Mandatory account warranty

Describe the problem: We have the following rule in a couple of sections:

Spoiler: Sectional rule

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 for two years.

Occasionally both seller and buyer may mutually agree to waive this warranty. However, if the buyer subsequently reports a lock or recovery issue, the seller is still required to recover the account. This practice has led to conflicts in the past.
Explain the change: I propose allowing explicit mutual agreement between buyer and seller on the warranty period (if any) for each account sale. This agreement must be made in writing, separate from the Terms of Service, to ensure clarity and mutual understanding.
Explain why this change will fix the problem: This change addresses several issues. For instance, some sellers deal in mass-created bot accounts, which are often bought for testing/botting and quickly banned. Under the current rule buyers can claim these are "recovered" accounts, unfairly obligating the seller to provide a refund despite the ban. Additionally, Jagex accounts may inherently be irrecoverable in certain occasions, further complicating enforcement of our current policy.
Side-effects: Some sellers might abuse this by prematurely recovering accounts. I don't see this as an issue as the minimum warranty of 1 month is already quite short.

 

No it should not be mandatory, I simply think we should allow it.

As it currently is, which I'm not proposing to change:
If there’s no discussion or specific terms of service addressing this, the standard duration is two years. However, the duration can range from one month to two years if it's mentioned and agreed via ToS.

 

In that scenario I think that counts as an explicit agreement. Something in the lines of "Please be sure you've read section 13.2 of our ToS regarding the warranty we offer."

 

No support, I agree with the reasoning on why the one month minimum requirement was implemented.
"No one can sell an account and claim 0 responsibility for recoveries! 1 month is the minimum liability they must agree to.
This is to discourage users selling/flipping unsafe accounts and simply accepting no responsibility if something goes wrong."
Changes and clarifications to the account market

I feel that we should maintain some sort of buyer protection when it comes to account sales. Many buyers, especially less experienced ones, might not fully understand what they’re agreeing to waive. It also holds account sellers accountable and deters shady sellers from offloading problematic accounts. The free market aspect of this suggestion may sound appealing, but it sacrifices the safety of the buyer.

While I currently disagree, my position is not set in stone. I would love to hear more arguments for this suggestion.

 

I think if we require these agreements to be explicit (not in the form of ToS) then anyone will understand what they'd agree to waive.

I don't believe it currently protects buyers as much we might think. If a seller had malicious intentions then they can just wait a month before recovering. There are also people that resell shady accounts but act as some sort of middleman. They list the account for someone and after it sells they will wait 1 month before paying out the account owner. This completely negates the reason behind our mandatory warranty.

Also keep in mind that this is not part of our side-wide rules. At the moment it's only a rule in certain sections. If I advertise in the 1500-2000 main section but not in the 2k+ one, I can get people adding me or joining my server. If they then see I have a 2k+ total main for a much better deal, they could buy it without me having to abide by this 1 month warranty rule. If people really wanted to they could already bypass our warranty rule.

At the moment account locks and recoveries are placed in the same category. Sellers are always required to recover or unlock an account within the first 30 days.
With my suggestion buyers and sellers would be allowed to waive this minimum warranty completely as long as it's explicitly agreed upon in writing.

 

This is already happening with extra steps. As mentioned in my reply above there are users who don't pay out the account owner for a month, meaning the seller has zero risk. Then there are also sellers who pay the account owners via PayPal G&S meaning they have a limited time to issue a charge back. Account owners with malicious intentions will simply wait until this time has passed.

I'd even argue that a buyer would probably rather have an account recovered within a few days rather than spending time, money and effort on an account for months and having it all taken away month(s) later.

 

I strongly agree with @Yoshiki , I don't really want to open the market to more risky accounts and would be in favour of extending the warranty rather then shorting it if we are making any chances, though I rather us keep it as it is.

I'm pretty sure we discussed this recently in staff meeting and we rejected the idea, but I do remember @BlackBlasses got ragging boner over it though.

 

This is something that is already the case, somewhat.
If for example a seller gets reported various times for recovering an account past the 1 month warranty, we can choose to punish the seller regardless of this warranty rule.

I understand there are various types of accounts; I don't think we should have the warranty depend on the type of account as that becomes really hard to moderate and is often open to interpretation.

I'm also not suggesting to remove the default warranty. I'm only suggesting that we allow buyers and sellers to come to a mutual agreement regarding warranty. If both the buyer and seller agree to a warranty, the no matter how long (0 warranty, 1 week, 2 months etc) we will honor that agreement.
Currently this is not allowed and when people agree to a warranty that's less than 1 month, we void the warranty and instead revert it to 2 years.

 

I think it sounds nice on paper but can become very difficult to moderate. If a buyer is ok with no warranty on an expensive account, then that should be his decision imo.
It also doesn't have to be a long discussion. A simple agreement in writing would suffice.
It also isn't really possible for a buyer to prove an account has been recovered.