anonrerising | It's All Made Up, Anyway.

Do you know anyone who was unfairly banned? I'm just wondering how often the admins ban someone for unfair reasons vs they were actually breaking the rules.

This is the whole issue. This is a question that can't really be answered because people are quite willing to lie about why they were banned, especially if they WERE banned fairly.

Do people get unfairly banned? Sure. When you are running a site with literally thousands of active players and have to moderate that with only a handful of staff, then of course innocent players will get caught in the crossfire occasionally.

However, It is extremely difficult to tell, as a third party who doesn't know the people involved in real life, whether someone is telling the truth or not.

Like the thing about the mom who was unfairly banned because her daughter multi accounted.

Could it happen? Yeah, but even if mom was a separate account and not another one of the multis, surely mom had to know something was up when these various accounts sent her stuff, or her daughter, who was, I believe the image said pre-teen, managed to get all this stuff to send her.

However, even if mom was truly innocent and thought this was all legitimate, this is the reason why I, and many others I have seen, dislike multi-accounts. Beyond the obvious having multiple times the number of gathering turns and other 'dailies', multi-accounts can get innocent accounts in trouble if they can't prove they aren't part of the multi network.

I'm a case of "ToS editing"

During the Thrage bs, I commented that I was not going to buy anymore gems, and that I'd be tempted to pursue a refund if Thrage didn't apologize/step down. Not that I actually WOULD, but would be tempted.

Literally woke up to being banned, and later, there was a line added to the ToS that asking for a refund on FR purchases through paypal would result in a permanent ban.

Was it dumb for me to say that? Yeah. Was it bs for them to ban me instead of just giving me a warning? Yep.

I did follow through on my threat, because I had been banned- and I had JUST dumped a decent amount on gems to prepare for buying an imp pair (this was in 2013, so imp pairs were EXPENSIVE AF). Since I didn't even get to use the gems I paid for, I did a large dispute through paypal.

Got all my money back. Haven't spent money on FR since. All my gems are earned through skins/G1's etc.

nah i'm actually on FR's side with this. chargebacks on a business are a serious thing and could cause them financial problems if paypal freezes their funds/blacklists them from paypal entirely. banning users for this kind of stuff isn't uncommon in other shops or games.

the only way FR is in the wrong here is that it was stupid of them to not have it in their TOS in the first place, tbh.

AYRT

Naw, I get it, otherwise folks would be getting gems and then getting their money back.

But just an offhanded comment about it when it wasn't in the ToS shouldn't have warranted an immediate ban- which is why I felt no guilt whatsoever about getting a refund.

DA
Agreed here, if it wasn't in the TOS but they felt the need to add it, delete the post and warn the user. But an all-out ban is almost childish. I do remember how staff was back then ESPECIALLY surrounding that drama, they used to be extremely volatile and bad with PR. Very quick to take things personally and ban in the name of "nipping things in the bud" Though I believe at this point they've learned all that does is foster outrage and distrust.

I am pretty sure I vaguely remember this incident, and it could have been interpreted as encouraging folks to do it. Still not worthy of a ban, but it was worded kind of meh.

I can see why staff would get nervous. A handful of early chargebacks can ruin a small business. However, once they banned you, the chargebacks were more than fair. They earned it.

I think they're less trigger happy these days, at least.

DA

I still think FR is warranted here. Threatening to chargeback if X thing isn't done is pretty childish, and I can understand them wanting to make an example of of someone who would make that kind of threat. If you don't like the direction of the site you can just leave, FR should not be held to the whims of people threatening to chargeback if staff doesn't do what they want. It's one thing to say that you're disappointed in X choices and don't want to spend money on the site anymore, but another to say you're going to illegally backcharge the site.

I don't know if people understand that staff can can people for reasons not in the TOS. They're human and have the ability to not anticipate certain things coming up that would be ban worthy. It would be more concerning if they banned someone for a non-TOS reason and *didn't* update the TOS to include why that person was banned.

I also feel this is a good time to bring up this idea again:

With regards to unfairly banning people, or banning people willy-nilly:

A company/site that relies on its customers buying products or consuming its product does NOT want to ban people unless it is actually warranted.

They aren't going to ban people for saying something they dislike, unless it is something that can also harm their bottom line (such as getting the rest of the site upset and threatening to quit, or in the case of the chargeback). They aren't going to ban people 'just because'.

Sites that do that end up going down. They might not go offline, but they often aren't *good* sites and word gets around.

So, again while I am sure that there are people who get caught up in ban waves because they somehow became associated with people who are legitimately breaking the rules, I would feel confident in saying that the majority of people who are banned? Most likely aren't banned unfairly.

agreed, i run an ebay store and block people who start disputes for dumb reasons (after giving them the refund ebay forces me to give them lol). not putting my livelihood at risk.

+100

I have yet to see an account legitimately wrongly banned that wasn't lifted. The ones I see not lifted look sketchy as hell.

And people lie. A lot. Anyone remember the dude the edited his ban to spamming when he was actually a multi that staff had to respond about?

Or Natron, who got banned for trading CS:GO skins for an imp scroll but when they got caught tried to claim they got banned because they traded it between their moms account or something? I can't recall the exact details of it because it was on their clan bio, but it was something along those lines.

it was on their tumblr (don't have the link right now), they said it was because they and their friends were sending each other gifts too often.

It's All Made Up, Anyway.

Unfairly banned?

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