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Where's my money?


Lepus

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Hi I'm Lepus,
recently i found out about Dual Universe and was really excited to try it out! I decided to by the contributor pack but was sort of on the fence about paying 60€ for a game in alpha... 
Eventually I decided to go for it, mainly because DU is exactly what Î was looking for in a game, and since no other game (even in development) is offering the same set of features, I was not going to wait 2 years without anything interesting to play!
So I make my DU account and and buy the 60€ contributor pack. this was 8 days ago. 
Problem is, my money disappeared. A full day passes and I contact DU support asking why I still haven´t received the payment confirmation. Four days later (yes 4 days) I hear back from Novaquark. Novaquark hasn't received my payment. Apparently payments go through Xsolla, their "payment system provider". Do they offer to contact Xsolla to find out what happend? No. They tell me to do it.
Ok, so I contact Xsolla. They have a live chat. The person I speak to at Xsolla says my payment didn't reach them, that I should contact my bank to find out where the money went to.
My bank has 24/7 phone support, so I call them up. According to them the 60€ went to a company called PPRO Financial Ltd. 
*sigh*
I then contact PPRO (this was more than 2 days ago), they ask me to send them the transaction detalis, which I send straight away. Till today they have not given me an explanation of what happened to my money or refunded me. 
So just to recap:
- In Portugal I decide to buy a game
- The makers of the game, in France, don't receive my payment. They pass the blame to Xsolla
- Xsolla, in the US, don't have the money either, they point to my bank
- my bank, in Portugal, says the money went to PPRO, in the UK
- PPRO, till now, have not passed the blame on to anyone else, nor have they solved the problem.
So far I'm loving DU!

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Welcome to the wonderful world of electronic money transfers, where generally things work fine but somtimes they do not. It's unfortunate yes and should not happen sure. But from what you wrote neither XSolla nor NQ have anything to be blamed for.. 

 

Takes nothing away from being a nuisance and obviously a serious inconvenience. I hope writing this here made you feel a bit better and that it gets resolved soon..

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Hi @Lepus

 

We're sorry to hear about your transaction problem.

 

The Novaquark team doesn't "pass the blame" to Xsolla.

Xsolla is just in charge of processing all the payment transactions for Dual Universe and their customer support is in charge of solving issues related to the said transactions.

Novaquark's customer support can't - unfortunately - solve this kind of issue. Moreover, it's Xsolla's policy to interact directly with the customers who might have a transaction issue.

That being said, we will investigate on our side about why your payment went to a company called PPRO Financial Ltd. It's the first time we hear about this kind of issue and as far as we know, it should have been a direct transaction between your bank and Xsolla... On your side, could you please check if the payment going to PPRO Financial Ltd has nothing to do with a possible agreement with your bank for transactions going outside Europe or online payment?

 

Best Regards,

Nyzaltar.

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@NQ-Nyzaltar 

I can assure you my bank has nothing to do with this. The reason my bank (or any bank for that matter) has nothing to do with it is that when I go to pay NQ, Xsolla gives me several payment options. The option I chose (because it was the most convenient) was Multibanco. Multibanco is a Portuguese network of ATM machines. When you make any payment through Multibanco, it generates a reference number and gives you an entity number. So for example you pay 60€, to entity number xxxxxx, using reference number yyyyyy. The entity number is not random or chosen by my bank or Xsolla. The entity number is the number that each company is registered with at the Bank of Portugal. Like an ID. It doesn't change.

The thing is, I got this entity number from Xsolla, before i paid anything.

I could have used a different bank at this point, I might not even have a bank account and have to ask a friend to pay for me, it has nothing to do with my bank or my country's banking system. 

Here is a quote from PPRO's web site:

"PPRO helps consumers pay with the local payment method they trust and know, wherever they are. Our partners are local payment methods and payment service providers alike, that we connect through our single payments platform, a single contract and a single integration. This enables merchants to offer their customers the widest possible range of local payment types and services in markets worldwide. And with PPRO’s broad range of payment-related services, we help all our partners grow their businesses, work efficiently and make their transactions secure."
So you see, this is an arrangement between Xsolla and PPRO.

At the end of the day, if nothing goes wrong, everybody wins:

- Novaquark doesn't have to deal with the money

- Xsolla facilitates business for profit

- PPRO enhances Xsolla's reach worldwide by offering local payment methods

- The customer gets the convenience of using a simple payment method

The problem is, when something goes wrong, no one knows where the money is at!

Too many fingers in the same pie!

Too many cooks in the kitchen!

Btw, I'm not a pimple faced teenager, I'm a 45 year old man who has made numerous purchases, from several countries, over many years, using Multibanco, Paypal, Visa, etc. This is the first time something like this has ever happened to me. 

 

@blazemonger

Thanks for saying something. Although I disagree with your opinion that NQ is blameless. The way I see it, although technically that might be true, I still think the responsibility is NQ's. After all, I am their customer, the other companies are intermediaries, facilitators... Still, nice to know someone is listening and takes the time respond! 

 

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I've had some experience with multibanco in a professional sense and all I can say, while generally it works well it does also see issues relatively frequently.

 

From what you wrote earlier, it appears the processor Xsolla uses for Multibanco did not actually process the payment.

 

I would log a ticket with NQ  on support.dualthegame.com for this as well as pester the processor PPRO

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Hi @Lepus

 

You received an answer here on Saturday (two days ago), that we are investigating on the incident.

We understand that is probably not the answer you wanted, but you did receive one nonetheless.

Moreover, as you can imagine, investigating during a weekend is not the best moment to get a quick answer.

In the meantime, could you send to our Customer Support a proof of your payment from your bank, mentioning the company which received the payment (it could help in the discussion with Xsolla) ?

 

Last but not least, we don't want any backer to feel frustrated or cheated and we will do our best to solve the problem.

However, you have to understand, that no, Novaquark is not responsible for the issue and here is why:

- Novaquark has no involvement in the payment process and has made a partnership with Xsolla precisely due to the fact that Novaquark is a game development studio and has no expertise in payment solution development (we would have handled this ourselves if we could).

- Xsolla is in charge of the whole payment solutions and is responsible if any issue occurs on that level (if the issue doesn't come from your bank). This company is paid in exchange of that service. They offered you to use Multibanco and an issue came out of it. So yes, the responsibility is fully on their side, not Novaquark. It's not putting the blame on them, these are just facts, and responsibility regarding transactions is part of their contract.

 

That being said, as mentioned above, we will try our best to help in solving this situation.

 

Best Regards,

Nyzaltar.

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On the 29th (Friday)  I sent an email to Xsolla, PPRO and NQ support with the payment transaction information attached.

I had already sent it to PPRO some days before.

Do you want me to send it again!?

"no, Novaquark is not responsible for the issue"

You misunderstood me. Of course NQ is not responsible for "the issue". NQ is not responsible for losing the money, it never got to you.

What NQ is responsible for is it's relationship with it's customers.

What you don't seem to realize is that the day after I bought the contributor pack (22nd) I contacted your support asking for help.

NQ support basically said: we're sorry this happened, it's not our business, contact Xsolla.

Do you know how many times your support contacted me to ask if the problem had been solved?

Zero.

It was only when I started posting on this forum that NQ started promising to look into it.

This is what I mean by "being responsible". 

Taking sincere interest in solving a situation that, ultimately, started with your choice of contracting Xsolla.

Do you think that when any company decides to use intermediaries they remove themselves from the equation?

I don't. Honestly, in my experience, the more intermediaries you use, the more opportunities you create for problems...

 

"if the issue doesn't come from your bank"

Why do you keep suggesting that?

Like I said before I have already sent you the transaction information showing that my bank sent the money to PPRO.

Are you suggesting that my bank chose PPRO as the recipient?!

Are you suggesting my bank stole the money and pretended to send it to PPRO?!

My bank did it's part. It sent the money. The ATM system (Multibanco) did it's part. It gave me an entity to send the money to. The entity was a legitimate company, PPRO.

PPRO's service is well known, to facilitate payments between companies. PPRO should have sent the money onward to Xsolla, which they say they did. Xsolla should have made your bank account 60€ fatter...

This should not be complicated to understand, i have explained it before... 

... again, I will send the transaction info to your support, but just in case you misplace it I will also post it here

I understand it takes a while to solve the problem, what I don't understand is that 11 days have passed and the problem hasn't even been identified!

I hope to hear from you soon with at least an explanation of what happened.

 

 

C_TEMP2679682.doc

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I just received another email from Xsolla asking me to send them the credit card info!

to which i replied, again, that I did not use a card to pay!

So, after 11 days, Xsolla's attempt to solve this is to ask me the same thing as almost a week ago...

exactly the same automated email...

The funny thing is, that email is a direct reply to my email on the 29th where I explain the whole thing and send attached the transaction details....


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update:

4 hours ago I received this email from Xsolla: 

Stacy (Xsolla Inc.)

Dec 2, 7:24 PM +05

Due to technical issues we are not able to process this payment to the game. We have credited this payment to your Xsolla balance. This balance will appear on the top right of the payment page. Here is an example of the balance https://www.evernote.com/shard/s455/sh/32038603-4235-4bba-8451-b837df99166f/7e409d2d85368a45. You can now make a payment again using this balance. In order to activate the balance, please proceed to the payment page, choose a payment option and you'll see an option to redeem your balance.

Thank you for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience.

 

Reading this I think, OK, finally problem solved...

So I go to the payment page like they say and I can find no balance on the top right corner!

What to do now?

I try to use Xsolla's live chat support.

After several attemps to explain at the live chat, i finally start a (somewhat) meaningfull conversation with the person on the other side.

This is a transcript of what was said:

 

 

Me: I have received an email from xsolla support saying that they credited 60€ to my xsolla balance, but when i go to use it to pay the game again it is not there

 

Just a moment...

 

Beverly: Hello, I'm happy to address this issue. Please wait for a minute or two while I look into it. Thank you! 
Sorry for the misunderstanding. According to our system, no balance was credited to your account. 

 

Me: so? what is happening now? are you going to fix it?
hello?

 

Beverly: According to your previous screenshots you did the payment not via Xsolla. In this case, please, contact the bank and ask what was the payment for. We can't see that the payment was made to Xsolla on the screenshot and we can't locate the payment in our system. 

 

Me: waht?
what?
the payment is for Dual Universe
it HAS to be via Xsolla!

 

Beverly: There is no Xsolla in your bank statement, as you can see yourself 

 

Me: the screenshot is from the dual universe page
Yes, there is ppro
because PPRO is where xsolla redirected me!
I received an email TODAY from Xsolla saying that you credited me with the money!
Was Xsolla lying?

 

Stacy (Xsolla Inc.)

Dec 2, 7:24 PM +05

Due to technical issues we are not able to process this payment to the game. We have credited this payment to your Xsolla balance. This balance will appear on the top right of the payment page. Here is an example of the balance https://www.evernote.com/shard/s455/sh/32038603-4235-4bba-8451-b837df99166f/7e409d2d85368a45. You can now make a payment again using this balance. In order to activate the balance, please proceed to the payment page, choose a payment option and you'll see an option to redeem your balance.

Thank you for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience.

 

this was the email!

 

Beverly: According to this screenshot snapengage.com/fileuploads/sna... you did not pay via Xsolla 

 

Me: i can't access this page!

 

Beverly: It seems that our agent did a mistake. 

 

Me: I PAID AT THE DUAL UNIVERSE SITE!
DUAL UNIVERSE WORKS WITH XSOLLA!
I DON'T CHOOSE
wihich agent?
i have exchanged so many emails...which agent?

 

Beverly: Please clarify do you see the charge marked as Xsolla in your bank statement? 

 

Me: NO, like i said, when i went to pay the game xsolla gave me several payment options, i chose the ATM system of my country (Multibanco), this gave me an entity and reference for payment
i only found out that xsolla had redirected me to PPRO days later!
THIS WAS NOT MY CHOICE!
It was Xsolla that redirected me to it's partner PPRO, without telling me!

 

Beverly: Oh, I understand now. 
If you successfully completed the payment it may have a "pending" status as bank transfers and cash payments can be processed from several hours to 5 days. As soon as we receive the funds you'll get the purchase on your account. Thank you for your patience. 

 

Me: do you?
THIS WAS 11 DAYS AGO!

 

Beverly: According to our system, your payment was made today. 

 

Me: what?
YOU ARE KIDDING ME!
I PAID 11 DAYS AGO
wait, maybe the payment you see today is xsolla trying to fix the problem!
can you confirm if the payment today was made by xsolla like they say on their email today?
hello?

 

Beverly: Please stand by online, as it may take some time to resolve the issue. I'll provide you with an update in a few minutes. Thank you for your patience. 

 

Me: ok i'll wait
Beverly: Thank you for your patience. 
Could you please send us the screenshot of your payment page? 

 

Me: i try to drag the image to this chat but it doesn't work...
 
 
File uploaded: 
Sem_1243.jpg

 

As you can see there is no credit on the payment page
it should appear on the top right of the payment page

 

Beverly: You cannot find your balance because you have been credited with it to another account. 

 

Me: which account?

 

Beverly: Your balance was credited to Backer account. 

 

Me: backer account? what is that?
how do i access it?
I only made one account with Dual Universe...
when i tried to pay the first time 11 days ago
this is very confusing...

 

Beverly: Are you sure that you have only one account in this game? 

 

Me: YES!
I made 1 account registered to my email: gvazpinto@gmail.com

 

Beverly: Thank you for informing us about this incident. We apologize for the delay. We're escalating the issue to our technical team. We'll immediately notify you when we receive any new information. Thank you for your patience and understanding. 

 

Me: you will notify me how? through this chat or email?
Hello?
should i wait here?

 

Beverly: We will notify you via the email 

 

Me: ok...

 

Beverly: Thank you for contacting us. Have a nice day! 

 

 

 

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I honestly don't know what to do anymore...

It's like I'm stuck in a time loop and every day the process goes back to the beginning...

I'm stuck in the dual Universe version of Groundhog day!

If anyone has an actual, serious, legitimate, feasible option that I can use, please let me know.

 

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I rly don't know where to start here. 

 

If I'm paying some company (xolla) and they don't resolve my issue after 3 days then I would call them and escalate it to someone who is in charge. If they don't do anything after some calls, then just retract the payment (call your bank). And just in case call my lawyer to be on the safe side.

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Hey @Lethys,

I wish I could retract the payment...but that ship has sailed. The payment went through immediately. It just didn't reach NQ!

It's funny that you say "when I pay some company (Xsolla)", because in reality I am not paying Xsolla, I am paying NQ! NQ pays Xsolla for their service! My 60€ is supposed to end up in NQ's bank account. At this point, it's anyone's guess where the money really is! I certainly have no idea. From the last things Xsolla has said I want to believe the money is with them...

Of course the idea of getting my lawyer involved has crossed my mind, but I really don't want to resort to that.

I'm also considering a formal consumer complaint against NQ with the EU. But, again, I don't want to go down that rabbit hole!

Call me naive, but I believe most problems can be solved between intelligent people of good will.

We'll see... 

 

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Crazy story ! The response from NQ is not correct they are responsible for the issue. when i pay for a pair of nike shoes if the sole is peeling of the day after i don't want to ear from Nike, "hey sorry, not our fault, we don't have any expertise in glue developpement, it's the guy who sell us the glue, call him, we are not responsible for this".

 

Ok, so call the guy who sell glue to Nike, is he going to say  " sorry, i'm not responsible for that, the guy who give me the raw material to make the glue is responsible" So that can be funny. 

 

NQ, be nice, just give access to this guy to DU until the problem has been resolved, the guy have some good arguments and seems to be honest. What does it cost to you to give him access ? You will earn respect if the response was "Sorry to hear that, we apologize for this, we give you access to the game, we will put pressure on our provider, Xsolla to solve the problem as quick as possible".

 

Lepus don't have to investigate the problem by himself, that's crazy.  

Lepus, i hope your problem will be resolved, DU is a very good game, i love it, i hope i will see you soon in the game.

Regards.

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@citoyen

Hi, thanks for the support! Maybe your post had an effect because finally, today, the problem has been solved!

Today I had the 60€ credited to me in the Xsolla payment page!

 

Anyway, I'm guessing they are going to close this thread soon so I just want to leave here a warning to anyone thinking of backing DU or buying it when it is released.

BE VERY, VERY CAREFUL WITH THE PAYMENT METHOD YOU CHOOSE WHEN PAYING THE GAME!!!

Look around and ask other people who have bought it (preferably in your country) what are the best payment methods.

JUST BECAUSE DUAL UNIVERSE OFFERS A BUNCH OF PAYMENT METHODS (IN MY CASE 16 DIFFERENT WAYS!), DON'T BELIEVE THEM!

My options were:

credit card, debit card, paypal, multibanco, skrill, pay by mobile, amazon pay, bitcoin, bank transfer, trustrly, skins cash, teleingreso, visa, maestro, onebip sms and razor gold!

I haven't even heard of half of these before...

 

Also, according to Xsolla, any type of bank transfer might take up to 5 days to go through.

Imagine making a game that works on a subscription system and some payment methods might take up to 5 days to work! you're playing the game all the time, you're really invested in it, and if for some reason you choose the wrong payment method you're out of the game for five days! And that's not even what happened to me, worst case scenario, they loose your money and it takes 12 days, dozens of emails and i don't know how long at the live chat support to get it back. And the amazing thing is that after all this no one tells you what exactly happened, how it went wrong. So you can't adapt because you don't know what went wrong in the first place!

Just...be careful, because if your money gets lost, it doesn't even make sense to pay again, it's not like I could by a contributor pack on top of another contributor pack! Imagine how long it would take to sort out that mess!

 

From what I hear (now that I got the game the servers are down...) the game is really nice, but sooner or later these guys at Novaquark will realize that making  an MMO is not just about having a small group of "artist" with a vision. It's also about how you relate to your customers, your player base. How you see yourself in terms of responsibility to them. Of course they are still in alpha, so they still have some time to make that change in mentality...

 

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8 minutes ago, Lepus said:

@citoyen

Hi, thanks for the support! Maybe your post had an effect because finally, today, the problem has been solved!

Today I had the 60€ credited to me in the Xsolla payment page!

 

... Or maybe because we did what we promised (try our best to help solving this situation) ? ?

Xsolla staff doesn't read this forum and solving payment issues can take several days.

To our knowledge, you were the first to experience this kind of issue among thousands of pledgers.

We can understand the situation was frustrating but it was an exceptional case (despite what you may think).

Sometimes there are a series of issues that lead to unbelievable situations and you were just very unlucky.

 

Anyway, we're glad your issue has been solved.
The topic is now going to be locked. 

 

P.S: Yes, we already know that making a MMORPG is a huge undertaking.

 

Best Regards,

Nyzaltar.

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