Official Legal Complaint: Breach of EU Consumer Protection Laws and Unfair Pricing

KylerrTheMajty

KylerrTheMajty

Well-known member
Dear Support and Legal Team,
I am writing to formally lodge a legal complaint regarding the pricing structure applied to my account on the DDO Market. I am a resident of Poland, an EU member state.
Your customer service recently informed me that Poland is hardcoded to USD pricing. This practice directly violates EU Consumer Protection Laws, specifically:
  1. EU Geoblocking Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2018/302): Traders cannot block or limit access to their online interfaces based on nationality or place of residence, nor apply different conditions of payment.
  2. EU Price Indication Directive (Directive 98/6/EC & Omnibus Directive): Any price quoted to an EU consumer MUST include all applicable taxes (VAT) from the very first presentation. Charging a baseline USD price and slapping an unexpected 23% VAT at checkout is a prohibited, misleading commercial practice.
Because your system forces a USD model with added tax instead of the standard, tax-inclusive EUR model available to neighboring EU countries (like Germany), I am being forced to pay roughly $160 USD instead of €120 EUR. This is severe price discrimination based on my location within the EU internal market.
Since Daybreak Game Company is owned by Enad Global 7 AB, a company publically traded and operating within the EU (Sweden), you are fully bound by these legislations. I request that my account billing country be corrected to the EU/EUR region immediately so I can purchase the expansion at the lawful price.
If this issue is not resolved, I will be forced to escalate this matter to the European Consumer Centre (ECC-Net) and the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) for a formal investigation into systemic EU law violations by your platform.

Sincerely,
Kyler
 
D

Dude

Well-known member
KylerrTheMajty said:
Dear Support and Legal Team,
I am writing to formally lodge a legal complaint regarding the pricing structure applied to my account on the DDO Market. I am a resident of Poland, an EU member state.
Your customer service recently informed me that Poland is hardcoded to USD pricing. This practice directly violates EU Consumer Protection Laws, specifically:
  1. EU Geoblocking Regulation (Regulation (EU) 2018/302): Traders cannot block or limit access to their online interfaces based on nationality or place of residence, nor apply different conditions of payment.
  2. EU Price Indication Directive (Directive 98/6/EC & Omnibus Directive): Any price quoted to an EU consumer MUST include all applicable taxes (VAT) from the very first presentation. Charging a baseline USD price and slapping an unexpected 23% VAT at checkout is a prohibited, misleading commercial practice.
Because your system forces a USD model with added tax instead of the standard, tax-inclusive EUR model available to neighboring EU countries (like Germany), I am being forced to pay roughly $160 USD instead of €120 EUR. This is severe price discrimination based on my location within the EU internal market.
Since Daybreak Game Company is owned by Enad Global 7 AB, a company publically traded and operating within the EU (Sweden), you are fully bound by these legislations. I request that my account billing country be corrected to the EU/EUR region immediately so I can purchase the expansion at the lawful price.
If this issue is not resolved, I will be forced to escalate this matter to the European Consumer Centre (ECC-Net) and the Polish Office of Competition and Consumer Protection (UOKiK) for a formal investigation into systemic EU law violations by your platform.

Sincerely,
Kyler
Click to expand...
Did you actually send this or are you just posting on the forums?
 
I

in4theride75

Well-known member
On point 1:
Article 4(1)(b)
Pursuant to this provision, the ban on applying different conditions of sale of electronically supplied services does not apply if the main feature of the services is the provision of access to and use of copyright-protected works, including selling them in an intangible form.

Meaning they can legally sell the game for a different price or different currency based on your country of residence. However, they cannot block you from purchasing it from another country for a cheaper price, such as with the use of a VPN or even accessing a country specific website.

On point 2:
You are 100% correct and that is a violation of EU law. The VAT and all other taxes are required to be presented in the price the very first time the price is shown.
 
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M

mikarddo

Well-known member
Posting on the forum is not "official". You probably need a lawyer to help you actually file a formal complaint.
 
Retsam

Retsam

Member
Have you tried contacting SSG and asking if they'll apply your international tax ID to your sale, before attempting to legally threaten them?.. as that is likely to cause you more headache than you want.

Always use honey before you vinegar bomb someone come on. lol
 
KylerrTheMajty

KylerrTheMajty

Well-known member
Retsam said:
Have you tried contacting SSG and asking if they'll apply your international tax ID to your sale, before attempting to legally threaten them?.. as that is likely to cause you more headache than you want.

Always use honey before you vinegar bomb someone come on. lol
Click to expand...

I wrote to them regarding previous expansions and they switched the currency to euros for me, but unfortunately, this year they are unwilling to help. When I started asking why there hadn't been an issue in previous years (i bought Vecna, Myth Drannor and Lamordia this way) but there was one now, I received this reply:


Greetings,

Thank you for the inquiry. As previously stated on your prior ticket, our system required Poland to utilize USD as a payment currency. There is no mitigating this. Customer Support is not able to assist in bypassing this for you.

The creation of multiple tickets regarding the same issue is considered malicious abuse of support covered by DDO's Code of Conduct.

Further requests regarding this issue may now go unanswered. Further warnings may lead to further actions taken against your account.

Thank you,
 
Striga

Striga

Well-known member
The market is a joke. My last two transactions:

I was charged EUR148.09 for some expansion - lost 30+ EUR there, support refused to compensate. They did change some setting for my account.

I purchased “Sinister Secret of Saltmarsh Collector's to Ultimate Upgrade” for $2.00. I was charged around 50 dollars (43.87 EUR). Support refunded me 40 dollars. I only lost around $8 in this transaction.
 
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