How am meant to appeal a false ban, when every time that I put one in the only response I get just says that nobody has investigated anything? I don’t even know how to bot or hack, but every time I put in a ticket I’m told to refer to the email accusing me of doing so. I only ever have spotify, curse or chrome open in the background. If anyone at customer support gave me even a fraction of their time to send more than a template response this would be resolved already. 16 years of progress just gone over a mistake on Blizzard’s end and the process to resolve it is hands down the worst customer service experience I’ve ever had. I’ve dealt with Blizzard CS like a decade and more ago and it used to be pleasant. But this is unacceptable. Troll me all you want with “he probably did this or that” it doesn’t matter anymore in the replies, because people today just love to watch others suffer. It’s great. But I hope some mods see this and give enough of a damn to light a fire under someone’s butt to turn something around in the CS department.
That is not what a reply would say. They don’t say “we did not investigate”. They DO check that the account was indeed flagged as having met criteria for third party software/hacks/cheating. They use a set of templates that are the same for everyone, depending on what the GM finds.
- That the penalty is upheld, often with a link to the Blizzard EULA/Policies
- That the issue has been escalated to a specialist
- That the penalty is overturned and they apologize
If the detection criteria is incorrect, it can result in false flags on accounts. That is rare, but does happen. When it does they usually unban those impacted as a group. That can take a few days after a ban wave for Hacks to realize and sort out.
Appeals via ticket are the ONLY way to contest an account action. You can appeal until they tell you that your Bnet account is at risk. Blizzard does not engage in live debates about someone’s account, and never has. They will not tell you specifically what they found, as sadly the bot and cheat makers would love to get a hold of that info. That means players are left guessing sometimes.
Keep in mind that botting/hacking/third party software is not “just” using a fully automated bot.
It is:
- Using a macro outside of a game to automate any portion of your keypresses or rotations. Only macros made with the in-game macro maker (WoW) can be used.
- Having prohibited programs running like Autohotkey or multiboxing software.
- It is exploiting a bug in game for gain
- It is any software or overlays that provide information from a game that is not provided by the game itself. WoW addons work in Blizzard’s sandbox using data Blizzard provides them through the API. Those are generally fine.
This recent post on WoW CS to another banned player covers some of it.
Im lootgoblin btw. I know nothing can be done by posting, but the players should know the level of support theyre receiving is inadequate. I know theyre not literally saying they havent investigated. But if they did they would know im innocent. So when i receive a message saying “refer to email”, that means they didnt check anything. Its a lie and its lazy. Wouldnt it be better to leave my ticket open until someone actually investigates? Why say “no, cheater” and shut me out?
I thought you might be. Please read what I posted very carefully. Esp the part about how accounts are flagged, and the possibility of false flags. You are understandably upset right now, and I dumped a lot of info in one post.
They DID check - your account is flagged as having participated in whatever it is the Hacks team was looking for. If the flagging criteria is wrong resulting in your account being flagged in error, that is going to take longer and won’t be done by a GM. The GM can only verify the flags. The Hacks team would need to look at enough escalated appeals to realize something is off with some of the detection criteria - false flags. That tends to take a while, like days.
No. They are going to do what they are tasked to do as first line GM. Verify the account was indeed flagged by the Hacks team criteria. Send you a template telling you that, and move on to other tickets.
What I would do, is wait a few days and appeal again in hopes that by then if there is a false flag issue, the Hacks team is aware of it and has alerted the GMs, or overturned it already for those impacted.
It goes without saying, stay polite, don’t try to bring up other issues like opinions on CS, etc. Just appeal and state you have never used any automation, macros, third party software, etc and to please escalate for further investigation, that you feel it must be a false positive flag. At some point they will tell you no more appeals or they will ban your Bnet - if that happens then that is the end of the appeals road.
Thank you. I mean it. But for it to be a system that flags my account, means that no person could have monitored my actions. I know for a fact that there’s no possible way that happened because I wouldn’t be where I am right now. It sucks.
MVPs don’t work for Blizzard so SPECULATION AHEAD! I can’t confirm any of this. Just going off what little is public over the years and piecing things together. This is a high level generalization and not at all confirmed.
Did they watch each and every single one of the banned accounts? I am sure that would not be possible. What they usually do, I THINK, is research an automation method, bot, cheat, etc. That does involve hands on watching many accounts using it, researching the cheat method/software, etc. They figure out what it is about that method on those accounts makes them unique. They set up some sort of detection criteria to detect accounts using that specific method and flag them. From the flagged accounts they pull a bunch and verify that yes, the detection criteria really is catching the accounts that are using the target method. That in their testing all the flagged accounts really were using it. If the verification checks match, they can issue a ban wave.
This works MOST of the time. Sometimes though the detection criteria can have something off and sweep up innocent people. That is where the Hacks team ends up having to go back, revise the criteria, run the sweep again, and unban those that were false flags. Usually with an apology and game time.
It’s just unfortunate that a company exists that would make mistakes like this and make their customers feel like there’s no hope until they realize they made a mistake. Why not have another team looking into issues like mine in the meantime while they get to the mass screw-ups? Why not work on the ones reaching out, persistently wanting to get back in the game. I’m leveling another account but uncertainty of whether or not I get ANOTHER false ban on top of what I’ve already lost just makes me ready to walk away from the game altogether. I shouldn’t have to feel like all hope is lost because of something I’m not at fault for.
I truly appreciate all of your input, though. You also helped out a lot the other day on my first complaint on Caffinator lol. Idk why the avatars swapped. Regardless of how many times I get denied I’ll keep coming back, posting about this injustice, until I get banned from here too, or my account is released from this false imprisonment, or I just give up and move onto a game that doesn’t have a system that could make an oopsie that false bans and copy/pastes irrelevant replies to people. I couldn’t imagine the GM’s job is to sit there and paste scripted responses into a chat box all day. I used to be able to have conversations with them, and see human emotion in responses. Now they just give me a link to a definition o something I didn’t do and send me to the back of the line…
Well from all the threads that I’ve read you just keep appealing till you get an actual human. I’m also in the same boat as you were I got banned for botting/gold buying etc… I had a few friends from the Allies side also saying they got banned. I didn’t post it on Reddit or any other place cause people will downvote you and always say you are in the wrong. I’m currently on my 7th appeal and I’ll keep going till i get someone. Even though it was a 2 week ban it still sucks they banned me 4 hours after phase 2 was out. Before phase 2 I farmed RFK a ton and got lucky with a few drops and I sold a few through trade. People said i might have sold to a gold buyer and that’s why I got flagged and banned. I’ve had this account for 19+ years and this is the first for me. I know people are going to say “oh it’s only 2 weeks” but i took off so i can enjoy phase 2 with my friends and guildies which isn’t happening. Not the end of the world but sucks.
Wait wait wait…you’re telling me they will ban your account for placing appeals? They will BAN your account for appealing a BAN on your account? Isn’t that their job? To answer appeals? You’re telling me they will sever all ties to the game you want to pay for and play, because you’re trying desperately to regain access to the game you want to pay for and play?
“Hey man, you’re annoying me. You’re forcing me to earn my paycheck. Please shut up or I will remove you as a means for my paycheck.”
They will literally remove you as a paying customer to Blizzard, because you’re trying to reclaim your status as a paying customer to Blizzard?
Then you can’t appeal anymore. So it’s like “shut up kid, go sit down and be quiet. By the way, you owe me money.”
And everyone is okay with this? Even Blizzard employees and MVPs? That’s the new standard in support?
If I was wrongfully punished for something I didn’t do, which has been the case before, you can bet I would raise hell. Especially considering it’s something I pay for. After receiving the same templates on my 3rd, 4th, 5th attempts, I would start opening an appeal on the hour, every hour. Then telling us to shut up or we’ll be banned further, it’s sickening. I would have been fired for giving such a response in my previous support jobs, because I’m making the client feel undervalued and potentially driving away that client and future investors. Plainly put: It’s really moronic thinking and the worst support I’ve ever seen.
I truly hope what I said is seen by higher ups. We’re not stupid and most of us see the bigger picture. I hope you all get your accounts squared away and that we’re all eventually treated like we were 10 or so years ago: as valued clients and players.
You act like this is a simple case of being warned just for putting in an appeal. They are perfectly happy to accept an appeal ticket the first, second, third, time. Etc. That is their job and they do that job. They don’t get paid to be spammed after doing their job and giving a final answer to the player.
The same was true 10 years ago, or 20 years ago. Sometimes “no”, means “no”. They have looked into the appeal multiple times and the logs back the account action.
Putting in many many tickets about the same account infraction eventually becomes abuse of the GMs. It is NOT their job to tell someone “no” about the same issue 20, 30, 50 times. They don’t get paid to be spammed with tickets for something that is already decided and communicated.
Yeah, spamming is actually abuse of the system just because you did not like the answer you got. That really will get your Bnet account actioned and they don’t get paid to put up with people acting like that.
I can’t think of any business that lets you spam them with tickets, calls, or showing up at the customer service desk and DEMANDING answers once an answer has been given. You will get told you are trespassing and shown the door. You will get your number blocked. You will get discontinued as a customer. Staff do not deserve to be abused with dozens or hundreds of requests for the same thing because a customer can’t take “no” for an answer. Universally I think people agree that staff are not punching bags, and you don’t have a right to monopolize their time that needs to be spent actually helping other customers.
I gave up. This company isnt run by the same people, they dont care if youre innocent or not. Their system says im wrong so i have no intention of continuing to do business with a flawed system thats punishing innocent people. Ive had 2-3 other friends, one was a GM like me with a much larger guild fall victim to this false perma ban nonsense. Theyre gonna destroy their own game. My second oopsie perma got swapped to a six month suspension but i told em they can go ahead and close my almost 2 decade old account. Im done with Blizzard.
Also, in the ToS they state theyre allowed to ban you at anytime for no reason if they want. Youre renting the account. Its theirs and you have no rights to anything you do in their game. If they dont wish to invest the time and money into correcting a mistake, they wont. They will punish innocent people to save time and money. Its as simple as that.
That is rather illogical I think. It is far more expensive to invest money in:
- Hacks team that handles anti cheat software and processes for all Blizzard games
- Investigating and updating detection criteria to keep up with the latest bots, exploits, cheating, automation, etc.
- Penalizing accounts and sending out emails
- Dealing with all the CS contacts that always generates
- If it is a false positive, dealing with unbanning and sending out another round of emails and appologies.
- Loss of the subscription from that account
The labor and overhead costs of having an anti cheat team, processes, and bans is expensive. Further, it costs them a paying customer to ban that customer.
That does not make Blizzard any money nor does it save any money. Quite the opposite. Even if the person were to buy another license, the costs of the anti cheat process far exceeds any license payment.
If they wanted to be cheap and save money, they could just ignore automation, exploitation, botting, cheating, language infractions, etc.