In response to my complaint to BFG a month ago of applying unexplained and unauthorised charges to my credit card (after purchasing a game with points only and receiving a zero balance receipt ) I have received the following reply :-

"Thank you for your valuable patience.

We sincerely apologize for the delay.

However, we've gone ahead and issued you a refund for the two $1 auth charges, and it may take up to 3-10 business days for the refund to fully process.

I hope this helps. Wish you a wonderful day."


No apology for taking this unauthorised action, no regret for the worry caused, and most importantly of all absolutely no explanation of why or how this happened. I suspect they don't know and haven't the resources to look into this properly.

Attached to the message was an invitation for feedback on how the query had been handled. My feedback, expressed politely, was that while I thanked them for the refund, unless BFG could find the source of the problem and rectify it I wouldn't have the confidence to enter into any further financial transactions.

So there you have it. Any alternative suggestions to Big Fish Games for casual games would be very welcome.

Hi meryl, Big Fish has fixed a lot of the problems that people were having including fixing the 1404 error messages that people with large Purchase Histories have been dealing with for years, which is very good news indeed. Having said that, I can understand why when something like what happened to you occurred, you would be worried that it could happen again in the future.

As far as alternative suggestions to Big Fish Games, there is Steam, which has a lot of casual games. I don't care for Steam all that much due to their refund policies being so restrictive, but obviously I am in the minority as Steam is very popular.

The other casual game website that I have some experience with is Gamehouse. I have never been a member there but have purchased some games there that at the time were exclusive to the site (specifically some time management games) but now end up being released on Big Fish as well. I have never had any issues with them, although years ago we did not recommend them due to their privacy policies which I will admit I have not looked into lately.

Thank you Marian. I've bought a couple of games via steam though not casual ones. I'll take a look at Gamehouse also.

I'm hoping things will settle down completely at BFG at some time in the future. They were such a great company and I've enjoyed purchasing from them with no problems for years. I'm sure they will recover their equilibrium.

In the meantime I'm really happy to hear that the new system of points is really working well for people and that many of the issues associated with the changes are being resolved.

I was amazed to find out that the BFG game prices have remained the same for years so a price hike wouldn't phase me once I could be sure there would be no wobbles with my credit card. Ever hopeful that they will identify what the problem was with my specific issue and be able to rectify it and get back to me. I'm an optimist!

BREAKING NEWS!
Explanation received from Big Fish. Apparently they do a $1 test on people's credit cards but the new system has been charging this to the actual credit card account. In my case 2 tests must have been done. They assure me this problem was identified and corrected on 15 september and it should not now recurr.
To apologise they have awarded 699 points to my account. I thanked them but don't think I'll be buying anything just yet.