I just recently purchased the Mines of Moria Collector's Edition and began the process of adding it to my account. However, the website asked for some form of payment in order to finish activating the product. Does this mean that in order to access the content, I'll need to spend an extra sum of money up front in addition to what I've already paid for the box or will it only start to bill me after my month of VIP time is up?
Where it asks you for a form of payment, select "Game Time Card". On the next screen it asks for your card number, select "I'll add one later". You don't have to have a credit card on file.
Ran into this tonight too, if anyone in customer service is listening this is a really unacceptable issue. Questions and confusion regarding this go clear back to 2009 and probably earlier; it appears to be less of a bug and more of a deceptive way of upselling players with game time when we enter a game code.
"Choose game card and tell it you'll pay later" is not a remotely intuitive course of action when upgrading your account, and I think the folks at Turbine must realize that as often as you see this question come up across the years. It really makes it appear that you have to purchase more game time, and it borders on dishonest business conduct.