I get this problem too, but what makes it odd is its only on Lusternia, every other IRE game is more than happy to let me by credits, but about 4 months ago Lusternia just stopped letting me, complaining about an invalid address that isn't invalid, its copied word for word off the bill, its the same address that all the other IRE games accept. Since they all use the same verification for payment I can only conclude its the fact that the company is Lusternia LLC, However my bank claim that they aren't stopping these payments, soooooo something is just very screwy with buying credits in Lusternia.


And also...The Customer is not always right, you just have to make them think they are right, and give them what they really wanted without them noticing.

Actually, the ideal is to give them whatever you want to give them, and convince them that it's what they really wanted and they were right for wanting it.

The company will not do anything that takes money out of their pockets - as you demonstrated, they're not actually losing much business by not accepting paypal, people will just use e-check instead. They make more money on it, and don't have to deal with the headache of paypal. A few people having difficulty here and there isn't really enough for them to change their policy, they can just recommed to everyone "Use an e-Check, it's easier!"

Well that's not totally true either. Big companies will often run sales and marketing campaigns that lose them a lot of money in the hope that they will score more frequent customers and later sales.

But Anyway...moving along...

Yeah, the E-check option requires, for some odd reason, an address, even though my bank says E-check does not require an address at all. Not only that, but they charge about $5 to process the E-check.

And in response the the "companies don't do things that will take money out of their pockets" remark:
Isn't me not being able to pay them $168.99 worse than them having to pay a small fee to allow me to send them $168.99? Remember, if your customer can't pay you, then what's the point of running a buisness?

Lastly, I've resolved the problem after much headache, however there's still a bad taste in my mouth about the whole ordeal. As a loyal customer of IRE for four years now, I'm rather peeved that the company is so unwilling to take a small fee in exchange for my continued patronage.

Would you like to pay the transaction fee for PayPal on top of the $168.99 you're paying for credits? If IRE were to start accepting PayPal, that would be the most likely solution: they would pass the transaction onto the customer. It isn't economical for IRE to accept a payment method that many people prefer to that would cost them money. Additionally, the risks associated with PayPal further detract from any benefit they would gain from using the service. Finally, not having PayPal is not a major financial drawback, as many people (yourself included) will find another way of sending in their money.

In other words, you play an extremely complicated text based game. Is it really that comparably more difficult to get up and send in a check?

If your words as a single customer had any bearing on the way IRE did business as a whole, this thread would certainly have not been the way to garner their attention. Just because something doesn't work for you, doesn't mean that an entire company has to shift the way they make financial transactions. The customer may always be right (in a sense), but one loud, irritating one does little to change people's minds.

And though you may have a problem with the way Verithrax conveys his opinion and advice, he's entirely correct.

As for why they will not use PayPal, I believe that point has already been addressed in this thread, and I won't go into that in greater detail.

Except this isn't a problem for one customer. It happens to many - including myself.

Point in case.

Whether a "point in case" or not, I believe Richter's post (quoted below) should be one you would do well to take notice of. If you wish your request to be taken up you should try to make it in a manner which does not lead the entire forum community to write you off as an arrogant twerp with few social graces.

...huh, I'm in trouble

Can this thread be moved to Real World, or possibly Idiots?


If we're going to digress and argue about customer service, this doesn't belong here. The bolded above is more about game mechanics than how transactions are processed.

I have another revolutionary idea.

Start accepting American Express.

AmEx (at least from my experience in Britain) Charge 6% on transactions and only allow you to go through them. Normal bank charges (for all the other cards) is 3% (even less for Debit cards, the British debit cards charge 30p per transaction)