The 12th Fleet: Starbase Valhalla

Im going to set the scene here.

On the 21st October 2014, a few people on this forum would have heard about the issue I had with Steam.

Basically I tried to make a payment via Steam for a game, however during an unusually lengthy authorization process, a message prompt on the screen that my Transaction was cancelled due to a "Unknown Reason", I checked my email for any payment confirmation yet I did not receive any, so under the impression that my transaction was indeed cancelled I tried again, after yet another lengthy Authorization period the message popped up that Transaction was successful, I checked my email to find that I had received 2 payment receipts sitting in my inbox both charging me for the same amount with exactly the same time-stamp.

I tried to contact Steam Support the very moment I saw the emails, yet I could not get through to them because their web page was down. The next day I checked my bank statements to check if this was a fluke and it seems Steam took 2 payments of £25 had been taken out of my account, I managed to get in contact with them and explained in detail had what happened and politely asked if they could returned half the money they charged me.
A week later Steam replied to my message with a generic Copy 'n' Paste response about how they do not do refunds, and that was pretty much all I got out of them.

Unhappy about this I later went to my local bank and explained the situation in detail, they put me through to their Fraudulent claims department and I explained the situation to them as well and they agreed to take this further, Pretty soon I got the £25 back that I asked for.

Right now (20/11/14) I am greeted by this message:


Because I got my money back from them, they have decided to enforce a 9 week embargo of Steam features and a permanent ban of future use of my Bank card If I do not tell the bank to cancel my fraudulent claim against them.
Im doing what I believe was the right thing, they had no right to take double what I authorized or hold on to that money and if they agreed to refund me the money in the first place, there would have been no need for me to go through these channels, I feel like I am now being blackmailed.

This dispute may seem quite petty to some, especially over the amount in question. But to those on a very low wage in a pretty despairing work of work, this amount can be a entire days worth of work, its enough to last a whole weeks worth of grocery and its worth a lot to me.

Is there anything I can do?

call costumer service and them get a hold of upper management. then explain what happened.


this is why i use scratch cards.

contact your bank too.

Iv tried to contact Steam, explained that because of their half-arsed and unhelpful reply the first time I tried to contact them I had no option but to contact my bank.
I also explained the situation to them again and stated that this was an error on their part and I will not be held responsible for this matter.

Steam Support are infamous for their "quick response and quality of service"

I dont see how my bank can get involved, its Steam that is blackmailing my account.

Hi Proto,
Sorry you are being put through this nonsense! Honestly that is infuriating. I guess you just have to repeatedly try your luck with steam customer care and hope in your 100 tries, one makes it good. You really need it go through good ones, so I suggest keep trying for that 1% chance it might go good.

Let us know how things go with this.


Gorov

Blackmail is definitely what they are doing, I hate that they are doing this to you

Your bank has already done everything they can.

File a complaint with the Washington state Attorney General or whatever your local equivalent is (I see you paid in EDIT:pounds and don't know how this stuff works over there, or if the Washington AG handles foreign complaints - I know Michigan does, so I imagine a real state should also)*. Even if the AG is not going to pursue action, they still require a reply, which has to come from either legal or reasonably high management and not customer service. I've found these complaints make a decent "cheat code" when the people you talk to refuse to escalate a claim.

*-Don't bother with the BBB, last I knew Valve paid for accreditation, which in a dispute means they basically can't be found wrong and get to decide whether the resolution was positive or not.

I love Steam and the service but when something goes wrong their support is among the worst. I lost my daughter and wife's Steam account because of a failure on their end and they were unwilling to resolve it. Sadly they do not have a live contact number that they will assist through.

It is sad that SoE is on my banned list and I think they set a better example of support service than Steam.

Im afraid I have even more bad news.

It seems that my Star Trek Online account has been banned for a unknown reason, I checked my emails as suggested on Cryptic's Support page yet I have found no such emails, not even in my Junk Mail.

I can only suspect Steam has something to do with this.

That's what happened to the guy who blamed Cryptic for getting his steam account banned, it was the other way around. If there's a chargeback on a steam account, they report it as straight out fraud to all associated accounts. The good news there is that in his case, since the bad card wasn't used for his STO account they lifted it.