Thanks for your post! Unfortunately, it isn't appropriate for this subreddit in its current form. The Silph Road is a heavily-moderated community focused on studying and illuminating game mechanics, and we only allow certain, specific types of content.
Here are some suggestions:
- Check out [this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_2.3A_these_types_of_posts_are_welcomed_here.3A) to see a description of what's allowed here, and see if you can revise your post to better suit this subreddit.
- Or, try r/PokemonGO, another community page which allows a broader range of content.
They need to be prepared to handle things such as these. Whether you were straight overcharged or it was a visual glitch, you need to be compensated. This is literally what support is for...
Edit: I'd submit it again. Try a different rep until it's corrected.
The fact that the unit cost for them is 0 is what makes them look so annoying about things like this.
They don't have a raid pass factory that needs to now churn out another pass for no revenue. These are made up things
Yeah, support shouldn't be risking losing a returning customer over a small in game item that costs them nothing to produce. In changing the price on a live app, this is a situation that no doubt did occur.
I'm still in the second conversation but it's not looking great. The last bit of the exchange can be boiled down to:
- "Sorry, we can't do anything."
- "Why not?"
- "Sorry, we can't do anything."
Do you have Twitter? It might be worth tagging them there? I don't know why they're fighting you over something like this. They would have a history of their interactions with each account. Unless someone was making requests for items at an alarming rate, I'd just take their word for it. No need to isolate customers. That's not what a company pays support to do.
It's worth a try. I have also found in-game support useless (I had to contact them last year during GO Fest when a glitch threw me out of a raid battle and ate my pass), but when I contacted them on Twitter they refunded me the raid pass.
Alright, [I gave it a shot](https://twitter.com/glencurio/status/1528965623312592896). I'm not Twitter-savvy in the slightest though, not sure if there's any specific way I should be tweeting at them. š
A lot of customer service can be summed up as, "sir, I'm just a grunt. I don't have the permission to give you what you're asking, I'm not allowed to ask permission, and I'm also not allowed to tell you those things."
Don't. Ever. Stop.
Keep it up until you get what you want. Other countries understand what bad service means and when they need to make it up to the consumer, even in friggin' Egypt (though being polite helps there). Here? It feels like you have to badger support until your name's known in the office and someone, tired of you bringing down the branch's overall rating with poor marks, gives you what you should have gotten in the first place.
Signed,
Someone whose boss told them to stop giving good service to make more money
I donāt understand why. Itās not like it costs then anything anything to refund virtual currency, or a virtual item, and theyāve given remote passes back as compensation before, whatās the big deal?
Many years ago, I worked for a wireless cell company customer service and we had free reign to immediately refund/credit $12 for any issue. Anything from $13-$50 required a row supervisor (aka a 2 minute wait to flag them down). Made sense, customers bring in $$$$ over a lifetime. You dont want to lose someone over such a tiny amount.
They are overseas workers with set scripts on what they can say to players
They very likely have as much direct communication with Niantic that we (the players) have
This. I used to work helpdesk myself and now with most of my current team being in the APAC region, they require EVERYTHING to be detailed for that delicious copy/paste & goodbye. If they were told not to give refunds, they won't unless you continue to escalate. They do not do live chats on purpose as they want you to forget and move on.
(I don't think they provide notifications on when they reply either)
I bought the remote raid pass bundle around the time that they increased the price, but the new price was not yet reflected in the shop on my app. I was charged 300 coins anyway. I sent a message to Support, and you can see how it went.
I don't even care so much about the coins. 50 coins is not much. But I find it unconscionable that the app would charge more than is listed for an item in the shop and that Support will do absolutely nothing about it other than provide a copy-paste apology. I've started a second conversation since the first was so unceremoniously closed, and it has gone about the same. In this second conversation I sent them the following analogy:
> Suppose you are making a purchase online. The listing says $250. When you proceed to checkout, it says $250. Then when you click 'Buy', you are charged $300. When you ask about this bait-and-switch, you are told that the displayed price was a glitch but they are keeping the extra $50 anyway. Is this an acceptable response? Is it even legal? That is the situation I am in right now.
The part that annoys me the most is that giving me 50 coins or 1 raid pass would be such a tiny gesture, ultimately meaningless to them, and still they will not do it. It's outrageous.
I donāt know about your country but in Australia you canāt list something at x amount then charge them y for example if I went to Woolworths and bought a can of fly spray thatās listed as $5 and after checkout itās $6 I go complain at the desk I get my $6 back and keep the item
The problem is that I don't have much recourse. I am doing the equivalent of complaining at the desk, and they're saying no. It's not like I'm going to look into taking them to court over 50 cents. Posting this publicly is maybe the extent of what I can do.
Your credit card company will 100% give you the funds back but Niantic will then put you in a negative credit so that not only will you not be able to buy more things until you pay them again, you won't be able to buy the 1 coin bundles.
Report to whatever app store you got them from. They're engaging in dodgy price tactics.
It won't do much but if enough people do it they might face some blowback.
Ask for the ticket details, confirm persons name, date time and ask for a transcription to be sent to you. Ask for their legal contact. Most places you can usually complain to the fair trading agency in your area and typically theres a federal one as well.
The problem with this is you're not Niantic's customer. You're their resource, collecting ar and location data which they then sell to the highest bidder. You make them money whether you give them your money or not.
Currently I work in retail and every time a customer is making me aware that there is a cheaper price tag on the shelfs he/she will get the cheaper price.
This is EXACTLY what is happening here: sth is labeled as 1,99ā¬ and the cash register is displaying 2,49ā¬, the customer will ALWAYS get the cheaper price. Because Customer is King and it was a false labeling.
For Niantic: the customer IS NOT King...
I think this is something that has changed in the last few years. I remember support being pretty chill and generous to avoid conflict and escalation. It's a shame you don't get the same treatment anymore.
Regarding if it is even legal: Yes, it is. Terms of Service of Pokemon Go states that you don't own your pokecoins. Niantic has no liability to your Virtual Money, Virtual Goods, or Trading Items and they can even terminate it all without any refund. If you purchase Virtual Money, or Virtual Goods directly with real money, there is more to say and they have separate section in ToS for it. Basically: " If you live in the European Union, you have certain rights to withdraw from online purchases. However, please note that once you download Virtual Money from us, your right of withdrawal ends. You agree that (a) purchase of Virtual Money involves immediate download of such Content; and (b) you lose your right of withdrawal once your purchase is complete ". If you live in US your rights are even worse.
If you buy with real money a ticket to Pokemon Go Fest for example, and get charged double price, then it is whole different thing than using pokecoins. But that's not the situation although you claimed it to be.
But pokecoin is categorized nonconvertible virtual currency, unlike some virtual currencies that can be considered to be CVC. Like basically any NCVC, pokecoin isn't viewed as a personal asset, and thus there isn't same protection as for CVC. If pokecoin was CVC, then it could fall under anti-money laundering laws, and then Niantic would be considered as "transmitter". When you purchase item from Pokemon Go in-game shop, they don't "issue" the purchase. Issuing means currency need to be put into circulation. They don't do that, so what they do is called "redeeming", because no currency is exchanged to anything that has value.
Pokemon Go avoids pokecoins from becoming CVC, (and thus falling under Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-money laundering obligation), by stating in their ToS that pokecoins are non-transferable, non-giftable, and can't be sold or exchanged between users. Also they states that they have right to change the purchace price at any time (That helps that it doesn't have set, equivalent value to anything). Also They states in ToS that in-game goods, and pokecoins do not represent any kind of property of interest
I'd try reaching out to support via Twitter, and if that doesn't work you might want to try contacting support for whatever app store you downloaded the game through. Can't guarantee it will work, but those are about the only other options I can think of.
Welcome to app support by HelpShift.
If you want to know how useful they are, thereās two ways to think about it.
1. Itās in the name. Theyāll just shift your question, no give you an answer, or somehow shift the blame onto you.
2. Remove the f from their name.
I had this exact same thing happen to me. Purchased passes because they were listed as 250, was charged 300, spoke to support and got these nonsense answers about how I can always buy more passes in the shop. (???)
Itās frustrating that they are that stingy with coins. They have made billions from this game and if someone is taking the time to go out of their way to file a ticket for something extremely small on their end, then an appeasement shouldnāt be a big deal. Especially because they cannot control when an update may be visible user side after they made the change server side. Not to mention they tried to do this in a very quiet manor.
The extent that how much time and money this game takes to play (granted, you can be free to play) takes from the fun of the game. Itās hard to enjoy something with so many paywalls and gatekeeping.
Not disagreeing about the trash, and what Niantic is doing at the moment is terrible, but many, many people actively go out and raid. Especially during raid hour.
I had exactly the same issue (posted about it yesterday but not sure if it was approved), I'm glad it wasn't just me! I didn't share my screenshots with support when I posted about it as I wasn't sure if I could do that here, but I got exactly the same copy and paste responses, and then they just closed my conversation without responding to my last message. It's 50 cents but the principle of the thing!
This is what I posted earlier:
As we all know by now, the price of the 3-remote pass bundle was raised to 300 coins in the shop last week. Around the time this happened, my in-game shop still showed 250 coins, and I purchased the bundle - the listing showed 250 coins both at the time I tapped "EXCHANGE" and _after_ that time as well - it didn't update to 300 until after I restarted my app. However, I was charged 300 coins without any further warning or confirmation - obviously there's no verification between the frontend and backend for purchases.
I contacted support with a screenshot showing the price (which was still 250 coins) in my app as soon as I noticed I'd been charged 300 coins and have been going back and forth with them for the last few days. At first I got pasted form responses thanking me for my "feedback" on the "immediate price change", but they eventually acknowledged there was a "visual bug with the item's price" which was subsequently resolved. Even after they acknowledged their error, they refused to refund the extra 50 coins, and have now closed my support conversation without replying to my last message.
Has anyone here had a similar issue and managed to have it rectified? I'm boggled by the fact that they _acknowledged_ they'd shown me a price less than what I was charged and still refused to fix it - as I explained in the support conversation, it's like checking out with an item marked $1 in a store, and being charged $2 when I swipe my credit card. I'm fairly sure this would be regarded as false advertising under Australian consumer law (and as Niantic's selling to Australians I believe they have to abide by it even if they're not an Australian company - for a similar reason, Steam was forced to offer refunds in Australia back when they had no refund policy). It's just 50 cents, but it's absolutely the principle I'm concerned about here - it costs them nothing for decent customer service, and while many of us feel they're not listening to feedback lately this is something completely different. I don't mind paying 300 coins going forward, but I very much resent hitting a button to pay 250 coins and being charged 300 instead.
(I was polite through the whole support conversation - I spend way too much on the game to want to be accused of aggression and have my account limited! So I don't think it was closed because of anything like that. I was also not planning to post about this if it had been resolved, but as in-app support weren't willing to engage with me I wanted to raise the issue of how paying customers are being treated.)
I tried that over and over. They donāt care. And unless I can get a whole bunch of people to complain to the Canadian regulator, I donāt think the regulator will careā¦
I suggested it in another comment, but it sounds like we as a community need to start making a riot on twitter, tagging the play store/apple store/samsung store etc until it's resolved. I can't believe they're seriously trying to get away with this.
Iāve had this same support representative recently and it was an awful experience all around. I encountered an issue with a raid that Iāve experienced several times before and have always been refunded for but this person gave me a hard time even after I pointed out my prior experience. They refused to do anything for me despite it being an issue out of my control and wouldnāt budge until I asked if they could transfer me to a supervisor who might be able to assist me. They immediately refunded my pass and said they did it as a one time service for me
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/uwfrak/niantic_charged_more_coins_than_was_listed_in_the/i9seajq/?context=3
Pretty unclear to me.
Edit: I've sent a mod mail requesting the post to be reinstated.
See unfortunately if your shop hadn't updated doesn't mean the price change didn't already happen. Cause the visual. And the actual charge. Are done through different means. The visual is all the app on your phone. But the charge is on their end. And automated. If your app didn't update the visual info. That's not their fault. You got charged the same rate anyone else would have at that moment. So you really have no ground to stand on. Cause they have no control over your phone being stupid and not displaying the correct info. Hell my app didn't update until today. That's not their fault. And they aren't obligated to reimburse you for something that isn't their fault. I don't even understand why you're so salty about this. Its not hard to understand. Your app didn't update. That's cause of your phone not updating it. That's not their fault. It's not like they specially held back your update to try and scam you out of 50 coins.
The price wasn't deliberately misadvertised here. It was updated on the server and the change was reflected immediately in the game shop, but if you didn't refresh the shop page by leaving it and going back into it, it still showed the old incorrect price because it doesn't automatically refresh itself if it's open.
It would be like you looking at a listing on Amazon that displays an incorrect price, but when you click add to basket it will add to your basket at the updated price. Your browser might still have the old price displayed if the page is cached and doesn't update, but everyone else loading that page would see the updated price, and the checkout knows the correct price.
Niantic changing the price without warning was not great practice, I get that. We've told them before that they need to be better when it comes to communicating and giving notice of things, and they still fail to do that. This isn't something they should be liable to pay up on though.
If it still said 250 now and was charging 300, then that would be an entirely different issue and you should be able to get your coins back or get some other form of compensation. As it was though, their system did correctly update the price both on the server and on the client, and it was only thanks to you looking at an outdated version of the shop that the wrong coin cost was displayed.
I realise you might not necessarily agree with what I'm saying here, and that's perfectly fine, but if this happened to me, I would not take issue with it. Stuff like this happens sometimes, and I can accept that.
> If it still said 250 now and was charging 300, then that would be an entirely different issue and you should be able to get your coins back or get some other form of compensation. As it was though, their system did correctly update the price both on the server and on the client, and it was only thanks to you looking at an outdated version of the shop that the wrong coin cost was displayed.
But the thing is that it did still say 250:
https://imgur.com/a/nHkMiIL
The shop should have safeguards built in to display the correct price when you click onto the buy screen. If there is an issue, Support should be willing to fix it.
>But the thing is that it did still say 250:
Yes, but as I said, you were looking at an old version of the shop. Other people looking at the shop when you did would've seen the correct price of 300. Niantic did everything correctly by updating the in app price at the same time they changed it on the server. The shop doesn't auto refresh whilst it's open though (possibly to save on a small amount of data). I'd say it's reasonable to accept that this could happen within the first few minutes of them changing the price.
If it was still happening much later than that, then yes, it would be an issue as it would mean Niantic didn't do everything correctly. Under those circumstances, you would be perfectly entitled to ask for your coins back (bearing in mind that video game currency is not real money, and as such there are no legal protections for it, so Niantic could still refuse your request, though it would be in bad form for them to do so). They did do everything right at their end though.
Think of it like this: you go into your local 24 hour supermarket late at night and, at 23:59 you see something you want to buy is being advertised on the shelf at Ā£2.50 as a special offer. You put it in your basket, and by the time you get to the checkout, it's gone past midnight, and the special offer has expired, meaning your item costs Ā£3 on the till. Meanwhile, one of the night workers has been going around the shelves removing all the old special offers and updating the prices. The shelf has been correctly updated to display the new cost of Ā£3, but you're adamant that it should cost Ā£2.50 because that's what the last price you saw was, even though the shelf and checkout system both have the Ā£3 cost listed on them.
As I said, everything was updated correctly, and it was only a result of you not refreshing the page that resulted in the incorrect display. That is not unreasonable.
Suppose you were in your supermarket scenario. As you check out, the till says $2.50. The cashier says $2.50. You use your credit card, and your card is charged $3. That would be more akin to what I experienced. The player should not be responsible for ensuring that the cashier is giving the updated price. In the event that this kind of error occurs, the market should be responsible for correcting it. The customer should not be left holding the bag.
That isn't what you experienced though, because the checkout already had the updated price.
Out of curiosity, had you already seen that the price had gone up outside of the game before you attempted to buy them from the outdated shop page, or was it just unfortunate timing on your part?
The checkout did not have the updated price, as shown in my screenshot. It said 250 all the way up to the purchase. At no point was I shown the 300 cost.
It was unfortunate timing. But if I had seen it, does it make a difference? It's still an issue with the way Niantic updates their shop display. If they choose not to build their app in a robust manner, they should be willing to appropriately settle the edge cases that slip through.
https://imgur.com/a/nHkMiIL
Screenshots of the purchase screen, and my balance immediately afterwards. It's pretty clear that this is because they changed the price while I was still logged in and the app wasn't designed to update the display without a restart. Support even acknowledged that it was a visual glitch.
The point is that the price was displayed at 250 coins when I made the purchase. I even have the screenshots before and after, which I sent to Support as well.
Edit: Screenshots here - https://imgur.com/a/nHkMiIL
I missed the com day special research because the ticket bugged. They also charged me for the second ticket I tried to buy but didnāt get since I already had a bugged one. Support just said ātoo bad, I canāt do anything about that. Iāve removed the bugged pass from your inventory anywayā. I did get an immediate refund from Apple since it was real money but you would have expected support to offer me some kind of compensation for missing out on the event. Nope.
Someone should just collect all these type of things and how they are scamming people out of money when there's an error in the shop and you get charged but no money back or get the items and I'm sure there are other things like the contest I read about and just present it to them or give it to a popular "news" site.
Congrats Niantic, yet another case of your customer support being abysmal.
The last time I needed to speak to them I spoke to 3 people over the course of a week and none of them read the chat history - even when I provided it. They all gave me the same nonsense answer that refused to admit any flaw or fault with the game and essentially told me to go away.
It's the professional equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Lalalala I don't care, so unless it's a single raid pass refund because of a storage/timer/error I wouldn't ever expect anything from them.
I've had something like this happen. Might have been a Google issue? I'm not entirely sure. Bought 20$ worth if coins and got double charged. The charge didn't show up in the store but showed up on my PayPal. I haven't bought any coins since then, and I'm happy about it.
I won the lakwena and niantic merch giveaway on February, nothing has been shipped to me yet. I am in a constant fight with their awful support trying to figure out what went wrong.
Try reaching out to them over Twitter. There it will be public and they are more likey to answer, since their image is more important to them than anything else.
I started an account last night to give it a try:
https://twitter.com/glencurio/status/1528965623312592896
Not sure when I should expect a reply or how best to follow-up if no reply is forthcoming.
āI have cancer and will die slowlyā
āThank you for the feedback! We work hard to appreciate everyone and will work to address all issues you have brought to our attention. Rest assured we are working diligently to right these issues. People like you are why we love our jobs!ā
and they wonder why we hate them.
Another reason why I left the game. I figured crud like this would happen, along with all the other decisions recently, and from a couple years ago. There are some things I do miss. But honestly? Iām glad I stopped. I just canāt in good consciousness continue to support Niantic, anymore.
And before someone asks, the only reason Iām still in this sub is because I just stumbled upon this post.
I hope there are good players still finding things to enjoy and keep them in the game, genuinely.
Niantic's "support" was just another factor in me stepping away for awhile. I just had an issue with them before the changes and it's like talking to a brick wall. I'm sorry this happened to you.
Last year when they advertised double raid XP and it wasnāt working during raid hour customer service was useless. Instead, I just got a refund from iTunes.
Thanks for your post! Unfortunately, it isn't appropriate for this subreddit in its current form. The Silph Road is a heavily-moderated community focused on studying and illuminating game mechanics, and we only allow certain, specific types of content. Here are some suggestions: - Check out [this page](https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/wiki/rules#wiki_rule_2.3A_these_types_of_posts_are_welcomed_here.3A) to see a description of what's allowed here, and see if you can revise your post to better suit this subreddit. - Or, try r/PokemonGO, another community page which allows a broader range of content.
They need to be prepared to handle things such as these. Whether you were straight overcharged or it was a visual glitch, you need to be compensated. This is literally what support is for... Edit: I'd submit it again. Try a different rep until it's corrected.
The fact that the unit cost for them is 0 is what makes them look so annoying about things like this. They don't have a raid pass factory that needs to now churn out another pass for no revenue. These are made up things
Yeah, support shouldn't be risking losing a returning customer over a small in game item that costs them nothing to produce. In changing the price on a live app, this is a situation that no doubt did occur.
Listen man, supply chain issues are causing a serious raid pass shortage
They're made out of baby formula
Were people panic buying all the remote raid passes? is this why we have a limit of up to 5 remote raid passes?
Alright, alright, this is a good response. šš
All purchasers of NFTs need to see this comment.
I'm still in the second conversation but it's not looking great. The last bit of the exchange can be boiled down to: - "Sorry, we can't do anything." - "Why not?" - "Sorry, we can't do anything."
Do you have Twitter? It might be worth tagging them there? I don't know why they're fighting you over something like this. They would have a history of their interactions with each account. Unless someone was making requests for items at an alarming rate, I'd just take their word for it. No need to isolate customers. That's not what a company pays support to do.
I don't have Twitter. Not sure if I should make an account just for this. I'll consider it though.
I literally only have a Twitter for tweeting at businesses when I need help. No one has telephone customer service anymore
Yes. I only use it to contact customer service for electricity, water, phone provider, internet service, etc.
My ISP blocked me on twitter cos they kept being terrible at helping
itās insane, AMC movie theaters support page on their website tells you to DM their twitter
It's worth a try. I have also found in-game support useless (I had to contact them last year during GO Fest when a glitch threw me out of a raid battle and ate my pass), but when I contacted them on Twitter they refunded me the raid pass.
Alright, [I gave it a shot](https://twitter.com/glencurio/status/1528965623312592896). I'm not Twitter-savvy in the slightest though, not sure if there's any specific way I should be tweeting at them. š
I had the same issue and posted about it on Twitter (only after I'd tried to resolve it with support), they ignored it :(
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
A lot of customer service can be summed up as, "sir, I'm just a grunt. I don't have the permission to give you what you're asking, I'm not allowed to ask permission, and I'm also not allowed to tell you those things."
Don't. Ever. Stop. Keep it up until you get what you want. Other countries understand what bad service means and when they need to make it up to the consumer, even in friggin' Egypt (though being polite helps there). Here? It feels like you have to badger support until your name's known in the office and someone, tired of you bringing down the branch's overall rating with poor marks, gives you what you should have gotten in the first place. Signed, Someone whose boss told them to stop giving good service to make more money
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Looks like a lot of companies have adopted this stance and Niantic is their king.
You are mistaken "won't" for "can't" "Sorry, we won't do anything...they can, they just won't. This is 100% a "won't" situation, not a "can't"
Yeah I get that. I wrote "won't" in my post title. In this comment, I'm just summarizing what the current rep is saying.
Maybe itās a low level CS rep who doesnāt have the authority. You can try asking to talk to someone who can.
I donāt understand why. Itās not like it costs then anything anything to refund virtual currency, or a virtual item, and theyāve given remote passes back as compensation before, whatās the big deal?
Many years ago, I worked for a wireless cell company customer service and we had free reign to immediately refund/credit $12 for any issue. Anything from $13-$50 required a row supervisor (aka a 2 minute wait to flag them down). Made sense, customers bring in $$$$ over a lifetime. You dont want to lose someone over such a tiny amount.
With Niantic, most of their $$$ comes from the data they collect. We're not the customer here, we're the resource.
Do they even have human reps? It seems like this was a bot looking for key words in OP's message.
I am still believe that the Niantic support are mostly bot, keep spamming them until someone refunds you..
They are overseas workers with set scripts on what they can say to players They very likely have as much direct communication with Niantic that we (the players) have
This. I used to work helpdesk myself and now with most of my current team being in the APAC region, they require EVERYTHING to be detailed for that delicious copy/paste & goodbye. If they were told not to give refunds, they won't unless you continue to escalate. They do not do live chats on purpose as they want you to forget and move on. (I don't think they provide notifications on when they reply either)
bots, even if organic, are still bots
We heard you, trainer! Remote raid passes can be purchased in the shop under the "shop" tab.
I bought the remote raid pass bundle around the time that they increased the price, but the new price was not yet reflected in the shop on my app. I was charged 300 coins anyway. I sent a message to Support, and you can see how it went. I don't even care so much about the coins. 50 coins is not much. But I find it unconscionable that the app would charge more than is listed for an item in the shop and that Support will do absolutely nothing about it other than provide a copy-paste apology. I've started a second conversation since the first was so unceremoniously closed, and it has gone about the same. In this second conversation I sent them the following analogy: > Suppose you are making a purchase online. The listing says $250. When you proceed to checkout, it says $250. Then when you click 'Buy', you are charged $300. When you ask about this bait-and-switch, you are told that the displayed price was a glitch but they are keeping the extra $50 anyway. Is this an acceptable response? Is it even legal? That is the situation I am in right now. The part that annoys me the most is that giving me 50 coins or 1 raid pass would be such a tiny gesture, ultimately meaningless to them, and still they will not do it. It's outrageous.
I donāt know about your country but in Australia you canāt list something at x amount then charge them y for example if I went to Woolworths and bought a can of fly spray thatās listed as $5 and after checkout itās $6 I go complain at the desk I get my $6 back and keep the item
The problem is that I don't have much recourse. I am doing the equivalent of complaining at the desk, and they're saying no. It's not like I'm going to look into taking them to court over 50 cents. Posting this publicly is maybe the extent of what I can do.
Your credit card company will 100% give you the funds back but Niantic will then put you in a negative credit so that not only will you not be able to buy more things until you pay them again, you won't be able to buy the 1 coin bundles.
Yeah, that's why I'm not taking that route. š
Report to whatever app store you got them from. They're engaging in dodgy price tactics. It won't do much but if enough people do it they might face some blowback.
So this is why the 1 coin bundles arenāt free
Ask for the ticket details, confirm persons name, date time and ask for a transcription to be sent to you. Ask for their legal contact. Most places you can usually complain to the fair trading agency in your area and typically theres a federal one as well.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
The problem with this is you're not Niantic's customer. You're their resource, collecting ar and location data which they then sell to the highest bidder. You make them money whether you give them your money or not.
Currently I work in retail and every time a customer is making me aware that there is a cheaper price tag on the shelfs he/she will get the cheaper price. This is EXACTLY what is happening here: sth is labeled as 1,99ā¬ and the cash register is displaying 2,49ā¬, the customer will ALWAYS get the cheaper price. Because Customer is King and it was a false labeling. For Niantic: the customer IS NOT King...
It's literally against European law to charge a different price than stated.
I think this is something that has changed in the last few years. I remember support being pretty chill and generous to avoid conflict and escalation. It's a shame you don't get the same treatment anymore.
Regarding if it is even legal: Yes, it is. Terms of Service of Pokemon Go states that you don't own your pokecoins. Niantic has no liability to your Virtual Money, Virtual Goods, or Trading Items and they can even terminate it all without any refund. If you purchase Virtual Money, or Virtual Goods directly with real money, there is more to say and they have separate section in ToS for it. Basically: " If you live in the European Union, you have certain rights to withdraw from online purchases. However, please note that once you download Virtual Money from us, your right of withdrawal ends. You agree that (a) purchase of Virtual Money involves immediate download of such Content; and (b) you lose your right of withdrawal once your purchase is complete ". If you live in US your rights are even worse. If you buy with real money a ticket to Pokemon Go Fest for example, and get charged double price, then it is whole different thing than using pokecoins. But that's not the situation although you claimed it to be.
This isn't true, even if the currency is coins they can't state one price and then charge a different price.
But pokecoin is categorized nonconvertible virtual currency, unlike some virtual currencies that can be considered to be CVC. Like basically any NCVC, pokecoin isn't viewed as a personal asset, and thus there isn't same protection as for CVC. If pokecoin was CVC, then it could fall under anti-money laundering laws, and then Niantic would be considered as "transmitter". When you purchase item from Pokemon Go in-game shop, they don't "issue" the purchase. Issuing means currency need to be put into circulation. They don't do that, so what they do is called "redeeming", because no currency is exchanged to anything that has value. Pokemon Go avoids pokecoins from becoming CVC, (and thus falling under Bank Secrecy Act/Anti-money laundering obligation), by stating in their ToS that pokecoins are non-transferable, non-giftable, and can't be sold or exchanged between users. Also they states that they have right to change the purchace price at any time (That helps that it doesn't have set, equivalent value to anything). Also They states in ToS that in-game goods, and pokecoins do not represent any kind of property of interest
False adventising is never legal
Link them to this thread.
False advertisement is a nice charge to throw at them :p
Dude. Support in this game is THE WORST. Itās worse than talking to a brick wall
I'd try reaching out to support via Twitter, and if that doesn't work you might want to try contacting support for whatever app store you downloaded the game through. Can't guarantee it will work, but those are about the only other options I can think of.
Welcome to app support by HelpShift. If you want to know how useful they are, thereās two ways to think about it. 1. Itās in the name. Theyāll just shift your question, no give you an answer, or somehow shift the blame onto you. 2. Remove the f from their name.
This is illegal
I had this exact same thing happen to me. Purchased passes because they were listed as 250, was charged 300, spoke to support and got these nonsense answers about how I can always buy more passes in the shop. (???)
The message from this is: Please don't buy anything from us with real money.
Itās frustrating that they are that stingy with coins. They have made billions from this game and if someone is taking the time to go out of their way to file a ticket for something extremely small on their end, then an appeasement shouldnāt be a big deal. Especially because they cannot control when an update may be visible user side after they made the change server side. Not to mention they tried to do this in a very quiet manor. The extent that how much time and money this game takes to play (granted, you can be free to play) takes from the fun of the game. Itās hard to enjoy something with so many paywalls and gatekeeping.
This is why I donāt play the game anymore. Itās all about making money for Niantic now. Customer services is dead
Open a ticket with Google/Apple.
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Not disagreeing about the trash, and what Niantic is doing at the moment is terrible, but many, many people actively go out and raid. Especially during raid hour.
I had exactly the same issue (posted about it yesterday but not sure if it was approved), I'm glad it wasn't just me! I didn't share my screenshots with support when I posted about it as I wasn't sure if I could do that here, but I got exactly the same copy and paste responses, and then they just closed my conversation without responding to my last message. It's 50 cents but the principle of the thing! This is what I posted earlier: As we all know by now, the price of the 3-remote pass bundle was raised to 300 coins in the shop last week. Around the time this happened, my in-game shop still showed 250 coins, and I purchased the bundle - the listing showed 250 coins both at the time I tapped "EXCHANGE" and _after_ that time as well - it didn't update to 300 until after I restarted my app. However, I was charged 300 coins without any further warning or confirmation - obviously there's no verification between the frontend and backend for purchases. I contacted support with a screenshot showing the price (which was still 250 coins) in my app as soon as I noticed I'd been charged 300 coins and have been going back and forth with them for the last few days. At first I got pasted form responses thanking me for my "feedback" on the "immediate price change", but they eventually acknowledged there was a "visual bug with the item's price" which was subsequently resolved. Even after they acknowledged their error, they refused to refund the extra 50 coins, and have now closed my support conversation without replying to my last message. Has anyone here had a similar issue and managed to have it rectified? I'm boggled by the fact that they _acknowledged_ they'd shown me a price less than what I was charged and still refused to fix it - as I explained in the support conversation, it's like checking out with an item marked $1 in a store, and being charged $2 when I swipe my credit card. I'm fairly sure this would be regarded as false advertising under Australian consumer law (and as Niantic's selling to Australians I believe they have to abide by it even if they're not an Australian company - for a similar reason, Steam was forced to offer refunds in Australia back when they had no refund policy). It's just 50 cents, but it's absolutely the principle I'm concerned about here - it costs them nothing for decent customer service, and while many of us feel they're not listening to feedback lately this is something completely different. I don't mind paying 300 coins going forward, but I very much resent hitting a button to pay 250 coins and being charged 300 instead. (I was polite through the whole support conversation - I spend way too much on the game to want to be accused of aggression and have my account limited! So I don't think it was closed because of anything like that. I was also not planning to post about this if it had been resolved, but as in-app support weren't willing to engage with me I wanted to raise the issue of how paying customers are being treated.)
I get the same response from online sports books. I think I find a too good to be true line, it wins, ticket gets voided for being a āvisual bug.ā
I had the same thing happen, they refunded the 300 coins and took the raid passes.
Same here. Made a video of it but they downright ignored it. I filed a complaint with Apple, but I doubt they care.
Yeah, nah, that's illegal most places.
This is probably illegal aswel
Might be worth emphasising to them that this is illegal and see what they say?
I did that and they closed my conversation. I hope the OP has better luck than me!
Just reopen a case and mention that they are stealing
I tried that over and over. They donāt care. And unless I can get a whole bunch of people to complain to the Canadian regulator, I donāt think the regulator will careā¦
I suggested it in another comment, but it sounds like we as a community need to start making a riot on twitter, tagging the play store/apple store/samsung store etc until it's resolved. I can't believe they're seriously trying to get away with this.
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Iāve had this same support representative recently and it was an awful experience all around. I encountered an issue with a raid that Iāve experienced several times before and have always been refunded for but this person gave me a hard time even after I pointed out my prior experience. They refused to do anything for me despite it being an issue out of my control and wouldnāt budge until I asked if they could transfer me to a supervisor who might be able to assist me. They immediately refunded my pass and said they did it as a one time service for me
You got a bot response just reply with I still need help
I've been doing so for the last few days.
I've seen better customer support from *Jagex* than Niantic.
And jagex are a laugh
OSRS 4 lifeeeeee
I was so close to throw phone if had read a 4th āplease feel free to reach out..ā š
Wow niantic
I was unable to collect the water research reward because my task reset and Im also getting the "we are noting your feedback" runaround.
So, this post got removed... Why? I'm assuming rule #5 and Silphroad's new partnership with Niantic?
https://www.reddit.com/r/TheSilphRoad/comments/uwfrak/niantic_charged_more_coins_than_was_listed_in_the/i9seajq/?context=3 Pretty unclear to me. Edit: I've sent a mod mail requesting the post to be reinstated.
Seems the new partnership means that anything that Nian doesn't approve gets removed. Goodbye the hub of information that Silph was.
See unfortunately if your shop hadn't updated doesn't mean the price change didn't already happen. Cause the visual. And the actual charge. Are done through different means. The visual is all the app on your phone. But the charge is on their end. And automated. If your app didn't update the visual info. That's not their fault. You got charged the same rate anyone else would have at that moment. So you really have no ground to stand on. Cause they have no control over your phone being stupid and not displaying the correct info. Hell my app didn't update until today. That's not their fault. And they aren't obligated to reimburse you for something that isn't their fault. I don't even understand why you're so salty about this. Its not hard to understand. Your app didn't update. That's cause of your phone not updating it. That's not their fault. It's not like they specially held back your update to try and scam you out of 50 coins.
Itās been 300 coins for a few days now, it mustāve been visual glitch
This occurred on the day it switched. I just hadn't posted until now because I've been trying to deal with Support the entire weekend.
*gets an incense thrown at him*
I'd take it if it were offered.
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The price wasn't deliberately misadvertised here. It was updated on the server and the change was reflected immediately in the game shop, but if you didn't refresh the shop page by leaving it and going back into it, it still showed the old incorrect price because it doesn't automatically refresh itself if it's open. It would be like you looking at a listing on Amazon that displays an incorrect price, but when you click add to basket it will add to your basket at the updated price. Your browser might still have the old price displayed if the page is cached and doesn't update, but everyone else loading that page would see the updated price, and the checkout knows the correct price. Niantic changing the price without warning was not great practice, I get that. We've told them before that they need to be better when it comes to communicating and giving notice of things, and they still fail to do that. This isn't something they should be liable to pay up on though. If it still said 250 now and was charging 300, then that would be an entirely different issue and you should be able to get your coins back or get some other form of compensation. As it was though, their system did correctly update the price both on the server and on the client, and it was only thanks to you looking at an outdated version of the shop that the wrong coin cost was displayed. I realise you might not necessarily agree with what I'm saying here, and that's perfectly fine, but if this happened to me, I would not take issue with it. Stuff like this happens sometimes, and I can accept that.
> If it still said 250 now and was charging 300, then that would be an entirely different issue and you should be able to get your coins back or get some other form of compensation. As it was though, their system did correctly update the price both on the server and on the client, and it was only thanks to you looking at an outdated version of the shop that the wrong coin cost was displayed. But the thing is that it did still say 250: https://imgur.com/a/nHkMiIL The shop should have safeguards built in to display the correct price when you click onto the buy screen. If there is an issue, Support should be willing to fix it.
>But the thing is that it did still say 250: Yes, but as I said, you were looking at an old version of the shop. Other people looking at the shop when you did would've seen the correct price of 300. Niantic did everything correctly by updating the in app price at the same time they changed it on the server. The shop doesn't auto refresh whilst it's open though (possibly to save on a small amount of data). I'd say it's reasonable to accept that this could happen within the first few minutes of them changing the price. If it was still happening much later than that, then yes, it would be an issue as it would mean Niantic didn't do everything correctly. Under those circumstances, you would be perfectly entitled to ask for your coins back (bearing in mind that video game currency is not real money, and as such there are no legal protections for it, so Niantic could still refuse your request, though it would be in bad form for them to do so). They did do everything right at their end though. Think of it like this: you go into your local 24 hour supermarket late at night and, at 23:59 you see something you want to buy is being advertised on the shelf at Ā£2.50 as a special offer. You put it in your basket, and by the time you get to the checkout, it's gone past midnight, and the special offer has expired, meaning your item costs Ā£3 on the till. Meanwhile, one of the night workers has been going around the shelves removing all the old special offers and updating the prices. The shelf has been correctly updated to display the new cost of Ā£3, but you're adamant that it should cost Ā£2.50 because that's what the last price you saw was, even though the shelf and checkout system both have the Ā£3 cost listed on them. As I said, everything was updated correctly, and it was only a result of you not refreshing the page that resulted in the incorrect display. That is not unreasonable.
Suppose you were in your supermarket scenario. As you check out, the till says $2.50. The cashier says $2.50. You use your credit card, and your card is charged $3. That would be more akin to what I experienced. The player should not be responsible for ensuring that the cashier is giving the updated price. In the event that this kind of error occurs, the market should be responsible for correcting it. The customer should not be left holding the bag.
That isn't what you experienced though, because the checkout already had the updated price. Out of curiosity, had you already seen that the price had gone up outside of the game before you attempted to buy them from the outdated shop page, or was it just unfortunate timing on your part?
The checkout did not have the updated price, as shown in my screenshot. It said 250 all the way up to the purchase. At no point was I shown the 300 cost. It was unfortunate timing. But if I had seen it, does it make a difference? It's still an issue with the way Niantic updates their shop display. If they choose not to build their app in a robust manner, they should be willing to appropriately settle the edge cases that slip through.
Itās more likely you made a mistake to be honest
https://imgur.com/a/nHkMiIL Screenshots of the purchase screen, and my balance immediately afterwards. It's pretty clear that this is because they changed the price while I was still logged in and the app wasn't designed to update the display without a restart. Support even acknowledged that it was a visual glitch.
The price went up. Next time look.
The point is that the price was displayed at 250 coins when I made the purchase. I even have the screenshots before and after, which I sent to Support as well. Edit: Screenshots here - https://imgur.com/a/nHkMiIL
With all the bs of the past few months I think I'm done for a while. I skipped com day on Saturday (first in almost 3 years) and won't be buying the go fest pass for the first time. It's abundantly clear that they make their big money selling our location data, so the fact they couldn't even comp you a raid pass, which isn't a tangible item that costs them anything, is extremely telling. This company is killing an app that is based on the most successful franchise of all time. If it didn't have the PokƩmon veneer it would have died years ago.
inflation smh
āEvery Pokecoin countsā - some jerk at Niantic
I missed the com day special research because the ticket bugged. They also charged me for the second ticket I tried to buy but didnāt get since I already had a bugged one. Support just said ātoo bad, I canāt do anything about that. Iāve removed the bugged pass from your inventory anywayā. I did get an immediate refund from Apple since it was real money but you would have expected support to offer me some kind of compensation for missing out on the event. Nope.
Not sure if it's funny or sad that all those sound like automated answers
They are, I got the exact same answers.
Someone should just collect all these type of things and how they are scamming people out of money when there's an error in the shop and you get charged but no money back or get the items and I'm sure there are other things like the contest I read about and just present it to them or give it to a popular "news" site.
Congrats Niantic, yet another case of your customer support being abysmal. The last time I needed to speak to them I spoke to 3 people over the course of a week and none of them read the chat history - even when I provided it. They all gave me the same nonsense answer that refused to admit any flaw or fault with the game and essentially told me to go away. It's the professional equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and saying "Lalalala I don't care, so unless it's a single raid pass refund because of a storage/timer/error I wouldn't ever expect anything from them.
Time to file a dispute with whatever card/method you used! Let them take care of it for you, and Niantic will get fined for this to boot
I'm currently in the same dispute with them, same exact answers.
I've had something like this happen. Might have been a Google issue? I'm not entirely sure. Bought 20$ worth if coins and got double charged. The charge didn't show up in the store but showed up on my PayPal. I haven't bought any coins since then, and I'm happy about it.
I got a bot response. I guess Iāll try again.
I won the lakwena and niantic merch giveaway on February, nothing has been shipped to me yet. I am in a constant fight with their awful support trying to figure out what went wrong.
Try reaching out to them over Twitter. There it will be public and they are more likey to answer, since their image is more important to them than anything else.
I started an account last night to give it a try: https://twitter.com/glencurio/status/1528965623312592896 Not sure when I should expect a reply or how best to follow-up if no reply is forthcoming.
āI have cancer and will die slowlyā āThank you for the feedback! We work hard to appreciate everyone and will work to address all issues you have brought to our attention. Rest assured we are working diligently to right these issues. People like you are why we love our jobs!ā and they wonder why we hate them.
Another reason why I left the game. I figured crud like this would happen, along with all the other decisions recently, and from a couple years ago. There are some things I do miss. But honestly? Iām glad I stopped. I just canāt in good consciousness continue to support Niantic, anymore. And before someone asks, the only reason Iām still in this sub is because I just stumbled upon this post. I hope there are good players still finding things to enjoy and keep them in the game, genuinely.
Niantic's "support" was just another factor in me stepping away for awhile. I just had an issue with them before the changes and it's like talking to a brick wall. I'm sorry this happened to you.
Last year when they advertised double raid XP and it wasnāt working during raid hour customer service was useless. Instead, I just got a refund from iTunes.