Account perm banned for 'helping gold seller'... by reporting him?...

#1 - Sept. 11, 2012, 7:05 a.m.
Blizzard Post

I was playing on my GW2 main character and in Divinities Reach /m chat was being spammed by a gold seller, I made a joke about his name, I reported him for botting and I told everyone in /m to report him; Another player asked me how to report him, I told them and I told them why I chose the bot report option thing (Because he was auto typing); I told them this because you do not have a real world trading report option and I found the bot one best fitting.

Immediately after I was logged out to an error telling me my account had been terminated and banned permanently for ‘reason 20’

I found reason 20 which is :
‘20.You may not use any third-party program (such as a “bot”) in order to automate gameplay functions, including playing, chatting, interacting, or gathering gold or items within Guild Wars 2. You may not assist, relay, or store gold or items for other players who are using these processes.’

Right…

How does your ban machine in any way interpret me REPORTING IT and helping others REPORT IT with NO previous contact ever with the character it was using, as me ‘using a third party product, assisting, relaying, storing gold or items’ for him?!

I have appealed and have no way of tracking it, I am seeing other players talk about a week + of waiting with no response and that’s just not on!

You have a beautiful game and thousands of loyal users but not only are you banning those players without reason, your customer support is complicated, slow and from what I’ve been reading, only effective for those who actually HAVE broken rules?!

Should we be afraid to report bugs / rule offenders ?

~Tear

#10 - Sept. 11, 2012, 11:06 a.m.
Blizzard Post

The bot you were reporting for spam used his alts for counter reporting you, I would assume if enough people report someone it would autoban them.

Let me clear this up right now. We do not have auto-banning. Each report is reviewed by a human being, and no amount of griefing will lead to a suspension or termination — the issues must be verified as legitimate.

#11 - Sept. 11, 2012, 11:07 a.m.
Blizzard Post

Should we be afraid to report bugs / rule offenders ?

No, you definitely should not hesitate. Can you provide your 12-digit incident number?

#19 - Sept. 11, 2012, 6:27 p.m.
Blizzard Post

No believe me, you are lashing out. Making wild assertions about the nationality of the support personnel, insulting their communication skills, arguing that there is an auto-banning mechanism when there is not, waving another game as some sort of threat… yep, that’s lashing out.

We’ll review this as soon as we are able to do so, just as we will for any player.