Current Press Releases

Blizzard Clarification of Charge Backs

August 5, 2009 — As a result of emails sent by Blizzard Entertainment on 7/28/09 to a small group of their consumers, there has been a great deal of confusion and misinformation created in blogs, forums and the media.

The Blizzard issued emails contained confusing information concerning chargebacks for some World of Warcraft consumers who pay their subscription via their phone bill.

Some of the misinformation related to PaymentOne allegedly being responsible for the "chargebacks" and somehow being at fault for the confusion.

On 8/5/09, Blizzard published a formal clarification to its consumers and the market that PaymentOne was in no way at fault.

The full clarification statement issued by Blizzard is at http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=18983418629&sid=1&pageNo=1 and is also contained below.

Per Blizzard's clarification, "these problems are not the fault of PaymentOne, which acts as an intermediary between the local telephone companies and Blizzard Entertainment."

Also noted in Blizzard's clarification below is that "the chargebacks were issued by telephone companies and not PaymentOne." As an intermediary, PaymentOne simply provides the information from the telephone companies to Blizzard.

As further clarification, chargebacks issued by the local telephone companies are the result of 1) the consumer receiving a refund directly from the phone company or 2) the consumer not paying their bill in full. Similar to credit card chargeback process, PaymentOne provides this chargeback information from the telephone companies to its merchants on a daily basis. This process of handling chargebacks has been well established for many years and is well proven through billions of dollars of billings.

If you have further questions on this matter, please contact PaymentOne at 1-800-747-4028 or email Rob Uhrich at ruhrich@paymentone.com.

Clarification Statement From Blizzard

The communication that was provided to the players affected by these temporary suspensions was unclear -- we want to take this opportunity to clarify that these problems are not the fault of PaymentOne, which acts as an intermediary between the local telephone companies and Blizzard Entertainment. Note that the chargebacks were issued by the telephone companies and not PaymentOne. We regret any confusion over this issue and will be reinstating all of the affected accounts while we conduct a further investigation.

Please note that those affected players who recently sent in payments have had their World of Warcraft accounts restored, and no further action is required. With regard to the accountholders whose accounts still show missing payments, we will be contacting them directly to further address any outstanding issues.

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