Unable to buy server transfer

A few days ago I started buying server transfers (with the sale going on). I bought 4 from Vigilance to Freedom. After those 4, I still wanted to buy some more, but every time I tried, I got an error saying that the payment was refused by my bank.

I was quite surprised about it, since neither my bank account nor my credit card were having the slighest problem. I called my bank, they told me "everything is perfectly fine with your account, and we didn't receive any billing request other than the 4 you mentionned". Ok, I contact the NC Soft support : "Definetly a problem with your bank, we don't know why but they didn't accept your payment.". Then my bank contacted again (without my asking) to confirm that they dug deeper in all their logs, and they didn't find ANY request made to my account after the first 4 purchases.

Feeling like speaking to a wall, I decided to borrow a credit card, buy my transfers (2 more) and done. Leave that behind me, it's probably just a bug in the matrix.

That was 4 days ago. Today, I saw a friend of mine and told him about the sale that was going on. Like me, he wanted to move toons from Vigilance to Freedom.

And guess what, after 3 transfers, he got the exact same problem as mine. We don't have the same bank, we aren't even from the same country! He didn't have the time to contact his bank yet (it happened a few minutes ago), but it looks a lot like what happened to me, which is still unexplained.

From the beginning, I trusted my bank more than NC Soft... because I actually talked to someone, who read to me all the things that happened on my bank account for the past week, who put me on the line with someone from I-don't-know-where but who seemed to know what he was talking about. But now that my friend has the exact same bug as I have, without any relation betwen our bank... I'm kinda asking NC Soft "So, what is it?"

Just to remind the circumstances : buying multiple server transfers from Vigilance to Freedom (for lvl 50 characters), in a small amount of time (like one per minute).

So, anyone else experienced it? Any way my friend can benefit from the sale with this bug?

PS : And I had the chance to find someone to help me buy lending me his credit card, but with the sale ending in less than two days, my friend is afraid he's going to miss it, because of a bug that's most likely on NC Soft side.

PPS : Like me, my friend contacted support and gave them my ticket ID to point out the fact that it's not an isolated incident, and that the bug is most likely on their side.

Based on my own experiences from a few years ago, your bank may indeed be blocking the charge and most employees may not be able to see all of the requests for charges.

A few years ago, my account came up for renewal on a Saturday night and was rejected. I filed a support ticket, but since it dealt with account/billing issues it was escalated to someone that wouldn't be in until Monday. Knowing that their phone hours started at noon Central time, I contacted the local branch of the bank and even went in to the bank. The branch manager made some calls, but no one that she talked to could see any charges being attempted.

I got ahold of NCSoft account support by phone, and one of the reps stayed on the line with me while I tried again to process the charge with no luck. He suggested I contact the Fraud department for my credit card (issued through my bank) as the code he was seeing made him think it might be a fraud issue.

After calling the 800 number on the credit card and asking for the Fraud department, they told me that it was indeed blocked for possible fraud since the IP address for billing was from an area outside the US. They whitelisted the charge and had me try again and this time the charge went through. My account with them was flagged to allow charges from NCSoft, the IP address they were using for billing, and everything they could think of to keep it from happening again. They also told me that no one at the local branch or anyone with the bank outside of the fraud department would have been able to see the charge attempts since it was blocked for possible fraud. I called back to NCSoft support to let them know what the problem was and they told me they had seen this a few times due to them changing the billing IP address and they were glad I was able to resolve it. They also made notes for all of the billing department in case people called to have them try contacting their Credit Card's Fraud department. Since it's been a few years, those notes may not still be showing up for them in these cases.

In your case, and your friend's, it may be that after a few charges of the same amount by the same IP address or company that they may have flagged it as possible fraud and be blocking the charges. The only way you'll likely be able to tell would be to call and ask specifically for the Fraud department.

Enough people had enough problems with it that Lighthouse made a post about it here, and it's still stickied in this forum even though it was from 2007.

Hopefully, this is what is occurring and you and your friend will be able to get it straightened out quickly while the sale is still going on.

I've lost my original post about this to the forum purges, or I'd link you to that.

EDIT: Knowing you are in France, and assuming your friend is likely outside the US as well, I don't know if PayPal would be an option for you or not. I have no idea if how PayPal works for people in the EU countries.

Thanks for your answer. I didn't find any mention of a "Fraud department" at my bank (even though there's obviously one), and there isn't a single phone number on my credit card (since we're from different countries that doesn't surprise me). I asked my usual contact at the bank for more information about the Fraud department, how I could contact them, etc. I'm waiting for the answer.

I'll tell my friend about it too, but I guess it'll be way too late for him. And about PayPal, I tried it, but it doesn't work for the in-game store. It kept telling me "No credit card registered on your account", even though I linked it with my PayPal account.

I'll keep this topic updated with whatever information I manage to get, but I wanted to thank you for your help.

I will have to second the "Fraud department" thing as it has happened to me a couple months ago as well. It kept telling me that the bank is blocking the transaction, but eventually turned out the credit card people (VISA if that matters) are blocking it for Fraud possibility. I have been using the card for 6 months for all sorts of stuff on the NCSoft site before this randomly happened out of the blue. You will have to contact the number on the back of your credit card and specifically ask them to unblock the NCsoft website purchases for you.