Area 51 - Issues with Bitcoin Payment and Poor Support

by NatelieDotA

I was excited to out Area 51 IPTV service so I created an account, signed up for a month, and paid immediately using Bitcoin with my mobile wallet. It seemed their system didn't catch the payment a few hours later so I tried to login, however I wasn't able to. It said my account didn't exist anymore and I couldn't recover my password

I then tried their Discord asking for advice. Their admin team was somewhat slow and unresponsive to a few of my questions on my account being deleted and what I should do. Eventually after a few hours of silence, I just created another account with my same email and it worked so I could submit a ticket via their client portal.

I explained that I had paid and that the transaction had been confirmed . I also attached screenshots of the invoice showing it matched the payment amount and the Bitcoin payment address.

The first message was curt and just said my invoice is unpaid. I explained again I had paid and asked what the next step was to initiate service or how to get a refund. They then said they only accept payment via Coinbase and not Blockchain, whatever that means. They also pointed out there was another smaller address on the invoice, that I should have known to have pay that instead, and condescendingly said I need to learn to follow directions.

I then explained I used a mobile wallet and that I sent payment which has been confirmed to the address clearly supplied to me at the top of their checkout page as shown by my screenshot .

I also pointed out that their online cart checkout is much more explicit with a QR code and address (which is the one I paid) at the top compared to the small text address later in the page. I asked them why even have the bitcoin instructions at the top if they were wrong, where my Bitcoin actually went then, and I suggested they fix it or remove accepting Bitcoin all together. I'm not expecting any further contact and that I probably lost a minor amount of money. I just thought I'd share my experience and probably recommend others pay via other means if they decide to use this service over the other many competitors they have.

haste18

I had exactly the same problem. Their service is so bad. There's no clear channels list and the ones from other websites is false. They give you a bitcoin address you can't use and once you deposit to the right address they delete your account. They told me they didn't, but they did.

Customer service is rude. And after I found out they don't have the channels I need I cancelled my account but never got back my bitcoin. They did deactivate my account.

https://imgur.com/a/7hZH11m

Here you see one of the emails I received from them. Just to be clear, I did two payments. The first one was my mistake. But it's so crazy to give a BTC address and then refer to another address... Shady

SouthPurpose

The exacte same thing happened to me. Soon after I opened a ticket stating the payment had been made via paypal, they just deleted my account. SCAMMERS!

mikalkhash

Same thing happened with two of my payments. I think a support on their team is doing this.

I would hate to think that the admin is allowing this

talent-support

if you want to buy anything pay by paypal

if service is not good ask to refund. if they did not then make chargeback or dispute

acheney1990

I've had a positive experience so far in terms of channels but I'll agree their customer service is very lacking. Sometimes it can be great and other times it can be terrible. But in terms of service itself been great to me so far.

JLGx2

Sorry to hear you had this experience. I just re-upped with them via Paypal and have not had any issues with their service or with payment through their website at all. I'm not sure what the other poster is referring to in regards to channel list and not having the channels they want, as they have tons of channels, and I even opened a ticket asking them to remove some for me to which they quickly responded with a proper solution that I wasn't aware of (which was using their official app while I'm using Perfect Player app). I've had a great experience with Area-51 so far and I had a terrible experience with Helix but that's how it goes sometimes.