Recently a lot of people have been upgrading accounts through the Refer a friend system and has been causing a lot of accounts to lose their membership status. It is best to avoid these types of upgrades unless you absolutely trust the person selling them and will reimburse you if the account loses it's game time.
What is Refer a Friend?
Our Recruit a Friend referral system allows you to send friends and family members Starter Edition activation keys for World of Warcraft via email. With these keys, those you refer will be able to set up their own Starter Edition accounts completely free of charge. Starter Edition accounts created through your referral will become linked with your account. This link will open up a number of benefits for characters on both the veteran and recruit account, including increased experience, character summoning, and level granting!
https://us.battle.net/support/en/article/recruit-a-friend-faq
How exactly am I receiving my upgrade through this method?
Through this method a seller will be upgrading two accounts. One will be an account of their own and one will be your account.
These are the steps in most cases:
1. You send a invitation to the seller's account
2. The seller sets up the account after receiving the invitation.
3. The seller will then upgrade the account to battle chest + 1 month game time or 2 month game time if it was a Nightwing mount upgrade and this will be repeated if it was 3+ months.
4. After this point the trade will be done
So what are the associated risks?
These accounts run a person upwards $20 in total and its obvious these accounts won't be lying around collecting dust. If the account was upgraded through stolen information there is high possibility the seller's account will be banned and game time will be removed resulting in your account also losing it's game time.
This isn't always true though, a lot of RAF sellers are heavy gold farmers and bot extensively on the accounts they upgrade which has a high likely hood of the account being banned. If the account is banned and the gold farmer decides to charge back their payment or if Blizzard finds you were associated with those accounts your account will also lose the membership you had bought and can sometimes lead to your account being banned as well.
In most cases this is the email you will get if you were caught being associated with the account.
Greetings,
After our investigation regarding fraudulent payments on recently created Recruit a Friend accounts, several such World of Warcraft accounts were found linked to your account ******. As a result, the game time was removed, leading us into also removing any gains from your account that were awarded based on that game time.
This includes 12 months of game time that was added due to the Recruit a Friend bonuses, as well the removal of the mount and achievement from your character ******** at [Server].
We regret to take this action, but due to the false payments, are left with no choice but remove the links and any rewards gained. Hopefully you'll have no such problems in the future with the Recruit a Friend service.
Also, we regret to inform you that your account ****** is not eligible for the WoW Annual Pass, as a result, for any of the eligible actions. This is a legal limitation which we cannot bypass.
Regards,
Game Master ******/******.
Blizzard Entertainment Europe
Alternatives?
Well for one you can use one of the many members who sell game time through game cards and avoid the Refer a friend method altogether.
Buy your own game time, it is $15 a month and cheaper if you buy different monthly subscriptions but at least you have the peace of mind knowing you won't be dealing with issues you can't resolve over a quick phone call.
I bought a RAF upgrade and it was charged back, what should I do?
In most cases your account will also be locked if the game time was removed, at this point the best thing to do would be to call blizzard and explain the situation, I would recommend saying you met the person online and didn't know their intentions for the account, but don't say you bought game time through them as this will just get you banned for association as well.
If you know who the seller was on Sythe, I would recommend you report them here:
http://www.sythe.org/report-scammer/ . Don't be afraid of their ToS because they are void if the loss of game time was due to their actions, simply report them and they will be banned until they reimburse you.
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