"Unsupported transaction" scam?

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1

Got scammed through the trade window selling a bottomlless bag in classic wow. The scammer did an extremely fast (almost instant) gold switch in the trade window - entered gold, pressed accept trade, cancelled trade, removed gold, pressed accept again - that I admittedly didn’t catch in time and accidentally gave the bag away for free basically.

Apparently this is a long time, common scam. I opened a ticket and got a response basically saying they can’t help because it is an unsupported transaction. I don’t understand why it’s considered unsupported? The entire trade happened through the trade window except I got fooled and got no gold in the process.

Can someone explain why this is considered unsupported? The entire response doesn’t seem very relevant to the situation either to be honest. But anyway should I try to follow up in some way with the ticket or is this a lost cause? It’s a significant amount of gold in classic but I’ll get over it. I can accept that I got fooled so if that’s my problem then so be it I guess.

But I am still confused about the response… copies of both are below.

Thanks.

edit: I have no idea what’s going on with the formatting of this post… I hope it’s readable.

***Ticket***
Hello,

I got scammed out of 340gold by a player named ********** while selling a bottomless bag in classic wow.

Happened around 11pm Benediction server time on January 31, 2021.

1) I posted in trade chat  that I was selling a BottomLess Bag for 340gold (see screenshot)
2) Player named ********** invites me to group and posts a message in chinese? characters (see screenshot)
3) He opens a trade window and enters 340 gold and presses trade. I put the bag in and also press trade. Except for some reason the trade doesn't go through - I suspect he pressed cancel.
4) The trade window didn't close and he quickly pressed trade again except the gold was removed. I also pressed trade again thinking there was lag or something. This all happened in less than a second and I didn't even notice until after the fact.
5) He got the bag and I didn't get the gold from it. 
5) I tried to reach out to him after but he never responded (see screenshot).

I would really appreciate if I can either get the 340gold or the bag back. But at the very least if you can look into this and deal appropriately.

Thank you.

GM response

Hello! I hope you are having a great day! This is your Game Master ********** but you can also call me ********. Thank you anyway for reaching Blizzard Entertainment. I would like you to know that I would be more than happy to assist you! :slight_smile:

We would like to start by thanking you for waiting for I know you have been waiting to get a reply, and I can assure you we are working to drive down our response time, however I do hope you are staying safe and healthy.

Sorry to hear that **********scammed you like this! Reading the details, this would be what we call an “unsupported transaction” - defined as a trade that doesn’t fully take place in the trade window. Common unsupported transactions are paying someone to carry you through a dungeon, get a higher arena rating, or to get you a mount they don’t have to trade you. In World of Warcraft, the trade window was carefully designed to make sure neither party could scam the other. When a scam takes place through the trade window, we are able to both penalize the scammer and refund what was taken, but with an unsupported transaction, I’m afraid all we can do is penalize the scammer. This is so we don’t make unsafe trades “safe”, and incentivize them. We also aren’t able to share exactly what we do to another player, due to our privacy policies, but I do want you to know we take this kind of thing very seriously, so if we’re able to verify the details you’ve provided, the penalty will be significant.

We do suggest that repeated visits will usually be part of collecting items that you desire. Drop rates are set by Game Developers so that the game will be much exciting. I know this may not have been the exact answer you were looking for, but I hope this at least helps provide some insight into what we’re doing and how we handle this type of scenario. If you do have further questions, please do not hesitate to visit this website https://us.battle.net/support/en/. Thank you for giving me the chance to assist you today!

Again this is your Game Master ********. Have a good day ahead! Take care always!

2

Well you can reopen the ticket and and get a 2nd set of eyes to look at it im not realy sure how its a unsuported transaction but thats me im not gaurenting a better outcome but it never hurts.

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3

Unless you discussed the price of the bag in in-game chat beforehand, there’s nothing Blizzard will do.

4

I posted in the /2 trade chat - what I was selling and for how much. I don’t know if that counts as ingame chat? It wasn’t reconfirmed in party chat or whispers =\

He contacted me right after my trade post and entered the correct amount of gold on his own. That’s pretty much what everyone always does. So obviously we were both operating based on what was posted.

5

Maybe reopen the ticket and give the timestamps of the chat. I don’t know how much that will help but it’s worth a shot. Blizzard does tend to want players to be responsible for what they do in the trade window though, so I don’t know if anything will happen.

If someone changes what’s in the trade window, both players have to confirm it before it will go through. So if it was just a result of you not paying close enough attention, they may not do anything.

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6

It likely has something to do with you pressing the trade button again after the gold was removed from the window.

While Blizzard can see what happened in chat, they have no idea if some other negotiation was happening in discord that superseded the chat dialog.
Your accepting the trade under different conditions than what was discussed in chat put the transaction into the unsupportable realm.

7

That is likely. Unfortunately, when it comes down to what we can see, we aren’t able to see them place an item/gold in the trade window or the act of removing it. We can only see the final trade.

So it can just look like someone traded an item or gold with some other character, which happens a lot, but not necessarily as part of a mutual trade.

Naelana, I would agree with the others in that you might want to reopen your ticket. Explain the situation, and especially note if you did have a trade agreement. I can’t guarantee that anything will change, but they’ll take a look.

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8

Another thing to consider: Did this message have to do with the trade? Could he have said something like “I’ll pay you 50 for it”? In the end, the onus is on you to not accept a trade then the conditions change. Take the extra couple seconds, and make sure.

I do hope you get it sorted out with Blizzard, as I completely agree that he was being shady.

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