I’m currently residing outside of the US (in South Africa) and wanted to get a Steam Deck OLED. I’ve successfully purchased a Steam Deck LCD previously with no issues. I used the exact same method, i.e. I used a US Steam account that I previously created and where I have also 2 games previously purchased in my library, I used a US Unlocked account to make the payment using a US prepaid card, and I used the shipping address of a package forwarder whose warehouse is in Oregon (Shipito).
The purchase went through fine, but then about 3 hours later it got cancelled and refunded. Any idea why this might be?
The only real difference from my previous LCD purchase is that I used a different package forwarder then (MyUS with address in Florida), but other than that I can’t think why.
I haven’t clocked any time on any of the games in my library, could that be another reason? I’ll try put in some time before I try to purchase again. I’ll even buy another game just to show some activity maybe?
I’ve logged a Steam Support query already, but thought I’d ask here since there might be others who experienced this.
I’ve seen this post (6) Purchase cancelled and refunded : SteamDeck (reddit.com) , so maybe it’s just due to something else, maybe too many orders since it just launched.
Hi hi. Im also fellow ZA looking into getting a deck from the States. Any update on this, i noted one reply stating it was due to prepaid cards, should you rather have used a credit card? If so would ZA Cc work?
Where are you able to get one? How did you go about it?
Using a local ZA bank card can work, one of the other thread contributors managed to get the payment through with their Capitec bank card, and seemed like the order went through and was not canceled like mine.
I would say try to use a ZA Cc first, making sure to use a VPN to have your location seem to be in US. Tunnelbear seems to work well.
I think the main problem is getting it shipped. I used Shipito and mine was canceled. Maybe a lot of scalpers used it because you can get tax free shipping with them and i was flagged alongside them. Another user used MyUS and theirs was not canceled.
We are taking a risk using VPN and faking our territory, my account was suspended and I was given a one time warning from Valve that they would lock all accounts for good if I did it again. Now maybe if I didn’t use a prepaid card and/or didn’t use Shipito and/ or used a VPN when I placed an order, I wouldn’t have been flagged. Just bad luck I think.
I will try it again on a new account once my refund comes through, hopefully next week, using a ZA card this time, behind a VPN and with MyUS.
Please do post your feedback once you try so we can see what permutations work. Right now, the only one I know of is Capitec Cc (payment) + TunnelBear VPN + MyUS (shipping).