyone as a security measure…

  22. WG had some time ago big problems with gifts paid with credit cards. Scammers were selling premium tanks cheaper to other players and later withdrawing the payments they made to WG (credit cards give such option). So maybe there is some autoblacklist to limit WG loses when such scammers appear again (they can’t then sell too much stuff).

  23. I am an NA player, but do you remember when WG spoke of the issue when players would gift to another player, then cancel the charge on their card, leaving the gift recipient with the bill? Until the receiver paid for the gift, WG would lock the poor recipients account while the giver goes free. Perhaps this is their answer to that issue?

    Also, the second message implies that EVERYONE is put on this “blacklist” by default until they have reached some “threshold” of gift giving, and then they may use a credit card and papal to gift as normal. Perhaps some people never experienced this issue because they were above the “threshold” of total value of gifts given, at the time of implementation?

    • [quote]Also, the second message implies that EVERYONE is put on this “blacklist” by default until they have reached some “threshold” of gift giving, and then they may use a credit card and papal to gift as normal. Perhaps some people never experienced this issue because they were above the “threshold” of total value of gifts given, at the time of implementation?[/quote]

      Can’t be the case. Never gifted something, still able to pay the gift via CC and PP.

  25. Like i said on the question N°6: if WG eu needs to change the bubblelight, prepare to be in the dark for centuries…

    Lot of people in Belgium (i’m french but our clan has some peoples from belgium) got the problem.

    On my account, my CB, 2 different CB of my GF, my uncle CB and my father CB where used, and i’m not blacklisted (if someone can be a suspect, i should be one, no?).

  27. I am allowed to pay via PayPal, I do not have any problems with that.

  28. Damn! Too late for an edit on my last reply.

    The more I think of it, the more I agree the idea is like this: I’m sure you know about the idiots that were giving gifts to players only to cancel the payment after that. Well, they were doing that from fresh accounts; accounts that had no money invested in them. So, a logical step was to cancel some payment methods for new accounts until they reached a sum of invested money. That way, the idiots could not scam people because either they had to use a method that did not allow the payment to be canceled or they had to invest money in their accounts and then it would have become pointless to do all that.

    I’m pretty sure this is the right explanation.

    • Yep, I think this is correct. But even if it is a security measure to prevent losses, in certain cases it prevents profit – as in this case.

      Overall it’s quite bad that support can’t intervene. I mean, c’mon… that one guy even knows SS… they can see that there have been transactions in the past and that there never was a problem. Still the system doesn’t allow them to do anything about it in individual cases? Badly managed.

  29. I can only use GameCard to pay for gifts. But then again, I only spent 50 EUR on this game.

    That thing with how much money you spent sounds quite real to me. -.-

  32. Whoopsy daisy i just chekced and i can only send gifts via ULTIMATE GAME CARD. So consider yourself happy :D

  33. Damn i’m getting even less options then you SS,either Western Union or Ultimate Game Card(WTF is that!?!)
    … Guess i’m veeeery untrustworthy for WG to put me on their shit list.

  34. SS what browser u used? and have u tried from another (new) acc on another PC? one u never logged in before

  36. It seems like you can only use paypal and credit card for gifts for cheap packages. About month ago I had a giveaway, paid for 3 (cheap) gift tanks without problem, still can’t buy more expensive packages as gift by paypal.

    Maybe you need to earn the possibility?

  37. It isn’t WoT, it is the companies they use to take payments from. I had a similar issue last year on the NA server. Most likely something changed on the payment side of things and those options for a particular zone are not available until matters a cleared up. In my case the payment processing changed the way they report the payment to the bank and they took it as fraud so canceled the transaction. It took about a month to get it all cleared up before I was able to do more than 1 transaction a week. Just keep pestering them to get it resolved and check back to see if the options are back, shouldn’t take to long.

    In this case they probably did have a rash of fraud payments/canceled payments and the company is trying to resolve the issue. When there are a lot of chargebacks on particular types of transactions the processing company normally puts holds on that kind of transactions.

  38. Try the hola browser plugin, it’s vpn so if it’s IP pool blacklist you can avoid it. Or just make a new account to send the gift :)

    • Don’t use it if you have traffic limited internet access as it uses your connection to cache content and stream it to other users (like Pando does).

  39. Is this perhaps depending on where you are located?
    Im in Sweden and I can use Paypal and CC as payment method when buying a gift, but about 2 weeks ago a friend of mine from UK tried buy as a gift some premium days and noticed that the option for PP and CC disappeared when he checked the gift checkbox.

  41. For EU-server (at least) there is a tiered soft-filter for payment options depending on:
    - price of what you want to purchase
    - how much you have purchased overall & recently (more than 30 days and not been charged back)
    - where you live (based on national fraud risk)

    You can increase your soft-filter amount (for gifting) by purchasing more on your own player account. It is tiered, so if purchases are high enough based on location, you should be able to initially buy lower-priced premium tanks for gifting and with more spending overtime higher-priced tanks for gifting.

    This filtering is used far less for NA server, because the fraud risk has been substantially lower amongst the player-base than for many nations using the EU/RU servers.

    I can use gifting for my NA account (I’ve rarely purchased anything), but can not gift even low-tier tanks for my EU account using credit card or paypal. So its not just you. I have no purchase history for EU and even though I’m in a low-fraud risk country, I too can not gift anything on EU server.

    How many parents and friends will no longer purchase gifts because of this? I see the issue WG is facing with charge-backs and fraud, but GG WG, well played, like an arty or KV-2 firing an HE shell into a wall to die.

  42. Why can’t wargaming just admit for once that they screwed up rather than hiding the fact and pointing their fingers at others saying it is their fault like little kids? They have some of the oddest ass backwards security systems they use that are far to tight even just to change your email just for example. Why do they make us register our phone numbers and go through all these steps to ‘secure the account’ if they won’t use these options to verify who we are?

  44. Admitting to having 2 accounts and giving the names of them?
    Better hope nobody of your haters reads it.

    • The multiple accounts are on different servers since the 1 account on the EU server does not transfer to RU or NA for example. So you have to make a new account for those other servers.

  45. Maybe the reasons are:

    1.) You bash WG EU and this is their backlash.. just kidding..

    2.) Too many gift scammers before, so they put some automated program to temporary disable additional gifting to avoid fraud, let’s blame this on scammers because it affects players sending legitimate gifts. Maybe there’s like a maturity time before you can send another gift, maybe let’s say 30days or after 60 days, thus WG will safe to assume that players will not charge back those purchases and consider it as legitimate gift, and if player charge back, they will flag those accounts.

    3.) Some financial institution will block those type of payments for gifts because of previous number of cases of fraud and chargebacks so they are also trying to safeguard accounts.

  46. I doubt there’s “blacklist” of any sorts. It’s more likely that there’s a some kind of threshold of money spent before you can use cc/paypal to send a gift.

  47. Same here, no paypal when try to send gifts to another player.

    Seriously, WG EU? WTF?

  48. Apparently I’m also on that list, although I NEVER bought anything from WG. EVER!

  50. I get the same thing on my EU account and I haven’t made ANY transactions on it. We are ALL on the blacklist, meaning WG EU just don’t want to offer it due to the amount of fraud they were subject to.

    I can’t even buy the cheapest option of 1 day premium, so it is pretty hard to work your way up any supposed ‘tier system’ if you can’t take the first step.

  52. Interesting, I can actually gift tanks with CC or paypal which cost around €15. If I choose a tank a price tier higher of around €22 I am unable to pay by Paypal or CC.
    -
    I only bought some gold and american T-14 heavy and nothing else. So in a sense my threshold is probably around €20, despite that I actually bought gold for €20 If I remember correctly and T-14 was at €10.
    -
    Just checked. Yes I can gift gold priced at €20 with not problems with CC or Paypal. If i go higher I cannot do it!.

    • i used as a test the FCM 50t, no problem :P (well i didn’t checked out, but got the option)

      • rechecked:

        main account – 3 tier 8 prem tanks + 3 years of premium + 200up slots in garage + 96 bunks for crew (all of them with discount but still lots of money) ===> i can send gifts with all the options for payment

        second accound – used just for tests = zero investment =====> same issue as silent

  53. everyone’s talking about the payment problem….
    i wonder how many WG staff likes your blog

  54. I find it amusing that so many players have spent a great deal of money on a free to play game.

    Russia’s economy must appreciate the input from Europeans paying to play for free…better profit margins than gas or oil…bloody genius comrades!

  55. Everything ok here, screen how it looks from the german store:

    [URL=http://www.bilder-upload.eu/show.php?file=e9be38-1402386195.jpg][IMG]http://www.bilder-upload.eu/thumb/e9be38-1402386195.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

  57. It happens sometimes.. for me it was two or three time this year and last for several days and after that all back to normal,you can buy with visa/master.

  59. Had the same problem couple days ago, I don’t have credits card, so my friend wanted to send me a gift, but … :(