New League of Legends account dispute rules

[EpicNPC]

I want to get the communities feedback on League of Legends trading, buying and selling in terms of how disputes are handled.

This post is in a direct response to this thread. The last post sums of my thoughts, however I'll reiterate it here.
http://www.epicnpc.com/active-dispu...ncondor-lol-account-seller-5.html#post3064920

The problem is there is almost no way to prove if the account was stolen or if you're lying.

Riot's recall policy makes it almost impossible to determine what happened as they normally just send a long list of questions for people to answer when a recall request is made. 99.99% of sellers do not have this info and many players who are selling their accounts will not give out this info as it contains lots of personal sensitive questions that you wouldn't want other people to have.

Because sellers are unable to recover these accounts it makes them high risk as the OO, who knows all the answers, can just recall the account. However it also make it hard to determine if the buyer is lying as they can simply claim the account was taken and since sellers cannot recall, no one knows who's lying.

The mods and i have recently spoken about this security hole in depth, however we were unable to come up with any solutions as how we could solve it. The consensus is until Riot changes their recall policy to something else, LoL account sales and trading will remain high risk.

That leaves us with 3 options.

1) Ban LoL sales altogether
2) require sellers to provide the answers to all of Riots questions every time an account is sold
3) Leave it as buy at your own risk

#1 was thrown out very quickly as there is obviously a want for players to buy, sell and trade League of Legends accounts.
#2 was contemplated for some time, however due to the questions Riot asks, we though most seller would no longer sell here as they would not want to give out such sensitive information to other members who then might resell or trade their account spreading that info to many other people.

That leaves #3 and where we are today.

As there seems no clear way to determine who is lying in many of these League of Legends disputes or if the OO really did recall I want to post an possible idea on how disputes will be handled in the future.

Possible New LoL dispute rules

1) If a recall claim is made by the buyer and no proof is provided (as nearly all LoL recalls are), the seller will have to either provide a refund or 2nd account.
-- Once this happens, regardless of what happens after, the dispute is resolved and no bans will be issued.

2) If the second account is recalled, it will not have any standings in the dispute. The dispute will remain resolved.
-- The seller can give a 3rd, 4th or 5th account, however it terms of dispute resolution, I will consider the dispute fully resolved after a 2nd account or refund is given.

3) There will be almost no restrictions on negative feedbacks for anyone buying, selling, trading League of Legends accounts.
-- This means I will not be removing ANY negative feedbacks EVER regardless if the dispute was resolved successfully or not.
-- The only time a dispute will be removed is if the trade or sale never actually happened.
-- The only restriction will be if a refund was given after the 1st account was recalled. If a refund was issued, no negative feedback can be given to the seller. The buyer can get a neutral feedback if the seller believe they are lying.

I fully understand this will hurt many sellers feedback scores, however as there is no way to prove who has the LoL account in nearly all of these disputes, I think feedback is the best way to go.This provides incentive to sellers to make sure their accounts are not high-risk and to resolve any disputes that do come up. For buyers that are lying and just want free accounts, they will soon have neg feedbacks themselves causing other members to stay away from them.

I realize there will be people inbetween, where the OO actually did recall the account, who might end up getting a neg feedback, however League of Legends accounts are high-risk. So this is the risk you take.

Before I implement these rules, I'd like to get the communities opinions on them.

 

[jeanacco]

As i was involved in this dispute and in the end believe me or not i lost my £25 , which is not a lot of money but its still money i think number 2 (require sellers to provide the answers to all of Riots questions every time an account is sold) is the best way to go.
It gives buyers more safety and it excludes sellers with HIGH risk accounts, and also makes the sellers only buy to resell accounts that has all the answers to the riot questions and OO email or whatever is needed to get the account back if it's recalled.
overall it would increase the safety to buy accounts from the sellers in this website, would decrease the amount of disputes and it would give the admins more time to focus on improving stuff.

 

[Geek]

As i was involved in this dispute and in the end believe me or not i lost my £25 , which is not a lot of money but its still money i think number 2 is the best way to go.
It gives buyers more safety and it excludes sellers with HIGH risk accounts, and also makes the sellers only buy to resell accounts that has all the answers to the riot questions and OO email or whatever is needed to get the account back if it's recalled.

I don't personally feel like that's a viable option, MANY League (and every other game) accounts simply do not come with enough security info, The buyer may not have gotten it when they purchased it, the original owner simply may not remember it, so forth and so on.

I agree that League sales should be a "at your own risk" type deal, And that 1 account restoration/recovery/reimburse is a fair statement.

 

[jeanacco]

I don't personally feel like that's a viable option, MANY League (and every other game) accounts simply do not come with enough security info, The buyer may not have gotten it when they purchased it, the original owner simply may not remember it, so forth and so on.

I agree that League sales should be a "at your own risk" type deal, And that 1 account restoration/recovery/reimburse is a fair statement.

i see your point and yeah it might be the best way to go, but sellers with high risk accounts will still make people lose money, but as you said yeah if its "at your own risk" then people need to take the chance and the consequences too.

 

[Sakura]

I created my own League of Legends account.

When it got "hacked" some of the questions were so specific even I had no idea to the answers.

I had to go through 2 different sets of them before I finally gave them enough where they unlocked it.

#2 seems impossible to enforce with, at the bare minimum, 30 different questions/answers you would need.

 

[leanardo]

I dont think banning the sell of any game is a good option, First thing is when selling a game or buying a game
a screen shot of char's and account info should be done. I personally only buy/sell lotro, Every account i sell I screen shot each and every char and the account info. If i buy one I screen shot as well. There is really nothing you can do accept keep detailed records, even if you do all this, you take a chance at loosing every account you buy/sell as most of what epicnpc does is against every game tos. You just have to use your judgement and have a little bit of faith in your fellow man. There is always going to be dishonest people and that is the chance we take, if all you loose is a little bit of money consider yourself ahead of the game. Before buying and selling lotro accounts I bought and sold anarchy online, I did it for 8 years and was ip banned from playing the game. i made over 400 account in them 8 years it was a big loss when i got banned. I could go back to it because i no longer live where my ip address but it is the chance we all take in trading and selling game accounts.

 

[Rmysidia]

League accounts are very high scam rate. I have a form with ~ 30 questions I make sellers fill out. It's easy to smell the bullcrap if the seller says they are the Original owners but fail to provide answers to the more simple questions.

I personally think LoL accounts should be a BUY AT YOUR OWN RISK. I always warn people about buying them, bu I tell them the choice is ultimately theirs.

Even using a middleman for a safe trade does not guarantee safety of LoL accounts

 

[Naota]

Banned - scammer - 3 scam threads - http://www.epicnpc.com/active-disputes/550290-naota-kame-took-money-namechange-vanished.html

Only problem with "buy at your own risks" would be the fact it is encouraging scammers rather than turning them away.

The other problem is that LoL accounts have a high rate of ban since they let the piss poor community dictate the rules.

There really is no solid solution. Maybe state "buy at your own risk" but to knock out repeat scammers have a spot where you can list recalled or banned summoner names so people can check them over. Also if a member here has repeat problems with accounts being recalled or banned just bar them from selling LoL accounts.

 

[leanardo]

you could make it so only epic verified members can trade the accounts, it does 2 things, who wants to get verified then scam someone. plus it might help more members become verified, that trade lol accounts. them put if you trade outside of the verified area do so at your own risk.

 

[Geek]

you could make it so only epic verified members can trade the accounts, it does 2 things, who wants to get verified then scam someone. plus it might help more members become verified, that trade lol accounts. them put if you trade outside of the verified area do so at your own risk.

That would drive away a HUGE portion of traffic.

 

[Naota]

Banned - scammer - 3 scam threads - http://www.epicnpc.com/active-disputes/550290-naota-kame-took-money-namechange-vanished.html

you could make it so only epic verified members can trade the accounts, it does 2 things, who wants to get verified then scam someone. plus it might help more members become verified, that trade lol accounts. them put if you trade outside of the verified area do so at your own risk.

I don't agree in making them become verified because of the fact there is a fee and also because a lot of LoL community members are under the age required to get an ID or Paypal.

 

[leanardo]

what i meant it have 2 sections for trading lol accounts

Section 1 verified members trading lol.
Section 2 non-verified members trading lol - Use at your own risk.

 

[HELLHULK Gaming]

I find any mmo of high risk when dealing with children. The fact that wow and LoL are driven by mostly children creates this environment of high risk trades/sells. I don't want to suggest all children are of low morals, but many see it as an opportunity for personal gain as they have no income or general responsibilities to earn an income.

I can only see supporting the idea of a one time trade rule where it is supported the first time. All trades thereafter can not be supported due to the pass of information.

I agree that verification requirement will reduce traffic, but honestly a lot of that traffic is fraud anyways. Verification will help some.

Turning down LoL accounts along with WoW accounts has become second nature for me as I just cant guarantee their safety.

No real answer for this problem. If the fraud level is 9 out of 10 are scammed, then I wouldn't even want to support it.

- - - Updated - - -

I like this idea. Rep'ed members dealing with rep'ed only.

Leave the shark pool to the rest, at your own risk.

 

[Sakura]

There is already a section of the forum for verified trades only and it receives little traffic.

This is, unfortunately, a "leading a horse to water" type of thing for people.

We can sticky safe-trading guides. We can beg people to use middle-men. We can offer sections where you can only deal with the most trusted individuals. People will still opt for the quickest choice 9 times out of 10.

And with League of Legends trading it's just going to be a wild-west situation and we will do our best to protect people where we can.

 

[Battlewyvern]

Hi everyone

I have traded with Ian in the past, and he seems like a genuinely nice and honest guy.

My account was however recalled a few days after I bought it as well.
After contacting him, he promised me a replacement and apologized, although this is as far as things have gotten.

At this point, I am unsure as to whether Ian is legit or not.

I did not have any proof, nor did Ian ask for any .. This not only proves how easy Ian's service is to scam, but how easily Ian could scam.




I also fear that your first policies could be easily abused..

If they were posted as a sticky, scammers would quickly realize they can buy accounts from well known sellers, and claim
that the account has been recalled for a second account or re-fund. The seller would be forced to comply or risk a bad reputation
and possibly have their account banned, where as a buyer with 0 or low feedback can only gain. (Most traders have 0 feedback)

The market's well known sellers would either leave the market, or have replacement accounts set up for which they would use solely to recall,
so that they could abide by the new policies. (As they are let off the hook after providing a replacement account, even if it is also recalled)

I feel like there is no easy solution, however I believe these policies may unintentionally encourage scammers, and scare off legit traders.



My only suggestion would be that accounts would need to be bought and sold using a form similar to Rmysidia's when over a certain price (eg. $150+)

Possibly, further verification could be undertaken if the account was even more expensive (eg. $500+), possibly a middleman/woman could attempt to recover the account using the information given in the form, and the sale could take place several days after, when it is confirmed to be correct.. Although obviously, these services would mean a higher middleman/woman fee. People could also attempt to bypass this system, although I'm not sure there would be many buyers that would walk away from this sort of protection.

It doesn't solve much, but at least for higher-end accounts, a small amount of safety could be given.



TLDR; Policies may encourage scammers and unintentionally destroy the LoL market.

 

[Sakura]

The problem, again, becomes enforcing those rules.

People come to the site and sign up and don't even bother reading the basic rules we have in place.

If we forced anyone selling an account at different price tiers at with different rules it would be a nightmare on the moderating team and create a huge workload on us to keep track of. the few MM we have would also be put under a strain to ensure that certain types of information/etc was received for certain transactions.


Edit :

Another big problem with LoL accounts is you cannot "verify" someone is the OO. There is no way of telling and no way of proving someone claiming to be the OO is as LoL accounts do not show names.

 

[Battlewyvern]

Realistically..

I think any attempt at a solution would be too difficult to moderate or implement for this website. It would be too demanding and if this thread proves anything, it's that there is simply no easy solution available.

 

[hinigashi]

There is "two sides of the same coin" so how about we do it that way?

If a seller DOES have a good amount of Q/As which could cover the buyer to be able to recall the account back themselfs, they should be fully supported and backed by EpicNpc. (Trouble is i dont play LoL, is there anyway to prove that the Q/As are working in the first place? which if not makes this totally void then.)

And other sellers which most are doing now, supply account without Q/As will only be covered by the new rules which Mike has mentioned above.

 

[EpicNPC]

If they were posted as a sticky, scammers would quickly realize they can buy accounts from well known sellers, and claim
that the account has been recalled for a second account or re-fund. The seller would be forced to comply or risk a bad reputation
and possibly have their account banned, where as a buyer with 0 or low feedback can only gain. (Most traders have 0 feedback)

I agree with that, however as a seller it would push them into making sure they can recover the accounts they sell. For example

BoB sells lolaccount to Joe
Joe is a scammer and claims account was recalled when it was not
BoB either refunds or gives Joe 2nd account
-- If a refund is given BoB protects himself from a neg feedack
-- Joe successfully scams, but gets a neutral feedback saying he claimed a lol recall

At this point the scammer Joe might be able to scam one more time using the same account, but then will have to create a new account

-- If a 2nd account is given and joe again claims it was recalled, both can give each other negative feedbacks.

In this scenario Bob gets hurt with bad feedback, Joe will need to create another account to scam


In the example where Joe is the scammer, BoB loses either way. However this lose would either do two things.

1) Bob leaves the forums to sell else where
2) Bob decides that when he buys an account from someone, he gets more info from the seller so he can secure it better.

What I'm hoping for is #2 and that sellers take it upon themselves to make sure the LoL accounts they are selling are much more secure then they currently are so if a scammer does try to claim a recall, the sell can recover the account and prove them wrong.

I don't want to make providing the support recall questions a requirement because it would be nearly impossible to enforce, so I'm hoping the risk to reputation will provide enough incentive that the sellers take it upon themselves to do it.

Maybe changing the rule where instead of negatives are given, only neutrals can be given? This way it won't hurt sellers rating scores, but members will be able to see how many times it has happened with a particular seller. I think the neutrals would still provide enough incentive for sellers to make sure the accounts are more secure without hurting their rep as much.

 

[HELLHULK Gaming]

No way am I selling/trading an account for a risk of negative feedback.

Anything less then 100% has diminishing returns among our community.

If anything, this thread has made me only want to deal with rep'ed members in regards to LoL (which I don't do trades for anyways.)

Honestly, it is just a shame that people value scams more then feedback.

High feedback gets you better deals, more offers, and is way more beneficial then scamming. Now if scammers only understood that...

 

[Logical Nonsense]

since there is no way to know if the answers to the list of questions is true until the recall needs to take place, giving the list would do nothing to stop a scamming seller. a scamming buyer wont care about the feedback.

is there a way to track a scammed account to make sure it is not resold or traded?

is there a way to track, infract and even ban a seller or buyer that has too many claims on lol accounts?

 

[blkc]

Well for one, if you cannot login to an account you bought, you can go to lolking and check out match history to see if anyone (probably the scammer) is playing on it.

As for the questionnaire, you can tell if you check out the ip address the seller gives. Sometimes they faked the ip address as it is so obvious since the seller lives in US but the ip points to EU. Aside from that you cannot really confirm the answers nor if he is the original owner.

Riot policy is that if they realize there are too many recovery attempt by multiple users they will perma-ban so this is the last resort for revenge if you lose your money...

After all I think LoL accounts are just risky to be trading but supply/demand gives little choice since people want them. Buy at your own risk -.-"

Some personal ratio:

Bought accounts 4 times; got scammed 2 times and 1 time I have to track down the guy's credit card and negotiate

Sold accounts 2 times; since it is gift the chance of being scammed are unlikely unless it is stop payment from bank; both times success

 

[EpicNPC]

I update the rules a bit and changed it so negative feedbacks can only be given with proof and neutral feedbacks will be used when there is no proof.

I'm going to post these in the LoL forums now and give it a test run to see how things go.


New LoL dispute rules

1) If a recall claim is made by the buyer and no proof is provided (as nearly all LoL recalls are), the seller will have to either provide a refund or 2nd account.
-- Once this happens, regardless of what happens after, the dispute is resolved and no bans will be issued.

2) If the second account is recalled, it will not have any standings in the dispute. The dispute will remain resolved.
-- The seller can give a 3rd, 4th or 5th account, however it terms of dispute resolution, I will consider the dispute fully resolved after a 2nd account or refund is given.

3) There will be almost no restrictions on neutral feedback for anyone buying, selling, trading League of Legends accounts.
-- The only restriction will be if a refund was given after the 1st account was recalled. If a refund was issued, no negative/neutral feedback can be given to the seller. The buyer can still receive a neutral feedback if the seller believes they are lying.
-- Negative feedback can only be given to the seller if there is proof the OO or seller recalled, or the seller sold a stolen account. The buyer can only be given a negative if there is proof they are lying about the recall.
-- The only time a feedback will be removed is if the trade or sale never actually happened.

 

[Rmysidia]

I don't think a list would help would it? Can't the scammers just use the $ they stole from the buyer and purchase a summoner name change, thus starting the equation all-over again?

 

[blkc]

Take a ss at match history and compare. I don't think anyone can duplicate your exact same earned gold all 3 games... at least I hope not.

- - - Updated - - -

No way am I selling/trading an account for a risk of negative feedback.

Anything less then 100% has diminishing returns among our community.

If anything, this thread has made me only want to deal with rep'ed members in regards to LoL (which I don't do trades for anyways.)

Honestly, it is just a shame that people value scams more then feedback.

High feedback gets you better deals, more offers, and is way more beneficial then scamming. Now if scammers only understood that...

Scammers don't care about deals since they are not selling or buying in the first place.

 

[Coldbolt]

This post might get complicated for people but just have a try to understand because the problem is actually worse even if you have all the information, let me explain..

Person A (BOB) is the original owner of LoL Account. BOB sells account to Person B (DAN).

Dan gets every bit of information he can and the email address. He now has full control of the account. BOB recalls the account, stating that his email account is compromised. He fills in more information than is required like the first champion he ever played and more. Person A gets the account back.

Now you can say Person A gets banned and that fair enough, he's ****ed but what has just happened is a couple of things. Even with all the information, Person B still got scammed and Person A might get banned but he still has the ability to sell again. With Fake ID and enough Photoshop, he can redo this process once again.

The problem simply is the original owner has always the ability to recall the account no matter how much information you have. If he regains knowledge of certain information not on the list, he will always win the recall claim.

What we need to do is figure out a way that the original owner looses the ability to do that. If the original owner can't retrieve information, then all responsibility goes to Person B as he now retains the right to recall over person A.

If Person A recalls and Person B can prove this, Person A will never have anything done to him legally as in the TOS it states we aren't allowed to do this.

If this is the case, verified members are still not the most legitimate and the only way to do this is collateral.

The only way for this to truly work is if Person A gets banned, he looses the collateral. Collateral could be X amount, this is up to EPICNPC, something of a high enough price to insure clients. This option would only be ever used for people that would never ever do a recall.

The problem now is if Person A is wrong fully banned, he'll loose money so how do we prevent that? Person A could sell to Person B, person B could sell to Person C. Person B could scam and say Person A recalled.

-------------

Now Person B is trying to scam Person C by blaming person A. To Person C, Person A is the bad person and should be banned and therefore loose his collateral and therefore be given a refund. But that would never happen. Person A could recall the account therefore technically taking the account from Person B and giving it to Person C. Person B has now been found to be a scammer and is banned. If he had collateral, that goes to some sort of fund for EPICNPC to safeguard.

Person B can never claim it was recalled as Person A will always be able to recall and obviously knows he did not recall therefore if he gives the account back to person B. One would say this was very strange and suspect person B to be lying. Person C wanting the account could claim also like person B but if the account is given back to them, that again is strange.

Now the problem becomes evident that the more people that have original information, the chances of refund claims starts to get effected. Therefore I would state that Person A should only be responsible for Person C.

What i’m playing on is simple. The original owner would be the only person interested enough to create such assurance to the seller he would do this. I could never see Person B trying to share this assurance therefore Person A would only ever be liable until Person C. When we move to Person D, this get way too complicated. Why Person C?

If Person A sells to Person B, that’ll obviously be on EPICNPC. Now Person B could sell somewhere else, up to him. If anything did happen, Person C would contact Person B would could contact Person A, therefore a chain has been made. The thing about Person D is the link is varely big and for an account to be resold 3 times, I think we need to create a limit of risk for Person A so we don’t start creating recall loops.

End of the day, the more people that know all the informaiton on the account, the more bad things could happen.

I'm happy to discuss this but what does this achieve?

Problem: Person B buys an account from Person A but Person A recalls, using more information than what is stated and is true, Person A gets account back. Thou person B has original information, they simply can't compete with Person A ever.

Solution? Because it is not possible to remove Person A's right to recall, the only deterrent possible would be a finical loss to Person A if he got banned. This is achieved by giving collateral to EPICNPC that if they recall and do not give the complaint user the account back, he is banned and EPICNPC rewards the compliant user compensation using the colateral

Why would anyone do this? The seller wishes to prove he is infact a real seller with no intensions of stealing therefore puts up collateral to safeguard himself.

--------------

I'm also very new and would like to if possible, sign up to a way to prove that I have to deliver on my word if the account being sold is marked as a full insured account which would use application to the method above. It would be somewhat strange for me to scam someone for me to loose my collateral.

 

[EpicNPC]

What we need to do is figure out a way that the original owner looses the ability to do that. If the original owner can't retrieve information, then all responsibility goes to Person B as he now retains the right to recall over person A.

That is not possible in any game, not just LOL. The OO will always be able to recall an account, we don't need to figure out a way to prevent this, we just need to figure out a way to show who recalled. It's a lot easier to prove in other games because there are support tickets or email notifications, but LoL has nothing, so its extremely hard to prove who's lying or if the OO really did recall.

I think the neutral feedback system is the best way to go. Sellers will hopefully make sure the people they are buying from are legit so when they resell accounts, there is a much lower rate of recalls.

 

[Coldbolt]

I don't know if you read what I said because I cover the ability to be able to penalize people properly for recalling.

Now if you get a vertified people to recall as he is the OO, yea nothing will ever happen to him but a ban, sorry but that's all it is. He has no actual problems to do this. This simply means that Vertified people are as much an issue as normal people but just not as likely to steal.

People who would use collateral would have something to loose. Lets see to get this status, you need to pay in for 6 months $30 therefore an excess of $20 is used to create collateral at the minimum. Now if Person A recalls from Person B, he simply looses that money but if Person B tried to scam, Person A simply would give him the account, I mean it would retarded not to. This applies to Person C also.

So can you control this, if the OO wants to prove he is a real seller without any issues, yes you can.

------------

What you want is the ability to find out who recalled, what i'm doing is voiding any reason to have to do that. You would know who recalled quite simply because if Person B tried to scam and say he got scammed by person A, Person A can easily do a recall for Person B which would imply that's strange because why would Person A do that? If Person did recall and refused to recall the item, it's safe to say he did recall and therefore looses his collateral but no one in their right mind would do this because they are loosing out.

 

[EpicNPC]

Neutrals feedbacks are basically penalties, so if LoL sellers keep selling accounts that are recalled, they'll end up with lots of neutral feedbacks that all say the accounts purchased were recalled. If you're a buyer and see 5 neutral feedbacks saying the lol account purchased were recalled, you're probably not going to buy from that seller.

I wouldn't want to use a collateral system because I would basically be guessing who's lying when a dispute comes up and I would not want to put myself directly into the dispute by deciding who to give money to.

The fact is there will be no proof of who recalled when a dispute comes up and I'd rather deal with feedbacks then actual money. I think a collateral system would turn off a lot of sellers as well, so I'd rather not do this.

For now, I'm going to give the new LoL rules a chance to see how they work and if nothing changes, we'll go back to the drawing board.

 

[DCM]

I don't know if you read what I said because I cover the ability to be able to penalize people properly for recalling.

...

------------

What you want is the ability to find out who recalled, what i'm doing is voiding any reason to have to do that. You would know who recalled quite simply because if Person B tried to scam and say he got scammed by person A, Person A can easily do a recall for Person B which would imply that's strange because why would Person A do that? If Person did recall and refused to recall the item, it's safe to say he did recall and therefore looses his collateral but no one in their right mind would do this because they are loosing out.

As said, unfortunately there is no way to prove who recalled. If the buyer recalled the account and accused the seller of doing it, even if the seller recalled it and gave the details to the buyer again, not only the buyer could keep doing this again and again, placing constant pressure on the seller, but he could still say the seller recalled in the first place and he wants his money back, or the trade undone.

Unless a much more controlled system is put in place, in which all the money and account information goes through EpicNPC - which doesn't seem likely given that trade traffic appears to be the highest priority -, I believe practically nothing can be done to prevent these issues with the existing account recovery system of LoL unfortunately.

The neutral feedback method at least provides an indication that the person has participated in suspicious LoL trades, and that people should exercise caution when dealing with them.

 

[PowerLevelingTo30]

Do people scam here?

 

[Geek]

Do people scam here?

People scam everywhere.