Unsure what to do regarding potential dispute

Some questions about a recent transaction (me purchasing) - sorry if this the wrong place, but it doesn't really fit anywhere in the disputes section.

In October, I "lent" somebody on this forum $1,500 USD through PayPal/CC (as he said he had issues repaying his home) and as "collateral", he provided me a game account (with a value around $3,000)

He repaid about $500, before deciding 12 days ago to instead sell me this game account, in exchange for clearing the remaining debt and an additional $200.

So basically, I paid him $1,200 for this account (exact amount might be a small bit off).

Then, 2-3 days later, this particular account got banned. I had only briefly used the account and transferred a tiny portion of its contents (no differently to how I've used thousands of accounts in the past without any problem).

After several support attempts, they will not give an exact reason for the ban. The seller is saying that he will only make efforts to remedy the situation IF the game officially declares that his actions were the cause.

As I am mostly a seller, my understanding is that if I provide an account that gets banned, I am liable for a full replacement (I would give one regardless).

I also understand that protection is much stronger on the buyer's side - having suffered from thousands in fraudulent chargebacks for goods that I've delivered in the past.

In this case, the seller is saying that my actions caused the ban. There is no more evidence for this than anything else - I could say "the seller probably knew the account was in trouble so he quickly sold it". I don't know.

So my questions are:

1. Who is liable for a safe account and/or proving that the account was safe or unsafe? The seller or the buyer?
2. Is a formal Sythe dispute required?
3. If there is no hard advice/Sythe regulations, then am I reliant on local consumer affairs advice?

Thank you for reading.

 

Would appreciate anyone's thoughts!

 

were there any tos in place? Without any tos, he is liable for the account and has to recover it, as far as i know. If he doesn’t want to help you, the only right thing is to fill out a scam report.

Cheers,
Gregs

 

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. No we did not prepare a TOS (either from the buyer or seller side), aside from an informal agreement that I would carefully/gradually transfer the account contents to another (which was in both of our interests and exactly what I did).

 

Do you mind providing more details around exactly what was said relating to the "careful/gradual transfer of contents?" Is it in writing? If so, please provide.

"Careful" or "Gradually" are arbitrary terms and can easily be interpreted differently depending on who reads it.
He could reasonably argue that the account became banned because you were not "careful" enough. You could argue the opposite.

Rules -

1. An explicit refund and returns policy must be defined by the seller and agreed upon by the buyer (in writing) before a sale occurs.
2. 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.

This is likely one of those scenarios that would justify staff team collaboration / case-by-case review since it isn't black and white. With that said, I'd imagine that he would be required to assist in unban/unlock/recovery because:

1. You acted in good faith by providing a loan to someone in need and the original terms were that you'd be repaid in $$ and not an RS account.
2. No refund or return policy, as well as TOS, were ever discussed prior to the sale.
3. The burden of requirement typically defaults to the seller to ensure that TOS are in place that clarify what happens in the event of ban/lock/recovery post sale.

Last thought - why is he refusing to help unlock unless you can prove the ban occurred because of his actions? You did him a favor when he was in a tough spot. You went a step further and accepted an RS account as repayment vs. $$ which was expected. Based on the info you provided, you've done this guy a huge favor. Him refusing to assist is a HUGE red flag IMO. Sounds like he's intending to try and keep the account in the long run or he is not being honest about ownership and knows he won't be able to recover it. If it were me, I'd submitt a report with all the facts and asking for unban assistance and then a refund in cash.

 

Thanks so much for your response.

Firstly, I'll state that the game is Neopets (I'll redact that shortly, and I didn't mention it initially in case their staff see this)

Since the account had rare items, it was agreed by both the seller and I that I would:
1. slowly transfer them off the account
2. the rarest items - I wouldn't publicly sell - I would instead quietly offer them for more common items that I need (this situation never happened anyway - I only managed to transfer a small amount of points off the account).

Discord chat:

Seller — 12/05/2021
So how do you plan on selling/transferring the stuff?

ozfe — 12/05/2021
Very slowly
I will assume your identity I suppose

Seller — 12/05/2021
Yeah hahah be careful, all the big traders know me

...

Seller — 12/05/2021
Are you looking to turn the gallery into pure or sell the items?

ozfe — 12/05/2021
I will probably offer the gallery items for items that my customers need

I will admit that an explicit policy was not written up.

The seller did send an unlock request to the game, which was denied. However, that is all he has done, as I decided to take the proactive steps myself and send further requests.

Ok.

There were attempts to get the account unbanned, but he says that it's assumed I am responsible for the account's banning, unless I can prove he is responsible (by getting the game staff to provide a ban reason, which they said they won't as it could give people "a way to avoid detection").

I made attempts (as a friend) to reach a mutual compromise, but he wants me to take full 100% liability, and basically he hardly responds anymore.

 

The situation appears to be somewhat different than what was described in the first post, given that the seller has indeed assisted with the unban process, despite being unsuccessful. Again, this would likely be a case-by-case situation since forum rules don't outline accountability requirements specifically surrounding account bans. Candidly, if neopets operates like any other game's moderation, they likely saw suspicious activity (your IP on the account, transferring of items, etc.) and banned it for that reason. If you were to ask me, that sounds like your issue and not the sellers. If I were you, I'd post a report and let the staff team weigh in.

 

Sorry I didn't mean to indicate that the seller didn't try, but more a question of whether I need to prove that the seller provided a compromised account.

Based on my experience with hundreds of accounts, I would be 99% certain that the account was already "in trouble" before I bought it.

Thank you, I will do.