[aionplayed]

Hello my name is Hong

I own a small chain of computer stores along the east coast from VA-MA. Recently my account was hacked and my account was almost sold by the hacker. I contacted NC Soft about the issue and was told that they don't care who or what sold the account and it is perma banned because of the fact. Well after thinking about this I have never allowed anything like this to happen in my life so I am not about to start. I am willing to invest a fair amount of money into actually taking this to a legal stand point anyone who has had their account wrongfully banned should send me a PM here thanks. [admin edit: for NA accounts]

This post has been edited by Nobody: 14 September 2011 - 04:02 AM
Reason for edit: added info for NA accounts

[Serenadex]

If I were you, I would thank NCsoft for banning me from such a terrible game.

This post has been edited by Serenadex: 12 September 2011 - 07:45 PM

[omidus]

aionplayed, on 12 September 2011 - 04:45 PM, said:

Hello my name is Hong

I own a small chain of computer stores along the east coast from VA-MA. Recently my account was hacked and my account was almost sold by the hacker. I contacted NC Soft about the issue and was told that they don't care who or what sold the account and it is perma banned because of the fact. Well after thinking about this I have never allowed anything like this to happen in my life so I am not about to start. I am willing to invest a fair amount of money into actually taking this to a legal stand point anyone who has had their account wrongfully banned should send me a PM here thanks.

1st, call your bank and get your monthly fee back as far back as you can to start. You can't sue them because the TOS states you're pretty much "renting" your account with them even though you paid for the account license. They can do whatever they deem necessary and please with your account. So you won't have a chance with it, since you agreed to the TOS.

2nd, you would not be the first to be wrongfully banned by NCsoft; so don't be mad about it they do it all the time.

3rd, call your bank and get as much of your money back as possible. You have the right to do that because to your bank you paid for a service and was stiffed out of the service.

[Indigoy]

omidus, on 12 September 2011 - 08:19 PM, said:

So you won't have a chance with it, since you agreed to the TOS.

If he is telling the truth technically he didn't accept the TOS, the hacker did. Not the actual account owner when the violation occurred.

[aionplayed]

Yes you are right Indigo

The lawyer I am dealing with said the same thing that I didn't break the Terms of use the person who hacked me did.People don't realize that the terms of use can be fought to a certain degree as long as you didn't do the violation. And we are actually going to push forward with the lawsuit atm we are trying to decide if we should turn it into a class action suit because I am sure alot of people who have been wrongfully banned don't have a clue that they can actually do something about it. Also there have been alot of lawsuits over the last 5 years that people have won for wrongful banns from different companies ranging from Blizzard on down.You do have rights even if you click the terms of use.

Today a website will be made for the class action suit for people to sign up on atm I am speaking with Mr. Matthew Esber who is part of NCsoft's legal team but I am going to push forward with this as crazy as it may sound and I know people are going to flame the idea but wrong is wrong.

[Sicknesss]

If you are a businessman/entrepreneur, your time is worth more than fighting something as meaningless as a video game.

[dirtyklingon]

i posted a nice rply in one of these threads and it seems to have been deleted well here we go again:



ncosft like any other mmo company reserves the right to close your account at any time for any reason.

you at no time have any expectation fo ownership of your account. in fact this is the reason blizz was able to sue sue RMT companies and get paypal to shut down their accounts- because mmo companies are the sole owners of all virtual items and anything related to their game(including the client on your pc which you are only licensed to use for the purpose of playing on their servers)

if a judge is even willing to hear it, and you lose, which you will, you will be personally be responsible for ncosft's legal fees. and ncosft doesn't hire cheap hack lawyers. like you obviously have.


if your lawyer isn't a cheap hack lawyer, which it sounds like he is, then he hasn't done the research phase yet, and is just charging you for consultation. at which time he will tell you there's no chance of the case going anywhere. if he isn't a hack then he's just charging you large amounts for consultation.


the court precedents which have actual legal standing due to actual court rulings in a court of law, are heavily in mmo companies' favour to excercise full control and ban accounts at their discretion.

and not just in the blizz case, but also in the case of an l2 farmer guy who had about 10 or more accounts going and was banned and tried to sue ncsoft a couple years ago. however in his case he was runnning an rmt business off it and claimed ncsoft banning him hurt his business. but iirc it didn't even matter that he was running a business off it, as the judge ruled in the same vien as the blizz case- that ncsoft retains the right to excercise full control over all aspects of their service.

if you do win at all, you will be awarded- the remaining amount of time on your sub in a refund- ie if you paid 1 month sub plan, and were banned at the 15 day mark, you would win a whopping $7. plus your legal fees paid. to get punitive damages awarded you would have to argue pain and distress and stuff- but seriously mmo's are a luxury so don't count on that.

what you definitely won't get is
refund of hte box price
refund of paid time that you got hte full amount of.


and GL getting a charge back for everything you've paid into aion to ncsoft, for time spent. ncsoft is actively purising all cases of fraud against them, including fraudulent chargebacks, so if you try to charge back sub fees and box price for time you've played, whgich your bank WILL give you ofc, expect to be investigated for fraud, which ofc your bank and cc company will cooperate with, alogn with your ISP giving full records of your Ips and activity to math with ncosft's records to verify that you did indeeed use their service during the months you paid for and fully recieved that you have then gotten a charge back refund for.

ofc if you've gotten a cheap hack lawyer then he is going to take you for you are worth right up to the point where the application for your case to be heard is denied. which can cost hundreds of dollars.

[Fiets]

Good luck. About time someone takes a stand against them

[dirtyklingon]

oh ialso forgot about blizz wining suits against p servers, which ruled that the client can only be used for their own servers, as well as jus tbecause the server client they use does not use blizz server code doesn't make it legal to run a p server or make money off it, since wow owns and excises sole rights over all wow assets from the client to the ingame items and art and such, and that as sole rights holder as express permission to fully and sole ability to profit and run everything related to teh game.

so basically, customers have no legal basis to sue the mmo companies over bans, wether wrongful or not, and the liability of thge mmo company is at most a refund of the rest of your paid sub time- but again, you're going to lose more money to the lawyer than you'll get back from teh awards, all while this will not punish ncsoft in anyway...


aside from the fact, again if it goes to court, they can tie your ass up proceedings for eyars while yoru lawyer conitnues to charge you.

and i mean at best they might settle. settle for what? a refun dof your remaining time. since more than that they can afford to let the court decide either way, since there's no reasonable expectation of an expensive (to them) judgement.


this case is essentially the same as trying to sue a night club because you paid 15$ cover and they randomly kicked you out because a guy in the booth next to you stole your drink. ofc even drunk people are smart enough not to sue over that kind of thing.

[Mostly]

Indigoy, on 12 September 2011 - 10:03 PM, said:

If he is telling the truth technically he didn't accept the TOS, the hacker did. Not the actual account owner when the violation occurred.

Nearly. If it was his account he had to accept the TOS first, so both accepted it. The hacker violated the terms of it though.

[dirtyklingon]

if access to his accoutn was gained by the hacker "hacking" him say through his email or using malware on his pc, then he can report it to the law enforcement... though gnerally speaking unless the case gets alot of publicity the police don't give a nyerk if your hotmail was hacked.


if access was gained through uhhh hacking aion directly type deal, ie not hacking the OPs email or pc, then it would be up to ncsoft to report it to police.


but i don't think police give a nyerk about ncsoft anymore, since the last time the FBI worked on behalf of ncsoft in regards to p servers for l2, iirc they weren't able to go beyond investigation/raids

although ncsoft seem to get an inordinate amount of fraud in it's online services in the west.

[MrOrangeTree]

I am really not sure about the "they can bann ur account at any time for any reason". I don't have any clue about the american law system, but at least here in germany the meaning of enduser agreements and terms of use are really limited. They can write whatever they want, but this doesn't make it binding in the way of law. It's more like that every part of the EULA, that puts the customer into heavy disadvantage, is null and void.

[Nobody]

MrOrangeTree, on 14 September 2011 - 12:13 PM, said:

I am really not sure about the "they can bann ur account at any time for any reason". I don't have any clue about the american law system, but at least here in germany the meaning of enduser agreements and terms of use are really limited. They can write whatever they want, but this doesn't make it binding in the way of law. It's more like that every part of the EULA, that puts the customer into heavy disadvantage, is null and void.

This is generally true in NA as well (I'm fairly sure for both Canada and the USA, though not other countries), although the laws don't protect people quite as well (when compared with how things are with EU countries *in general*) and people generally don't understand where they are protected at all. Which is just sad really. Oh, and companies almost always try to settle out-of-court for $$$ and so less precedents that could make the law clear are created.

[Indigoy]

People like dirtyklingon seem to believe that enduser agreements hold up in court much better then they actually do.

Adobe vs Softman is a good example. They ruled that consumers can resell bundled software, no matter what the EULA stipulates. And Adobe is a very big company with very well written legal agreements.

EULA's are not 100% legally enforceable contract under any circumstances, it's very much dependent on the state and the court if end-user license agreements are treated as wholly enforceable or not.

[Jahaudant]

Wishes to hear more about this potential class action lawsuit.