I can post my opinion on the subject of recovery here:
It seems many of you operate under the assumption that once the buyer of an account claims the account has been stolen, the seller is automatically responsible for recovering the account or refunding the buyer. To my understanding this stems from the belief that only the original owner can recover an account.
While it may be true that the original owner has an advantage in recovering an account (geographic location, firsthand experience with account information), it is not true that only the original owner can recover an account. Successful recovery tests done by MMs can serve as examples of non-original owners recovering accounts. Another example can be those that we banned some time ago for recovering very old accounts that they weren't theirs, and those that published guides for doing so. Personally, I know that Jagex's recovery system is largely a crapshoot.
Original owners can be denied recovery, non-original owners can have their appeals accepted with little to no proof. The system has always been rather unpredictable.
Now even if it were true that only the original owner could recover an account, I would argue that any staff member need not take action against a seller unless there is proof that damns him. An example of damning proof would be a seller recovering an account and then attempting to resell it. In that case the staff member can ban the user because he is
sure the seller is at fault. See here for an example:
http://www.sythe.org/report-scammer-archive/1800765-hidden_-reselling-account.html
What seems to be happening should stop: sellers should not be held responsible for refunding or recovering if their buyers merely claim their accounts are out of their possession. Although this might be the easiest way for staff to handle scam reports, it is not fair to the seller and leaves much wiggle room for buyers to scam. Granted, account disputes are difficult to judge fairly because sometimes it's hard to establish who has possession of the account. To remedy that, instead of automatically holding the seller responsible, we all need to be encouraging users to draft their own agreements that enumerate exactly what is expected of the seller/buyer if the account is claimed to be stolen or locked. Then, given proof of those terms, we (staff) can properly mediate between the two parties and help them reach an agreement. But unless there is overwhelming evidence that proves someone is guilty of account scamming, we should not be banning anyone.
The pre-trade agreement mentioned can be quite simple and we can easily throw up a sticky template. If the traders don't list terms beforehand then, as with all scam reports, the buyer needs to prove the seller is at fault and has scammed in order for us to take action.
