Steaming pile of crap

J

justincredible

Guest
OK I'm just wondering - how long does it take for Valve to get back to you regarding a support question? Basically, I went to purchase HL2 on Steam, an unexpected error occurred while processing. Of course the money was taken from my account but my steam account remains the same with no games.

So obviously pissed off and sent a (very friendly) support query, how long does it take for a query like this to be resolved? Judging by some posts, probably a week or so but just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar.

I would post this on the Steam forum which I have signed up to and can login but no... no permission to post. Yay... nothing about that in their forum FAQ either.

I was actually not surprised an error had occurred anyway. It would be too simple to just simply pay and download the bloody thing.
 
I tried to get Ep1 that way when it first came out. Still waiting...
 
umm it is that simple....lol

i bought orange box off steam no problem. have you tried restarting steam at all?
 
I seem to remember a couple of people here having similar problems. Wait around long enough and maybe one of them will reply to this thread.
 
Well what happened to me, ages ago, was that I'd go and try to buy stuff, but no matte what I did it kept either crashing steam or giving me page cannot be displayed.

As it is I prefer tangable objects to digital copies. New game smell, manuals, etc.


Manuals own you, and Valve failed for not putting one in talking about the story and stuff.
 
Yeah I've tried restarting Steam and all the usual stuff. This is my first time to deal with steam. I've done a good job in the past to avoid it with HL1 but no can do these days. So I am curious - when you do purchase a game through it, is it supposed to appear under the "Games" section in your steam account?

I'll post back with results on how all this goes.
 
I've purchased quite a few things through Steam and had no problems, although I'm aware that means nothing to people who do have them.

Generally it works very simply - it will say that it's preparing files for installation and then it will start downloading them, with an option to go straight to your Games list and have a look. And yes, they should be there, downloading.
 
justincredible said:
how long does it take for a query like this to be resolved? Judging by some posts, probably a week or so but just wondering if anyone else has experienced anything similar.
Click to expand...

I have faith that steam support will address your problem in one or two weeks. I know that being patient with similar issues is difficult but things will be fixed. There are transaction records so the matter will be clear to steam staff.
 
I remember purchasing the Orange Box through PayPal, and the games appeared on my list almost instantaneously after paying.
 
I have a friend, who is definitely a moron. He said something along the lines of "yeah, but it costs like $10 more to buy it in store. Why would you spent $10 on a box?".

Please tell me it wasn't just me who thought his question was irrefutably stupid.

OT: Steam got back to me in only a few days. Every response from them from there on took less than 2 days. It shouldn't be that long to wait.
 
OK thanks for the replies. I can wait two days or more. I'm a lot more calmer now, these things happen. Apparently they have many emails per day with only a few support staff to look after them.

As long as they fix up their mistake and don't delay it by replying back asking for more details which drags it out longer, or even worse - no reply at all; then all good.
 
Could it be a firewall / router issue? You need these ports open:

UDP 1200 (for friends service)
UDP 27000 to 27015 inclusive
TCP 27020 to 27039 inclusive

Also, some ISP's block Steam traffic thinking it's P2P or something. Might be worth a call to them to confirm it's not that...
 
justincredible said:
As long as they fix up their mistake and don't delay it by replying back asking for more details which drags it out longer, or even worse - no reply at all; then all good.
Click to expand...

...

...

they will...
 
OK well, I hold my head down in shame. It was my fault, although I am still confused why there was an error, they actually had not taken money out of my account. It just so happened that there was a purchase at the same time on my credit card which was from an automated service that takes out the same amount of money per month. The weird thing is that it had no description, so it was actually pretty safe to assume it was them.

The next day I checked my account, and all of a sudden the description was updated and at the same time, Steam replied saying that they had no record of any purchase. Ah, I felt like a goose so I apologized to them.

Anyway next problem, I went to try again, however every single time my credit card is declined. I tried my parent's card, same. A friend's card, same. I have no idea why. Could it be that I am buy from the Philippines (where I live currently) but using credit cards with billing addresses that are in Australia? Even though when I purchase, I state that I'm living in Australia, perhaps they check the IP and if it doesn't match up to the country of the billing address, it's declined?

And no, definitely my ISP does not block p2p traffic :) They don't even block outgoing port 25 which is strange these days.
 
I think it might be odd that you're using an Aussie credit card in the philps. Not sure on that, but that coudl be the problem, I woudl think.
 
Yes, routing my machine via my company's Australian network before it hits the Steam servers fixed my problem. Although it said that the subscription has not been completed because there is an error with the Steam servers, money was taken out of my account (really!) and all my games appear under the games section. Yay... now lets hope they stay there when I remove my default route to Australia...
 
Try setting up a PayPal account with your credit card if that problem persists.
 
OK thanks for the advice. I noticed that PayPal was an option for payment. I don't really buy much shit off the internet but seeing that half life death match was part of the funniest time of my life, I just couldn't resist half life 2 after getting this new PC now that I can run it.
 
justincredible said:
OK thanks for the advice. I noticed that PayPal was an option for payment. I don't really buy much shit off the internet but seeing that half life death match was part of the funniest time of my life, I just couldn't resist half life 2 after getting this new PC now that I can run it.
Click to expand...

Because HL2 = Leet.
 
Glad to hear you figured it out. Myself I try and buy things from in store as much as possible, I know, steam is awesome, secure, convenient, cheap so on so on, but overall its just common sense to have that receipt and disk in your physical ownership. I think so anyway.

Happy gaming!.
 
I wish people would stop using the Steaming Pile of Crap pun. There's been like 3 threads using it so far this month...
 
Yeh and they all pretty much relate to the same problem lol.
 
nurizeko said:
Glad to hear you figured it out. Myself I try and buy things from in store as much as possible, I know, steam is awesome, secure, convenient, cheap so on so on, but overall its just common sense to have that receipt and disk in your physical ownership. I think so anyway.

Happy gaming!.
Click to expand...

Doesn't really help much when you don't have internet :(
 
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