No chance to buy short-time Lotro Market offers without credit card?

[Zorwik]

Hello there,
(I'm from Germany, so I beg your pardon for my probably bad English.)

as I already have bought 3 of the 4 "old" expansions (and have Helm's Deep, too), I've been interested in buying the expansion Rise of Isengard, I'm still missing.
But as only the Quad Pack was announced (on Thursday 28th in the German forums and in the launcher, iirc), the Quad Pack offer didn't seem to be interesting for me.
Accidentally on Friday 29th another user told me of the Black Friday offer on the English forums, where it was said "... all previous expansions are also 50% off ..." - it's a pity that this wasn't announced elsewhere (neither on the German forums, nor in the launcher, nor on facebook, nor on twitter).

So I immediately tried to buy the Rise of Isengard expansion on Friday noon (CET, which should be Friday 6 AM Eastern Time) during the announced offer time "Black Friday: 50% off Quad Pack - 11/27-12/3".
As many other German users (and other Europeans, I guess) I have no credit card (e.g. in Germany only 20% have one), as credit cards usually come with high costs and no advantage for us (e.g. paying by credit card in online shops is often not offered at all, or if offered, you pay the double amount for shipping and handling). Also underaged persons - a main target group for MMORPGs like this, I guess - usually don't have a credit card at all.
Also having read (here in the forums) about the actual problems with paying by UltimatePay, my only chance to buy the expansion seems to be using store.turbine.com, where I lastly bought my Riders of Rohan expansion a few months ago (before the new Lotro Market store.lotro.com existed) by creating a new clickandbuy account and using direct debit (a common way in Germany and perhaps Europe) as payment method, which worked more or less instantly for me (despite of the waiting time for registering and verifying my bank account as a new customer).

But this time using my clickandbuy account to pay for the Rise of Isengard expansion there were no other payment methods offered any more than paying by ... wait for it ... credit card. -.-
Calling the clickandbuy customer service, they told me, that Digital River doesn't seem to support direct debit as payment method any more (clickandbuy does, of course), which worked for me and many other users perfectly so far.
So the last buying chance without having a credit card seemed to be by sending the money in advance via bank transfer, which takes about 3-5 working days according to clickandbuy (in Germany a bank transfer usually takes about 1-2 working days, but inner-Europe bank transfers seem to take longer, as clickandbuy is based in England).
As today is the 3rd of December and should be the last day of the announced Black Friday offer, I hoped to still have a chance to buy the Isengard expansion, as the money was withdrawn today but still not arrived on my clickandby acc, which could be the earliest there tomorrow according to the 3-5 workdays (from Friday - Monday (1) - Tuesday (2) - Wednesday (3 working days)).

That's the reason for the topic: At the moment there seems to be no chance for users without a credit card to buy a short-time offer, which runs over the weekend and ends on Monday/Tuesday, because you set the runtime to 3-5 days of the only other offered (and momentarily working) payment methods by removing the direct debit payment method (also from buying with paypal, I was told), which also worked instantly like paying with credit card.
Additionally I noticed, that the offer seemed to end already on Monday (2nd) and not as announced on Tuesday (3rd), as today (3rd) the expansion prices on store.turbine.com are already without any discount (I checked it on Tuesday morning). So it even wouldn't have been possible to buy one of the offers in time via the Lotro Market without having a credit card, if I tried it immediately after the announcement on the English forums (and not 1 day later, as the 50% off of other expansion packs wasn't announced elsewhere).

I know of many other users not having a credit card and having the same problem: they want to use such offers and want to buy something from the Lotro Market, but turbine doesn't seem to want us by restricting payment methods. And as the quad pack isn't offered on turbine.store.com, it's even not possible to buy it for the regular price w/o a credit card e.g. by using clickandbuy, as in the new Lotro Market clickandbuy even isn't offered as payment method any more.
As I read in another (still unanswered) thread, other users w/o a credit card see store.turbine.com also as the only way to buy from Lotro Market (and miss the Quad pack there, too).

So please turbine, give us back the "direct debit" payment method you offered until a few months ago (before you restricted the working payment methods by launching store.lotro.com, I guess), or provide other payment methods than by credit card, that will work to use such short-time offers.

Thanks in advance and in hope of being read
Zorwik

[QuartermasterS]

Hi Zorwik,

Thank you for addressing your concern. The sale was mentioned on the German LOTRO Store twitter last week.
The expansion pack sales were actually extended till tomorrow morning 12/4. Hopefully your clickandbuy account funds will be available by then so you can purchase Rise of Isengard at the discounted price.

As for direct debit and other payment options, we will continue to look into what can be added to make purchasing more convenient for our players.

-QuartermasterS

[Zorwik]

Thanks for your reply, QuartermasterS - on the German forums I still don't have any reactions since last Friday morning so far.
And thanks for extending the sales until today morning, but just coming home, the sales already seem to be gone.
On another phone call with the CnB customer support they just told me, my money I sent on last Friday noon, won't be on my account before tomorrow, which means, that it usually seems to take at least a week. And they also didn't understand, why during your payment process it isn't possible any more to use the "normal" and fastest payment method, they're offering, namely direct debit - as it worked so far I used my CnB account with purchases from turbine / Digital River.
This exactly depicts the problem users w/o a credit card have (at least in Germany or perhaps Europe): no chance to buy one of your short-time offers any more, since you removed the direct debit payment method (with CnB or paypal) a few weeks(?) ago - my purchase of the Legendary Riders of Rohan extension a few months ago worked excellent and instantly with this payment method.

This also affects the possibility of paying for a VIP subscription, so I searched the turbine support pages for payment methods and found this promise (which already has been there before the launch of the new lotro Market):

"Will Turbine support European payment options?
Yes. We are expanding our current billing system to accept many new payment methods."

Hoping that this expansion will be done some time in the future, just undo the decrease of payment methods you did by disabling the direct debit option, which worked so far for many users from Germany (or even Europe).
Momentarily it seems I have to hope to hear of short-time offers at the first day of announcement and that it leasts at last 1 week or even longer, to have a chance to buy it ...


Concerning the sale announcement: As I already told above, the "... all previous expansions are also 50% off ..." wasn't found on lotro launcher, facebook, twitter or German forums, so me and others missed it until accidentally reading of it in the English forums. Your twitter link above only mentions and links to the Quad pack sale (which seems now to be a dead link, perhaps because the offer is gone?) which isn't available on store.turbine.com.
By the way I didn't even know of a twitter account named LOTROStore_DE (and so did no other user I know of), but I'll try to propagate it.