Unable to buy games - Is this wait for help chat normal?

[Jebu]

I decided I was going to give stadia a go. Signed up on website, setup a google account, setup my membership. All looking fantastic.

Then...

I click to buy cyberpunk and get an error saying the transaction has not completed.

I try a few more times, same error.
I try a different card, same error.

I go to amazon and check to ensure my cards are ok, buy some toilet roll LOL! Cards are ok

So I thought I best chat to someone at support.

3 hours later and I have moved from number 330 to 236 in the queue. Is this normal service? I am estimating its going to to take 9-10hrs to be able to get ahold of support.

Try to find an email address I could email instead but can't find one.

Hmmm... is this normal?

[Chufu]

Hey @Jebu,

yes the Stadia support team seems to be very busy at the moment (especially with the Cyberpunk free bundle promotion and also the release of cyberpunk on the platform), so it's normal that you need to wait a long time to get through. I am not sure if they do offer email-support. If they do, you would see it as contact option when going through this form.

What you could try in the meantime would be: Try to purchase it in the Stadia app. If you have another payment method that is accepted in your country (see here), you can also try out something else, e.g. PayPal, Google Play Balance, etc.

Usually paying on Stadia is pretty easy once you have added the payment methods to your account via play.google.com. But some of them can only be used in the Stadia app using an Android device to purchase a game on Stadia.

[Jebu]

Thanks - I am down to position 3 so will see what support says. Its a mastercard and it has never had an issue on other services. If I try setup a new payment method on IOS it just opens a browser and it is same options.

If support can't fix it I can see that I can add my bank details in as a payment method so I could try that.

[Jebu]

LOL - the support bombed me out and I restarted at number 468 again. This is up there with the funniest and worst things that's ever happened to be with a gaming service!

To double check I got in touch with my bank and they can see the pre auth for the stadia subscription that has gone through fine on the card but they have not declined transactions on the card from stadia and they said the issue has to be with the retailer.

So I know that stadia can see my credit card fine as its done a pre auth on it for the subscription at the end of the monthly trial. Its just when I try and buy a game it tells me that it cant complete the transaction and I get a log of declined payments in GPay under activity.

[Jebu]

Another update in case anyone ever looks in. Down to about 200 in queue.

So I tried a few more things

1) I tried to setup my bank account directly. However, that deposits a certain amount of money into your bank which won't come in for 3-5 working days which you then need to verify. So I am guessing this may work in the long run but not a quick solution

2) I tried adding paypal to my Gpay. Which worked and I thought this was going to be it. Surely I can now just select paypal on stadia on my pc on chrome? Nope... the pay pal option you add doesnt show in a browser, only the credit card (which keeps getting declined). So I googled how to pay with pay pal for stadia and the solution appears to be to use an android device, one issue though, I don't have any android devices, just IOS and PC.

So I am back to waiting a few more hours to talk to to STADIA support. At least I can watch the boxing while I tick down the queue and hopefully in another 2-3 hours I am back to near number 1.