Don't buy in game items from Cryptic
 

I purchased the Long Range Science Vessal Retrofit and the Tactical Escort Retrofit using Cryptic Points bought with my credit card when they were first available, and discovered 3 weeks ago that I could not access them anymore. Two of my characters that already had them in their inventory kept them, but I can't access them from my other characters. Cryptic does not give you a receipt for your in-game transactions(You have a receipt for the points you bought, but not what they were spent on), so when they lose your data, you can't do anything about it. I got two responses from them apologising, but they didn't give me access to the ships I bought with real money, not in-game currency. As someone who has been here since the beta and is a lifetime subscriber, I find this very disappointing. I was going to buy the Odyssey Pack to help support the game, but they aren't going to get another dime from me. I had also been happy to pay to unlock the lock boxes, because I wanted to help support the game, so I haven't been coasting on my lifetime subscription.

My advice is enjoy the free aspects of the game and ignore the rest. They can take or lose your in-game items from you and you can't do a thing about it.

Strange, I bought the Caitian race and can still play as my Caitian character.

You have all the evidence you need to submit a credit card dispute.

You have screenshots or in-game video access to your characters having the ship hence you must have purchased them in the past. You have your credit card receipt of when you bought those c-store points.

Submit the dispute and evidence. That way the company is forced to deal with your credit card company and not insignificant little you. Most of the times the credit card will refund the money (if your evidence is solid and the company does not rectify the issue inside of 30 days) to you directly and penalize the company for that amount in future transactions.

I used to suggest this as well only to discover that disputing a charge may lead to your account getting banned:

https://support.perfectworld.com/app...1500/kw/banned

I don;t make a judgement with this response. Just pointing it out.

This must be some kind of bug, because I just noticed today that I cannot claim the Tactical Escort Retrofit on one of my toons.

Checklist

1 do you have the correct rank?
2 do you have a ship slot
3 do you have that ship (or a console from it ) in another slot

That's clearly a bug and you should contact a GM about it. There's no need to get mad.

the future that is past now, is right. It is clearly a bug. A search of the forum would reveal that you are not the only one experiencing the issue. maybe not the exact issue, but the issue of ships you should be able to get (paid for with real $$) but cannot. It's a bug, that is happening in the game right now.
Submit a ticket.
Be patient, it's not going to get fixed overnight.

But ... but ... are you suggesting that the original poster should breathe, calm down, do the tiniest bit of a search to see if others are experiencing the same problem, or problems like it, and then quietly submit a ticket with any and all relevant information including screenshots, etc. INSTEAD of raging himself into a fit where he has to come to the forums and RAGE about how terrible the company is.

What a preposterous idea. Didn't you know ... this is the internet ? :)

EDIT : Ok, fine I am overstating it a little for effect , the OP wasn't "raging", but the point is still valid. When your first response to something going wrong in the game is to come to come complain and advise people not to give the company any monies before taking the time to actually research your issue and submit a ticket and allow the company to fix it ... ??? Yeah sorry , no sympathy. In my experience, PWE and Cryptic dealt with a serious problem i had. All i had to do was follow the right way to do things (submit a ticket) and be patient.

I thought i was having the same issue a few months ago with the Exploration Cruiser Retrofit (VA) . I had it on my main character and i wanted it on one of my alts. So when i logged into one of my alts it said i had to pay for it. I thought I already bought it but it turned out that 600 day vets get one free VA ship, either the Galaxy, Defiant or Intrepid. And since I already had the VA defiant on my alt as my free Veteran VA ship, it told me I had to buy the Galaxy.

When this happen to me i was really pissed because I thought they were trying to rip me off. It took a month of sending in ticket after ticket before a GM finally looked at my account and explained it to me. When I hit VA when VA was a new rank, i didn't know 600 day Vets got a free VA ship. But this may not be the issue that your are having.

I have the same issue. Here is one possible "answer":
Before F2P, certain Retrofit ships were available for promotional tokens, the TER among them. This was before the cloak was a separate console.

Now, those "earned" ships are essentially character unlocks, the same as any rank-up ship. They cannot be reclaimed on any character. They do not count towards purchasing a Fleet version.

If anyone can disprove the above beyond a reasonable doubt, I would love to hear it. And I'm sure Cryptic would too. ;) I certainly believed I had purchased the Defiant in 2011, but it's possible that I'm remembering the MVAE instead, which the C-Store does report properly as purchased.

The lack of a MMO paper trail is certainly a concern, and not for the business. :P

As I've noted above. Possessing an item doesn't in fact guarantee it was purchased. There is a convenient loophole.
Also you are entirely missing the purpose of why so many companies sell "digital credits" instead of "digital products". You bought and received the credits, that is the end of the transaction for the bank. Those credits can sit unspent on your account until doomsday and you can't ask for a refund. "Once you have their money, never give it back."

The absolute most, legally, the company owes you is an equivalent amount of replacement credits if they choose to recognize the problem. If you believe for one minute that the law treats imaginary "points" like real money, you are out of your mind. And the harder you push, the more likely you will be flagged for fraud.

PayPal has a blanket policy of never honoring a dispute over electronic goods. There is utterly no way to prove or disprove a claim without a physical object. Fraud is rampant.