Restoration of scammed items

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Hello fellow Classicers,

Sunday Evening I was scammed by someone who claimed they could do Lionheart Helm craft for me. In the end they took my items, ninja logged and I never got the craft or my materials back. I opened a ticket to Blizzard and in their response they banned him, They also said they deleted the items from this person and I will not refund my items. I find this highly unacceptable. I have all screenshots from time stamps, to every trade window, to trade accepted, to chat log in the agreement in the exchange of service.

What is the point in deleting the items from this person if you banned them? This is 900g worth of materials that didn’t just come to me in an hour. This is 900g that I have saved up since the beginning of classic, gone. Having a Gm give a response like this and having support like this makes me no longer want to play this game. This isn’t blizzard entertainment anymore. In the end I’m being punished, and that’s not right.

Removing the items from the scammer takes the same amount of time/effort as it does to restore them to the original owner with absolutely zero impact to the economy of the server at all. There’s no reason to simply just remove scammed items.

Over the years of Warcraft from vanilla to retail, I’ve been hacked, cheated, and scammed before, and never once was told they would delete the items from the person, but not return them to me? They always have been recovered. This is also why I screenshot every trade or craft I am part of in this game, to protect myself.

I am unable to link to imgur the screenshots I had, but I would also like to keep that information between me and a GM since it does include character names.

Here is the GM Response: > Greetings Randy!

Game Master {Removed} here and I will be helping you out today! First off, thank you for your patience while we got to your ticket :slight_smile:

After reading over your ticket, I understand there was a Mage who agreed to craft an item for you in Classic but ended up taking the mats and logging. I am sorry if this has caused any trouble but don’t worry! I can get things situated.

Being such a large game there will always be bad eggs. We will do our best to discipline them when they are found and the best way to get that done is to report them in game. I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news but since this is Classic, we won’t be restoring any items or gold. I will go through and investigate this player for scamming and delete any items and penalize the account depending on what we find. Due to privacy reasons we will not be able to contact you with the results of the investigation. I do apologize for the inconvenience as I know 12 Arcanite Bars and all the other mats take a long time to get together. When it comes to Classic the ideal situation is to have guildies, friends, players you trust and know handle any of the expensive trade transactions to lower that risk of a scam.

Thanks again for taking your time and getting in touch with us about this. Have a great rest of your day.

We’re talking about a craft that very few people have, a craft that will last till or through Naxx if I’m not wrong. How am I supposed to know who has the craft, who doesn’t, who to trust and who not to? After the incident, I learned about the person’s history. I shouldn’t have to suffer and lose everything I did, i’m not a magical gold farmer who had thousands of gold like its nothing.

– Also I want to point out, before anyone says “LoL a MaGe wITh BlAcKsMiThInG” one of the very first people to get lionheart craft world wide in classic, was a mage.

I would like to communicate with a GM, not open my email to a response, an actual conversation with a game master.

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You can ask for to message a GM in-game through the game menu or you can do it through the online chat on battle net, you really didn’t have to post this to the forums.

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You’re lucky enough they banned him, they usually don’t even do this.

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I would inspect all the other warriors and see who the helm was crafted by. This was the only method that I could verify a person truly could make said item. Sorry about the mats, better start farming again.

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I hope you get your stuff back, friend.

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He won’t.

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You need to post this on the Customer Service forum, I thought they returned scammed items. You probably won’t be able to talk to the GM in game but on CS they will respond.

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Looks like this got moved over to the CS forums for you. While there are no GMs on the forums at all, we can help to at least point you to current policies.

Unfortunately, in this case the policy is not to replace the lost items. It’s covered in the sticky in the Classic GD forums here:

Scams and Loot Disputes

Scamming other players is a violation of our World of Warcraft game policies. We will investigate any reports of scamming that we receive and take the appropriate action, removing gains and penalizing those who violate this policy as needed. It’s important to note that Game Masters will not restore any gold or items that may have been lost.

There are stricter limits on what a GM can do when it comes to Classic by the looks of it. Hopefully the scammer won’t be seen again anytime soon!

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To be clear, we don’t generally “ban” or otherwise close a player’s account in these situations. We will apply an appropriate penalty, which is usually a suspension from the game for a specific length of time based on the policy violation as well as the history on the account.

Therefore, removing the items is important so when they do return they are unable to use them.

While I appreciate that, Andron, there isn’t anything a discussion would accomplish here. The Game Master wouldn’t be able to change the results.

For Classic we are unable to reimburse items or gold that may have been lost due to a scam, as outlined here. We absolutely will investigate such scams and take appropriate actions such as suspending persons participating in a verified scam and removing any ill gotten gain, but that is as much as we can do there.

If you wish to see a change to the policy you are welcome to post your feedback in the Classic General Discussion Forum.

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This is the kind of a situation where the realm should ban together and help the guy out with restoring the mats. Thats how a good community functions

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Kind of a failure of policy. This opens the doors to a LOT of griefing. Scammed items aren’t lost, they’re stolen. Players have absolutely no defense against something like this situation and the cms should take the extra 30 or so seconds and give the players back the items.

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As noted in the final paragraph of the post you replied to, if you would like to see a possible change in the policy, you need to post where the developers are going to receive such feedback.

In this case, the Classic General Discussion forum.

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