Customers claim they are unable to stop payment on their credit cards through BioWare’s website.
Update: BioWare reported to The Escapist the problem was strictly a website display issue and it was resolved shortly after it was identified, sometime yesterday afternoon.
Original: With a release date of December 20th and a purchase of The Old Republic coming with a month of free game time, tomorrow is the point when many customers must decide whether to keep paying a monthly fee or to cancel their subscription. Unfortunately for some people who have decided to forego the $15 monthly charge, BioWare’s website is making it difficult to unsubscribe. The button to “Cancel my Subscription” will not display for some customers on their account page and BioWare has acknowledged they are investigating the problem. Many are concerned that the problem will magically be fixed after credit cards are charged and are angry that community managers are locking or deleting threads which offer a direct link to the cancellation page.
“We are currently investigating the missing cancel button issue that some of you are reporting,” stated S1-H8 in a thread that now seems to be deleted in the TOR official forums.
“It’s obvious that either you purposefully removed the ‘unsubscribe’ button or it’s just a browser bug, but either way, you are as a company morally responsible to ensure that your customers are able to cancel if they wish,” posted a customer with the handle of Xugos.
Upon hearing these reports, I checked my own account page and found the cancellation process and button to appear just fine for me. I’ve contacted BioWare to see if these reports are bogus or if they have a statement for whether cancellation requests will be honored before a new charge is placed on customer’s cards. I will update this post as soon as I hear from them.
In the meantime, if you really need to get out of The Old Republic, community managers at BioWare recommend canceling your subscription the old fashioned way – with a phone! Oh the horror! What have we become?
Thanks to Kyle Baran for the tip.
