Square - Enix - PlayOnline ripoff Internet

We tried out Final Fantasy IX back in Dec. 03'. We hated it, and only ended up playing it for a month and went back to EQ.

We cancelled our accounts and went on our merry way.

Well, February of this year, 2005, my hubby and i got an email from PlayOnline Inc., saying we were late in paying our bill. For those that don't know, when you sign up for FF IX, there are two parts to it. An actual FF IX account, and an account to Playonline (which is what connects you to the FF IX servers).

We call the company to find out what's up, and the Playonline company tells us that we reactivated her account in January and have been playing all month. When they went to bill us, (I'll get to that later) the credit card was invalid, so they wanted a good card #.

Firstly, I tell them that we didn't reactivate anything, in fact, we threw away their games over a year ago after we cancelled our accounts. (All four accounts, you have to cancel the FF IX subscription AND the PlayOnline Inc. account, which we did for both our accounts)

What we surmissed happened, is that someone got my game box somehow since the preceding year, and reactivated the account with it. The Game manual for FF IX had spaces in it for all the registration keys and whatnot, and we had written our game information in them. (There were ALOT of codes).

The thing is, the credit card that was tied to that account has long been invalid and discarded by us. We don't even know what credit card it was. (We've consolidated since then)

The company would not help us at all in february. We couldn't access our "account" since we didn't have any of the member ID information, and they wouldn't verify that it was us because we couldn't give them the last four of the credit card!

They reactivated that account on an invalid credit card, and let someone play for the entire month before trying to charge the card, and then they were saying we owed them money. Riiggghhhttt. The person on the phone let slip that they only check the cards once a month, so that's how they got to play without the card being checked first. Whatever, we figured, it's not our problem. We told them to cancel our account long ago, they shouldn't even have our information in the first place. We told them to cancel anything that's currently in their system on us.

Well, yesterday we get an email. This flippin company says now we owe them for TWO months of play. They have the GALL to say, "if you don't resolve your billing issues with us, we will be forced to TERMINATE YOUR ABILITY TO ENJOY OUR GAME." PLEASE Do! They go on to say how it will affect our credit rating as we will be assigned to a collection agency.

i call and goe CRAZY, as i should. They activated an account that still had our information in it, when it should have been cancelled, and was activated with a credit card that doesn't exist, and let them play for TWO MONTHS, and now expect us to somehow have a bill for it?

The person on the phone was rediculously unhelpful. Wouldn't let us talk to a supervisor, etc. Wouldn't give us any numbers, emails, of people that were higher to get this resolved. Once again, they directed us to log into their SHABBY website with our member ID, which we DO NOT HAVE, or verify us by the credit card on file, which we have no IDEA what it is.

Should we worry about this? Since we've had the account over a year ago, we've moved 8 states over and gotten all new phone #'s. The information that PlayOnline inc. had was all wrong, they don't have our current address, phone # or anything. Is it even possible for them to take action against us?

Patricia
Virginia Beach, Virginia
U.S.A.