I was the victim of a scam a few months back. There were a few of us that got hit. There was a sizeable amount of gold lost, and reports were made of course. Blizzard of course will not say what happened due to “privacy” concerns but that’s been their policy for a long time. That’s not why I made this post however.
Though thoroughly documented, and though it was done through Trade chat and Trade Services chat, and though it was a confirmed trade transaction involving gold, Blizzard was unwilling to reimburse my losses. I have seen many anecdotal stories of people being made whole again, and it doesn’t make sense not to here. I acted in good faith. When one does not have a guild, community, or friends that are able or willing to do the content one wishes to do for a more complete game experience, one must turn to strangers, as it IS an MMORPG after all, and all activities revolve around it. It bothers me that Blizzard made this very channel called Trade Services so people could advertise runs for gold. Blizzard supports this activity by making a channel dedicated to such things. Yet when people get victimized, they cower and refuse to help, further victimizing the victims and abandoning all support for their player base.
Blizzard, you need to be either all in or all out on this. Either support everything that happens in YOUR channels and in-game, or don’t bother supporting it at all. You betrayed my faith in you as much as the scammer betrayed my faith in the player base.
This message is directed solely at Blizzard, and I do not care if players wish to offer their two cents one way or the other because I won’t be coming back to check on this post. Flame me all you want for being scammed if it makes you feel better about yourselves. Put your snarky quips and lame troll jokes in here, I do not care. All I care about is how Blizzard constantly pretends to be in players’ corner and ultimately stabs them in the back. As Instructor Rasuvius would say, “You disappoint me, students.”
Blizzard employees will not act on posts made on GD. If you have a complaint regarding their follow up on you being a victim of ingame fraud, you should do that through Customer Support.
While some Blizzard employees may read this forum they rarely, if ever, tell us they have or interact on issues here.
However, just for your info, here is a quote from one of their support pages:
A scam is the act of acquiring items, services, or any other possession from another player through misinformation, confusion, or fraud.
Boosting services are not supported by Blizzard but if you are the victim of a scam, contact us. Game Masters cannot restore any of your losses, but will take action against confirmed scammers whenever possible so they won’t scam other players.
Ingame transactions like yours have always been risky and although the person or persons may be punished, we never know and that’s unfortunate, but its a “buyer beware” situation. On the couple of occasions I paid for carries (they were for a AotC mount some years ago) I paid part in advance and the bulk on completion. And I only did it with a reputable long-term guild.
Good luck with your future gaming, Im sorry you got gypped.
It’s a shame that you were scammed, for sure. Sadly, Blizzard does not act on these sort of transactions. The best way to avoid a scam is to make sure you are purchasing from a reputable source which, if you’ve been around long enough on your server and know which guilds are good for it, you’ll be able to spot easily enough.
The transaction is still not supported by Blizzard. They just allow gold to be used as a form of exchange for services.
Just play the game instead.
It’s almost like the amount of scams drastically increased as soon as Blizzard decided it was a good idea to ban the boosting communities.
Ever heard of Prohibition? Same deal here.
Some transactions aren’t supported. Scammed gold can be removed from the scammer, and their account actioned, but it won’t be returned.
Players are encouraged to find reputable sellers (where there’s still an element of trust) or keep things in the trade window where it’s basically a contained little transaction.
This is a very much an “at your own peril” thing.
I don’t think they even pretend that anymore.
As others have said, posting this in GD is less than useless. If you want to have even a 0.0000000000001% chance someone at Blizz will read your post, you need to move this to the CS forum or post on the r/wow subreddit. GD will simply laugh at you as you yell into the void.
I bet the void gets really tired of people yelling at it. 
Lul get rekt.
I pretty much agree with this. They are sending people mixed signals. Plus, people are running this scam because it works. It’s obvious that the punishments are not enough and they are some how keeping the gold they steal from people. If punishments were swift and thorough, nobody would be bothering to do it.
Having said that…
I have a feeling you handed someone gold in Org or SW. I’ll never know because you’re too scared to check your replies so I’ll just assume that’s what happened.
Blizzard can’t babysit and handhold people that don’t use good judgement. It would be a 24/7/365 job. And this would be a good way to scam gold from Blizzard. Just have a friend “scam” you then you put in a ticket and get your gold back then the two of you can laugh all the way to the bank.
In the future, wait to hand over gold until you are:
- In the raid, looking at the boss
- In the dungeon with the right key
- In a group with people that have the correct pvp rating, verified on the Armory.
Any respectable carrying group would have no problem with these requirements.
But yeah if you’re derpy enough to hand a level 10 millions of gold in Org or SW, you deserve to lose your gold.
This post is too vague for anyone, including Blizzard, to notice or take action.
Wrong place.
This feels disingenuous.
Hmm…
Just some friendly advice, OP. You’ll get a better reaction to your post if you avoid language which intentionally victimizes yourself and tries to demonize the sympathetic parties. Just because Blizzard didn’t resolve the issue the way you wanted them to doesn’t make them evil, or even complicit with the scammers who conned you. Clearly we don’t have all the details here, but I believe that Blizzard’s position regarding the channel they set up for said transactions is that they don’t support paid runs per se, they just wanted to give a place for people to conduct these transactions where not everyone would have to be inundated with the advertizing. I think (correct me if I’m wrong) Blizz has always stated that if you are going to deal with people on this level, it is, has been and always will be a case of caveat emptor. It’s worth noting that people have been targeted by scams all the way back when Latin was in current use! (And before then, come to that!)
Sorry for your experience, but try to keep responsibility where the responsibility belongs.
I marvel that there’s still people who trust strangers online.
carries have always been unsupported functions - they state if the entire transaction cannot be done within a trade window, it isn’t supported. No one else got reimbursed for this.
guy bought a carry and got scammed and he figures just because blizzard made a trade services channel so that the trade channel could be used they should give him his gold back.
Understood.
Point was there are too many pertinent details missing.
They created that channel in an attempt to curb it from continuing to spread into other areas that were a problem. Blizzard has been very clear on this one point. They do not support activities like carries and this is a buyer beware area. They have just understood that no matter how they feel about “carries”, there is very little they can do to stop it. It is a player created situation and outside of their ability to stop.
When such sales were made by communities rather than individual players, there was less such fraud. In fact, people did not buy less, only now the risk is higher.
Well people just need to stop buying them from level 1 alts saying they are part of “insert uber raiding guild here”.