More Accountability

Recently, a friend of mine suffered a significant loss due to a lack of accountability from a service provider.

As an Ironman player, he entrusted a server with his account, expecting professionalism and security. Unfortunately, he was scammed out of valuable items, including a Twisted Bow and Shadow Staff—essential gear that takes hundreds of hours to earn in-game.

Not only did he lose these items, but the worker handling his account only had a deposit of around 2 billion GP, which fell substantially short of the required coverage, estimated at 6 billion GP.

Incredibly, the server owner received only a warning, without any tangible consequences for the mismanagement. This response is concerning, as it risks setting a precedent that minimizes accountability for service providers, who should be held to a high standard when they are entrusted with players' accounts and valuables.

Considering the real money spent and the time lost, my friend’s situation underscores a need for stricter policies and stronger repercussions for those who provide account services.

By increasing accountability, we can ensure that players receive the reliable, secure support they deserve, helping prevent future occurrences and reinforcing trust within the community.

 

this can all be easily resolved…

1, have the service provider clearly state their liability of any wealth beyond a workers deposit, if they refuse to then they can only use a worker with a deposit equal or more than the account they are working on. It’s just another bullshit cop out for people to scam and then only have to pay back a fraction.

2, have the provider set a temporary PW that only they know, this will absolve any claims of the account owner removing their own wealth and then claiming false scam.

3. stop trusting third world retards with a plethora of in game wealth as they will be tempted to scam.


Just my 2 cents.

 

Hello mate, first and foremost i'm sorry to hear about your friend getting potentially scammed, as a provider myself and as someone who has and I stress it enough been here since 2012 doing services (2013 for sythe*) it's just stupid more than ever

I do however hope your friend manages to sort the issue(s) caused as it's not nice or fair that anyone should be scammed in any way shape or form, stealing is bad in general let alone on a literal kids game that many use to support their families and lifestyles in some countries

I do feel there should be more accountability and I have always said and stood by this, I used to love the market and what it was all about and if anyone was around in the golden era so to speak where I was mainly on what was then Powerbot and also OSBot (give or take over 2k feedback between the two) no one could stand with me but yet I wanted to see others thrive and some of those people you still see today, people like @Neer you can ask him and multiple others I was a big influence on them to come to this side of the game

So with that being said, where did we go wrong, how do we resolve this and how do we move forward making sure it's better for everyone?

As of right now in such cases I make sure if my workers are not able to either use a collateral payment or have a high enough deposit that the customer is aware of this. In most cases workers should be able to at least pay something towards minor upgrades and such, but in some cases we have also had customers even in my neck of the woods say like "oh it's fine, I trust them as they work for you" and it has garnered them lovely rewards such as twisted bows and such in raids (keeping in mind this isn't something that everyone does, some do steal obviously and this is workers with ~300M deposits i'm referring to on my end...)

Honest workers are hard to find, VERY hard to find in fact. The problem we face is a lot of the time we all get painted with the same brush even though we're also honest, and it puts a bad taste in everyones mouths not just the scammed victims which is also why ultimately you see other providers shutting up shop and/or joining the scam quit list. I wont sit there and say ALL providers are scammers, or their workers are or whatever but I do feel we could do more to act on it

Enforcing stuff like I mentioned above with the collateral would fix some issues, or even simply informing the customer of the worker(s) situation and their deposits/what they cant use, even now the same worker we have working on a 1 defense pure getting hydra KC currently and he couldn't do a collateral so we downsized the gear but of course goes without saying the price also got changed slightly. I understand time is money, but unless you know the person like a family member and they literally live next door to you then you are giving them the benefit of being able to access large amount of wealth in such cases like this said friend which is sad to see

So I do think as followed -

- Have enforced collateral/deposit requirement for workers to do orders to specific wealth to that, either that has to work or you will have to mention in EVERY order to the customer they either remove wealth or you cannot be held responsible for any potential foul play (should be in your TOS anyway, and there should be a showing of agreement to this with them confirming they "agree" as sort) otherwise you are opening the door for anyone to impersonate, scam, or in fact screw over customers in any way shape or form

- Having a temp password that only the worker knows can also eliminate stuff but like above, you would then either still need higher deposit/collateral or somehow able to check your bank pin every day/2 days to make sure it's not getting removed (we also witnessed this happing with a customer recently, but was quickly resolved thankfully)

- I do think with all this being said, there should be a clear outlining maybe a sticky thread/updated portion of threads in each section explaining our involvement and what we are/should be doing, or maybe have a further discussion with the actual community and not just the automated spambots that we see autobumping even with their recent banned servers

 

What I hate is everybody knows the guy scammed, he’s even admitted to people he needed the 6 billion gp, but since he hasn’t explicitly stated it on discord, it is just hearsay. I feel like it’s obvious who scammed, so it is frustrating that the service provider didn’t face any real consequences. And the worker that worked on the order is no longer even working for them, but still exists in the server, so I find that a bit odd, wouldn’t you?

 

I think what Zulu said was perfect, about enforcing a rule where the service provider must inform the client if the worker assigned to the job doesn’t have the deposit necessary to cover the job. And making sure no login details have been shared before the required deposit is met.