Scammers delight, blizzards official word

#0 - Oct. 8, 2010, 12:11 a.m.

First story, a while back I was sitting in Dal waiting for a dungeon to pop when I see in trade some guy offering 50g for an SFK run. I was like what the hell why not so I agree to do it, I even give the guy a ride to the dungeon on my hog. So I clear the whole instance for him and ask him for the money he owes me, guess what? Yeah he logs, I add him to my friends list and wait for him to log back on. Sure enough when he finally does and I whisper him, he completely ignores me. So I talk to a gm to complain about this guy clearly scamming. The GM says "Sorry bud, shoulda asked for the money up front." WTF? Moral of the story, scamming for runs 100% legal in blizzards book.

Next story, my gametime runs out and I don't get paid for a few days and I just dont have the money for a new card so I text a friend of mine to see if he could hook me up, but he's broke too so I tell him to try to buy some time with gold in trade and I'll pay him back. I have another friend who always gets all his gametime purely with gold. Well my friend gets an offer but the guy doesn't want to give up the code without some sort of guarantee so my friend puts 1k down, guess what? Yeah the guy logs /ignores the whole bit. So my friend shakes it off and tries again. Next guy says the same thing, no code without putting something down first. So my friend puts 1.5k down this time, bam /log /ignore whole bit. At this point my friend is pissed and puts in a GM ticket. GM's official word, "Sorry that isnt a transaction supported by blizzard, so we're not going to do anything about it".

So there you have it folks, 2 completely 100% legal scams you can pull off with no risk of retribution. Need to run your alt through something? Just offer somebody some crazy sum without any plans of ever paying it. Don't like those guys asking to buy gametime in trade? Scam them hard, see if you can trick them into giving you the full amount up front then laugh your way to the bank. Frankly im absolutely disgusted with blizzards stance of turning a blind eye to scammers especially in a case where the chat logs clearly indicate a scam took place. But if that is going to be blizzards stance I dont see why more people shouldn't take advantage of it. Enjoy.

Nevalistis

#54 - Oct. 8, 2010, 4:51 a.m.

I'm a little confused, Stinkypaws. You haven't placed a petition in over 120 days. I'm inclined to believe that you never placed a petition regarding the first issue you mention and are merely creating incorrect conjecture on what a Game Master might say in the situation.

In regards to the issue placed by Tubesteak, it looks like he had a great conversation with one of our Game Masters that cleared up the situation. So allow me to elaborate on both examples.

In the first example, this is a perfect definition of what we refer to as an unsupported transaction. This means that the goods being sold in-game are primarily unverifiable or very difficult to verify. This transaction is not a violation of our policies, however, while our Game Masters are always happy to investigate a situation where a scam may have occurred, there is no guarantee of a reimbursement. Be aware that we are never able to disclose actions taken on another player's account, though all investigations will end with appropriate action taken.

As for the second example, this transaction is straight up not allowable per our Terms of Use, so trusting anyone to follow through with this kind of trade is rather foolhardy. In-game currency for in-game items, all good. Out of game items for out of game currency, just fine. Any mish-mash between the two, and you would likely find yourself in trouble. Though these situations should be avoided to begin with, you should still report to us any situation where you may have been scammed. I believe such a report might be treated as an unsupported transaction (as it's a violation of our policy, clearly it's a transaction we don't support) - where a scam would be appropriately investigated and actioned, but losses incurred may not be subject to reimbursement.

As for our Scam Policies, you may find the following article to be most informative:

Scam Policy
http://us.blizzard.com/support/article/20459

I believe this conversation has truly run its course, so I'll leave it closed. I do hope that proper education has been gained from the situation on a whole. <3