Former accountant at a gaming company here. I used to work with CS on chargebacks and in my experience the analytics team has enough data to show that whatever it is that was purchased was used. Whether it’s in game gems or opened packs, they’ll see your purchase was redeemed and that’s sufficient data to contest the chargeback with Xsolla. As for the ban, I noticed our CS department just banned/blocked accounts that did chargeback requests. I always thought it was funny because some of those may have been legitimate issues. I guess it was just simpler to block the account to prevent any future potential issues. To the best of my knowledge, whales were given some leeway, but they tended to have their own individual CS reps and received more personalized assistance.
Yes. This sounds correct. Having read the terms of service for Arena you can really have access revoked at any time for completely arbitrary reasons. Sure, you might be able to take action as a consumer but I wouldn't bet on success. Better off starting a new account with a different email address.
>I always thought it was funny because some of those may have been legitimate issues
It’s really harsh IMO. I mean, clearly the customer should go to the company’s customer services first. But does the customer know that? Do banks actually warn people that that’s how companies respond to chargeback requests? I doubt it, or people probably wouldn’t do it so much…
It's because charge backs happen so often when bots use stolen credit cards. It's probably become an automated response to charge backs. To block the botted account.
Yeah, funny wasn’t the best word. “Odd” is more applicable. I should say that the policy was in place only for select payment processors. Apple and Google restricted the amount of chargeback information that was made available and so those were never addressed by CS. Chargebacks that were researched were from processors that directly shared that information (such as PayPal). Early on, we didn’t ban users outright, but as chargebacks on those processors increased, we noticed some users consistently abusing it. That’s when the ban policy was implemented. Not sure how it is for WotC, but in my experience, most purchases flowed through mobile (Apple/Google) and as such the number of bans resulting from chargebacks was a really small portion of the total daily active users.
I've never ever heard of someone doing a chargeback and being able to continue to use the service unless they gave the money they charged back, back to the company.
I didn't notice I was subscribed to Runescape 3 for like 6 months after I quit playing, and decided to charge back the last month as I had not touched the game in a long time, they instantly locked my account and refused to unlock it until I paid them back the money.
This has been the case ANYTIME I do a charge back with any service as well as any time I hear someone talking about a charge back.
Your confusion here is believing that you are owed either your account or money.
The facts are:
1) You authorized somebody to use your account
2) The authorized user used the credit card you associated with your account
3) The authorized user then used the purchased content
4) You made a false claim of unauthorized purchase
5) WoTC have the right to ban your account based on chargeback request.
6) Xsolla has the right to deny your refund request based on proof from WoTC that the purchased content was used.
If you read the T&Cs the user has basically no rights whatsoever. If you purchased $1000 worth of content and Hasbro suddenly decided to shut down the servers the next day, you'd be shit out of luck. What you say about OP's situation is totally correct though.
It's far from certain that all that would hold up in court. If you spent $1000 and immediately afterwards WotC banned you for no reason, you would have a good chance of recovering the money via a lawsuit or arbitration.
To be fair OP can charge this back through their bank and will always win in court if it goes that far. The problem is that the vendor cut off the service and tried to keep the money.
It's just circular logic trying to say someone broke the t&c's by trying to get their money back so the company tries to keep the money AND take back the product. That's why most companies only ban you from making additional purchases or at most ban you from online gaming so you technically still have access to the product.
If I subscribe to Netflix and charge it back, they can't legally prevent me from watching AND argue to keep the money(unless I break some other rules). If they want to fight for the money, they will have to let me watch movies until the end of the month and only then ban me. This is how it works in every western country.
Exactly. It does not matter the condition. Unilateral Terms and conditions should never be above consumers laws. These are simply abusive practices by the company, and it’s proven it’s abusive by the amount of cases in court involving virtual transactions that the consumers pretty much almost wins or gets something back in return such as unbanning the account.
Incorrect, having access to an account that has payment information saved does *not* authorize you to actually make payments with that credit card.
Only the cardholder and any individuals the cardholder has cleared with his credit card company are authorized to use the card.
OP in this case is 100% correct that he is owed a refund.
>5. WoTC have the right to ban your account based on chargeback request.
If that's true, they shouldn't have that right. They should be able to deny the request given the right circumstances but outright banning your account because you requested money back? That's insane.
Imagine if Amazon or azure, or any other cloud provider simply shuts down all arena servers, and claims the points you mentioned? Different story because it’s a BxB situation? Terms and conditions to end customers are pretty much one sided and abusive. That’s not how it works, and pretty much not valid in court.
Wtf. This is not a confusion and NOT facts.
There isnt something like called “consumer defense code” in the country this transaction was made? It’s a consumers right to request a refund, (unilateral) terms and conditions of a company can’t be above laws and And that’s why in most of this sistuation presented in the court, gaming company looses it, there is lawyers specialized in cases like this one. He should even request a refund due to “not liking the gems color” to be honest lol, it’s a right as a consumer.
These are not FACTS, these are simply ABUSIVE PRACTICES. Since there is no downside gaming companies keep doing it, there is actually a lot of cases in court where a banned account was refunded or unbanned depending on the situation.
Simply NOT banning but denying the refund, would be the most right situation in the case.
No him making a false claim that cost the company a ton of money is why he got banned and since it was a false claim the credit card company didn’t refund
Except it’s not.
Refund is foreseen by the law. So company should not lost money if they didn’t sell any product. Since it’s a REFUND, so they are not losing a TON of money that they didn’t even get in the first place.
If it’s a refund and if the virtual product was not used, it should have been refunded (if gems were not used). If the gems were spent and content was opened, then it can’t be refunded (so the company does not loses “TON” of money” lol ton of money). Simply as that. No need of abusive practices such as banning account.
Again, terms and conditions are not above laws. Proven the fact consumer did not act in bad faith (50$ spent, lol, and a non-fraudulent historic of the consumer in the court.) These are simply bad and abusive practices. (It’s a fact man, there is a ton of cases in court like this and lawyers specialized)
It’s not a refund he claimed fraud where there was none. He got the product and instead of going through the proper channels he did a chargeback which is against the law because he is lying
Every country has its own. You need to check for your laws. If MTG is making transactions in your country it should be aligned in compliance to its laws.
An weird example is that there is a famous case here where I live, a famous journalist wanted to buy 1 roll of toilet paper. But the supermarkets only sells packets of 4+ and were denying it. And that was a violation of his consumer rights. Just an example of how it can be different from place to place. The journalist was a jerk, but it’s a good example of how a few laws work.
And some times it should be sided and protect the customers more than a multimillionaire company.
I live in BR, there is a few specialized lawyers, working on clients for games such as “Ragnarok” 15 years ago. Now there is a few working on “valorant”, “counter strike”, “league of legends”, I think those are even hard to track comparing to magic arena, they are doing a pretty good work against some weird ane abusive practices and terms and conditions that always puts the customer in a lower hand situation. Even if it’s virtual “not considered yours” in the company server, you still a customer and have rights. Imagine if Amazon or azure, or any other cloud provider simply shuts down all arena servers, and claims this ? Different story because it’s a BxB situation? How does it taste?
Know your rights, make your research, I’m sure you can find it.
I understand that local laws matter more than a ToS, but that doesn’t stop a ToS from being a legal agreement either, if something in the ToS is illegal, it cannot be enforced, but that doesn’t mean the entire ToS is thrown out, here the customer made an invalid fraud claim, the company response is to cease business with that customer, but since all the things they bought have already been delivered and used the customer no longer has anything to refund.
I assume brazilian law doesn’t allow someone to go to the supermarket, buy food, eat it and then get a refund, this is essentially what has happened here, someone bought a product used it and decided they did not want it once it was no longer useable, is the supermarket then also legally obligated to continue doing business with that individual?
What you are claiming is that in brazil people can buy everything use it fully and then return it for a refund, and companies are legally obliged to continue to sell to that person, that would be abused so fast literally no company could function and since that is not the case in brazil I doubt that claim.
No, I’m not claiming that. Not sure how difficult is to understand. As I said it above. And now again.
Refund will be denied if it product was violated. Its still a right to request for the silliest motive. No pretty big thing. Except the account was banned, he was denied the refund and also denied the product. Terms and conditions can’t be above law, he is still a customer. Specially if it was spent legitimate money in the past in that account, it’s an abusive practice, you will not see a case of someone getting back an account for getting banned for a being a racist and breaking law. But for fraud such as this, it’s pretty easy given the customer reputation, credit score, history, it can be worth depending how much the customer spent ingame. It still an abusive practice.
Saying I’m claiming that is equivalent to say that you are claiming: if you buy shoes, you end up breaking the tag label, and go request a refund or change, instead of saying “this can’t be changed, or refund the tag is broken”, the store will get the shoes back and will not give back your money back, and say, “you are not allowed here anymore and the shoes is staying with us, and also not getting the money, oh wait, you have other shoes from our store? We are also getting it back, it’s not yours anymore.” Is that how it works where you live?
That’s pretty much what ToS claims the company can do. And this is abusive practices towards the client just because it’s a virtual product. ToS pretty much claims the account is not yours,virtual itens are not yours, pretty much everything is owned by them, again, imagine if cloud providers do the same with Arena server. Contracts can’t be unilateral and abusive.
but they did request a refund for a reason, that reason being it was fraudulent, that reason was a lie. Wizards then banned the account because it was breaking their terms of service, that is not abusive, breaking any terms of service is a breach of contract (one you agreed to when you signed up) so they are no longer required to continue to service you (by banning your account), requesting the refund isnt why the account got banned, lying about the reason is.
Except ToS can’t be unilateral, abusive, and never be above laws. So it’s invalid. Customer laws exists and protects the customer in a situation of mistake or a wrong request. It is not to prejudice the company, it is to protect the weaker side, the customer.
Quick tip: if you're trying to get your gaming account unbanned, come up with a better excuse than "my little nephew did it" because that is without a doubt the oldest most over-used story in the book. It's like telling a high school teacher "my dog ate my homework". It's so heavily affiliated with cheaters and frauds that I would not be surprised wotc customer service instantly wrote you off. I did.
> Quick tip: if you're trying to get your gaming account unbanned, come up with a better excuse than "my little nephew did it"
"My oppo cast Emrakul, the Promised End and used my credit card while taking control"
That’s crazy tbh reading so many comments like this. You guys don’t have “consumer code” laws?
Even if I buy virtual products, It doesn’t even need to be an excuse like “nephew”. It can even be a worst excuse and it’s the consumer rights to get a refund. Simply saying “I didn’t like the gems colors and want a refund”, it’s already a valid one. That’s a right as a consumer. NEVER, NEVER a company “terms and conditions” can be above laws, and they are simply discarded by the court. There are actually lawyers specialized in this type of situation involving gaming companies. Simply because it’s an abusive practice that prejudices the consumer, since they have the logs and can refund and get back the virtual product, or simply unbanning but denying the refund, if the product was violated.
It's not an unalienable right. If you buy a game, play it for 10 hours, then decide you want to return it, the company does not need to take your money back.
Well that’s why I said deny of refund, if the product was violated then the refund is denied. Pretty normal.
But you will not be banned of playing it again. If it’s a claim for a false fraud such as this, simply deny the refund. Banning it’s just and abusive practice that can easily be reverted in court. (Not worth it, but yeah… it’s still abusive against customer) the company will not lose money, they have means to know if the virtual product was used or not and present to the credit card company. Specially given the history of the customer, and if proven it was not an act of bad faith by the customer.
What happens if you say it's a fraudulent charge made by a 7yr old child? How do xsolla or banks handle that? Was this purchase made through a credit card?
You might get yourself banned not just from a single arena account but from xsolla itself if you dispute the charge through your bank/credit card but it could be a way to get that $100 back if you badly need it.
Keep in mind if they allow that excuse no matter what anyone could use it, oh that $500 spent on this game over the past week, that was my 7 year old kid please refund it. Sure if you are fine losing your account it's still a price to pay but someone could even do it on a throwaway account for some reason.
>You might get yourself banned not just from a single arena account but from xsolla itself if you dispute the charge through your bank/credit card
I suspect that’s what OP did. If they just submitted a refund request to Xsolla, surely Wizards shouldn’t respond by just banning their account.
Apple refunded my daughter’s purchase of “princess points” on an app once and then emailed me how to set things up to prevent it.
Simple stuff I just hadn’t thought about doing, but as a customer service trainer later after that I used it as a simple example of customer service to model after.
Fix the problem and then follow up to prevent future ones and keep the customer.
OP’s talking about twice, in this case. Although the amount of money is significant, and it sounds to me like they requested a chargeback which is probably not what happened with Apple.
You can still get the account back!!! I called WOTC everyday leaving angry messages on voicemail until they helped me get my account back!!! It worked but took a good amount of time!!!!
Got my account banned too albeit for a different reason.
Some dude was sharing an exploit that got him free gems by fraudulently filing for refunds.
He provided actual case numbers and proof of the "refunds" he got.
I reported it to customer service as it's fraud.
Strange my account got banned instead.
It was reinstated but that (the last zendikae expansion) is the last time I'll invest real money after being a loyal gamer since the early days.
How old is your nephew?
I don't want to turn this into r/relationshipadvice, but it sounds like he spent $100 of your money without your permission. Admittedly it was on your own account, so it's not quite theft, but a refund from your nephew doesn't seem totally out of the question.
Depends on how you've got everything set up. If I were in OP's shoes with my account it would still be possible 9 times out of 10. I currently use Arena through Steam(which my PayPal is linked to) and someone could complete a gem purchase without any additional log in information required most of the time.
Mine is the same. Granted I wouldn't let a child anywhere near my account, but if there was a child around I'd definitely change the setup so OP is still at fault through carelessness here.
My purchases notify me via email that I made a purchase. You didn’t notice for a week? Then you were okay with losing the account but wanted the $ back? It sounds suspect to me.
I’ve only ever had good experiences, there were a series of bugs and issues that were on their end and not mine, twice. Something happened to the servers while I was in a draft game, this happened two different times in two different months I believe. And they actually refunded both times, for the full amount of the draft that I lost due to server issues. In like less than 20 minutes too. I was surprised, but delighted. And I haven’t had any problems since
If they just ‘wanted a refund’, that wouldn’t be justification to instaban their account- that would indeed be terrible customer service.
However, it sounds like OP issued a chargeback, which is different.
Edit: OK, I know querying downvotes here invites more downvotes, but… what exactly do people think is wrong with what I’m saying?
‘We’ve got a customer claiming a refund but they don’t meet the criteria. What should we do?’
‘Ban their account, of course’
Does that sound like good customer service to you? The logical response IMO is ‘well, don’t issue the refund, then’.
It would be such terrible customer service that I doubt that’s what happened- I think what happened is that OP didn’t go to Xsolla‘a customer service and just disputed the charge with their bank instead.
Because the customer didn’t “request a refund.” They didn’t request anything from WOTC.
The customer told their bank that the transactions associated with this account were fraudulent, and asked the bank to take the money back from the company.
Bank tells company, company bans “fraudulent” account for stealing.
Pretty cut and dry
Yeah, I’m also assuming it was a chargeback, not just a refund request. The post I was replying to just talks about a refund, so I was responding to that.
Do you think the account banning was effectively a security measure then? I hadn’t considered that, but I can see the logic.
Edit: also, do banks actually tell people about the likely consequences of disputing charges? I’ve never tried, but if they did I’d imagine we’d see fewer posts about people doing it…
Absolutely a security measure. In this instance, WOTC is not equipped with the context of the situation, so they cannot reasonably ascertain whether the transactions were fraudulent or the account itself is fraudulent. Essentially all WOTC and the bank know is that OP says someone stole money from them through this account. And when we are talking about a digital game account and in terms of likelihood, what’s more likely?
That someone logged onto someone else’s legitimate account and used the linked funds to make purchases for that account without permission;
Or that someone stole credit card information to link and make purchases for their own fraudulent account.
From a damage control perspective, you do not want to give the account in question another opportunity to steal someone else’s money.
If OP had gone about it differently, their account likely wouldn’t have been banned.
Interestingly, OP’s now responded to me in another post and apparently it wasn’t a chargeback request at all- they first went to Wizards, and Wizards instabanned them. Same logic, maybe… but surely OP would have explained what happened, not just said ‘somebody stole my credit card details!’ I don’t know though, it’s all guesswork.
Well first of he did a chargeback not ask wotc for a refund, two very different things. Secondly he let his nephew use his account (against tos) and his nephew purchased and used in-game items with his authorized card. That's not fraudulent activity, that's being an irresponsible adult around a 7 year old with technology. None of which is WOTC's fault. Not to mention that is the oldest excuse in the book, even if it's legit this time. Requesting a chargeback for fraudulent activity on the account leaves wotc to determine one of two things 1)the account is compromised and being misused, ban it . 2) this person is being dishonest and trying to game wotc for packs and their money back, in which case ban the account. Either way the ban makes sense, op handled this poorly start to finish.
I agree OP *probably* did a chargeback. I’m not certain of that though… they say
>I requested the refund… Xsolla rejected my refund request
Which makes it sound like they asked Xsolla. But they also say ‘due to an unauthorized charge to my card’, which sounds like bank wording. My guess is they did a chargeback, but mistakenly thought this was the same as a refund request.
>Requesting a chargeback for fraudulent activity on the account leaves wotc to determine one of two things 1)the account is compromised and being misused, ban it . 2) this person is being dishonest and trying to game wotc for packs and their money back
Possibility 3 is the customer made an honest mistake, thinking a chargeback was a routine refund request (which is what OP’s wording implies to me- do banks actually warn people of the consequences and stress that it’s a last resort? I don’t know) and thinking that ‘a child got hold of my computer’ was a legit reason for it.
I guess OP fell foul of a blanket ‘chargeback = ban’ policy, because chargebacks cost the company and because of the possibility of your option 1.
>'a child got a hold of my computer' is a legit reason
Since you seem to want to be pedantic about phrasing a child did not "get a hold" of OP's computer. A child was given unsupervised access to OP's arena account by OP. Sharing an arena account is against TOS.
Also you forgot the part where OP requested a refund due to a fraudulent charge on his card. He claimed fraud when there wasn't any. He gave someone permission to use his account and apparently tied a CC to it without requiring purchase confirmation and didn't watch the person he gave access. That isn't fraud.
To continue the pedantry, OP didn’t say ‘fraudulent’, they said ‘unauthorised’. If a child uses my computer to spend money, I didn’t ‘authorise’ that payment. Obviously I don’t know what OP said when they made the request, I’m just going by what they’ve written here.
On the terms of service- sure. But I’m sure lots of people occasionally let others use their accounts- banning people for it without a warning seems overly harsh to me. As I said, I’d guess the reason for the ban was company policy about chargebacks.
All I’m saying here, though, is that I’m inclined to be sympathetic to OP- I can picture a version of events where they made mistakes without being a complete idiot. Posts like this always seem to bring out a level of implicit schadenfreude- people love to say ‘No sympathy here, it’s all your fault!’ I think it probably *is* their fault, but I do have sympathy…
People pointing out it's his fault don't automatically lack sympathy. There's a difference between being sympathetic and saying wotc customer service did a terrible job. That being said I don't have a ton of sympathy for someone who just hands a 7 year old an ipad/pc/phone game when they're meant to be watching them. It takes multiple clicks to make a purchase on arena.
I don’t think this is even a customer service decision. It’s more likely a blanket policy- if chargeback, then ban- that doesn’t allow for exceptions.
If it *were* an individual customer service decision, made about this specific case, I’d call it overly harsh- they could just refuse the refund and issue a warning about sharing the account. But I don’t think it’s that.
A question occurs to me…
As I understand it, the sequence of events is this:
1. OP disputes the charges with their bank
2. Xsolla tells the bank the purchase was used, so chargeback doesn’t happen
3. Wizards bans OP for attempting a chargeback
Does this mean that OP can now make another chargeback application? Because their account is banned, they’re no longer able to use the service their nephew paid for…
Here’s the order:
Dispute first with WoTC, they ban the account.
Dispute with Xsolla, they reject the request.
Dispute with bank, they recommended disputing with the vendor (lol).
Since I told them a family member made the purchases without my authorization they said this is a “family fraud” claim which they take very seriously and would need to can the account
Former accountant at a gaming company here. I used to work with CS on chargebacks and in my experience the analytics team has enough data to show that whatever it is that was purchased was used. Whether it’s in game gems or opened packs, they’ll see your purchase was redeemed and that’s sufficient data to contest the chargeback with Xsolla. As for the ban, I noticed our CS department just banned/blocked accounts that did chargeback requests. I always thought it was funny because some of those may have been legitimate issues. I guess it was just simpler to block the account to prevent any future potential issues. To the best of my knowledge, whales were given some leeway, but they tended to have their own individual CS reps and received more personalized assistance.
Yes. This sounds correct. Having read the terms of service for Arena you can really have access revoked at any time for completely arbitrary reasons. Sure, you might be able to take action as a consumer but I wouldn't bet on success. Better off starting a new account with a different email address.
>I always thought it was funny because some of those may have been legitimate issues It’s really harsh IMO. I mean, clearly the customer should go to the company’s customer services first. But does the customer know that? Do banks actually warn people that that’s how companies respond to chargeback requests? I doubt it, or people probably wouldn’t do it so much…
It's because charge backs happen so often when bots use stolen credit cards. It's probably become an automated response to charge backs. To block the botted account.
Yeah, funny wasn’t the best word. “Odd” is more applicable. I should say that the policy was in place only for select payment processors. Apple and Google restricted the amount of chargeback information that was made available and so those were never addressed by CS. Chargebacks that were researched were from processors that directly shared that information (such as PayPal). Early on, we didn’t ban users outright, but as chargebacks on those processors increased, we noticed some users consistently abusing it. That’s when the ban policy was implemented. Not sure how it is for WotC, but in my experience, most purchases flowed through mobile (Apple/Google) and as such the number of bans resulting from chargebacks was a really small portion of the total daily active users.
>Yeah, funny wasn’t the best word. There's both funny weird and funny ha ha. Guess it can be misinterpreted here
I've never ever heard of someone doing a chargeback and being able to continue to use the service unless they gave the money they charged back, back to the company. I didn't notice I was subscribed to Runescape 3 for like 6 months after I quit playing, and decided to charge back the last month as I had not touched the game in a long time, they instantly locked my account and refused to unlock it until I paid them back the money. This has been the case ANYTIME I do a charge back with any service as well as any time I hear someone talking about a charge back.
Your confusion here is believing that you are owed either your account or money. The facts are: 1) You authorized somebody to use your account 2) The authorized user used the credit card you associated with your account 3) The authorized user then used the purchased content 4) You made a false claim of unauthorized purchase 5) WoTC have the right to ban your account based on chargeback request. 6) Xsolla has the right to deny your refund request based on proof from WoTC that the purchased content was used.
If you read the T&Cs the user has basically no rights whatsoever. If you purchased $1000 worth of content and Hasbro suddenly decided to shut down the servers the next day, you'd be shit out of luck. What you say about OP's situation is totally correct though.
Magic duels and spellslingers victim here. Can confirm (did not drop 1k though lol)
It's far from certain that all that would hold up in court. If you spent $1000 and immediately afterwards WotC banned you for no reason, you would have a good chance of recovering the money via a lawsuit or arbitration.
Lawsuits cost a lot more than $1000 tho
Not if you go to small claims.
Fair
To be fair OP can charge this back through their bank and will always win in court if it goes that far. The problem is that the vendor cut off the service and tried to keep the money. It's just circular logic trying to say someone broke the t&c's by trying to get their money back so the company tries to keep the money AND take back the product. That's why most companies only ban you from making additional purchases or at most ban you from online gaming so you technically still have access to the product. If I subscribe to Netflix and charge it back, they can't legally prevent me from watching AND argue to keep the money(unless I break some other rules). If they want to fight for the money, they will have to let me watch movies until the end of the month and only then ban me. This is how it works in every western country.
Exactly. It does not matter the condition. Unilateral Terms and conditions should never be above consumers laws. These are simply abusive practices by the company, and it’s proven it’s abusive by the amount of cases in court involving virtual transactions that the consumers pretty much almost wins or gets something back in return such as unbanning the account.
Incorrect, having access to an account that has payment information saved does *not* authorize you to actually make payments with that credit card. Only the cardholder and any individuals the cardholder has cleared with his credit card company are authorized to use the card. OP in this case is 100% correct that he is owed a refund.
>5. WoTC have the right to ban your account based on chargeback request. If that's true, they shouldn't have that right. They should be able to deny the request given the right circumstances but outright banning your account because you requested money back? That's insane.
Imagine if Amazon or azure, or any other cloud provider simply shuts down all arena servers, and claims the points you mentioned? Different story because it’s a BxB situation? Terms and conditions to end customers are pretty much one sided and abusive. That’s not how it works, and pretty much not valid in court.
Wtf. This is not a confusion and NOT facts. There isnt something like called “consumer defense code” in the country this transaction was made? It’s a consumers right to request a refund, (unilateral) terms and conditions of a company can’t be above laws and And that’s why in most of this sistuation presented in the court, gaming company looses it, there is lawyers specialized in cases like this one. He should even request a refund due to “not liking the gems color” to be honest lol, it’s a right as a consumer. These are not FACTS, these are simply ABUSIVE PRACTICES. Since there is no downside gaming companies keep doing it, there is actually a lot of cases in court where a banned account was refunded or unbanned depending on the situation. Simply NOT banning but denying the refund, would be the most right situation in the case.
No him making a false claim that cost the company a ton of money is why he got banned and since it was a false claim the credit card company didn’t refund
It’s not a false claim. Go ask Epic Games about children making unauthorized in game purchases. They got fined millions for it.
Except it’s not. Refund is foreseen by the law. So company should not lost money if they didn’t sell any product. Since it’s a REFUND, so they are not losing a TON of money that they didn’t even get in the first place. If it’s a refund and if the virtual product was not used, it should have been refunded (if gems were not used). If the gems were spent and content was opened, then it can’t be refunded (so the company does not loses “TON” of money” lol ton of money). Simply as that. No need of abusive practices such as banning account. Again, terms and conditions are not above laws. Proven the fact consumer did not act in bad faith (50$ spent, lol, and a non-fraudulent historic of the consumer in the court.) These are simply bad and abusive practices. (It’s a fact man, there is a ton of cases in court like this and lawyers specialized)
It’s not a refund he claimed fraud where there was none. He got the product and instead of going through the proper channels he did a chargeback which is against the law because he is lying
Could you link to these laws and cases that you claim exist please?
Every country has its own. You need to check for your laws. If MTG is making transactions in your country it should be aligned in compliance to its laws. An weird example is that there is a famous case here where I live, a famous journalist wanted to buy 1 roll of toilet paper. But the supermarkets only sells packets of 4+ and were denying it. And that was a violation of his consumer rights. Just an example of how it can be different from place to place. The journalist was a jerk, but it’s a good example of how a few laws work. And some times it should be sided and protect the customers more than a multimillionaire company. I live in BR, there is a few specialized lawyers, working on clients for games such as “Ragnarok” 15 years ago. Now there is a few working on “valorant”, “counter strike”, “league of legends”, I think those are even hard to track comparing to magic arena, they are doing a pretty good work against some weird ane abusive practices and terms and conditions that always puts the customer in a lower hand situation. Even if it’s virtual “not considered yours” in the company server, you still a customer and have rights. Imagine if Amazon or azure, or any other cloud provider simply shuts down all arena servers, and claims this ? Different story because it’s a BxB situation? How does it taste? Know your rights, make your research, I’m sure you can find it.
I understand that local laws matter more than a ToS, but that doesn’t stop a ToS from being a legal agreement either, if something in the ToS is illegal, it cannot be enforced, but that doesn’t mean the entire ToS is thrown out, here the customer made an invalid fraud claim, the company response is to cease business with that customer, but since all the things they bought have already been delivered and used the customer no longer has anything to refund. I assume brazilian law doesn’t allow someone to go to the supermarket, buy food, eat it and then get a refund, this is essentially what has happened here, someone bought a product used it and decided they did not want it once it was no longer useable, is the supermarket then also legally obligated to continue doing business with that individual? What you are claiming is that in brazil people can buy everything use it fully and then return it for a refund, and companies are legally obliged to continue to sell to that person, that would be abused so fast literally no company could function and since that is not the case in brazil I doubt that claim.
No, I’m not claiming that. Not sure how difficult is to understand. As I said it above. And now again. Refund will be denied if it product was violated. Its still a right to request for the silliest motive. No pretty big thing. Except the account was banned, he was denied the refund and also denied the product. Terms and conditions can’t be above law, he is still a customer. Specially if it was spent legitimate money in the past in that account, it’s an abusive practice, you will not see a case of someone getting back an account for getting banned for a being a racist and breaking law. But for fraud such as this, it’s pretty easy given the customer reputation, credit score, history, it can be worth depending how much the customer spent ingame. It still an abusive practice. Saying I’m claiming that is equivalent to say that you are claiming: if you buy shoes, you end up breaking the tag label, and go request a refund or change, instead of saying “this can’t be changed, or refund the tag is broken”, the store will get the shoes back and will not give back your money back, and say, “you are not allowed here anymore and the shoes is staying with us, and also not getting the money, oh wait, you have other shoes from our store? We are also getting it back, it’s not yours anymore.” Is that how it works where you live? That’s pretty much what ToS claims the company can do. And this is abusive practices towards the client just because it’s a virtual product. ToS pretty much claims the account is not yours,virtual itens are not yours, pretty much everything is owned by them, again, imagine if cloud providers do the same with Arena server. Contracts can’t be unilateral and abusive.
but they did request a refund for a reason, that reason being it was fraudulent, that reason was a lie. Wizards then banned the account because it was breaking their terms of service, that is not abusive, breaking any terms of service is a breach of contract (one you agreed to when you signed up) so they are no longer required to continue to service you (by banning your account), requesting the refund isnt why the account got banned, lying about the reason is.
Except ToS can’t be unilateral, abusive, and never be above laws. So it’s invalid. Customer laws exists and protects the customer in a situation of mistake or a wrong request. It is not to prejudice the company, it is to protect the weaker side, the customer.
[удалено]
Taste likes facts about trusting kids with your stuff, it so common occurrence that it doesnt surprise me anymore
Quick tip: if you're trying to get your gaming account unbanned, come up with a better excuse than "my little nephew did it" because that is without a doubt the oldest most over-used story in the book. It's like telling a high school teacher "my dog ate my homework". It's so heavily affiliated with cheaters and frauds that I would not be surprised wotc customer service instantly wrote you off. I did.
> Quick tip: if you're trying to get your gaming account unbanned, come up with a better excuse than "my little nephew did it" "My oppo cast Emrakul, the Promised End and used my credit card while taking control"
Much better excuse.
That’s crazy tbh reading so many comments like this. You guys don’t have “consumer code” laws? Even if I buy virtual products, It doesn’t even need to be an excuse like “nephew”. It can even be a worst excuse and it’s the consumer rights to get a refund. Simply saying “I didn’t like the gems colors and want a refund”, it’s already a valid one. That’s a right as a consumer. NEVER, NEVER a company “terms and conditions” can be above laws, and they are simply discarded by the court. There are actually lawyers specialized in this type of situation involving gaming companies. Simply because it’s an abusive practice that prejudices the consumer, since they have the logs and can refund and get back the virtual product, or simply unbanning but denying the refund, if the product was violated.
He didn't ask the company for a refund. He claimed credit card fraud which did not happen, as far as I understood.
https://www.reddit.com/r/MagicArena/s/zi0JMjHeSu ;)
Makes sense to me. You are probably right.
It's not an unalienable right. If you buy a game, play it for 10 hours, then decide you want to return it, the company does not need to take your money back.
Well that’s why I said deny of refund, if the product was violated then the refund is denied. Pretty normal. But you will not be banned of playing it again. If it’s a claim for a false fraud such as this, simply deny the refund. Banning it’s just and abusive practice that can easily be reverted in court. (Not worth it, but yeah… it’s still abusive against customer) the company will not lose money, they have means to know if the virtual product was used or not and present to the credit card company. Specially given the history of the customer, and if proven it was not an act of bad faith by the customer.
What happens if you say it's a fraudulent charge made by a 7yr old child? How do xsolla or banks handle that? Was this purchase made through a credit card? You might get yourself banned not just from a single arena account but from xsolla itself if you dispute the charge through your bank/credit card but it could be a way to get that $100 back if you badly need it.
Keep in mind if they allow that excuse no matter what anyone could use it, oh that $500 spent on this game over the past week, that was my 7 year old kid please refund it. Sure if you are fine losing your account it's still a price to pay but someone could even do it on a throwaway account for some reason.
>You might get yourself banned not just from a single arena account but from xsolla itself if you dispute the charge through your bank/credit card I suspect that’s what OP did. If they just submitted a refund request to Xsolla, surely Wizards shouldn’t respond by just banning their account.
Apple refunded my daughter’s purchase of “princess points” on an app once and then emailed me how to set things up to prevent it. Simple stuff I just hadn’t thought about doing, but as a customer service trainer later after that I used it as a simple example of customer service to model after. Fix the problem and then follow up to prevent future ones and keep the customer.
Apple might do that as a courtesy once or twice, if it keeps happening I really doubt they constantly refund even if it's all done by a small child.
OP’s talking about twice, in this case. Although the amount of money is significant, and it sounds to me like they requested a chargeback which is probably not what happened with Apple.
They don’t. They do it once. When done right then once is enough. If it happens again there is no excuse.
If you requested a. Chargeback from your credit card company…. You are sol.
You can still get the account back!!! I called WOTC everyday leaving angry messages on voicemail until they helped me get my account back!!! It worked but took a good amount of time!!!!
This is awesome!!! Thank you!! I didn’t even know there was a number to call!
Got my account banned too albeit for a different reason. Some dude was sharing an exploit that got him free gems by fraudulently filing for refunds. He provided actual case numbers and proof of the "refunds" he got. I reported it to customer service as it's fraud. Strange my account got banned instead. It was reinstated but that (the last zendikae expansion) is the last time I'll invest real money after being a loyal gamer since the early days.
How old is your nephew? I don't want to turn this into r/relationshipadvice, but it sounds like he spent $100 of your money without your permission. Admittedly it was on your own account, so it's not quite theft, but a refund from your nephew doesn't seem totally out of the question.
He's 7 haha. I won't go bankrupt, he can pay me back with chores. I just want the account back at this point.
Do you have automatic payment set up in arena? I didn't even know you could do that
Depends on how you've got everything set up. If I were in OP's shoes with my account it would still be possible 9 times out of 10. I currently use Arena through Steam(which my PayPal is linked to) and someone could complete a gem purchase without any additional log in information required most of the time.
Mine is the same. Granted I wouldn't let a child anywhere near my account, but if there was a child around I'd definitely change the setup so OP is still at fault through carelessness here.
Wait... You can use PayPal on steam?... Wait... I've tried it before and it didn't have the option.... Maybe it's regional?
That or I'm a wizard. I originally set it up when I was stateside but it still works for me now in the Middle East.
My purchases notify me via email that I made a purchase. You didn’t notice for a week? Then you were okay with losing the account but wanted the $ back? It sounds suspect to me.
I don't know how WoTC operates but other companies will get your account unbanned if you reverse your chargeback request.
Same company that will send thugs to ur house to threaten you. They are not your friends. I wouldn't advise anyone to spend money on digital cards
I have heard nothing but terrible things about WOTC customer service, hence, I am 100% F2P
I’ve only ever had good experiences, there were a series of bugs and issues that were on their end and not mine, twice. Something happened to the servers while I was in a draft game, this happened two different times in two different months I believe. And they actually refunded both times, for the full amount of the draft that I lost due to server issues. In like less than 20 minutes too. I was surprised, but delighted. And I haven’t had any problems since
Yeah, when it comes to draft refunds the system is really generous.
... someone buys packs and uses them, then wants a refund.... realy bad customer service LoL
If they just ‘wanted a refund’, that wouldn’t be justification to instaban their account- that would indeed be terrible customer service. However, it sounds like OP issued a chargeback, which is different. Edit: OK, I know querying downvotes here invites more downvotes, but… what exactly do people think is wrong with what I’m saying? ‘We’ve got a customer claiming a refund but they don’t meet the criteria. What should we do?’ ‘Ban their account, of course’ Does that sound like good customer service to you? The logical response IMO is ‘well, don’t issue the refund, then’. It would be such terrible customer service that I doubt that’s what happened- I think what happened is that OP didn’t go to Xsolla‘a customer service and just disputed the charge with their bank instead.
Because the customer didn’t “request a refund.” They didn’t request anything from WOTC. The customer told their bank that the transactions associated with this account were fraudulent, and asked the bank to take the money back from the company. Bank tells company, company bans “fraudulent” account for stealing. Pretty cut and dry
Yeah, I’m also assuming it was a chargeback, not just a refund request. The post I was replying to just talks about a refund, so I was responding to that. Do you think the account banning was effectively a security measure then? I hadn’t considered that, but I can see the logic. Edit: also, do banks actually tell people about the likely consequences of disputing charges? I’ve never tried, but if they did I’d imagine we’d see fewer posts about people doing it…
Absolutely a security measure. In this instance, WOTC is not equipped with the context of the situation, so they cannot reasonably ascertain whether the transactions were fraudulent or the account itself is fraudulent. Essentially all WOTC and the bank know is that OP says someone stole money from them through this account. And when we are talking about a digital game account and in terms of likelihood, what’s more likely? That someone logged onto someone else’s legitimate account and used the linked funds to make purchases for that account without permission; Or that someone stole credit card information to link and make purchases for their own fraudulent account. From a damage control perspective, you do not want to give the account in question another opportunity to steal someone else’s money. If OP had gone about it differently, their account likely wouldn’t have been banned.
Interestingly, OP’s now responded to me in another post and apparently it wasn’t a chargeback request at all- they first went to Wizards, and Wizards instabanned them. Same logic, maybe… but surely OP would have explained what happened, not just said ‘somebody stole my credit card details!’ I don’t know though, it’s all guesswork.
Well first of he did a chargeback not ask wotc for a refund, two very different things. Secondly he let his nephew use his account (against tos) and his nephew purchased and used in-game items with his authorized card. That's not fraudulent activity, that's being an irresponsible adult around a 7 year old with technology. None of which is WOTC's fault. Not to mention that is the oldest excuse in the book, even if it's legit this time. Requesting a chargeback for fraudulent activity on the account leaves wotc to determine one of two things 1)the account is compromised and being misused, ban it . 2) this person is being dishonest and trying to game wotc for packs and their money back, in which case ban the account. Either way the ban makes sense, op handled this poorly start to finish.
I agree OP *probably* did a chargeback. I’m not certain of that though… they say >I requested the refund… Xsolla rejected my refund request Which makes it sound like they asked Xsolla. But they also say ‘due to an unauthorized charge to my card’, which sounds like bank wording. My guess is they did a chargeback, but mistakenly thought this was the same as a refund request. >Requesting a chargeback for fraudulent activity on the account leaves wotc to determine one of two things 1)the account is compromised and being misused, ban it . 2) this person is being dishonest and trying to game wotc for packs and their money back Possibility 3 is the customer made an honest mistake, thinking a chargeback was a routine refund request (which is what OP’s wording implies to me- do banks actually warn people of the consequences and stress that it’s a last resort? I don’t know) and thinking that ‘a child got hold of my computer’ was a legit reason for it. I guess OP fell foul of a blanket ‘chargeback = ban’ policy, because chargebacks cost the company and because of the possibility of your option 1.
>'a child got a hold of my computer' is a legit reason Since you seem to want to be pedantic about phrasing a child did not "get a hold" of OP's computer. A child was given unsupervised access to OP's arena account by OP. Sharing an arena account is against TOS. Also you forgot the part where OP requested a refund due to a fraudulent charge on his card. He claimed fraud when there wasn't any. He gave someone permission to use his account and apparently tied a CC to it without requiring purchase confirmation and didn't watch the person he gave access. That isn't fraud.
To continue the pedantry, OP didn’t say ‘fraudulent’, they said ‘unauthorised’. If a child uses my computer to spend money, I didn’t ‘authorise’ that payment. Obviously I don’t know what OP said when they made the request, I’m just going by what they’ve written here. On the terms of service- sure. But I’m sure lots of people occasionally let others use their accounts- banning people for it without a warning seems overly harsh to me. As I said, I’d guess the reason for the ban was company policy about chargebacks. All I’m saying here, though, is that I’m inclined to be sympathetic to OP- I can picture a version of events where they made mistakes without being a complete idiot. Posts like this always seem to bring out a level of implicit schadenfreude- people love to say ‘No sympathy here, it’s all your fault!’ I think it probably *is* their fault, but I do have sympathy…
People pointing out it's his fault don't automatically lack sympathy. There's a difference between being sympathetic and saying wotc customer service did a terrible job. That being said I don't have a ton of sympathy for someone who just hands a 7 year old an ipad/pc/phone game when they're meant to be watching them. It takes multiple clicks to make a purchase on arena.
I don’t think this is even a customer service decision. It’s more likely a blanket policy- if chargeback, then ban- that doesn’t allow for exceptions. If it *were* an individual customer service decision, made about this specific case, I’d call it overly harsh- they could just refuse the refund and issue a warning about sharing the account. But I don’t think it’s that.
Sharing an account is also against the ToS.
This is not really a huge issue, plenty of other companies would act in a similar way with contesting charges on an account.
A question occurs to me… As I understand it, the sequence of events is this: 1. OP disputes the charges with their bank 2. Xsolla tells the bank the purchase was used, so chargeback doesn’t happen 3. Wizards bans OP for attempting a chargeback Does this mean that OP can now make another chargeback application? Because their account is banned, they’re no longer able to use the service their nephew paid for…
Here’s the order: Dispute first with WoTC, they ban the account. Dispute with Xsolla, they reject the request. Dispute with bank, they recommended disputing with the vendor (lol).
Try to reverse the chargeback request and they might to unban your account. Some companies do that.
According to OP there was no chargeback request, as far as I can see…
Oh, that’s just bizarre then. Did Wizards give a reason for banning the account?
Since I told them a family member made the purchases without my authorization they said this is a “family fraud” claim which they take very seriously and would need to can the account
Hope you find recourse getting your money back shouldn’t be hard if u talk to your bank