Steam quality of life improvement

[Commander B]

I have recently attempted to purchase a game, as I have many times before, using my Steam Wallet funds, for both myself and my brother. I could get it no problem, but Steam did not allow me to purchase it for my brother, resulting in multiple purchase errors, As such, I created a help request, a simple one asking for help in resolving this purchasing issue, unaware at how rigid and robotic Steam would be in their response. Sure they got back to me quickly, but they also failed to solve the issue, and more to the point they rudely decided 'they'd given me all the information they could' and therefore closed the request and furthermore banned me from asking about the same issue, stating they would just close such pleas for help without reading them. Let me post the exact response here:

Hi there,

I understand that you're having issues making purchases. I'm glad to explain things here.

I looked at your account, and I do see that you have a general gift purchasing restriction.

You can still purchase gifts and send them to any of your friends if you use a payment method directly to purchase the gift, instead of your Wallet funds. You are free to use your Wallet funds toward making purchases for your own account.

Steam Support is unable to remove this restriction.

As this is all the information we can provide about this gift purchase restriction, I will be closing this ticket. if you have any other issues with Steam, you are welcome to open a new ticket. Also any future tickets about this issue will be closed without a response.

Steam Support
Lilian


First of all, I will say it is very rude for Steam to just determine they're done without waiting for follow up questions from the customer, and of course barring them from asking further questions about the topic ever again. First question I would have is what is a 'general gift purchasing restriction', why do I have it, and why can Steam not explain what it is/remove it? Why are Wallet funds suddenly seemingly no good for making purchases universally? What is the point of offering prepaid cards if only the gamer themselves can use them? Credit card or prepaid card, it's the same money, and you alienate those without credit cards, or those who don't want to use them, by forcing a 'direct payment' as Steam puts it. I spoke with a fellow Steam user the other day, and they reckon some sort of automatic fraud system is blocking me from purchasing, and my question, if that is true, is why is it tagging me for purchasing a single game? I have gifted games with the Wallet at least 3-4 times before, no issues, and if Steam has any sort of problem, send an email asking if the user purchased the game, simple solution. Again, you alienate customers by basically blocking them from buying games with a preferred method of payment, and making that payment method less versatile. As I said, it's still the same money, so what's the deal? I don't expect Steam to see or do anything about this, but I really wish they would improve their customer service interaction. Also, why is there not a general help request? Or a better way to contact them, a phone number perhaps?

[Brian9824]

Support can't remove that restriction. They are very strict about gifting from wallet funds because people use that to launder skins or do off site trading.

It happens when people gift multiple games using wallet funds. It won't block you from gifting games, but you can't use wallet funds to do it.

[MonkehMaster]

yep, support is horrible, imagine being support and telling people you are meant to help/support, that they decide when your issue is resolved, closing tickets to falsely claim they are resolved (likely to meat quota) and telling people not to ask again (or they close your ticket and/or punish you for asking for help).

spamming templates saying to ask for info, then saying they dont have to give any info, or dont have that info.

among many other issues revolving around support.

including the fact they use this horrible ticket system, instead of hiring a sizable trained team to do proper support (or other aspects of valve staff).

one of the worst support, i have seen on a platform and thats saying a ton.

[Commander B]

So basically, we're being punished for what some other users are doing, laundering skins and whatnot you cited, excellent, really excellent. How about just punishing them rather than forcing everyone else to suffer alongside the perpetrators?

[Ben Lubar]

Here are some previous threads on the subject:

https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3392923906934472072/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3183487594838825682/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/1/3278065083957982005/
https://steamcommunity.com/discussions/forum/0/3815166629931153694/

[Ben Lubar]

Opprinnelig skrevet av MonkehMaster:

yep, support is horrible, imagine being support and telling people you are meant to help/support, that they decide when your issue is resolved, closing tickets to falsely claim they are resolved (likely to meat quota) and telling people not to ask again (or they close your ticket and/or punish you for asking for help).

As someone who has worked as a support engineer in various industries, there's often a very good reason to forcibly close a ticket with someone who is trying to argue with you. A support rep doesn't have the ability to change anything about the situation or rules they have explained to you, so leaving the ticket open to further pointless back-and-forth just leads to increased wait time for legitimate tickets.

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Commander B:

So basically, we're being punished for what some other users are doing, laundering skins and whatnot you cited, excellent, really excellent. How about just punishing them rather than forcing everyone else to suffer alongside the perpetrators?

There's several policies in place courtesy of people abusing how things used to work.

From VAC bans to the item restoration policy.

[Commander B]

I am very disappointed with Steam's handling of this, or rather their failure to do so. When did they apparently ban the use of Wallet funds for gifting games. and more to the point, what difference does it make when using a credit card over paid cards? It's the same money regardless. Why even offer prepaid cards if you can only use them in limited fashions, and you alienate those who don't have credit cards/don't want to use their cards. This just about makes me want to stop using Steam, their complete failure to handle this, plus I can't gift games unless I use my credit card now, it doesn't jive with me.

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Commander B:

I am very disappointed with Steam's handling of this, or rather their failure to do so. When did they apparently ban the use of Wallet funds for gifting games. and more to the point, what difference does it make when using a credit card over paid cards? It's the same money regardless. Why even offer prepaid cards if you can only use them in limited fashions, and you alienate those who don't have credit cards/don't want to use their cards. This just about makes me want to stop using Steam, their complete failure to handle this, plus I can't gift games unless I use my credit card now, it doesn't jive with me.

Credit cards or other authorized payment methods are easier to track in terms of fraud or laundering as opposed to gift cards, etc.

If they want to cover their behinds by imposing those restrictions unfortunately they have the right to as it's their platform.

[Ben Lubar]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Commander B:

plus I can't gift games unless I use my credit card now

your posts in this thread seem to indicate that you were gifting a lot of games to people via Steam Wallet funds

if you have a credit card, why were you buying physical gift cards for your own account? were the wallet funds actually from gift cards you bought with your own money?

[Commander B]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ben Lubar:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Commander B:

plus I can't gift games unless I use my credit card now

your posts in this thread seem to indicate that you were gifting a lot of games to people via Steam Wallet funds

if you have a credit card, why were you buying physical gift cards for your own account? were the wallet funds actually from gift cards you bought with your own money?

That is not correct at all. Matter of fact I'm more of a casual gamer with only about 10 games in my Library. The only person I gift to is my brother, and I've only done that about 4 times in the span of several years. I use prepaid cards because for one, when I started using Steam, I didn't have a credit card, and 2, I don't want my credit card information out there for potential hackers to have access to. This whole thing about banning the use of Wallet funds strikes me the same as the class being punished for what one person did, but didn't fess up to, so the whole class is wrongly punished. It's wrong, and very anti-consumer, Steam is alienating an entire group of gamers with this decision.

[Leonardo Da Pinchi]

Opprinnelig skrevet av Commander B:

Opprinnelig skrevet av Ben Lubar:

your posts in this thread seem to indicate that you were gifting a lot of games to people via Steam Wallet funds

if you have a credit card, why were you buying physical gift cards for your own account? were the wallet funds actually from gift cards you bought with your own money?

That is not correct at all. Matter of fact I'm more of a casual gamer with only about 10 games in my Library. The only person I gift to is my brother, and I've only done that about 4 times in the span of several years. I use prepaid cards because for one, when I started using Steam, I didn't have a credit card, and 2, I don't want my credit card information out there for potential hackers to have access to. This whole thing about banning the use of Wallet funds strikes me the same as the class being punished for what one person did, but didn't fess up to, so the whole class is wrongly punished. It's wrong, and very anti-consumer, Steam is alienating an entire group of gamers with this decision.

You can choose whether or not to save your payment details, so you can make one-off purchases to purchase games without having your payment details saved to the platform. However, they will be saved to Steam's side for things such as payment verification, the purchase details, etc.

You're more likely to get your card details skimmed at a teller/RL place than Steam's payment system getting hacked, however.


And again, you can thank people abusing things such as csgo skins, case keys, and region pricing to resell accounts/games for profit.

[Mamyt Rahal :)]

gg

[Neoxa_Meliodaz]

this is why steam is the epic games for poors, you cant use the money you invested on a gift card, wow!, basically i spend money on steam and then i cant use it the way i want it, awesome