[Denied]Disallow exoneration from recovery assistance when provider is the OO

Right now rule 5 of the account selling sections says: "Anyone who wishes to sell an account must maintain "recovery responsibility" (they must refund their buyer if the account is recovered or becomes locked and they are unable to unlock it) for at least a month after the sale. If you are an account seller and you do not specifically mention your recovery responsibility in your Terms of Service, by default you have recovery responsibility forever."


A lot of providers exonerate themselves from recovery responsibility by including constructions like "we will only recover until 6 months after purchase". I think it's fair to allow these types of constructions when providers are not the original owners and have explicitly mentioned this. The buyer is aware of the risks and this factor is most likely incorporated in the price. Therefore, it's not unreasonable to allow these types of constructions. However, when a provider is an original owner I feel like he should not be able to exonerate himself from recovery responsibility through terms. There's literally no reason to do so. It's like allowing the sale of your bike under the terms that you may rightfully steal it back after a set period of time. I feel like these two cases should be distinctly distinguished in this rule.

 

What if I'm looking to buy an account to play on this summer, don't care about what happens in 6 months and I would rather pay lower amount of money for an account w/o extra warranty? Am I not allowed to make a deal I want because the seller is not allowed to do so?

 

That's really the exception to the general scenario. In any case, if such a thing is factorized in the price then there's no one harmed and this also means that such practice has been explicitly discussed between two parties. More-over this seems to more to be more of a renting-construction than a trade. Lastly, there will be no dispute in your scenario so I fail to see why it's important here. Especially when you weigh it off against the following scenario, that does actually happen frequently:

You are impacted however, when you buy an account, assume it's yours forever. The original owner assures you there's no recovery risk because he is the OO. OO waits until the recovery assistance duration expires and poof. Buyer is duped by OO's scummy practices (OO lied), but is still protected per Sythe rules.

 

Quick hitter:

The recovery system is flawed/not 100%. There comes a certain point in time too where a seller may remove the information stored/forget about the information/switch computers/etc..

No support.

 

The gesture is nice, but I don't support.

Currently there are a various amount of things requires when recovering an account.
I will go by them one by one to give some insight.

1: First, second and third password.
A big(ger) account seller often sells accounts with no e-mail registered. This mean they only know the first password. The customer however, will have access to all three.

2: Membership details
A big(ger) account seller often uses bonds for membership. This is much cheaper. This means the account seller does now have a payment email, payment post or zip code and no transaction ID. The customer however, could have used real money for membership and therefor has all of this information. Especially after a couple months, this will be essential information in recovering/unlocking an account.

3: Creation date
This information is easily obtained by talking to Hans in Lumbridge. The country it was created is most likely the country where the account seller lives. This is also often not kept secret.

4: ISP
This is the only information the account seller has and that the account buyer will most likely not know.

5: Recovering from a certain IP
At first, after the account has been sold for only a few weeks, the creation IP will be essential in recovering. However, after a certain amount of time, Jagex seems to look at the IP that was used when playing this account mostly. When the buyer has played the account for months, it seems that Jagex actually prefers a recovery from this IP rather than the original IP.

TLDR: Accounts that were created for selling purposes seem to get harder and harder to recover the more time passes. A personal account however, will be easier to recover even when a longer period of time has passed. Account trading is one of the most risky trading practises on Sythe. Educating people and teaching them about the risks is the way to go.

 

No, it would be considered a scam.

 

This pretty much nails it on the head @Departure

 

Lol was going to go this route as well. Beating a dead horse.

 

First of all, thank you for responding so extensively @Wellness

1) "The account is impossible to unlock for the OO": This is actually a solid point. It addresses the different nature of locks and recoveries. This example does rebuttal why my suggestion does not work for locks, but it does make me believe that the rule should make a distinction between locks and recoveries.

2) "Accounts being resold and then recovered": Note that this problem isn't exclusive to my suggestion. It already does happen under our current model. The only thing that changes is that under the current model the thing you describe as a "mess" happens within the first six months because the original owner guarantees recovery assistance. While under my model this mess may occur before and after six months. So yeah, a bit more mess on my side, but lets zoom in on this mess, see what it really is and how bad it is in comparison to the alternative.

If it is part of the agreement to, additionally, attach the buyer's email address -which is an extremely common practice-, then the only person capable of recovering the account without access to both email or the account is the original owner. This automatically marginalizes your problem a lot, because it becomes very clear who can and cannot have recovered the account. In addition, it is compulsory to state whether or not the reseller is the original owner of the account. If the reseller does not do this, he will be held liable. Idem if he lies about being the Original Owner.

Furthermore, the thing you describe as a "mess", has almost no impact in practice. In contrast to the problem that I'm addressing and the proposition to tackle it. In the Status-Quo the buying party potentially never has "full ownership" of the product they're buying. In your worst case scenario it is unclear who recovered the account, which is really only the case if the reseller has not explicitly mentioned whether or not he is the OO. As I have explained earlier, the pointing finger argument does not work.
The weigh-off between these two is thu really easy to make.

3) "Users forgetting info": I have been around for very long and this has never been a problem in my trades. And in one or two hypothetical situations where an old buyer would approach me, requesting the account data, I don't see why I should not give it to him. You should assist buyers to the extent of your obligations and to what's reasonable, regardless if they are careless or not. And it's not like buyers from our age-group suffer from dementia...

4) "You will not be around forever": This is self-contradictory. If the Original Owner stops being around, then it will not get recovered. If it does get recovered then the OO never left and he has to feel the consequences.
This is just like me signing an agreement which includes me not walking over someone's real-estate. Me moving away after, say five years, and breaking the contract by walking over the real-estate after five years with the excuse "I moved away".
If the account is being resold, then this is a dispute between the reseller and buyer. If the reseller did not explicitly mention that he is not the original owner, then he will be deemed liable. Furthermore, the reseller can only recover the account through email, so in the very rare case where email registration has not happened, the buyer can just approach the reseller and ask him to recover the account through email.

I think this covers all scenarios.