Is this intended? I'm currently on a preferred account, and the pink/magenta crystals I unlocked in collections are no longer authorized because I don't have artifact equipment authorization. Prior to 4.0, it was perfectly fine for Preferred players to use Cartel Market color crystals.
I'm working on a month, myself, though because of the barrel/hilt vendor problem. 🙂
The barrel/hilt situation is just ridiculous ☹️ hopefully it gets fixed in the next patch.
I hope they notice my new problem though (above). I already bought the collections unlock. The game doesn't recognize it anymore, but I am not going to buy it a second time.
One of the patches fixed the issue for some people, but apparently not all.
Today's patch notes seem to address a lot of things, but still not this: I can no longer claim my crystals from collections. See my previous post in this thread about "a new problem".
The cartel bought crystals and crystals that are from the hypercrates or grand crystal boxes etc are not suppose to require artifact authorization.
http://www.swtor.com/patchnotes/11172015/game-update-4.0.2-patch-notes
The patch notes for Nov 17th outline this more with showing some of the crystals they've specifically targeted to remove artifact authorization from.
If after the patch you're still receiving the error for the artifact equipment authorization I'd suggest emailing [edit: email address removed] assuming that you can't submit an in game ticket.
The following Cartel Market Color crystals have had their artifact permission requirement removed:
