I recently got banned for gold buying. I never bough gold with real money and tried to appeal. I was hoping maybe i could talk to someone. This is my first experience appealing a ban. Maybe show credit card statements or something. After waiting 4 days i got an autmated message with no reason or discussion. But what really left me dissapointed is the joking in the message. This isnt funny to me and adding humor to banning someone really was distasteful.
This definitely lost a customer, i understand an automated system will flag innocent people but offering no form to communicate or even know why after 4 days just really left me feeling terrible about my expereince. Couldnt even say how to avoid this in the future or what i could do to not have this happen again. Some form of communication at all and not just a generic automated message with no information and instantly closing it so i couldnt respond or communicate.
My only other experience with blizz support was probably 2009 when my account was hacked and it was amazing. Gm was super helpful and fast and to compare to my experience today of getting an automated message joking that im suspended with no reason was just terrible. I couldnt even defend myself with proof of no purchases.
This forum is for feedback on the support website, not for feedback on any provided support.
Support wouldn’t accept outside proof even if they allowed a dialog. Anything a customer provides can be falsified, hence Bliz only goes of their internal logging/tracking systems.
You can continue to appeal until you are told that no more appeals will be accepted. If there was a mistake, your penalty could be overturned. However, if their internal logs show that you accepted gold from a known exploitative account, it would likely upheld.
You’ll need to leave that as feedback in the survey after the ticket is closed.
They did tell you the category that you were penalized for.
The category that you were penalized for is Real Money Trading (RMT). You may not have bought gold directly with your credit card, or other payment method. However, there are other ways players get caught up in the RMT illicit gold transfers. If, for any reason, your account was dealing with (or was a pass through for) illicit gold the chances are high you get flagged as part of their investigations.
Some ways that happens that are not directly buying gold on a website:
Participating in carries or other services for gold. While not technically against the rules in some versions of WoW, they are at your own risk. If someone buys gold and passes you illicit gold, your account is at risk.
Participating in any activity where someone passes you large amounts of gold - gold transfers between game versions or factions in some versions of WoW are no longer allowed for that reason. They were being used to dupe unwitting players into being part of money laundering.
Anything where you are getting large amounts of gold from level 1s. Always deal with people you know, on their mains if you can.
The AH is much safer for trade, but beware they will flag it if you sell a grey bear butt for 2 million gold. That is just sus!
The appeals process is not for you you to argue your case. It is for them to take a second look at the data and verify that yes, your account really did receive illicit gold.
You can appeal, one ticket at a time, until they tell you that you are bordering on GM harassment. Be polite and tell them you think it is a false positive. That your account did not receive illicit gold. If the records back that, they will overturn it.
Be aware you will get back a template when you appeal. Usually one of the following:
Upheld
Overturned with an apology
Penalty reduced
Ticket escalated to the Hacks team for further investigation
I was just stating my experience thats all. The gold was given by a guild member who i know farmed it.
Im not coming back so im not gonna wait another 4 days for an autmated message.
Its just a closing statement for people to see my experience. Hopefully so support can see what made a customer leave and try to fix it for future customers. Honestly im pretty understanding person about flags for automated system. It was just the time it took to respond which in itself if even over turned is still a ban then, an automated message, and the joke in it, when for me it is a serious topic and that should not be in a message for customer service.
This is just so others who have never had this experience can see it. Bad publicity like this is deserved if this is how they treat people. And id rather leave a public review before i leave. I think they deserved a bad review for a terrible performance. And they silenced me in other forums.
Im not looking for help or advice. Just leaving a review for people to see.
It’s not possible for a penalty of this kind to be automated.
For something like this, a human has to investigate the path that illicit gold has taken.
Tickets are placed in queues, like getting in a line. The time it takes is simply a function of waiting your turn.
As MissCheetah pointed out, they are templates that are sent by human GMs.
I’m not seeing the bad publicity. You seem to be saying you accepted bad gold, yet you wanted to appeal as if you didn’t and were wrongly penalized, and now you want people to see that the penalty was upheld. All while receiving a human review of your case and receiving human templated reply.
As discussing moderation is against the forum rules, it’s likely it won’t last very long.
It wasnt bad gold though i even was in some of the ST runs it was gotten in. And you attacking me like this is just supporting my not wanting to come back if this is how people are treated. I hope people read these comments and see it. You honestly are furthering my opinion.
Bad publicity is 4 day wait times for a message that just says appeal upheald. Honestly when i do support at my job something like that would get me marked for bad performance and repeatedly done would get me fired.
So yes that is a bad look.
Then perhaps that wouldn’t be related to the penalty. It could have been some other gold exchange at a different time.
No one is attacking you, Tyraels. MC and I have been providing information that typically applies to cases like this.
Which is your prerogative, but again there’s no attacking or otherwise treating you badly.
No, that’s you waiting for your turn in line like everyone else, and then the penalty being upheld after your case was reviewed by a new GM.
That’s the problem with attempting to compare two dissimilar companies: they aren’t analgous. Hence, your comaprison isn’t supporting bad publicity.
You’ll find that comparing two similar companies, such as two multinational video game corporations, the outcome to situations like this would be fairly similar.
If you are part of the chain of money/illicit gold laundering then your account gets penalized. The gold your friend got, or you got was traced to illicit exploitive accounts. People buy gold to buy runs. Using runs to launder gold is common. It is unfortunate if you got caught up in that, but that they really don’t want RMT in their game, at all. All those involved tend to get penalized, even if you were just the end recipient.
For the same reason this thread will be deleted. It is against the forum code of conduct to discuss specific account actions.
Discussing Disciplinary Actions
This category includes:
Creating posts or threads to discuss disciplinary actions taken against a player, including chat logs and email correspondence between a player and a Game Master (GM)
Creating posts or threads to discuss disciplinary actions taken against a character or account on the forums
If a player is found to have participated in such actions, they will:
Be given a temporary ban from the forums, depending upon severity
I am not sure why you think that Blizzard cracking down on illicit gold transfer makes them look bad. I understand you don’t like the answer you got - that the penalty was upheld. That does not make the customer “right” when they break the game rules.
Oh, and the templates don’t have any “jokes” in them. It can’t be both “automated” and “a GM making jokes at you”.
The joke was a space reference about a disturbance in the space, then just says ban upheld. Really comes off unproffesional when dealing with someone who is in a situation they find serious. The “joke” was longer than the actual topic.
I appreciate your tone cheetah. And your response are very helpful. Im not upset by them cracking down on gold buying. Thats also why i dont mind false positives when it happens. Im upset with the customer support. The time and little to no interaction, with barely any response. To just say no upheld in a generic response and close it with well open another and wait 4 says is what im sayong is a bad look. Especially with that long of a wait time.
If a response like yours was given that be great and i would be leaving a positive review. You gave a well though out, polite respones. That obviously showed effort and a care to the situation.
What you said with that tone is what i would expect from a company when dealing with customers thats not what blizzard is doing.
I do appreciate your response keep up the good work in here. This is the type of stuff the community should see.
MVPs are just other players who answer questions as best we can. I don’t work for Blizzard.
The place to leave a review is the survey you get when they close a ticket. That goes to the supervisors and is actually a way to give them feedback. Posting this stuff on the forums, as I said, is against the forum rules. It usually ends up a one sided conversation with the banned person presenting their view - but Blizzard not being permitted to discuss what/how they caught someone. The anti-cheat methods are kept private. I am sure you know one sided discussions are not super productive.
Be sure to let them know in the survey what you think of the wait times, etc. The folks taking tickets do so for all Blizzard games and services so there is often a queue, but it is certainly valid to be unhappy about it.
I am particularly mentioning the survey so that you know how to leave that review - because the forum mods will likely enforce the code of conduct and sweep up this thread when they come through.
Thanks and yeah the reason i was banned honestly doesnt matter its whatever. Im happy they are cracking down and i understand some people are just caught in the crossfire.
I didnt mean for people to take this post as a why am i banned for gold buying and more to say blizzard needs to step up the actual service and how they deal with any type of customer issue. Not just bans. It seems to be across all types of customer interaction. Even forums you have players being way more helpful.
The level of care and attention they gave me is why im quitting not because of the type of ban or necessarily the ban. It was the face value of the response that just comes off like they dont care and pretty much zero interaction.
And for a ban if you respond so slow even if they agree they were wrong i would have lost almost a week of my paid time.
I should of just left the type of ban out of the message and said for appeals and experience with customer service
On this part, if the account action was a false positive or other mistake, you certainly can ask for your game time to be credited back. They will often grant that. The other reason to appeal, and get actions removed, is that they stack. Each penalty on the account means the next one will be longer, up until license closure eventually. So if something is an error, a player would want to get that black mark removed from their license - along with asking for their game time credit.
I do wish you well in wherever your gaming journey takes you. There are tons of fun games out there!
Sorry to hear your experience. As you can tell, there is no way to appeal, no reviews being made, and making a post about it like you have will only lead to it getting removed. If you persist, you’ll be banned.