Account closure for Exploitative Activity: Abuse of the Economy

[Eleccybubb]

Eleccybubb, shut the fuck up and get out of my thread, you fucking tool.

I had already contacted support, and they had already chosen NOT to overturn. So I uninstalled the game, and was just going to write off blizzard forever. The fact that it even got to this point is sickening. The first person should of corrected it if it was a mistake on their end, which it was.

Did they overturn it? Yes or no? If you want to resort to insults though I see you have no actual argument.

I got one of your surveys to review, and I went ahead and dug into the issue deeper, as I felt we were in the wrong with this account closure. After going through the account, I found that we were incorrect in our investigation, and as such, I have overturned the closure on the account, and provided back 10 days of game time to cover the amount you missed. I'm sorry about the confusion on this, and I'm sorry about the issues with the account, which we should have caught.

Again, I appreciate you contacting us on this issue.

Oh looks like they did. What I'm guessing is it was incompetence on their part which I agree is stupid. But at the end of the day your issue was resolved. Hell you even got game time as a sign of good grace. Took me a week without mine to get it back and I didn't get no game time.

[Cæli]

Not really. They are there for a reason. Just because you don't agree with them doesn't make them "evil". And if you think the False positive system is exclusive to video games then just lol.

It IS inacceptable that OP had to live through this. It seems you disagree, well. Let's stop trying to argue we will get nowhere. People have different opinions I guess

[sciatika]

Great, so someone later got a survey, and thats what it took to get this overturned? Think of all of the people who invested hundreds, or THOUSANDS of dollars into this game over the years, and DIDN'T get so lucky to have someone review a survey. You're a tool, keep spamming threads with your bullshit, grats on having no life and 10k posts.

[Eleccybubb]

Great, so someone later got a survey, and thats what it took to get this overturned? Think of all of the people who invested hundreds, or THOUSANDS of dollars into this game over the years, and DIDN'T get so lucky to have someone review a survey. You're a tool, keep spamming threads with your bullshit, grats on having no life and 10k posts.

Hate to tell you but amount of money invested means jack shit to them. Just like any other game company. But seems all you can do is resort to insulting me.

[sciatika]

I just wanted to make sure that people know that blizzard can and does permaban without good reason. I feel for any innocent person who loses their account unfairly.

- - - Updated - - -

Hate to tell you but amount of money invested means jack shit to them. Just like any other game company.

That is a sad truth, my friend.

[Eleccybubb]

I just wanted to make sure that people know that blizzard can and does permaban without good reason. I feel for any innocent person who loses their account unfairly.

- - - Updated - - -



That is a sad truth, my friend.

They didn't permaban you without good reason though. They made a mistake. It happens in every online game. WoW is not exclusive to this. You were hit with a false positive which while rare is a pain in the ass. It's uncommon but it can happen with games.

[The One Percent]

Just contact them directly and explain the situation; don't waste your time on this forum with these clowns.

[sciatika]

It's a mistake that shouldn't happen. And when I open a ticket, and speak to someone who also investigates the matter and comes to the same conclusion, they are making the same mistake what, 3 times over? BS.

[Eleccybubb]

It's a mistake that shouldn't happen. And when I open a ticket, and speak to someone who also investigates the matter and comes to the same conclusion, they are making the same mistake what, 3 times over? BS.

Then the first 2 GMs must have barely glanced at it. Sadly I cannot argue the incompetence part much because any issue I've presented to them has been resolved. So speaking from personal experience I've had good support from them. Also it's a mistake that CAN happen. False positives are not really preventable until seen for the first time. Warden must have detected something akin to being banworthy but wasn't actually banworthy and triggered it. Aka a False positive.

I don't understand what you want me to say? A lot of people here including myself told you the best option was to contact support. You contacted support and while it took a while you got your account back and as a sign of good grace some free game time. Be happy.

[Gadzooks]

Just an update to the situation after speaking with a gm, the ban will not be overturned. Funny thing is, the GM or tickets gave me absolutely ZERO details of anything. I still have no idea why I lost my account, but I'm done dealing with this shady piece of shit company. Heres the transcript.
*snip*

Did you buy this account from them, brand new, and level all the characters in it, or did you buy it from someone else, with leveled characters?

- - - Updated - - -

I don't understand how when I spoke with the agent via chat, he did a "thorough review" of what happened, and couldn't catch the mistake, but later on someone could? How incompetent are these employees, really? This is just a game, but some of us take it very seriously, including myself. This was a huge kick to my face, this whole system is completely unjust, and unfair. They need to provide details to support their punishments, or players will continue to be unfairly banned. The agent on the phones response was "Well, it does say we can close accounts for any reason, and you agreed to it".

Is this any way to treat your customers? I had already uninstalled... GDI.

Because the last guy you got contact from was able to see more information than the previous GMs had access to. Something was flagging, that took digging into something like payment history, or CC#'s, or something like that - they may have thought you bought the account and transferred it to your BNET, and the last guy could see that you used the same CC info for all accounts.

Definitely a problem on their end, that hopefully will be reviewed internally at Blizzard and fixed. Frustrating for you, yes, but you're dealing with a massive corporation where one department very often doesn't speak to other departments, or aren't allowed to.

The main reason they don't go into detail is that the botters and account thieves would use that information to get around the rules, and exploit. Sucks, but that's not anyone's fault but the exploiters - they have to protect their game and player's accounts, and giving exact details on bannings would do more harm than good.

- - - Updated - - -

It's a mistake that shouldn't happen. And when I open a ticket, and speak to someone who also investigates the matter and comes to the same conclusion, they are making the same mistake what, 3 times over? BS.

In your case, yes, there's definitely a problem - but without knowing the exact details on their end, it's hard to point a finger. You may have just had a "perfect storm" set of circumstances that made the account get flagged, something that could only happen in one out of millions of accounts - and there's no way to predict everything in a system.

It's frustrating, yes, but who knows, your issue may have set off a small firestorm internally that they're now fixing. That they came back a 4th time is VERY unusual - something about this issue is off, I think this is more than just a typical false flag.

[Themanintobuildafire]

Nonsense, they don't permanently ban people without having someone look at the logs first. There's no "false positives" on permanent bans as they are not automated. Only temporary bans are.

Someone has probably called you out on this already, but you are wrong.

I have been automatically banned by their system at least 20 times in the past 6 years playing.

Reason: I work in Asia and usually use a VPN. Logging on without the VPN or from work and bang, ban.

THEY DO NOT look at the logs before the ban. You have to appeal to get them to do that and sometimes the GMs are so lazy you have to put in more than one ticket.

Also, if you do something like log in from an Asian IP and decide to buy a carry and throw someone a big sum of gold - BAN! Try it if you don't believe me.

[cFortyfive]

I don't understand how when I spoke with the agent via chat, he did a "thorough review" of what happened, and couldn't catch the mistake, but later on someone could? How incompetent are these employees, really?

Because you are talking to someone who looks into the account data base sees the reason why you were banned and that's about as much "thorough review" as you get. If you want to get something done you always have to insist on talking with a superior that. Writing tickets who get answered by random low level gms or that live chat bullshit gets you nowhere. That said we should probably still all be glad this isn't valve.

[Gadzooks]

It IS inacceptable that OP had to live through this. It seems you disagree, well. Let's stop trying to argue we will get nowhere. People have different opinions I guess

"Unnacceptable"?

Please send me the address of the perfect world you live in.

[FelPlague]

I just wanted to make sure that people know that blizzard can and does permaban without good reason. I feel for any innocent person who loses their account unfairly.

- - - Updated - - -



That is a sad truth, my friend.

they have to ban hundreds of thousands of bots... if you think they wont catch a few innocent once in awhile your crazy...

[TEHPALLYTANK]

Probably, but this is tied to a faulty system and filter mechanics. Default UI forces the user to search for the best offers, instead of simply allowing him to buy any quantity they want.

But yeah I agree, scrolling through 20 pages to find a FEW things, not a SINGLE thing sucks.

As much as I hate people who post items in single units, they're also the reason I can sell that same shit for up to 80% more than the lowest price simply because I'm putting it in a stack.

And no, Auctionator doesn't fix the problem; waiting 5 minutes for it to scan AH data, and doing so every couple of hours to ensure that any of the price trends are actually accurate, freaking sucks.

[Stormspark]

Eleccybubb, shut the fuck up and get out of my thread, you fucking tool.

I had already contacted support, and they had already chosen NOT to overturn. So I uninstalled the game, and was just going to write off blizzard forever. The fact that it even got to this point is sickening. The first person should of corrected it if it was a mistake on their end, which it was.

These things can be a lot more complicated than it appears at first glance. Imagine someone buys gold from a gold seller, then proceeds to buy a bunch of your auctions. That can really muddy the waters. Because the gold that you received for the items was stolen from compromised accounts. Not through any fault of your own, of course, but they have to investigate ALL of that when someone buys gold (because it's always traced back to someone's account being compromised and everything stolen). Gold sellers will use the AH method to deliver gold to their "customers", to deliberately try to make them look innocent. And people have played the "I got the gold by selling things in the AH, I didn't buy it from a gold seller" argument quite a lot. The only thing I can think of is the number of auctions you had up combined with other factors made it look like you were receiving stolen gold. Not accusing you of course, just pointing out a situation that people that do buy gold have taken advantage of in the past, and how it could end up inadvertently framing someone innocent. Gold sellers use large numbers of "mule" accounts, funneling gold through many accounts, in and out of the auction house, and lots of things like that. It basically works like money laundering does in the real world. Here's a real world analogy for what happened. Basically, it's like the police finding you in possession of money that was stolen from a bank. But you got it from the register of a convenience store as change when you bought something, and you had no idea that it was stolen. Fortunately WOW has logs, whereas real life doesn't.

Obviously it's not impossible to find as they did eventually find some evidence to clear you of any wrongdoing. I don't know the situation of course, I'm merely speculating as to what could've caused it. Unfortunately, they CAN'T tell you what flaged you, and what evidence eventually cleared you, because gold sellers and account thieves would immediately use that information to try to game the system. I sympathize that it took as long for them to clear you as it did, and why it took so many attempts, but without seeing the logs (which we can't see for the aforementioned reasons), I wouldn't be so quick to call them incompetent. I have a general idea of what those people have to deal with, and it's far more than you could imagine. There are large numbers of people out there that will exploit everything humanely possible.

[FelPlague]

As much as I hate people who post items in single units, they're also the reason I can sell that same shit for up to 80% more than the lowest price simply because I'm putting it in a stack.

And no, Auctionator doesn't fix the problem; waiting 5 minutes for it to scan AH data, and doing so every couple of hours to ensure that any of the price trends are actually accurate, freaking sucks.

you do know you dont have to scan the whole AH right... it doesent take 5 mins... all you simply need to do is when you want to buy something, go to buy tab, enter it, takes 3 seconds, same with listing something

[Cæli]

"Unnacceptable"?

Please send me the address of the perfect world you live in.

unnacceptable yes
innocent players should not get their account permabanned like that