Banned After Trading Between My Personal Accounts Via Neutral Auction House

Support Customer Support
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Hello,

It seems pretty clear to me that I was falsely flagged by the ban system after trading items between my own two accounts using the Neutral Auction House. About 30 minutes after selling ~600 elixirs of frost power from Account 1 (legitimizer#11791) to Account 2 (skonz#1714) for a total of ~1500g after AH fee, the account that received the elixirs of frost power was banned permanently for ‘Involved in RMT transaction’. The following day, I collected that gold from the mailbox on skonz, and 30 minutes later, that account was suspended for 14 days for ‘Acquiring Gold via RMT’.

I understand how it could happen because I’m an AH mogul with tons of gold (~30k liquid 200k in items) between my two accounts from my daily AH flipping/crafting/hawking, so the volume of that trade at one time might’ve tripped the flag, though I’ve traded many other things between the characters before that like Skullflame Shields/Elixir of Frost Power without issue (to be clear though - NAH activity is like 3% of what I do, not a super frequent thing).

Because of this, I tried to appeal the ban on both accounts but was stonewalled by support who sent all of the ‘the ban was upheld, it was already reviewed, read EULA’ messages. On the account that was banned, they eventually hit me with an Abuse of Customer Service flag and banned the whole account, not just WoW access (despite the previous reply telling me they’d be happy to answer further questions, and I was polite the whole time).

So, I’ve been banned/suspended, lost 2-3 weeks and counting of AH progress (depending on the account), and have no recourse. I’m not sure why, but support wouldn’t refer the case to a specialized review team like they did for a friend of mine in a similar situation (whose suspension for RMT activity was reversed as a result). From one support ticket, GM Ardandei confirmed that trading between my own two accounts isn’t bannable if it’s done using the Neutral Auction House, an in-game method of trade. However, no one will look into it again.

Now that I have access to one account, I see that the gold was removed from my Neutral Auction House alt (and for some reason another alt I don’t use often), which is comparatively little gold compared to the other characters, further implicating this trade as the source of the ban, since trading with my other account is all I do with that character. Of note, during the trade, a sniper got ~4 stacks of frost power elixirs for 7.5g/stack, but I’d expect that didn’t trigger the ban.

For reference, here are the following ticket numbers I send for this account, and issue IDs for the tickets on the other account (can’t login to see the ticket numbers!)

Ticket numbers: US104400991, US104282242, US104378556. Other account: legitimizer#11791, issue IDs: #104271659, #104281524, #104306190, #104306553

Obviously it’s a frustrating experience and I’ve lost out on so much already, but this is kind of my last resort to get someone to take a look and consider the case and hopefully unban my account/restore removed items/gold, so I would be incredibly appreciative if this could be addressed! The whole reason I created the second account was to play with my brothers on Horde as I had committed to Alliance before them, and they’re currently outleveling me as I type :’)

(edit: to clarify, this is Anniversary Classic - Nightslayer alliance/horde)
(edit2: To be clear, I sold the elixir of frost powers to my other account for around 1.50g each. That’s just 50 silver less than the crafting cost. It’s not a super lopsided ‘gold transferring’ trade like most people probably do. that being said, it’s kinda funny that my Skonz account was suspended for gold buying, when the items I traded over were worth a little bit more than the gold I got for it lol)

Sincerely,

skonz/legitimizer

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From what you said, it sounds like you weren’t trading gold between two wow accounts on the same battlenet accounts, but between two wow accounts on two separate battlenet accounts, right?

If so, this is not allowed anymore. It was recently changed specifically to disallow trading gold between servers or factions on WoW versions where it’s not normally possible to do (so in retail it’s fine but not say, classic era).

The GM who told you that trading between two of your accounts was probably assuming both your wow accounts were on the same battlenet account I imagine, but I am not sure if that is actually allowed either but I don’t know.

Sorry, I’m just a player and I might be wrong about some of this but this is what it looks like to me just reading what you posted.

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No, what you’re saying is false. The new terms are that you cannot trade between different factions where Player A gives gold to Player B on horde, and then Player B gives player A gold on alliance. This is completely bannable now, but what I did was sell items on the Neutral Auction House on one account and bought them on my other account. A GM confirmed with me that this was allowed because it’s an in-game system of trade.

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From my understanding of it, it doesn’t matter what, if anything, you get in return. Simply trading gold from one faction to the other (even if just one direction) is not allowed.
Using the neutral AH to do this by putting up a gray item for sale for 1000 gold wouldn’t be allowed either.

The thing that I am unclear of is doing this amongst your own WoW licenses. That’s the part I just don’t know if it’s against the rules or not, but since you were using two separate battlenet accounts this is maybe why you got banned.

Again, I may have a wrong understanding here, and I’ll be quiet now.

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Stupid question…selling WoW coins at the AH and depositing the gold in our warbound bank allowing other toons from same/ different accounts to access them; is that bannable?

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Not stupid, and no that’s fine. Retail WoW has the Warbank to help move gold across your accounts and use as you wish. Classic does not offer this service.

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The recent ToS change doesn’t affect retail.

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Well, not trady between Retail and Classic. So kinda retail-ish.

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Thanks for the clarification.

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The new terms actually state that unsupported in-game transactions that require a use of another third-party is now an offense.

This would probably also include the use of the neutral Auction House in the way you have done it, to transfer gold.

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You’re misunderstanding the link you sent - at the end of it, it says ‘However, trades within the game’s systems, such as cross-faction or cross-realm trades in Modern WoW, are allowed.’. Cross faction, in-game system (NAH) trades are allowed!

What they’re talking about by ‘transferring gold’ is literally trading gold with someone as I explained in a different comment. They don’t use that verbiage to describe trading across the Neutral Auction House. A GM confirmed this for me explicitly!

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Unfortunately, no GMs or folks from the Hacks teams come here - so this won’t be happening. Appealing through tickets is the ONLY path you’ve open to you. And since you’ve already been warned not to open any more tickets? You’ve hit the end of the road in your appeals.

You are also ASSUMING the sanction(s) come from you using the neutral AH to shuffle things around. Of late there have been an uptick in reports of people being sent illicit gold to other folks in an attempt to get them sanctioned. Since you are a self-proclaimed AH mogul, I feel confident in assuming you use some sort of add-on to auto open and process your mail?

If you received illicit gold, knowingly or unknowingly, you will get sanctioned. An innocuous mail, sent from some unknown tucked away between 100’s or however many mails you’ve got in that moment - it can happen. It has happened.

This…may have been in error. It may not have been. But usually when you’ve been warned no more appeals will be entertained; that warning isn’t just hot air. Accounts can be banned, as you found out the hard way - despite them offering to answer any further questions. Perhaps in the morning, one of our SFAs will be able to poke at that thread.

Your case is your own, just as your friends’ is their own. You’re not guaranteed the same practices or turnarounds. That being said, there was recently a bug where people were being sent illicit gold (as mentioned above), but they had NOT removed it from their mailboxes. So in that instance, it was an error and those sanctions were overturned. Unless you’re caught in the same circumstances? It is unwise to compare apples to oranges.

The appeals team will scoot things up the chain if they feel that a deeper dive is necessary. It’s not something you can request or tell them to do.

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And typically these investigations take longer than 30 minutes, so it’s unlikely (but not impossible) that what you were doing just hours ago would be what caused the ban.

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There is some degree of assumption, yes, because it’s not possible to explicitly know since CS can’t tell you exactly what caused the ban. But I don’t think it’s possible that this was my case, where I accidentally accepted gold among hundreds of mails (that is something I worried about). Reason being: Skonz was suspended for ‘buying gold’. Legitimizer was banned for ‘involved in RMT activity’ (sounds like selling gold would be that that refers to since buying gold is a different ban reason). If I accidentally accepted gold from someone mailing it, it would’ve had to have been on Skonz, the one banned for gold buying. Since my other account got banned, it would’ve had to mean that gold I bought on Skonz was used to buy the mats to craft the Elixirs of Frost Power that I sent in the trade. But those wintersbite/khadgar were from my stocks of thousands that I bought long ago, so if I recently accepted dirty mail by accident, it wouldn’t have been tracked to those elixirs. Furthermore, if it was some dirty gold I accidentally accepted at some point in the past that was traced to those mats I bought for the elixirs, it would’ve had to have been traced to other items as well, but there are literally no other changes on other characters or the affected one - just the gold and any items I received from that round of trading.

Hope that’s clear, but that’s why I’m quite sure that the ban wasn’t from accidentally accepting dirty gold - the mats were bought way in advance, and the account flagged for ‘buying gold’ was the account who accepted the gold from the mailbox/sold the frost elixirs. If my other account was banned because it received the product of that dirty gold (and not my hoards of other items), I would’ve had to have spent that gold on mats for the elixirs - which I didn’t because I was dipping into my stock bought long ago.

Also, the friend I referred to wasn’t one caught in the ‘didn’t actually accept the mail’ bug. He had no idea why he was suspended, suspected that he accidentally accepted gold from a random. It was more than a month ago before this bug seemed to be happening

I get that I’m not guaranteed certain practices, but what’s the conclusion then? Support might not actually consider my case when I legitimately didn’t break the rules, so I’m just out of luck and have to deal with it? Gl hf? I think it would be pretty nuts if that’s the reality of the situation for unlucky wow players… I put so much time into that account to have all the work erased, cash for my sub taken, when I genuinely wasn’t involved in RMT ? That’s a little hard for me to stomach.

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I think unfortunately you are the one misunderstanding. It specifically states “in modern wow” when discussing cross faction/realm trades.

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Have to wait for tomorrow when they are in the office and might respond. Us players can only make educated guesses based on other posts we’ve seen here and our own experiences. We’re certainly no authority here.

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I don’t think I am. It says ‘such as’ which isn’t inclusive. Also, it looks to me like it’s saying ‘cross faction trades’ or ‘cross realm trades in modern WoW’ are okay. Because there is apparently a system to cross realm trade in Modern WoW, but definitely not one in Classic Anniversary.

And, again, a GM literally did message me stating the following: ’ I see you are trying to learn the legality of using the Neutral Auction House to move goods between your two characters from different factions.

After investigating the issue and consulting with my supervisor for clarification, I found that as long as your are using the in-game systems, you should be in the clear when doing this.

I hope this helps you solve your inquiry, if you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate on contacting us, we are more than happy to help you clear up any other doubts you may have.’

Pretty sure I’m interpreting it correctly, but let me know if you think differently.

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My question is, is this two different accounts or licenses? Because it’s a big distinction.

Where you doing this from your WoW 1 License character to a WoW 2 License character?

Or do you have 2 different BNet accounts with different BTag names?

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It’s two different accounts, like battlenet accounts. I have two different accounts with two different emails which I pay (paid) subs for both. You can’t have horde and alliance characters on the same account, so the fact that it’s two different accounts, and the fact that a GM confirmed ‘…the legality of using the Neutral Auction House to move goods between your two characters from different factions… you should be in the clear when doing this’ seems to account for this. Why would they say it’s okay to transfer goods between two characters of different factions if you can’t do that without having two accounts in the first place?

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Well, there ya are. From their end it looks like ur moving gold like an RMT’er. Don’t do that moving forward.

Perhaps if both were under the same account you would be in no trouble. But alas.

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