PlayerAuctions screwed me. $200 wasted [1YearBattle]

Before any of you say anything against this and defend PA - this is my PERSONAL experience - I'm sure PA have had good trades but this is an example of a BAD one and a warning to the community with the false assumption that PA is safe for buyers.

Here's what happened

1: I purchased an account for $200 in 2012
2: That account got recovered back
3: Had to fill out questionnaires and report what happened
4: Received an unacceptable compensation of $100 market credit
5: Spent market credit on another account on PA
6: That account ALSO gets recovered back
8: Notice that my PA account has been SUSPENDED?
9: Rage quit for months
2013
10: Returned to the case - and battled for my money back / some sort of compensation
11: After weeks and weeks of countless customer support live chats, saving logs, and multiple emails what do they tell me?
- "It is correct that you bought insurance for order x , so we issued you the credit which you used on this order x . However no insurance was bought for order y.
We totally understanding you however we need follow the policy. Thank you for your understanding."

X = First account purchased $200
Y = Account purchased using $100 market credit

This is RIDICULOUS how can they simply take money like that leaving the buyer with nothing?

Especially when they pride themselves on Buyer protection -

"All game accounts purchased by Verified members and above through PlayerAuctions are guaranteed after sale support. For those members wishing for extra security for their purchased accounts, PlayerAuctions offers insurance packages which are protect against the rare event of your purchased game account ever being irrecoverably reclaimed or suspended due to the previous owner. If this occurs and PlayerAuctions is unable to completely restore your access to the undamaged game account, PlayerAuctions will award you with PlayerAuctions Market Credit equal to the specific insurance package price, usable toward any purchases of any products offered for sale at PlayerAuctions."


I'm aware that I didnt buy insurance for the account purchased on credit but damn - when you spend $200, and you're only given $100 of course you're going to buy the best account u can for that $100 - you'd be under the impression that you'd be COVERED if anything were to happen a SECOND time

Extremely disappointed with PlayerAuctions and will NEVER trade with them again - I've got countless chat logs and emails from them and I'm not sure what I can do anymore

Should I battle it further? If so what are my options

My advice to anyone, from personal experience - is that if you're buying an account FIND a TRUSTED user on Sythe or someone that is TRUSTED on an external site.

PlayerAuction is all fun, games, happiness and security UNTIL they take your money - after that GL-SON

/endrant

 

This is the nature of account trading unfortunately. Be glad you had insurance on the first account, most users don't get that. Personally I wouldn't bother battling it out, especially if you're now suspended. You may find that the sellers can provide some false evidence that they didn't recover the accounts - in which case, you're buggered.

I've never dabbled in accounts on PA and I doubt I will, it IS however (from experience of trading upwards of 3b on PA) safe for GP trading.

Cut your losses and move on, maybe consider buying an account from a very trusted member of Sythe, or do without.

Over the years I've come to the conclusion that you're better off putting the time, energy and money into your own accounts.

Sorry for your losses, thanks for the warning, and good luck!

 

Simple. You didn't have insurance on the 2nd account, so when it was stolen it was tough shit, you get no compensation. If you have a $10k car, and it doesn't have insurance and gets nicked, you're fucked. If it does, you might get a 7-8k payout, but you won't get the full amount.

 

Yeah I've only continued with sythe from now onwards - thanks mate appreciate the input

Indeed - very valid point - I love cars

 

Fill out a complaint at the Better Business Bureau website they can help.

 

There are quite a few PA complaints that can be found through google as well: http://www.ripoffreport.com/reports/specific_search/player auctions

I personally have known PA to be extremely slow with customer service and disputes especially. They will take their sweet time and you will always need to contact a Level 1 Representative before being "transferred" to a Level 2 Technician to help with any actual problems. I guess they try to deter those who don't want the hassle of waiting weeks or months for unsolved cases.

I knew a guy who won a dispute a year and a half after the transaction was made. He bought an account that was recovered after some time and after submitting the initial dispute, the dispute team never got back to 90% of his requests. Eventually, one day they decided to refund his original payment (somehow they still had the money in their system).

 

Sorry to hear about this man.

Here's a short story abot my bad transactions through PA.

Throughout 2011 I was buying gold through PA. Few mill here and there, ended up being over $600 in total.

Well, I ended up losing my bank one day dicing and pretty much rage quit Runescape for a year. In mid 2012 I'm looking at my bank account and I'm down quite a lot of money and start looking at my transactions.

For some reason, PA charged me 3 payments that equaled over $600. (I checked and it was the same amount that I had purchased in 2011.) I was charged for these transactions AGAIN even though I had paid them legit and up front over a year ago.

In my case, I ended up going to my bank and filling a theft report and received all my money back.

Since your case is a little different than mine, I'm not sure if it would work/ be legal to do so. But I would ask them, it can't hurt.

 

player auctions didnt screw u the seller did plus man buying account is stupid someones always gunna recover n resell

 

Playerauctions can't stop someone from recovering an account, insurance or not. You should have known the risks, sorry for your loss though.

 

sorry for you'r lose, next time you should think about where you buy it, on pa it's not personal, you have a list of accounts but you know nothing about the seller, when it comes to an account, you better buy directly from a person which you can trust, like on sythe etc. where you are in live contact with the account seller

 

100% what he said sythe,player auctions, ebay, even a friend down the street can recover maybe next time youll make ur own account its really not that hard

 

@OP, get in touch with me: [email protected].

I will have a looksie into the transaction history and see if I can help you out. The way our account system was designed was actually to render far more support than what you had received, but I fear this may boil down to a human resource issue which I will look into. You mentioned that you had the emails and chat transcripts, so I would love to have a look at those and identify the exact support agents that didn't assist you as should have been done.

I will say to the rest of you, that (if you haven't seen my other announcement, I would encourage you to read up) our account trade processes are going to be improved this year. Unfortunately, as I had moved away from that segment of the business, the process was left unfortunately in a state of perpetual stasis.

@TJOC I find that occurrence highly unlikely, but if it did actually happen, please get in touch with me so I can look into it. You can contact me directly, or post here in the thread, either is fine. Regardless, in all our processes, a buyer should be charged once for a successful transaction. Double payments are not possible without the authorization of your payment gateway, so you may also want to double confirm that no one else has access to your payment source (our ability to capture payment from an individual's payment source expires within 24-48hours of your authorization on any given payment gateway).

Cheers,
Jacob

 

Up until now I had little to no respect for PA. I must say that the dedication of a PR member to come and post here really does prove me otherwise.

 

@DH,

Jacob is very good and exactly what PA needs.

 

Thanks DH. I am actually much more than "PR", I actually (as of October) am the dude who makes all of the business decisions for PA moving forward. Unfortunately however when I created an account on Sythe, someone already picked up PlayerAuctions (hmm). I suppose I can create a new account, any suggestions?

Feelin' the love. Super thanks mate.

 

I don't want to hijack the thread, but if you are legitimately a staff member at PA then I have a question:

Your 'PA Verified Accounts' are very obviously marketed as being safer and a better choice of accounts, with the information suggesting that they are '100% verified' and come with a 100% 1 year guarantee. How come it was the case that, after purchasing one of these accounts last year, and having it recovered some weeks later, I was told by your livechat/support team that in fact Old School RS accounts are not covered by this protection, and that it is primarily for other games on your site.

The account itself was not particularly expensive, nor did I use it much, so I don't have the patience to try and do anything about it. However the question I have is this; if what I was told is true, then why do you continue to mislead customers by advertising certain accounts as PlayerAuctions verified? And, if what I was told is not true, then how do your staff get away with flat out lying to customers - presumably in order to avoid handing out any sort of compensation.

 

Hi mate. Toss me the order number, I will look it up in our backend, as well as all the corresponding chat logs. I'd love to help you with minimal effort on your part.

We've made changes to our policies over the years and I've tried locating where we advertise 1 year guarantees and can't find it. I actually don't even remember ever offering that, with the exception of seller's themselves offering insurance packages for up to that time. Where our game account policies are listed here: http://www.playerauctions.com/help/content/buying-a-game-account/

But if you saw this elsewhere on the site, could you send me a link?

So, not sure if I am who I say I am? Let's just see if I can make this right then :idea:

jake

jake

 

Thanks for you posts jacob + everyone - I've sent an email to you, hoping to get a reply soon

 

Like I said, it was a cheap account, so I'm not particularly fussed, would just rather it didn't happen to anyone else in future if they had actually spent a considerable amount of money.. but next time I log in to buy something on there, if I do again, I'll forward you the order number. Should I send it on here, or to a particular email address, or where?

As for the guarantee, where I found it personally is right here:
http://www.playerauctions.com/rs2007-account/?verifiedaccounts=1

Also on the main Runescape accounts page here:
http://www.playerauctions.com/runescape-accounts/?verifiedaccounts=1

At the time of writing, there is even an account listed in there (I remember someone using the phrase "screenshots or it didn't happen" in another thread, so I took the liberty):

Currently no accounts listed on the Old School one, but at the time of buying they popped up in there occasionally and I naturally assumed it would be a safer purchase. I'm guessing, from what you've said, that maybe it isn't an advert that applies any more. At the time they appeared in there from time to time (with the little PG shield icon next to the title in the main sales list as well), so it seemed legitimately safer than another account.

If it isn't something that exists any more, can you request the removal of that particular page, and also remove it for any other games where it doesn't apply? It's rather misleading to have the page there but not actually offer the support stated.

If it is something that exists and is a real thing, then make sure your staff aren't misleading customers and actually offer the support that is claimed on the site?

 

You are ace. That's all I've got to say. I actually am aware of these particular kinds of accounts, though specifically the person who set up this type of account trade at PA is no longer with the company, and therefore this might have been overlooked by staff.

Regardless if that particular policy is active or not, because you purchased the account under this set of expectations, you are entitled to the 1 year guarantee coverage. I do not think that our staff intentionally mislead you, but this appears to be a very obscure market on our platform, one that was previously managed by a staff that is no longer with us. As such, I will try and get in touch with said person to get the low down on how this program is run and if we want to continue running it.

For now, all accounts purchased under this particular market are covered by advertised protections.

You can post your order number here in the thread or email me directly if you'd like this worked out faster, at your discretion [email protected] Be sure to mention "sythe, PA verified accounts" in the subject mail so I know what it's about.

Thanks for bring this up mate.

j