caledonianblues wrote: Receiving em$ in exchange for membership is the problem. It's fine to do that once as part of a transition from one business model to another, but for retail codes redeemed thereafter it's not suitable, or in fact legal, to just assume that the consumer is happy with that arrangement
In fact retail versions for an aged product that has changed policy or systems like subscription etc - in this case lets say the pathfinder hunter pack 2016 - can be sold anytime everywhere without anyone having the need to display it on the package itself. as long as the prodcut itself ( the game ) is still running and the customer gets an equal value inside the product - in this case em$ from the sub conversion for one part of the product and u still get all other items that are listed on the box aswell. they are doing this right now via support and in the future it should be done automatically from what i have seen here, so they fixed the mess on their end and its totally fine again - if they had not reacted or worked on it and done nothing About it there would ofc be a possibilty for this to backfire. due to the fact how often merchants change stock how often suppliers change the items they sell and so on it can be impossible for companys to keep track of the stuff that is actually still around and give a notice to every single retail seller around the world that might sell one of those products. only times ive ever seen massive recalls or labels send out to be put on game boxes were triple aaa titles that have been released shortly before. the moment the customer inserts the key he agrees to the new or old terms of the product which anyone can always check before they redeem their code. just go and read them - the companys even make sure to tell u in those terms that anything might change at any time. Reedemable game codes are also excluded from Exchange or refund the moment u open the retail box sealing itself in pretty much every country i have ever visited that sold games. retail sellers make sure to always have signs on display in their stores that tell u this most of the time or its somewhere in the houserules on display in the store or written on the item itself. the moment u open the box and try to redeem your code u wont get your money back ever again ever no where. Weve had cases like this at least a hundred times a year in the big electronic market i worked at for a loong time - nothing to be done about. the only possible times u will ever see someone get their money back is when they bought a product like an online game that is actually not playable anymore - went offline or whatever - and they can prove it and the product was still for sale somewhere somehow which i have also seen happen sometimes - but seeing as this isnt the case for the hunter as its still running fine and have only changed some ways it works u can likely do nothing about it.
edit: the only times u might get a refund in retail in a case like this is if u find someone really nice that doesnt care and throws the product away after that and does this out of oblingingness in their sole discretion to keep u as a customer. but dont count on it
