Wow, I hope Steam/Valve corrects this, they have been nothing but very prompt at my requests for customer service.

While its not impossible that Valve didn't screw up and accidentally charge him in pounds, maybe he clicked the Euro currency beta option on accident?

You can be in the US and still "try out" the ability to pay in European currencies. Last I checked there was a link maybe in the top right corner of the steam store. I tried it out once, but its pretty obvious that you aren't in "US mode."

I do admit, it would probably take a moron to get through the whole process and not realize the foreign currency symbols, etc. So its probably Valve's mistake.

This is one of many reasons I will never purchase "virtual" goods. I won't buy games off of Steam, I won't purchase e-music, I won't buy books for kindle and I won't buy virtual television programs or movies. Not entirely because of all the rights and useage that I'm paying to lose, but because companies feel like once they have you doing business over the Internets, they don't have to bother having fancy things like "customer support phone numbers". No thanks.

This definitely blows. If he does a chargeback, valve could suspend/cancel his account.

Anyone know how the checkout works? Is there a drop down box for the type of currency? If there is a chance the user accidentally selected a different currency, that should be considered as a possible cause.

We're sorry, but Valve support is on break in another dimension. Of course, we value your business so please leave a message and we'll get back to you promptly after lunch.*

*Plus or minus 1000 Earth years due to time distortions from interdimensional travel. Contents may have settled in shipping.

So challenge the charge already! It's a simple error, and has a simple solution.

I wouldn't think twice about it. Just perform a chargeback and be done with it..

Yes, Steam has gone wonky with their new system in the UK and EU, or wherever it was just released. First, the UK pricing was completely wrong. They then matched EU and US prices sans conversion (a big mistake). And something else that led to super-cheap games for some Europeans, though I've forgotten the details.

Anyway, I bought a game last month, and while I paid the USD price, in the US, and there was no conversion, I was still charged a 40 cent foreign transaction fee by my bank.

It could be that they're not responding at all to your problem, or that many, many people are experiencing this around the world, and they're overwhelmed. Of course it's no excuse, but I don't think you're just getting brushed off.

So, did they charge you 38.23 in pounds, rather than dollars (i.e. 38.23 pounds), or did they charge you $38.23, but ran the transaction for the appropriate # of pounds (about 25 pounds)?

@Davan: Did you call them to make a purchase? so why should you expect your problems to be handled in any other matter?

BTW, pretending to be a ground hog and not purchase virtual goods at all will eventually see you not being able to buy anything ever ... welcome to 1999.

Glados is pleased with your patience and offers you some cake in condolance for their mistake.

/the cake is a lie

Valve's support is typically very good, so my guess would be one of the two, or a combination of the two:

1) Valves support is swamped, and their response time is in the weeds.

2) You entered your support tickets in a way that they were given a low priority, such as sending support tickets to "sales", or set the problem description to "other", which leads to your issue being put into some ignored bucket that is looked at maybe once a month.

gaben@valvesoftware.com (or GabeN)

Gabe Newell is the managing director of Valve.

@chrisjames: "...but I don't think you're just getting brushed off. "

A purely academic distinction. The result is the same.

Don't do a chargeback. They could suspend your Steam account.

Hopefully the publicity here and hopefully at facepunch will help. Justin, did you post at facepunch?

Important tip for Steam Support (this is discussed frequently on the Steam forums): DO NOT update a ticket once filed. Tickets are worked in-order based on the last update time on the ticket, so updating it will bump you to the back of the queue. Open the ticket with all relevant information, correctly categorize it, and do not touch it until you get a response from Steam support.

@insaneo: Yeah, and he makes video games for a living.

While a chargeback would seem to be the way to go ... that could be dangerous.

They could, legaly I might add, cancel his account in retaliation ... thus depriving him of all purchases he has made over steam.

^
The massive potential for abuses such as this is why I refuse to use services such as steam.

Read your ToS and ask yourself how much you really trust them to do the "right thing" all of the time.

@Davan: Um, okaaaay.

Why are we allowing on-line transactions in foreign currency? Doesn't that open up all sorts of fascinating loopholes and tax dodges?

In my experience Steam support is terrible and slow. They can take several weeks to answer an inquiery and often don't actually read your request before sending an answer. This can lead you to resubmitting the same info a couple times to get anything useful out of them.

Valve really needs to add phone line support for their products. Honestly, I'd rather wait on hold for 30 minutes than deal with their e-mail support ever again.

@david.c: I expect a call in order to handle my problems for a very simple reason - Companies love to institute email support systems, and then fail to staff them adequately. Emails build up, they never bother to answer them. Don't pretend it's never happened to you.

I purchased an LCD picture frame on black friday of 2007. It broke within 2 months, and long story short, my replacement arrived early January 2009. Ridiculous? You bet. The main culprit? No published support phone numbers and ZERO interest whatsoever in responding to customer emails or the "online support request." And yes, I sent more than one of each I promise you.

So do you really think that it will be better with virtual goods? No, it will be worse. The only way to combat it is to refuse to purchase anything without adequate support options. Anyways, I graduated from Georgia Tech with a degree in Computer Science and currently work as a programmer, So Im clearly not a "technology groundhog". If anything I am more informed than you are.

you could also try an EECB to gabe newell, the head honcho:

GabeN@valvesoftware.com

When did you find the error?

When did you submit the support ticket?

If you haven't given them at least a business day or two, chill out, and wait for them to get through their support queue.

@ludwigk: Yes, and the managing director. I don't think he's just making games all day long, he is involved in the various aspects of the company. I'm sure it's well within his power to get this problem resolved.

Some thoughts:

Make sure that $38.23 wasn't really £38.23. £38.23 is just over $54.07 USD. Depending on the tax (this works out to 8.2%) in your area, you could have been purchasing something that was $49.95 only instead of USD it was displaying the price in GBP.

The disparity of $18.41 could easily be explained by this, if you factor in altering rates between the currencies. Any additional fees your bank charged you would normally be quite small ($0.15 transaction fee is what I usually see for over-seas purchases).

Thanks for the responses.

Since this is right in my face, pat_trick, read what I wrote above, I have now given them 12 days. I used to work in customer service, in collections no less, and no matter how bad things got, we always got back to people within 24 hours. There was never a situation, ever, even the infamous period where our computer systems died for two months, that we didn't contact someone back within a day of request. We advised them that we couldn't do much but we made it a point to make sure people knew they weren't being ignored. Even if it was a simple, "We're currently backlogged with customer service requests and we plan on getting to yours by X of Month" would have been great, but I got nothing.

I was not aware of the currency conversion policy. However, the receipt that showed up in my in-box was clearly denominated in dollars. I was charged 38.23 Pounds on my credit card and billed through London. I'm a reasonable person. I only disputed the exact amount of currency exchange of $18.41, which puts us exactly at the value of the services I purchased. No one is losing out on the deal, I wasn't demanding a full refund like many hotheads that I've dealt with in my years of customer service.

I have been very happy with Valve since its inception. However, this customer service issue is outright absurd. There has been nothing coming out of Valve in response to any issues with billing, meaning, as far as I'm concerned, there isn't a major issue going on and that I am being ignored. Perceptions are reality. Valve has said nothing over the whole month of January on this situation which implies to the public that everything is business as usual.

@insaneo: And his favorite class is the spy.

@valarmorghulis:

My credit card statement separates conversion fees. The currency exchange was $17.16, right in line with the floating rates for that day and $1.25 for the fee to do the conversion through my credit card as it was processed overseas. It wasn't difficult to distinguish this as being Valve London as the only other thing on my credit card is my cell phone bill out of California. I barely use the thing in a year so when something like this shows up, it sticks out plain as day.

@MrGutts: Good solution to get the money back. Bad solution if other games have already been purchased on the account. Most companies will close out the entire account as fraud, preventing Justin from playing his other games he may have purchased.

@jodark: You're not a good person you know, good people don't come here.

@Davan: Just because there's a lack of phone support- doesn't mean there can't be reasonable support or response via email. Phone calls can be ignored just as easily as emails or forms- it's up to the company to step up and follow through with requests for support.

@dreamsneverend: I sent in a few requests about a year ago. Never heard back.

@Davan: You're being extreme seemingly only for it's own sake. And being CS graduate has nothing to do with savvy. Support is only as good as the company behind the product, whether its electronic delivery or tangible. You're as likely to get screwed in one delivery medium or another.

Basically though, you are missing out on something that can be quite wonderful, for example, losing all those CDs. BTW, you can buy DRM-free mp3s from Amazon.

So you have three seperate charges; one for $38.23, one for $17.16, and another for $1.25? Or is it one for $55.39 and another for $1.25? If it is the latter, I'd say I think my observation above is correct.

To double check, you should be able to go into Steam and look at your account history, or double check the email reciept they sent you.

For example, my most recent Steam purchase was listed as "49.95 USD" for the item price on my email reciept, and "54.49 USD" for the total. If it is listed there as a total of "38.23 GBP" then you were not overcharged, just billed in the wrong currency, which resulted in your bank charging the forign transaction fee.

@JGKojak: It is supposed to charge you in pounds if your IP is from Britain, same with Euros. They are doing this because the people of Britain and Europe have been using it for loopholes. It works both ways and Valve is attempting to rectify the situation.

@brent_r: It's valve. They have a reputation of actually doing the right thing. Now if it was BoA or Walmart, then yeah I wouldn't trust them.

@Davan: Because physical stores have never overcharged/missold/failed to respond to complaints?

@valarmorghulis: aaaaand you seem to have addressed this immediatly above.

@Corporate_guy: [support.steampowered.com]

Read under "Payment Fraud."

@zarex42: Not quite; Filing a chargeback will lead to the Steam account in question being disabled.

[support.steampowered.com]

@valarmorghulis: Correct. See: [support.steampowered.com]

@jodark: Due to mandatory scheduled maintenance, the appropriate customer service is currently unavailable. It has been replaced with a live fire course designed for military androids.

@Mr_D: Now I've lost some respect for the man...

@valarmorghulis:

My receipt says this:

Total 38.23 USD

My credit card is through Citi. The statement simply says 38.23. It doesn't distinguish in what currency that was in. It then has a line for Period Rate charges and a Foreign Transaction Fee, which is 3% (Citi's 2% and MasterCard's 1% of purchase) separate. Because the amount exactly matches the rate for December 28th, it's pretty obvious that it was due to the one and only charge on my card that originated outside the USA.

Again, I initially went to Valve on this. I am an auditor by trade and know how billing systems work. It would have been as simple as plugging in my order number and pulling up the payment details. I'm able to get around an accounting system in any company regardless of size with at most an hour to tinker with it. Valve should be experienced enough to just be able to pull it up in two minutes. It's just a database query. They could have said, "Well, it looks like we charged you in dollars, your credit card screwed up" if that were the case. Again, the main crux is that none of my requests for customer service have been answered.

The basic process of this is to question the vendor first. If the vendor shows records for the right amount charged to me, I can then take that to the credit card company to resolve the problem. The first step is being ignored so I can't go to step 2 if step 2 is the actual solution. I need the company's records to the fact to take to Citi because, as far as Citi is concerned, they sent Valve 38.23 Pounds.

[quote]Contact information

For all issues related to Valve's games, technical support, or Steam™, please visit www.steampowered.com.

For other issues:

General information: contact@valvesoftware.com

Jobs/hiring: jobs@valvesoftware.com

Mods and the Software Developer's Kit: sdk@valvesoftware.com

Cybercafe information: cafe@valvesoftware.com

Source Engine licensing: sourceengine@valvesoftware.com

Academic licensing: academiclicensing@valvesoftware.com

Webmaster: webmaster@valvesoftware.com

Telephone:
425-889-9642

FAX:
425-827-4843

Postal address:
PO BOX 1688
Bellevue, WA 98009
[/quote]

@SacredByte: No, filing a FRAUDULENT chargeback will lead to the Steam account in question being disabled.

There isn't anything fraudulent about using a credit card protection to sort out a billing issue in which the merchant is making no attempt to sort out themselves.

@VicMatson:

Called that number earlier today. They gave me the same "Drop us your contact information and we'll get back with you in 48 hours" line the online version did. They didn't get back to me via e-mail for almost two weeks, it is unlikely the phone line will get back to me in the promised time (which is the same as the e-mail version promised).

Try calling them at 425-889-9642.