Guild Wars 2

So lemme get this straight. I buy the game for 30 bucks on kinguin, redeem the code, play heart of thorns for a day, then it kicks me off of it? I can’t play heart of thorns anymore even though I have it, bought legitimately, with real money. Why in all of the nine hells do I not have it anymore. I even have a fricken revenant in my character creation screen for christs sake! If that’s not proof enough that I had HoT then idk what is. Support making a feeble attempt at telling me kinguin’s code was wrong even though it worked for an entire day. What do you, the community think? Did I get jipped? Because it seems like I did and not by kinguin, but by arenanet.

Kinguin are a grey market reseller and ANet warned against buying from any of those sites.

If you bought from a retailer not listed on ArenaNet’s authorized retailer list (such as Kinguin) then you are pretty much on your own. The keys might be fine or they might not.

Basically if the keys are bought from arenanet or another retailer using fraudulent means and then resold one can expect those keys to eventually stop working without notice.

MrH.2591:

Kinguin are a grey market reseller and ANet warned against buying from any of those sites.

Pretty much this. Kinguin is a marketplace which means that keys are sold by other people and not legit retailers. You probably got one of the stolen or shady keys.

So unless you buy directly from anet and pay their blatant rip off price they’ll take away what you payed for without a second thought. LOL anet, way to make yourselves look worse.

Blackhearted.1264:

So unless you buy directly from anet and pay their blatant rip off price they’ll take away what you payed for without a second thought. LOL anet, way to make yourselves look worse.

You didn’t pay Anet for it, so as far as they’re concerned you stole it. Doesn’t matter that you payed someone else for the key.

Blackhearted.1264:

So unless you buy directly from anet and pay their blatant rip off price they’ll take away what you payed for without a second thought. LOL anet, way to make yourselves look worse.

I paid £28 from Amazon which was £7 cheaper than ANet.

You knew the risk when you used a third party.

Blackhearted.1264:

So unless you buy directly from anet and pay their blatant rip off price they’ll take away what you payed for without a second thought. LOL anet, way to make yourselves look worse.

That is not it, you can buy from a retailer, as long as ArenaNet gets their cut… it is upto their authorized retailers to decide whether they sell at the MSRP or cut the price taking a loss on an individual copy but counting on increased volume of sales instead.

They are simply taking away keys for which they did not receive their dues (ie. keys bought with fraudulent credit cards or the charges had a chargeback performed on them). In situations like these as far as ArenaNet is concerned you haven’t paid for it because they did not get their compensation. If you paid to some other third party (that does not have an ongoing agreement with ArenaNet for resale of their products) then if you want your money back it is up to you to get the refund from your retailer of choice.

Problem with this logic is that someone bought the 50 dollar key already and got a -20$ profit. So just because they ‘think’ I didn’t pay for it won’t cut it. They got their money already, just because it wasn’t from me doesn’t mean the key isn’t legal.

Let’s also not forget that the policy is “if it’s a fraudulent key then your account gets shut off until you buy a real one.” The fact that my account still stands 2 days after this whole affair means that this policy wasn’t upheld and therefore I didn’t invoke need for this policy. AKA they don’t think I have a bad key.

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

LOLinator.1340:

Problem with this logic is that someone bought the 50 dollar key already and got a -20$ profit. So just because they ‘think’ I didn’t pay for it won’t cut it. They got their money already, just because it wasn’t from me doesn’t mean the key isn’t legal.

That’s if guy you bought it from got the key legit way.

TheRandomGuy.7246:

LOLinator.1340:

Problem with this logic is that someone bought the 50 dollar key already and got a -20$ profit. So just because they ‘think’ I didn’t pay for it won’t cut it. They got their money already, just because it wasn’t from me doesn’t mean the key isn’t legal.

That’s if guy you bought it from got the key legit way.

^ This, if retailer X that got keys from ArenaNet for resale has to refund those keys to some third party (ie. a credit card company if the cards the charges were maid on turn out to be fraudulent) then X will have to contact the publisher, formerly NCSoft now ArenaNet, to void the keys so that they don’t have to pay ArenaNet their cut for keys they had to refund. Of course if the keys were fraudulently purchased from buy.guildwars2.com then you can drop the retailer from the equation (technically it would be replaced by Anet’s choice of payment processor).

This is how (re)sale of goods works people, if in some part of the chain there is a problem then that problem will bubble up the chain and the end result is usually key being voided by the publisher.

LOLinator.1340:

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

If it was not an Anet authorized retailer then selling the key would have been a violation of the ToS. Remember that accounts are not transferable.

Ashen.2907:

LOLinator.1340:

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

If it was not an Anet authorized retailer then selling the key would have been a violation of the ToS. Remember that accounts are not transferable.

This is also true, but the fact of the matter is that if the person who sold LOLinator his key had bought the game in a way that had no problems with cash flow to the publisher there would likely be no way for anyone to know (since the key is unused, which i suppose technically makes ToS not apply to what happens to the key itself).

But since we are here obviously there has been an issue with ArenaNet getting their cut from the purchase by whoever sold this key on Kinguin, for ANet voiding the key is the only recourse they have. If LOLinator were to contact CS this is exactly what they would tell him and then proceed to instruct him to get a refund from his retailer.

Blackhearted.1264:

So unless you buy directly from anet and pay their blatant rip off price they’ll take away what you payed for without a second thought. LOL anet, way to make yourselves look worse.

I bet you buy cheap watches from shady pawn shops.

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

You really think someones paid full price just to sell it to you for a profit loss?

Or perhaps they managed to steal it so they could sell it to you for 100% of the profit?

Think. How is it someone is able to sell something for $30 which normally cost almost twice that amount, without being an authorized dealer?

Think of this as your first lesson in the adult world

Blackhearted.1264:

So unless you buy directly from anet and pay their blatant rip off price they’ll take away what you payed for without a second thought. LOL anet, way to make yourselves look worse.

If you buy something from someone who doesn’t own it, has no right to sell it, its your problem if/when the owner reclaims their property.

It’s also possible that they got the key honestly, and sold it to you. And Jake over there, and Linda, and Pat.

First person to use it has no problems until someone else tries to the same key. Then the excrement hits the fan.

LOLinator.1340:

So lemme get this straight. I buy the game for 30 bucks on kinguin, redeem the code, play heart of thorns for a day, then it kicks me off of it? I can’t play heart of thorns anymore even though I have it, bought legitimately, with real money. Why in all of the nine hells do I not have it anymore. I even have a fricken revenant in my character creation screen for christs sake! If that’s not proof enough that I had HoT then idk what is. Support making a feeble attempt at telling me kinguin’s code was wrong even though it worked for an entire day. What do you, the community think? Did I get jipped? Because it seems like I did and not by kinguin, but by arenanet.

Welcome to the wonderful world of third party scams. Let this be a lesson to you, unless it is a legitimate retailer don’t buy through them. Kinguin is like buying through ebay and amazon but with out the protection either of those offer. I just checked guild wars 2 on there and there are several different prices for the game being sold by different people such as gamesgarage and kupikey, both private users of kinguin that resale keys they have obtained possibly through dubious means.

you got ripped off, by a kinguin resaler, not arenanet.

LOLinator.1340:

Let’s also not forget that the policy is “if it’s a fraudulent key then your account gets shut off until you buy a real one.” The fact that my account still stands 2 days after this whole affair means that this policy wasn’t upheld and therefore I didn’t invoke need for this policy. AKA they don’t think I have a bad key.

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

Actually, doing a quick search of Kinguin suggests someone didn’t buy this for $50. It’s likely the seller bought a copy in a country where the exchange rate is enough that they can profit from reselling it for $30 (after some exchange/commodity juggling, that is), so while the key itself may be legit you likely ran into another problem.

Namely selling accounts is against the rules of conduct.

So your account isn’t fully disabled because the key is legit, but it may be partially disabled due to some other issue. You’ll have to submit a ticket to CS to find out exactly what.

Next time just buy from official retailers if you don’t want to risk this kind of headache.

Think of it optimistically – you didn’t get filched out of $50 like the rest of us. You got grifted for only $30.

Honestly, I wouldn’t doubt that ANet will be banning everyone that didn’t purchase from a sponsored site regardless of whether the keys are legit.

Zanther Deathbringer.4762:

Blackhearted.1264:

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

You really think someones paid full price just to sell it to you for a profit loss?

Or perhaps they managed to steal it so they could sell it to you for 100% of the profit?

Think. How is it someone is able to sell something for $30 which normally cost almost twice that amount, without being an authorized dealer?

Think of this as your first lesson in the adult world

Retail stores do this all the time. It’s called a loss leader.

Grocery stores do this with 2 liter bottles of soda.

It gets people to their store where they may purchase items with enough profit margin to make up for the loss they take on the item with the great sale.

Like candy at the register. Or the chips they’ve strategically placed on the end of the soda aisle. Or the other items they were heading to the store to buy – they just prefer it if it’s from their store and not their competition.

bLind.6278:

Honestly, I wouldn’t doubt that ANet will be banning everyone that didn’t purchase from a sponsored site regardless of whether the keys are legit.

Sponsored? The only legit keys come from buy.guildwars2.com and from retailers or distributors that have a contractual agreements with ArenaNet for either digital or physical sale of their products.

This is where all keys come from, by default every one of these keys is legit as you said. Key coming from any other source also originates from one of those sources (because that is the only way to get a key that would work on their system at all).

The key is made fraudulent if one of these primary sources has problems getting their money from a sold copy from the secondary source such as Kinguin resellers in this case. ArenaNet can not see who sold a certain key beyond the point to which their distribution contracts cover them. Most likely they can’t track down the sale of any individual key at all, they only see problems coming back up the distribution chain (meaning that when a distributor contacts them about a key they had to refund or did not get paid for is when they hear of it).

The only exception to this is region specific keys, but that is not a thing for GW2 as far as I know. Since the keys are ultimately region free. Besides these kind of limitations are usually done prior to key activation.

Your morality does not change the EULA you agreed to.

You broke the rules and lost your HoT key.

It doesn’t matter whether you think it’s right or wrong, that’s just what happened.

For the record, key reselling is actively moving developers to raise prices and offer less sales on software because it is costing them full price sales. The kinguin key you got was paid for at retailer price, which is a lower price point than consumer price specifically to compensate the retailer for their costs, or from a consumer who specifically agreed to buying a non-transferable software license, and had no right to sell it in the first place.

If price is your complaint, you’re actually part of the problem. If you don’t believe a developer deserves the asking price for a game, don’t buy the game, and force them to come up on quality or go down on the asking price. Second party sale sites don’t encourage developers to make better games or offer them cheaper. They just encourage them to raise prices and cancel sales to recoup lost income.

You chose to engage in third party key trading, it’s not Anet’s problem, and it is actually against their ToS to resell keys and accounts (which remain Anet’s property) unless you are listed as an official retailer with them.

LOLinator.1340:

So lemme get this straight. I buy the game for 30 bucks on kinguin, redeem the code, play heart of thorns for a day, then it kicks me off of it? I can’t play heart of thorns anymore even though I have it, bought legitimately, with real money. Why in all of the nine hells do I not have it anymore. I even have a fricken revenant in my character creation screen for christs sake! If that’s not proof enough that I had HoT then idk what is. Support making a feeble attempt at telling me kinguin’s code was wrong even though it worked for an entire day. What do you, the community think? Did I get jipped? Because it seems like I did and not by kinguin, but by arenanet.

Buys the game from a non-authorized, shady third-party retailer.
Complains that things didn’t work out properly.

Hahaha, Oh wow. What an idiot.

Though I’m curious. If you were planning to actually buy Heart of Thorns, why not purchase it here, in the official website, directly from ArenaNet? Just what in the kitten were you thinking?

Pandaman.4758:

LOLinator.1340:

Let’s also not forget that the policy is “if it’s a fraudulent key then your account gets shut off until you buy a real one.” The fact that my account still stands 2 days after this whole affair means that this policy wasn’t upheld and therefore I didn’t invoke need for this policy. AKA they don’t think I have a bad key.

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

Actually, doing a quick search of Kinguin suggests someone didn’t buy this for $50. It’s likely the seller bought a copy in a country where the exchange rate is enough that they can profit from reselling it for $30 (after some exchange/commodity juggling, that is), so while the key itself may be legit you likely ran into another problem.

Namely selling accounts is against the rules of conduct.

So your account isn’t fully disabled because the key is legit, but it may be partially disabled due to some other issue. You’ll have to submit a ticket to CS to find out exactly what.

Next time just buy from official retailers if you don’t want to risk this kind of headache.

I very much doubt Anet would block any account based on reselling accounts. Problem with sites like kingwin is you are doing some gambling.
see Kingwin is a market place not a shop, its kinda ebay if you will. You find different kinds of sellers. some are able to offer cheap prices because of grey markets (a game might sell cheaper in countries with low wages for example) sometimes they’re cheap because they leverage exchange rates (though I doubt that will translate to over $20 difference)

But sometimes you get the short end of the stick… People buy keys using stolen credit cards and resell them. Eventually legitimate owners of those credit cards realize that their card has been used fraudulently, report to their bank which triggers a charge-back. When that happens the key associated with that charge back is naturally going to be disabled. Think this is a much more likely scenario then OP having his account disabled because of account reselling.

When the price of the xpac is 20 bucks less then they put on official site, haven’t you paused for a miute thinking….. hey this sounds too good to be true?

LOLinator.1340:

Problem with this logic is that someone bought the 50 dollar key already and got a -20$ profit. So just because they ‘think’ I didn’t pay for it won’t cut it. They got their money already, just because it wasn’t from me doesn’t mean the key isn’t legal.

You are assuming that person didn’t do a chargeback on this sale, or that the key wasn’t bought using fraudulent credentials. Or that it wasn’t sold to more than one person. Unfortunately for you, one of those assumptions seems to be wrong.

OP bought a product that was stolen, and is surprised that Anet is stopping him from using it.

This is kinguin we’re talking about – the place people go to sell stolen games.

Based on that places track record, the absolute most likely option is that the person OP bought the key from sold that same key to five or six other people.

Next most likely is that someone bought a whole whack load of keys with a stolen credit card, and is trying to sell them there as fast as possible.

The odds of it being a legit key sold at a loss is about as likely as that nice man in the trenchcoat actually having some Rolex watches for sale for $10. While it’s possible, it’s so unlikely that there’s no reason to give weight to the option.

OP is actually lucky. He can still play the core game.
Many of us who had the same problem got a full account suspension, having our expansion revoked (which makes sense) and removing our access to the core game as well (which is full-out rediculous)

Galen Grey.4709:

Pandaman.4758:

LOLinator.1340:

Let’s also not forget that the policy is “if it’s a fraudulent key then your account gets shut off until you buy a real one.” The fact that my account still stands 2 days after this whole affair means that this policy wasn’t upheld and therefore I didn’t invoke need for this policy. AKA they don’t think I have a bad key.

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

Actually, doing a quick search of Kinguin suggests someone didn’t buy this for $50. It’s likely the seller bought a copy in a country where the exchange rate is enough that they can profit from reselling it for $30 (after some exchange/commodity juggling, that is), so while the key itself may be legit you likely ran into another problem.

Namely selling accounts is against the rules of conduct.

So your account isn’t fully disabled because the key is legit, but it may be partially disabled due to some other issue. You’ll have to submit a ticket to CS to find out exactly what.

Next time just buy from official retailers if you don’t want to risk this kind of headache.

I very much doubt Anet would block any account based on reselling accounts. Problem with sites like kingwin is you are doing some gambling.
see Kingwin is a market place not a shop, its kinda ebay if you will. You find different kinds of sellers. some are able to offer cheap prices because of grey markets (a game might sell cheaper in countries with low wages for example) sometimes they’re cheap because they leverage exchange rates (though I doubt that will translate to over $20 difference)

But sometimes you get the short end of the stick… People buy keys using stolen credit cards and resell them. Eventually legitimate owners of those credit cards realize that their card has been used fraudulently, report to their bank which triggers a charge-back. When that happens the key associated with that charge back is naturally going to be disabled. Think this is a much more likely scenario then OP having his account disabled because of account reselling.

I was under the impression that the OP’s account was only partially disabled. If a chargeback did occur he wouldn’t be able to log onto the forum to even post a complaint, much less hop on his account to take screenshots of his character select screen.

But yes, grey markets are a gamble regardless of the reason, OP made a mistake and shouldn’t be blaming ANet at all.

LOLinator.1340:

EDIT: I will say this again, someone BOUGHT this with 50 bucks, from arenanet, then gave it to me for 30. That’s not fraudulent, not in the slightest.

Sounds like someone bought for $50 then sold to you for $30 then did a chargeback or reported it stolen. Risk you take when buying from a “grey market”, that’s why you buy from authorized sellers, Anet can actually verify those.

Pandaman.4758:

I was under the impression that the OP’s account was only partially disabled. If a chargeback did occur he wouldn’t be able to log onto the forum to even post a complaint, much less hop on his account to take screenshots of his character select screen.

If he was just upgrading they probably only disable the key to the expansion without messing with the core account. They also may have switched how they handle it, or have multiple ways of doing it.

There is a lot on nonsense being told here.
Buying from 3th party is legal in Europe, and Anet has always supported it. Only now they are making it hard for us since they did not authorize every retailer and there is only an incomplete list of official retailers on their site. So you can never know if it is ok or not until Anet decides to suspend your account.
When they take any action, they NEVER communicate. For some reason they are just unable to inform their costumers.
The retailers on the list all ask 50 for the game. While in the past it was about getting clients and they didn’t look to much at how/where you got the key, now it is about getting money. The retailer you bought from was simply not authorized and probably got the key in an illegal way.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Wyvern.2430:

The retailer you bought from was simply not authorized and probably got the key in an illegal way.

The above is the kernel that everyone needs to know. A large number of the codes that are resold by unauthorized resellers are fraudulent. Naturally, ArenaNet cannot give you a refund — they did not receive the money. They cannot give you a free game — that’s just bad business.

The buyer must beware. Authorized partners do have sales, so watch for those. Or, if you decide to take a chance, please please have a realistic view of the situation, and do not blame ArenaNet for the shady actions of an unrelated business.

Hey Gaile, thanks for your response.

Could you shed some light on why players’ accounts have been suspended? Revoking the key (or even better – rejecting it) seems like a correct response, but it doesn’t explain the suspension of the account.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Wyvern.2430:

The retailer you bought from was simply not authorized and probably got the key in an illegal way.

The above is the kernel that everyone needs to know. A large number of the codes that are resold by unauthorized resellers are fraudulent. Naturally, ArenaNet cannot give you a refund — they did not receive the money. They cannot give you a free game — that’s just bad business.

The buyer must beware. Authorized partners do have sales, so watch for those. Or, if you decide to take a chance, please please have a realistic view of the situation, and do not blame ArenaNet for the shady actions of an unrelated business.

Thanks Gaile, you are the first to respond on this problem.

While we were unaware that we bought keys from an unauthorized retailer, I think most of us accepts that the key is rejected and most of us got or will get a refund from these retailers.
Our original core game however had a good key. We spends lots of time building it up and now it is also suspended. This should be given back. I am sure most of us are willing to buy HOT in game once we can go back to playing.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Hey, Karasu,

The accounts are blocked and then cleared through the appeal process. Any bogus (fraudulent) code would be revoked, of course. The account then would be reopened and the player would be good to go.

We’re going to take a look at the process and if there’s any way to avoid blocking the account — even though the suspension is temporary and ends when we do the review requested through an appeal — the truth of the matter is that a lot of the fraudulent code applications come from RMT. What this means is that the CS Team really needs to suspend the accounts and review upon appeal, to avoid all of us legitimate players getting spammed with gold ad whispers and other bad RMT activities.

Does that make sense to you?

It’s good to see that we finally have someone giving us some more information than ‘your key was fraudulent’.
I understand if it’s necessary for ArenaNet to work with account suspensions in this case, but what’s bothering me the most of all is how careless, from my point of view, the Support Departmant is handling some of our tickets.

I appealed my suspension and requested my account to be unsuspended and offered to re-buy HoT through Guildwars2.com (which I already did) and the kind of reply I get is “We can not help you with this issue. Any further replies regarding this issue might not receive a response”.

Not only has this lowered my trust and faith in ArenaNet, but also makes me wonder if my support ticket is even being looked at anymore. On top of that it’s very clear that the GM in question did not even read the ticket properly and just threw a copy/paste answer my way.

Most of us aren’t upset that we have to go through support to get our accounts unlocked, but the fact that we have to keep sending in replies until the GM handling the ticket finally decides to read and understand what we’re trying to say and actually tries to help us.

OMFGNinja.8639:

“We can not help you with this issue. Any further replies regarding this issue might not receive a response”.

Not only has this lowered my trust and faith in ArenaNet, but also makes me wonder if my support ticket is even being looked at anymore. On top of that it’s very clear that the GM in question did not even read the ticket properly and just threw a copy/paste answer my way.

Most of us aren’t upset that we have to go through support to get our accounts unlocked, but the fact that we have to keep sending in replies until the GM handling the ticket finally decides to read and understand what we’re trying to say and actually tries to help us.

This kind of miscommunication is sadly way too common. Receiving a response like this that says that the person working on the ticket did not read the contents of your message and worse of all – is not informing you about the actual status of your request or the issue in general. I’ve sadly observed this behaviour from support several times these past few years.

I’m relieved to hear an official response on the issue providing some valuable insight in the process and what it entails to the people affected. I hope everyone will be able to get back in on their accounts soon!

There is an old saying that goes" If it seems to good to be true , then it is too good to be true". I mean you see a site selling something that cost 49.99 minimum from the actual developer of the game for 30.00 bucks you better believe it is too good to be true. In today’s internet market it is very much the consumers responsibility to do a little research and know what he or she is getting into and not just accept things for face value and then blame or expect the original owner to take the loss in these situations.

Wyvern.2430:

Do you really always buy the product you want in the most expensive shop?

I got a high quality bridge to sell you. I’m running a deal. You can have it for half price even.

Grimrah.9256:

There is an old saying that goes" If it seems to good to be true , then it is too good to be true". I mean you see a site selling something that cost 49.99 minimum from the actual developer of the game for 30.00 bucks you better believe it is too good to be true. In today’s internet market it is very much the consumers responsibility to do a little research and know what he or she is getting into and not just accept things for face value and then blame or expect the original owner to take the loss in these situations.

This is nonsense!
Do you really always buy the product you want in the most expensive shop?
More shops are offering the game for 30 than for 50, so it doesn’t look "to good to be true’, it looks better. And these sites have good support, protection and tons of happy buyers. Research was done! Everytime I buy something, I look for the best price online (some people call this being smart) and I almost never had trouble (and that is not because I am lucky) while saving money. I have adressed this already several times on the forum. A company grows that big because it is trustworthy and not by selling illegal keys. The fact that they offer buyers protection and allow pay pal adds to this. They are supporting the victims and are taking care of the fraudulent supplier. They have lots of happy costumers compared to the ones who had problems.
Maybe you should do some research before posting this stuff! In todays internet market, buying from retailers and comparing them is a normal thing.

Also, can we please stay on topic now that Gaile is listening and helping.
If it make you feel better, you both were smarter and better then the millions of people that buy at these retail shops.

It comes of no surprise that out of everyone it’s Gaile that provides the quality communication, as she always has, even back on Guild Wars (1).
It’s good to hear that she agrees that the Support Department should never have replied saying that they might not respond to future questions in our support tickets.

I hope this means that we can expect our tickets are still being taken care of and not ignored, this was my biggest fear.

Wyvern.2430:

Also, can we please stay on topic now that Gaile is listening and helping.
If it make you feel better, you both were smarter and better then the millions of people that buy at these retail shops.

OK, but your own post really said nothing regarding what Grimah wrote: “In today’s internet market it is very much the consumers responsibility to do a little research and know what he or she is getting into and not just accept things for face value and then blame or expect the original owner to take the loss in these situations.”

It should be looked at that ArenaNet is providing a form of consumer protection by naming authorized sellers when they are not obliged to, yet people are complaining about it? ArenaNet has no control over the business practices of unauthorized sellers so it is entirely incumbent upon the consumer to perform good due diligence.

I purchase directly from ArenaNet myself. I’d rather a larger cut of my transaction money go directly to the creator of something I enjoy rather than a third-party.

Chaba.5410:

Wyvern.2430:

Also, can we please stay on topic now that Gaile is listening and helping.
If it make you feel better, you both were smarter and better then the millions of people that buy at these retail shops.

OK, but your own post really said nothing regarding what Grimah wrote: “In today’s internet market it is very much the consumers responsibility to do a little research and know what he or she is getting into and not just accept things for face value and then blame or expect the original owner to take the loss in these situations.”

It should be looked at that ArenaNet is providing a form of consumer protection by naming authorized sellers when they are not obliged to, yet people are complaining about it? ArenaNet has no control over the business practices of unauthorized sellers so it is entirely incumbent upon the consumer to perform good due diligence.

I purchase directly from ArenaNet myself. I’d rather a larger cut of my transaction money go directly to the creator of something I enjoy rather than a third-party.

I think most of us wouldn’t have complained about it if all that happened was a removal of expansion access, but still being able to play the core game.
It’s just a combination of the fact that our LEGIT core game got suspended with it and the sloppy support we’ve had in the first few days that got us upset.

Now that Gaile updated us that we’d get our accounts unblocked 99.9% of the time, we can be sure things will be taken care of. Also it gives us some nice words from ArenaNet to quote in our tickets.

If I would have known paying 10€ less for the key I wouldn’t have messed with it to begin with. Sigh I guess this is my punishment ^^

A different question though. Did anyone get contacted by the support yet? I’m really curious about how long you had to wait for an answer.

I just hope this gets solved quickly and I’m happy that I learned my lesson lol..

Currently suspended because of fraud but really hoping my account gets unbanned. I already bought an official key but still got suspended afterwards I guess it’s just automated.