Steam sale problems

[Teknic]

So I recently downloaded Steam and tried to purchase some games during the Christmas sale. Well, the first two purchases went through just fine, but an automated error occurred on their end that ended up temporarily deactivating my account.

My account just recently got reactivated again, but this has caused me to miss just about all of the Steam sale. I asked the tech if I could just buy the sale items for their sale price and he essentially said tough luck, I have to pay full price now.

Has this ever happened to anybody else, and if so did they manage to get another service rep to help them out?

 

[chubbyfatazn]

According to Section 9c of their subscriber agreement:

"C. NO GUARANTEES.

VALVE DOES NOT GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S)."

Seems you're stuck out of luck.

The last two times my account was put on hold I emailed support and had the block removed within two hours. It's probably better that you missed the sale, that way your wallet and your marriage/relationship will stay intact.

Edit: Unless the titles you were looking for were popular ones, like Super Meat Boy or BC2. Steam might do a recap day of the best deals towards the end of the sale (although they already did one on the 26th).

 

[CPA]

Just wait until January 2nd, when a lot of this week's items will be on sale again.

 

[Teknic]

Wow you got your account turned back on after two hours? It took me something like 4 days.

I'm pretty sure that subscriber agreement wouldn't hold up in court though if someone got a really bad virus.

Oh well, maybe its best to not have so many games as you suggested...but hopefully there will be another chance at the end of the sale like CPA suggested. Didn't know about that.

 

[paperfist]

According to Section 9c of their subscriber agreement:

"C. NO GUARANTEES.

VALVE DOES NOT GUARANTEE CONTINUOUS, ERROR-FREE, VIRUS-FREE OR SECURE OPERATION AND ACCESS TO STEAM, THE SOFTWARE, YOUR ACCOUNT AND/OR YOUR SUBSCRIPTIONS(S)."

Man that's some fine print. While Steam has pretty much worked for me without trouble for years I wouldn't find that agreement funny if it were the other way around.

 

[zerocool84]

Man that's some fine print. While Steam has pretty much worked for me without trouble for years I wouldn't find that agreement funny if it were the other way around.

Sounds just like any digital service, Xbox Live, PSN, all the same.

 

[power_hour]

Might be worth trying to escalate to a sympathetic CSR. If you can call them or get their attention on their forums they might honour sale pricing. Can't hurt to try. Every issue I have had with them, including a full refund has been dealt with excellent service.

If the games are fairly old then waiting for the next sale makes sense as well.

Honestly, the issue you mention is news to me and troubling to say the least. I don't buy that many games from them, but to have your account deactivated sounds a bit much. I need to find out how common that problem is because that sounds a bit scary considering the potential for future problems.

Best of luck. Report back with your findings.

 

[Teknic]

Might be worth trying to escalate to a sympathetic CSR. If you can call them or get their attention on their forums they might honour sale pricing. Can't hurt to try. Every issue I have had with them, including a full refund has been dealt with excellent service.

If the games are fairly old then waiting for the next sale makes sense as well.

Honestly, the issue you mention is news to me and troubling to say the least. I don't buy that many games from them, but to have your account deactivated sounds a bit much. I need to find out how common that problem is because that sounds a bit scary considering the potential for future problems.

Best of luck. Report back with your findings.

Well, I tried another rep and they wrote the same paragraph verbatim, so I suppose its not possible, even for one game.

In case you are curious about the circumstances, I had just downloaded the Steam client about a month ago and hadn't used it. I set it up so that Steam had my credit card memorized, and when the holiday sale began, I bought a game for myself and for my brother. Without logging out, I bought a game a few minutes later for a friend. The first two purchases went through fine, and the third failed (odd, since it's using the same saved credit card info during the same session).

I actually didn't know the transaction failed until I tried to logon the next day. During purchase it said it went through just fine.

Not sure what triggered my account deactivation, but it was deactivated from Dec. 22-27.

 

[JTsyo]

might be some kind of fraud protocol since you were buying games for others with a little used account.

 

[KaOTiK]

If your account gets locked like that again during a sale, just make another Steam account and purchase the games you want as gifts, wait till your original account is unlocked and send the gifts from your new account to be redeemed on your original one.

 

[power_hour]

I would contact your Credit Card company and ask them about the transactions. Might be worth a quick phone call to confirm if everything was ok. Ask them about those purchases.

I had a situation with a retailer where my CC was being frozen because of some overzealous security measures from the bank's Visa. Once I called my bank's Visa dept and cleared things up, never had another problem.

Or to put it another way, use another credit card with a new account as suggested by another poster. And I would never allow Steam to keep my CC info on file. Just a little to convienient for my tastes.

And sorry for your troubles as I know it sucks when you lose out on a good deal.

 

[Teknic]

That's actually a great idea -- creating another account and gifting it back to myself. I probably would've done that myself, but at the time I just figured that Steam would be able to give me a raincheck on the whole thing (since it was their fault) so I didn't think too hard for alternatives.

Oh well. My other credit card purchases went through just fine...

 

[Modular]

Man that's some fine print. While Steam has pretty much worked for me without trouble for years I wouldn't find that agreement funny if it were the other way around.

Damn, what happens if (when) they go under and we can't play our games anymore?

I mean, I love them just like many others and have handed over a decent amount of money to them, but this still concerns me.

 

[zokudu]

Damn, what happens if (when) they go under and we can't play our games anymore?

I mean, I love them just like many others and have handed over a decent amount of money to them, but this still concerns me.

Valve has stated that if they go under due to going bankrupt they will enable a way to download all games you own one last time to save for future use. I believe the fine print is protecting themselves against being sued for not being allowed to log into steam as the OP was unable too or an outage of some kind..