Meta Scams Their Quest Customers!

On November 23rd, I purchased a Meta Quest 3 128 GB (refurbished) from Best Buy.

The headset arrived on November 27th, as you can see below.

On November 28th, at approximately 9:52 PM EST I received a “Get Started” email from [email protected]. This email is no doubt part of an automated campaign and is dispatched when a Meta user activates a headset.

This automation will become important shortly, so keep that in the back of your mind.

At the bottom of this email was the following offer:

Now, I actually had no idea this was a thing when I bought the headset, and receiving this email was actually quite nice. I had already bought 4 or 5 games, so getting something free – Batman Arkham Shadow – was awesome, and then on top of that 3 months of Meta Quest+ free, which would enable me to play that Asgard’s Wrath game without having to shell out the $50 bucks, even better!

Problem was, I couldn’t find out where to claim the Batman Game or the Meta Quest+ 3 month trial. I looked everywhere on the headset and the Meta.com website and found a support article that detailed how to claim these offers.

Link to article: https://www.meta.com/help/quest/articles/in-vr-experiences/oculus-apps/redeem-promotion/

After following the steps in the article, I still could not find the content to claim, so I contacted Meta Support. That was December 1st.

Today is December 5th and they have to date refused to honor their mistake.

Clearly I received the email in error, something the Marketing Automation team at Meta should really rectify in their systems. They could easily have their database of serial numbers segmented into ‘refurbs’ and ‘new’ devices, so that when a customers activates a device, there is a check in place to determine if the headset is refurbished or new, and if it’s not new, a email campaign that contains offers of free content and trial subscriptions isn’t mistakenly sent to the customer.

In my opinion, Meta should at the very least honor the offer for the Batman Arkham Shadow game, however after going back and forth with them, their support refuses to do that. So, I made this website to warn people about Meta and how they scam their new Quest customers by sending emails with offers for free games that the customers will never be able to claim.

Don’t believe me? Below is a gallery of screenshots showing the email I received in its entirety. I’ve only redacted personal information.

The email does not say refurbished devices are ineligible, there are no asterisks indicating a “condition” that must be met for the offer to be accepted by the customers. There is a link to terms and conditions, which do say that refurbished devices aren’t eligible for this offer, however – why would you allow your systems to dispatch an email to a customer saying they can claim these things when they aren’t eligible?

That’s bait and switch. 100% a scam.

Meta, you ripped off the wrong customer, a petty one, with all the time in the world, so yeah…. I reported you to the Attorney General in Florida and also the FTC, then made this website.

Your Marketing Automation Team needs to fix this and you need to honor the offer for every customer that contacts you with proof they received it. Shame on you!

If you work at Meta and can access your ticketing system, you can read Meta Quest Support: Case #07585272 for the entire ticket history.