Account suspended for 72 hours.

[Fef]

Hi,

Three of my five accounts (accounts 1, 2 and 4) have been suspended yesterday evening. Type of Violation : Involvement in online trading activities.

So I will say it : I never sold or bought gold, characters or power levelling, or did anything against the TOS. Now you don't have to believe me. I know that I tend to be suspicious when people write (even on these boards) that they got banned by mistake. Hehe, just like I thought people getting hacked had been sharing password or buying gold at one point. Until it happened to me ...

I will call Blizzard as soon as their offices open. Until then, I try to think about what could have triggered that.

- I started doing PVP few days ago for the first time, perhaps this got me more attention and reports.
- I initiated the transfer between account 2 and 4 (both banned) of a level 70 rogue, to create a new group. I had this character for years, levelled the classical way.
- My first account (only) was hacked some months ago. Since then I bought an authenticator, regretting I didn't do it earlier. Blizzard refounded all my stolen gear/gold, so I guess they must have investigated it.

Quite frustrating, indeed.

Here is the copy of what I received :







Greetings,

We are writing to inform you that, unfortunately, we have had to temporarily suspend your World of Warcraft account and place a final warning on it.

Account Name: *****************
Type of Violation: Involvement in online trading activities
Investigation Concluded: 10/06/2009
Consequences for Account: Account suspended for 72 hours, Password Reset and Final Warning issued.

It is with regret that we take this type of action, but it is in the best interests of the World of Warcraft community as a whole, and for the integrity of the game. After your suspension has expired, you will be able to access the World of Warcraft servers again.

Please note that should any further violations of our Rules and Policies occur, this will almost certainly lead to the permanent closure of your account.

Online trading refers to the exchange of in-game content for real world money, and includes, but is not limited to, the sale or purchase of gold, the sale or purchase of experience in the form of powerlevelling, and the sale or purchase of honor points, reputation or items.

Account access is the responsibility of the account owner and account sharing is against our Terms of Use (http://www.wow-europe.com/en/legal/termsofuse.html). Therefore, should you believe someone other than yourself (the account owner) has committed this violation of the Terms of Use with your account, these sanctions would still apply, as our action is taken against the account, not the individual.

To protect the account’s security, we have also reset your password and issued you with a computer generated one, which you will receive in a separate e-mail. You will be able to change this password at your leisure, using the Account Management feature on our web site, located at: http://www.wow-europe.com/en/

Your password will be sent from noreplyeu@blizzard.com ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/mailto:noreplyeu@blizzard.com'). If you do not receive it after one hour, please add this address to your email address list so that it is not rejected by any spam filter you are using, and reply to wowaccountrevieweu@blizzard.com ('http://www.dual-boxing.com/forums/mailto:wowaccountrevieweu@blizzard.com') informing us that you have not received the password.

Please do not disclose your new password to anyone, including Blizzard staff, or change it back to one of your previous passwords as this could result in your account becoming compromised.

As a precautionary measure we have also removed your recurring subscription details from the account; if you wish to continue your subscription you will need contact our billing department, via our webform: http://www.wow-europe.com/support/webform/billingDefault.html?lan=en or by phone http://www.wow-europe.com/en/support/accountbilling.html

We strongly suggest you review our current Rules and Policies to avoid further action in the future, they can be found at:
http://www.wow-europe.com/en/policy/

Regards,

Account Administration Team
Blizzard Entertainment Europe

[Otlecs]

So, I was all ready to jump in with "it's a scam you fool - we've had three threads on it already!", but this one's obviously legitimate so I'll save that for another day :)

Are all of your accounts in the same name? I mean absolutely identical. No abbreviations, etc? Perhaps they incorrectly identified the rogue transfer as a transfer between people rather than just between accounts owned by the same person?

In the absence of a hack, and taking your claims of innocence at face value, that's the only thing I can imagine would have triggered it

Keep us updated, won't you?

[Fef]

The "Billing and Accounts" service I had by phone told me they could not do anything because my accounts are currently locked.

I have to fill in a request through the web service. The form requires a CD key, which of course I don't have with me here at work .... Pfff ... I will have to wait until I come back home tonight.

[edit] Oh, and yes, all accounts are in my real name, same address, same credit card for payment, etc ...

[Otlecs]

The form requires a CD key
Oh dear.

I suppose I'd better start thinking about getting all my CDs - or at least a note of the keys - in one place in case I ever find myself in the same position!

[Klesh]

That's what I'm scared of each and every time I need to mail large amounts of gold to alts for epic flying or stuff.
Been talking to a GM about it. He said I should use ingame mail to transfer gold, instead of the guild bank or trade window. And in case of suspension, to mail wowgm@blizzard.com (or something like that, can't remember the exact address right now). There isn't much else you can do i guess. :(

[KvdM]

I suppose I'd better start thinking about getting all my CDs - or at least a note of the keys - in one place in case I ever find myself in the same position! I hope you remember which cd keys belong to what accounts...

[Fef]

Fortunately, I had a way to identify which code belonged to my first account. So I filled the form only in the name of this specific account and explained about all three bans. Yeah, I went back home during lunch time to do that, could not wait until tonight ;)

For the rest, I have an hypothesis about why accounts 1,2 and 4 were banned and accounts 3 and 5 were not.
These days, I have been playing my farming/PVP group, 4 hunters and 1 druid. I started this group under RAF with 5 hunters and my usual naming convention : identical names, except for the first letter that is A for account 1, B for account 2, etc ... So my characters were called Aineal, Bineal, Cineal, Dineal, Eineal. At 60, I swapped two hunters for two level 70 characters I already had, a hunter, Fef, and a druid, Sharah. So now the group looks like Aineal, Bineal, Fef, Dineal, Sharah. The three character which names follow the convention were banned. Perhaps just a coincidence, or a horde player noted down the names for report, and only picked these three.

[Otlecs]

I suppose I'd better start thinking about getting all my CDs - or at least a note of the keys - in one place in case I ever find myself in the same position! I hope you remember which cd keys belong to what accounts...
No. And I have absolutely no record of that either. In fact, the truth is that I'm not at all sure I even have the keys for my very oldest account!

I think I was living in England when WoW hit the shelves.

Which means the original DVD (and account key) is either still in my UK house or has been chucked out in one of my infrequent clean-ups of my "office" there!

Now, if I can just give them WotLK keys then we're in business - they're all in my apartment in Frankfurt!

I suppose I'd better have a good snuffle around next time I'm in the UK. This could be a bit of a time-bomb for my WoW time!

[Smoooth]

I never kept my cd-keys, didn't know I was supposed to. Should I be worried about this ever happening to me?

[Otlecs]

I never kept my cd-keys, didn't know I was supposed to. Should I be worried about this ever happening to me?I think the biggest problem looming for the likes of you and I is that we're going to be forced to use a battle.net account at some point, and that process requires the keys!

[Fef]

Actually, this form I filled asks for the CD key AND the answer to the secret question (even though the way it is formulated on the page implies that only one is ok). However, would one not have one or the other, it is possible to send a high quality scan of an ID from the account owner.

[Svpernova09]

Interesting. Seems odd. I'm assuming you don't have them all under 1 battle.net account.

[Starbuck_Jones]

I dont know, but something redflagged you. I have traded lots of gold between characters all the time. I like to pile it all up on one toon and then divide it up amongst the slaves and stuff and never had a problem. However just because some of your accounts got suspended and others didnt makes just as much sense as well. Back in the day when ASCII characters in your name were not allowed, I got warnings on 3 of my accounts and had to change my toons names, however 2 of them I didnt.... Its not a big deal but now that nameing that way is ok, I would like them back.

If I had to make a guess, this is prolly some audit from your stolen account problems. Did you trade with an ingame friend or anything like trying to offload your assets in fear of them getting stolen as well?

[Fef]

No, really, except for going PVP, and this one pending character transfer, I didn't do anything special lately.

I did use my hunters group a lot, doing all quests I had left to make money and level my PVP pets from 75 to 80. I made about 26000g in 2 weeks, I levelled a lot in instances so I had several untouched complete zones. I kept count by sending everything to a guild bank (used only by me), and the gold is still there.

I have also been moving large amounts of gold between characters and accounts all the time, and never had troubles for it.

I really hope I get cleared of all accusations (this "final warning before perma-ban" is a bit scary when you know you did something wrong), but must of all, I hope I get to know what triggered the ban in the first place.

[Coltimar]

I had a similar problem when I had 5 accounts. Some GM banned me for 3 days. I got un-banned and the record of it removed from my account but it was a hassle reading all of my CD keys to the lady on the phone trying to find the right ones. I spent extra time to figure them all out and I put them, and the second set of 5, into an excel spreadsheet. Pretty anal but could save me a ton of headache. I recommend doing this.

[Moorea]

I never kept my cd-keys, didn't know I was supposed to. Should I be worried about this ever happening to me?I think the biggest problem looming for the likes of you and I is that we're going to be forced to use a battle.net account at some point, and that process requires the keys!I don't know my cd keys and I merged my accounts to battle.net and that didn't require anything - I hope I'm never asked my cd keys because except for my collector editions on 1 account I don't think I have kept the boxes

[Malekyth]

I don't know my CD keys either. I thought it only mattered when you first set up that account, and your username/password took its place from then on. Gawwwd. I *just threw out four old Battlechests too, thinking it stupid to keep these big bricks of unnecessary media around.

[wendalf]

I am at work and the military blocks gaming sites so I cannot search for it but I do believe that there is a way to have Blizzard give you your CD keys. I think it requires you to fill out a form and photocopy your drivers license or some other official photo ID and they will give you your CD keys for your records or something. I will try to remember to search for it when I get home this evening but I may forget.

Also, in regards to the battle.net converting. I was never asked for my CD keys. This is either something new or a Euro conversion thing.

[Ualaa]

I really digged...

Have a set of classic and BC cd-keys, but not sure which of my two original accounts these belong to, or even if they both belong to the same.
For the original two accounts, I do have their Wrath CD-Keys.

For the three new accounts, I have all of their CD-Keys.

I'm really curious if I can get the Classic and BC CD-Keys for the two original accounts.

[Catamer]

we are back to the GUILD BANK.

I think bliz has an automated program that checks for large movements in the Guild bank and auto bans anyone making large withdraws from the Guild Bank.
I'm pretty sure they have figured out that large withdraws from a Guild bank = someone robbing the bank.

I just don't use the guild bank to move stuff around and you should probably avoid it other than small transfers of raw materials

[Fef]

Could be ...

Just, in the last two week, I am pretty sure I didn't take any gold out of guild bank appart from repair costs. Nothing at all, actually, only deposits.

It's late evening now, and I didn't get any news. I hope they don't just let it die and just wait for the end of the 72 hours ban. I would feel much better having my name (well, accounts ...) cleared.

[zanthor]

I call bunk on the guild bank as I regularly move between 1K and 5K+ transactions through our guild bank with no problems.

[kadaan]

I doubt it's the guild bank. I withdrew 80k gold from my alt guild bank and immediately traded it to my main (in another guild, on another account) so I could hit 100k on the "Most gold ever owned" statistic. If 80k withdrawl/trade didn't flag something, then I don't know what would.


Although all my accounts are tied to the same battle.net account, perhaps that prevents it from being flagged?

[Malekyth]

I used my guild bank for transfers of 5K or so awhile back for my fast flyers, with no battle.net setup and no problem. I've never been a part of a guild nearly so generous or trusting but I can imagine this is part of what guild banks are used for -- everyone contributes, and the guild gradually funds members' flyers and gear. It'd be weird for Blizzard to automatically flag large withdrawals for that reason. It's far more likely they'd put a lower hard cap on the amount of gold that could be withdrawn.

Whenever I see this kind of ban, I just assume that someone saw a bunch of multiboxed toons running around, jumped to one of the handful of usual ignorant conclusions, and ratted the owner out to a GM for selling accounts. Blizzard's no-tolerence attitude may be efficient, but may also mean that sometimes the accusation is as good as the proof.

[Klesh]

we are back to the GUILD BANK.

I think bliz has an automated program that checks for large movements in the Guild bank and auto bans anyone making large withdraws from the Guild Bank.
I'm pretty sure they have figured out that large withdraws from a Guild bank = someone robbing the bank.

I just don't use the guild bank to move stuff around and you should probably avoid it other than small transfers of raw materials

That would explain why the GM told me to use ingame mail for gold transfers. Am just using the guild bank to store stuff and transfer trade goods to alts.

[Fef]

I got my accounts back !

Still, it went a bit weird. First, I didn't receive any email telling me I was back on. I just tryed to log an account and saw it worked. Also, I didn't receive the usual email telling me that I could finallize my pending character transfer, even though it was all validated and ready.

So I called Blizzard Customer service. Since the accounts were not locked anymore, the guy had access to my file, and could tell me that I had been banned for powerlevelling activities. He said something was written about extremely fast levelling (I can only guess this is related to my RAF period). He confirmed that the ban had indeed been lifted, and that a note was written on my accounts file saying that I was "only multiboxing". So normally, would another mistake like this one happens, they should be able to correct it immediatly. Unfortunatelly,he told me he could not leave a note warning I am a multiboxer on my other accounts (the ones that didn't get banned).

Out of principles, I asked whether I would be compensated for the loss of play-time. They will credit my account with two free days. Interestingly, they don't do it by default, one has to ask.

Also, because of the ban, I could not use credit card subscription. I anyway had to call them to get that option unlocked.

So I suspect someone opened a ticket saying I was selling characters, some uninformed GM saw my many characters and a pending transfer, and the ban hammer fell ...

[Tonuss]

Yeah. It never occurred to them to check for RAF status? I doubt a powerleveling service would use that. They didn't bother to check IPs?

The guilty until innocent part is bad enough, but it's a lot worse when it seems as if they're not even doing cursory investigations.

[hendrata]

some uninformed GM

This is what irks me... not that I've experienced it personally, but Blizz seriously needs to educate the new GMs about multiboxers

[Korruptor]

Blizz has some real winners working for them. I suffered their stupidity once when my accounts weren't even active(no active sub).

I received an email from Blizz that was a warning for using a racial slur in public chat. I'm never one to make such a comment as this guilty individual did (I'm not a racist or a bigot).

The worst part of this incident was that they did absolutely NO research into the matter before assigning guilt.
It was a server I didn't even play on anymore. My account's weren't active(no sub and the remainder had long since expired) and so obviously I hadn't logged in on
that account within months of the incident. In fact, at the time I wasn't playing WoW at all on any account. The quoted racial slur in the email plainly showed the offending characters name which didn't match mine(offender was Hellraiserr, mine is Hellraiser).I sent an angry email to Blizz pointing out the above facts and they backed down and cleared me of the miss-directed warning.

Still, what a bunch of retards.

[wendalf]

/On topic

I am glad you got your accounts back. I have been through the reinstating accounts due to a ban process twice actually and while typically slow it does get resolved.

/Off topic

What is a customer service Rep? Someone who has basic phone communication skills (most of the time). This is an entry level position - and normally they read out of a book.
I wouldn't set my expectations so high....

While I know that is a generalization and one that occurs at many businesses, there are just as many businesses that take customer service seriously and it is not an entry level position. Yes, typically PHONE support is that way but most face to face places are not.

I worked in customer service for a few companies while I was in school and even for a while after the fact due to the enjoyment of a couple jobs and they never were entry level and they were typically highly trained positions.

You always have a couple people who fall through the cracks and it is typically these couple of people that tarnish the entire name of a company's customer service reputation.