Niantic Refuse to Admit Mistake in EX Raid Pass Time

My son and I live in Hong Kong, and are avid fans of this great game. Together we battled a Lugia raid at ICC Hong Kong some time ago. We were in Japan on vacation when we both received our very first EX Raid pass for 2:00-2:45pm ICC Hong Kong on 8 April. We were ecstatic that we got to catch a Mewtwo together!

When we were approaching the ICC Hong Kong Gym just after 1:30pm on 8 April hoping to win the Gym before the raid, we were shocked to see that the raid will end in less than 15 minutes. Needless to say, with so few people getting EX Raid passes there were already no other trainers left and two trainers has no chance to beat Mewtwo. The pass we received had the WRONG time listed on it and were therefore useless!

It is clearly Niantic’s mistake that the EX Raid Pass lists the raid time as ‪2:00-2:45pm while the actual raid took place ‪at 1:00-1:45‬pm!

After discussing this for some time, we guess that there must be a glitch in Niantic’s system that issue EX Raid passes listing the local time of the place where the pass was received (in our case Japan) but not the local time of the location of the actual raid (Hong Kong). HOWEVER, the pass never listed any time zone (e.g. JST), so no one would have thought of any need to convert time. The rules given in the Help Center also did not mention anything about the need to convert time.

Receiving an EX Raid pass is rare and the chance of receiving it while on vacation is infinitestimally small. It is clearly the case that Niantic’s system never accounted for this. There is clearly a glitch in their system that caused the wrong time being given on the EX Raid pass.

And since my son and I now play less and less together due to his busy school work, it is very likely that we will NEVER receive EX Raid Passes together again! Niantic had just rob us of a great memory!

It simply makes no sense to list the local time of where the pass is received and not the local time of the raid location. It’s like airlines listing my flight time from London back to Hong Kong using local Hong Kong time instead of London time where I board the flight. Ironically listing local time of where the pass is received is only useful for “spoofers” who use GPS-cheaters to play abroad!

I have so far encountered nothing but frustration from my dealing with Niantic’s “Help Center” since reporting the case. I had dealt with no less than 7 of their “Support” staff over 2 weeks with 4 separate reports and they have been dismissive, irresponsible, and down right disrespectful. They gave conflicting information and had refused to compensate my son and me for their mistake. This whole event really wasted a lot of my time and stressed both of us out as my son asks me for updates many times a day.

Now finally, one of their staff apologizes today and offered - TWO PREMIUM RAID PASSES!! I told him to keep them. I didn’t want to share this horrible experience but I believe fellow trainers should be aware of this glitch.

5 Likes

Switch from summer to winter time, maybe?

I did my 11th today. You just need to know your EX-raid locations near you. Theres guide that help you how to find them.

How are the time settings on your phone? Automatic or did you set it manually? I could see things going wrong there.
And yes Niantics support people are less then great but thats pretty much always the case with big companys sadly.

3 Likes

To be fair it is down to chance really, I know guys who have got gold at multiple ex gyms and regularly raid at those gym in our town and the surrounding town but still haven’t got one… I on the don’t really raid and got mine without any focus at all…

Yeah i dont understand that. Cause i NEVER EVER since the new system hear about people NOT getting an invite at a gym in our city that has a Mewtwo comming next week when they raided there last week. Not one… And i think theres a total of ~300 different people im with in Whatsapp groups.
Honestly i just hope to miss one myself like that soon so i know its possible :stuck_out_tongue:

This is Hong Kong, we do not have summer/winter daylight saving time.

oh ok

I can’t blame you for being upset – the mistake in time sucks, especially after being so eager for the event. While there seem to be some cases where getting EX Raid passes are commonplace (robdebobrob’s report, for example), the EX Raids do seem to be rare in general.

It sounds like the only people who need to watch out for this, though, are those who play the game in multiple time zones.

Honestly man not calling you a liar but I don’t believe that and if that’s true you are in a very intense group.

Seems timezones are not correct for your location.

Yeah their limit is 2 passes i recieved them before. Doesn’t seem like they want to reward anyone for missing Ex raid.

Dont know what the intensity of the group has to do with it but sure… The only reason i can actually think of for no one missing out on Mewtwo is that theres not enough people having raided on the gym.

If there is a limit to the number of passes being given out per EX-raid, we have just never reached it.

Last i heard was 40 per Ex. Might be more now.

I’ve had Ex raids with well over 40 players months ago, the cap for that is rasied some time now.
One of the pro’s of making appgroups for every ex raids where people sign in like we do is that you can see how many, which team and what level players are.

Yeah we have something similair in a telegram group. But not everyone applys (for various reasons) so we dont get the whole picture. But i dont think we go over 40 players ever, so that might be the reason for no one missing out.