Error Code 401

I checked SE BBB's report, they're not registered with the BBB and they take forever to respond to comments on there.

http://www.bbb.org/losangelessiliconvalley/business-reviews/video-games-dealers/square-enix-in-el-segundo-ca-13168063

They were making the mules to spam legit players with tells and to use gardening, NPC items to make gil. Only a idiot would actually store gil on characters that were going to disappear after the trial period expired. They were using the stolen credit card numbers only to gain access to the characters (SE system at the time did require a valid billing source to even allow you to reach to the game title screen).


You can defend that trash as much as you want I won't change my mind about them. Are you one of them ? Or a customer ? lol

Look I had one of the most proficient RMT customers of my server at one point be on my LS. It was an horrible experience which the LS never recovered from. I have very good reasons to hate both the RMT and people who buy gil. :P

there was no money being lost if a stolen card was only used on a trial account, never mind the fact their original region lock was only by country and didn't have an absurd blocking system

the block system is implemented by globalcollect, NOT square enix

globalcollect doesn't care about rmt, trial accounts, or anything of the sort.. globalcollect is liable for chargebacks so they use extensive screening procedures to try to rule out clients they deem risky

you can hate rmt all you want, but it's not related to this issue.. plenty of other game providers accept payment smoothly while still combating rmt

You don't know what I am talking about. Seriously I just said my account is Japanese. Are you even paying attention ?

Oh yea I reported Paypal for some shady shi t and got all my money back :) Guess SE does not need a good reputation.

so better to call globalconnect and resolve this issue?

It is not global collect unless they blatantly lied to me. Talked to them twice and they said it was in ses end. Se rep on the phone also made several references to how their bank refuses a lot of charges.

By all means try global collect but I doubt you'll get far

http://www.globalcollect.com/consumers?&__hssc=133321553.4.1412558832791&__hstc=133321553.1c98e7fcc8e45559b16382d3492a6be4.1412558832790.1412558832790.1412558832790.1&hsCtaTracking=f0998517-8fae-4d9f-bae6-466135d98e39|e0f1b67c-a5d2-4aa1-9c65-613a3eb1425c#contact

There's their contact page. Their phone hours are weird though.

This is SE fault, this is part of their crackdown on stolen accounts and what not that you see a warning for when you login to the game everyday since 2011. The system has been doing this since 2011. The amount of innocent players affected by it have drastically increased though which should be alarming but SE wont even bat an eye lash.

In this instance, GC is their "bank" as it is the one processing the transaction for them, and it wouldn't surprise me if anyone lied to shift the blame. 3 way call the ***, or keep getting escalated up the call center until you get to somebody that matters.

The only one to blame here is SE, because I can only assume Globalcollect is working as intended. If SE were the ones getting screwed on this you can bet a change would have been made already. Since it's only the customers, they couldn't care less.

Right now, i bought some crysta for more 2 months.

Tried first with my cc, and nothing, 401. Then used mothers, and got some crysta, repeated the operation, and everything went ok also. So my cc: 1 fail, moms cc: 2 sucess.

I dont remember, but does the 401 issue an "unauthorized" kind of error? Ive been reading some stuffs in internet, a faq from pagseguro (something similar to paypal), it says this kind of httperror is due to invalid credentials. One of the recomendation is to verify token valid. Wondering if having ffxi token could help in this.

For Japanese accounts they're doing it since 2008. That's what I was saying lol.

I have the token, multple cc's ,etc. I'm more inclined to believe they keep a history of ip locations, this is the first time in a long time ive tried paying from a different location than my house. I noticed a couple other people saying they did the same under the same circumstances.

I really don't think it's Global Collect doing it. I'm pretty sure they just deal with the credit card data. Again, I did speak with them and while SE and their minions have a pretty bad history of 'he-said-she-said' finger pointing, but this is the email I got:

At any rate, they were easy to get ahold of, once phone support was open, and they responded to my email quickly.

Update~

I waited around 48 hours or more and relogged into SE account from home this time and used the first credit card that was denied again, got a 401 again. Tried the same card to purchase Crysta instead and it worked, not sure why its doing that but for now i'm glad it worked at all. So my account is back online but the method of purchasing Crysta was the first one to work. Luckily I didn't get locked out for 30 days.

Edit: Should also mention I had sent in a ticket to SE support saying that i've tried all their recommended fixes which didn't work so please send back any info that doesn't including lying to your customers and they did in fact send an email back saying they'll look into the issue and not the normal generated response.

What do you think is getting declined?

I really don't understand the whole system or how this stuff works, so someone actually in the field free to step in.

From my understanding, Global Collect is just collecting and processing cc data, and then passing that on to SE's bank who is the one accepting or declining it. Again, SE support guy on the phone made several references to issues with their bank and not knowing why their bank is declining stuff, just that it is. Global Collect is not a bank, they're just a payment service provider. During this time I also mentioned that I had talked with Global Collect and they told me it wasn't on their end and again he just talked a bit about their bank declining a lot of stuff, with different reasons being all the obvious BS that's been listed a hundred times over (addresses not matching, scripts blocking transactions, etc).

Considering the only people I've seen to get around really constant 401 blocks were to send emails with SE's financial division with their credit card information to have their card whitelisted with square's bank, this kinda supports that it is on SE's end and not on Global Collects. (Pretty sure this is only an option available to EU, every post I've seen about this has been an EU player and every time I personally mentioned it to Square support no one had any clue what I was talking about).

And again, I realize se and their associates have a pretty terrible history of going around in circles and blaming each other, but this is last correspondence I had with Global Collect:


I have posted the contact info for Global Collect numerous times, again feel free to call if you think it'll help. They're a lot quicker than SE at responding to complaints. There also isn't a ridiculous wait que time. Lady on the phone tried pretty hard to help and didn't try to rush me off the line like SE reps sometimes tend to do >_>

Their email is cs@globalcollect.com (got a reply back within 24 hours from that email) and their phone numbers are here :(Even though it says their phone support is 24/7, they have some wierd EU 9am-10pm hours. I was able to call and get through at about 4am).

Lucky for you, I waited several days on a mule account that no way should have had a 30 (or even 2-3 block) on it and I still got a 401 :/

Getting all sorts of results off google for 401 errors, though the most common is "unauthorized" pertaining to invalid credentials.. so not sure if that's what's actually going on with SE because I used my CC everywhere on the internet no problem, and I know all my information is correct :/

Blagh!

I have tokens on all 3 of my accounts btw and I've been having absurd amounts of problems for months. Doubt it's anything relevant to having a token or not.

the process should go like this:

-order is registered with globalcollect
-payment is collected by globalcollect
-globalcollect tells SE the payment is confirmed
-SE performs necessary operations

globalcollect most likely only sends a bulk sum to se once a month or whatever

globalcollect is the one on the hook for chargebacks, not SE.. if the blocks are intentional they're being applied by globalcollect

it's perfectly possible SE screwed up their implementation somewhere down the line and a bad communication is making transactions appear to fail and triggering globalcollect's security stuff(i wouldn't think it is though, since before ultimatepay was removed it'd go from the ultimatepay page directly to globalcollect.. your information wasn't visibly being sent to a SE domain and those errors still existed)

Its not luck. It was to check about the account blocked, and though i cant be conclusive as possibly 401 can happen for multiples reasons, its not true also that 401 will instantly prevent any kind of trasaction, as you saw with your account that should not blocked, but its still getting 401.

As a last thing to check, ive noticed most people here tried prepaid cc, dont know if thats related, but i did my transactions with a post paid cc. Btw, it was my visa cc that got blocked, my mothers is a mastercard, and for 2 purchases, it went fine.

Btw, why is this page larger than normal?

Btw, to add agaisnt the account block theory, i remember back in february when i first noticed this problem, i had no clue about this blocking issue. So, you can guess how many times i repeated the same operation. Maybe thats why my visa cc never again was the same >.>...

But i never stayed more than a day without playing, so even after a dozen of tries, it was somehiw solved by another payment method, though at that time i had lots of options.

About the globalcollector possibility, i think its a problem totally from SE side. Because when i had countless payment options, it never meant that all were possible. Normally i used one (for example paymentez), and keep paying till 401 poped, then changed to next. Paypal case was curious, as i never managed a payment through there, but i always received a message that everything was processed in paypal, but then refused by SE side.

Well, the punchline is: If you cant solve your problem by yourself, SE wont do it for you. Staying passive or waiting wont get you anywhere, so keeping trying is the only way to solve that, as you can see in some posts above, waiting 30 days didnt help at all. Its a fact the credic card can get blocked, but it isnt true that your account will be blocked.

If youre about to give up, if youre interested, pm to me your account management login info, that i can try my moms cc, though i just did 2 transactions yesterday, and most likely the next will be blocked (and mom will be pissed if i keep using her card for games >.>....)

Ultimate Game Card and Rixty were never subject to the account blocks, because it's impossible to chargeback a fake currency.. I'd guess that's how you got it activated before.

They added a big red warning not to try repeatedly or your account will be blocked, so I think it's fair to say that accounts are being blocked.

That also means they noticed the problem, hopefully they aren't considering it solved just by adding that..

They've been quiet about it for quite a long time now. Would have to assume that if they're planning to do anything at all, we'd hear about it very soon. Otherwise... well...

Good god please don't tell people to keep trying. Especially if they don't know how long their block is. I was told specifically by se my block was probably 30 days. I tried once on a mule account after 6 days and no go.

If you have a block on your account and you retry before that block is up you reset that block. That applies to the 30 day block as well. (Was told this by se rep and have read it numerous times over from other people)

So yeah. If you get a couple 401s don't keep trying. In my case was no less than 5 but no more than 7. 30 day block.

Wow, that's a really HELP I AM TRAPPED IN 2006 PLEASE SEND A TIME MACHINE system, when people can't log in, eventually they'll retry logging in, if they're unaware of a block on their account then they'll just keep resetting the block.

What i meant to say is that, unless something changed last months, is not true your account will be blocked. The cc yes, that will block. I can try the same blocked cc in any account, and that wont work, no matter what. But if the account was blocked, why did i still recharged my crysta yesterday? Same account, 401 in my visa, normal payment with mastercard. Also, back in february, if my account could be blocked, probably i would be perma right now, because ive no clue about this block thing, so i spend around 1h just trying, changing pc and trying again, changing browser and trying again, restarting pc and trying. Still, somehow i manage to buy crysta.

I didnt see the red warning comeatmebro said, and obviously its safer to do what they say if that can be solved at some point, but my opinion is that SE dont know what they are saying, based in my own experience (what they say and what i do are contradictory). If they had any clue, they would solve that long ago. If they dont know what to do, they will suggest anything they think correct, and in fact, repeating the transaction with cc will hurt your cc, thats a fact, but it shouldnt hurt your account.

Again, thats based in my own experience, maybe i just had luck, maybe i dont know whats going on, but i think its safe to say SE also dont know what they are doing, and while they cant come with a solution, people are deprived from their activities, without any official position about this problem.

http://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/44683-Dev-Anyone-from-SE-Can-we-seriously-please-get-a-response-to-payment-problems?p=528381&viewfull=1#post528381

There was no reason to remove the paypal option in the first place, unless they had to recode the entire section entirely to remove the other sub options of that section, which is highly likely.

They should have planned that ahead, it's not like they didn't know the UGC section of that company was shutting down.

Oh well. At least the bandwagon worked and we got an official response, and can hope we can have a solution once they can fully implement the paypal payment.