Beware of Greeks bearing gifts…

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Hello everyone,

no, this post will not be about Greek players in World of Tanks, the title of the post is an English proverb, that came originally from the Aeneid. It will be about yet another way how to screw someone in World of Tanks, a way that has been in existence practically since the beginning, yet still happens from time to time. For a lot of you it might be an old and known issue, but it is still actual, so it is better to repeat something, that was said a thousand times rather than to have someone fall for it.

Three days ago, I was contacted by a player, who wants obviously to remain anonymous. That player (or his friend, without names it hardly matters) was just a regular player, until this Christmas, when he recieved a gift from the premium shop, the E-25 tank, from an unknown donor. Considering it a Christmas present from his friend, he accepted it and everything went smooth until recently, when his account was banned out of the blue. Not understanding the situation, he wrote a support ticket, asking what the hell is going on. The reply of Wargaming support staff member was as follows:

We would like to inform you that you have initiated a chargeback process with our company, a gift that you have accepted has been charged back. This chargeback is a result of withdrawing the money the person who gave you the gift used to purchase goods on our website. Therefore; if you want to remove the chargeback form your account you will need to buy an amount of at least 6700 Gold, form our website (the price of the gift received) that will be removed and your account unlocked. When your transaction is successfully completed please notify us and we will then reactivate your account after a successfull proof of payment validation (attach one after the payment)

Further communication revealed that there is practically nothing you can do about this situations, this is specifically mentioned in the gift shop instructions too:

WARNING! If a recipient accepts a gift, and a giver asks for a refund (for example, cancels the bank transaction), the total gift package cost will be deducted from the gift recipient’s account. If an account has insufficient funds it will be blocked until sufficient funds are acquired. Do not accept gifts from strangers

Naturally, the player, not knowing what the hell happened was outraged and sent me an e-mail about this entire situation. So, what happened?

Chargeback is a nasty feature of certain forms of delayed payment of the Gift Shop, most notably the credit card payment. Basically, what happens: someone uses a credit card to buy you a gift and immediately cancels the transaction afterwards. You accept the gift in the meanwhile, yet the payment doesn’t come through. It’s more complicated than that, but I don’t want to give anyone any ideas on how to do it, so I will skip some parts. At this point the logical thing to do would be to actually remove the purchased content and life goes on, but for example it might have been gold you already spent. Therefore, the general approach is to block the account until the price is actually paid (in gold). In other words, if you purchase a tank, instead of having the tank removed, you will have to buy its price in gold.

Please note that this might seem harsh at first glance, but it is justifiable. You see, these operations actually cost Wargaming money and without making SOMEONE pay for this thing, they’d actually lose money everytime this happened. You can imagine how abusable that would be. They can’t force a bank to send the payment through obviously, so the only person they can get the money from to cover their expenses is the person, who is the “victim”.

Maybe you ask yourself, why would you actually accept gifts from strangers? Well, there are tons of reasons why you would. It is human nature not to immediately suspect foul play, humans in general are pretty gullible. There are tons of transactions happening every day and these “bad” ones probably form just a tiny fraction of the whole, so the chance the gift is “legit” is probably pretty good. Another reason would be players that are a bit “famous”. You don’t have to be a blogger or a streamer to actually recieve something, you can be a good platoon, company or CW leader, you could have done something else to make people like you. Or you might think that the gift is from a friend, like the guy above, when it is not.

This method can unfortunately be abused to cause intentional damage to players to have their account locked and there is very little you can do about it. Imagine “buying” someone you dislike a huge ass “gift” for 99 Euro… you get the drift.

In case your account does get banned after a chargeback, here is a set of instructions from Wargaming, what to do. Best thing however is to prevent it by making absolutely sure you know who an incoming “gift” is from and whether that person is really not just screwing around,

74 thoughts on “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts…”

  3. Best way to avoid this is do as I do: have no friends and be a dick to everyone, then you know that any gift you receive can’t be well-intended.

  4. Why not making a delay between the buying date and handling the gift out date?

    So you buy this gift and the gifted player receive it AFTER is transaction of the money is safely completed. It can be an option – so if someone u dont know gifts you something and he didnt use this delayed method u simply do not accept the gift. But if he choose the delayed method u would be safe from this kind of abuse.

      • In China we use Alipay, instant pay, instant deliver, no chargeback for virtual goods that has already been sent to a specific account. Personally I think it’s better this way.

        In China a chargeback process must has something to do with where you buy the good/service, you can’t simply “charge back a credit card purchase”. BTW, Chinese use credit cards less because we tend to use the money we own rather than the money we borrow. It saves lots of problems.

        • Well, I think the term “credit card” is often used incorrectly for “debit cards” as well and chargeback works on these too, so it wouldn’t make much difference in the end :)

          • That´s because many countries don´t have extra name for each card type. In Czech republic, everything is called Credit Card, no matter what is it´s purpose. I imagine it´s the world(area)wide problem. Everyone commenting on delay, charging the sender etc is the way the banks work, not WG.

      • Also a possibility. Also no, that’s not how credit card transfers work. You can’t just deduct money from accounts against owner’s will (without committing a crime, or obtaining a court order anyway)

    • Hacked account buys billion gifts and is then charged from the unknowing owner… Yeah, Merry Paying Fest. Also it takes then billion hours to work the sent gifts of which are ‘real’ even thou none of them are.

      Better just not accept anything without knowing from whom they come. Caution is insurance in internet and in life.

    • Knowing WG the senders account will also get blocked but it will either be a throwaway or stolen account so no way of getting the money back from there.

  6. “he recieved a gift from the premium shop, the E-25 tank, from an unknown donor. Considering it a Christmas present from his friend, he accepted it ”

    I’ve read something similar already… Hm, hm… Oh, I know! Many guys who bought cheaper gold through “resellers” told (wrote on forums) fantasy stories like that.

    Why didn’t the guy contact his friend before he accepted the gift? Obvious question, which ended most discussions that begun with a story like this one.

    “This method can unfortunately be abused to cause intentional damage to players to have their account locked and there is very little you can do about it. Imagine “buying” someone you dislike a huge ass “gift” for 99 Euro… you get the drift.”

    Not really, well at least if the recipent uses some of his brain cells. Or a cell phone, to call the supposed donor and confirm that he sent it.

    “Never take candies from strangers.”

  7. Assuming his story is genuine: Tell me the name of this player through here or email/smoking signals/postal pidgeons, i will pay it for him.

    • You can’t be a real Wot player…………………… :trollface:

      however… I do remember on a BF:DC server I used to play on a lot, there was a lot of regulars, some good some a right pain in the f…..

      * one of the good guys asked the admin to be given temp admin rights to make a certain pillowbiter’s life a misery..
      * admin said “no”
      * good guy said, if I pay you 100 euro for 24 hours, will you?
      * admin said rofl.. (actually.. “fucking rofl”) “pay it to charity and give me proof of transaction and then yes”
      * good guy paid 100 euro to charity AND 100 euro to admin…
      * Admin said.. “fuk.. I really didn’t beleive you would do it… here’s 7 days admin.. you want permanent admin?”

  8. Since a gift has to be accepted within 30 days, I would wait 29 days then accept the gift, to make sure it is legit if it is an unknown donor

  10. “Please note that this might seem harsh at first glance, but it is justifiable”
    It’s not even close to being justifiable. If wargaming either deducted the amount from the scammers account or just removed the vehicle from the victims account there would be no point in running these ‘scams’ at all and it would soon stop. So the argument that it costs wargaming money is bullshit since we’re also dealing with virtual goods here that in the case of gold literally costs wargaming absolutely nothing to produce.

      • yep..

        …every single financial transaction for a business via credit card costs money, purchases cost a fixed fee plus a percentage, chargebacks cost a fixed fee..

        (many UK businesses will not accept AMEX because they cost so much more than the other card companies its not worth the effort..)

        the business has paid twice for this transaction, but got no money out of it… and thats not including staff costs of the chargeback/account locking…

        They cannot re-charged the scammers account becuase that is illegal.. “taking money without consent”, the victims could have the tank removed, but how about gold spent on premium or crew? Its already spent…?

          • But when you receive a gift tank, chances are you’ll actually play with that tank. By the time the chargeback is initiated, you have played and benefited from that tank, be it by earning xp and credits or simply enjoying the games. Thus you have used a service which, after the chargeback, nobody has paid for, AND wargaming has to pay extra on top of it because a chargeback is an expensive procedure for the seller. You can’t expect a company to just give stuff for free, somebody has to pay for it. And it makes sense that the person paying for it, by default, would be the person actually benefiting from that service.
            Now if you haven’t played the tank at all, and haven’t touched the gold at all, you could I guess try and plead your case to WG simply remove it all from your account. Not sure it would work but it would be worth a try.

  11. There is allot of players I hate in World of Tanks but this is just going way too far, its actually pretty despicable to do something like this. WG needs make it impossible for random strangers to send gifts.

    And while they do that, they need to enable a double security feature where as when someone buy something to someone (Gifts) They will have to agree to a window explaining them that they wont be able to refund nor cancel it if they choose to buy and send it as a gift.

    That probably would decrease this scam allot.

    • The simple solution is to make all acounts able to receive gifts only from friends (from contact list) as default. Who really wants to be able to receive from anyone, should be able to change the option. in Account Management.

  12. WG should give the gift first after they recieved the money from the sender … but i think they want this issue to get more money.

    another use would be to allow gifting only for players with 500+ games … or 1000+

    but what is reallity? zero battles fake accounts suddenly start to gift 100 gifts well done WG $$$

    • So how long do you wait for a cancelled CC transaction?

      It could be a month before the owner of a stolen card gets a statement, it could take weeks for the transaction to then be disputed.

      If you are sending a gift do you want to have to send it 2 months in advance?

      And I don’t think its 0 battle accounts sending gifts, it will probably be stolen accounts, or botted.

    • Permaban whom? Someone can use a stolen credit card and order the service for example. The buying person doesn’t even have to have a WoT account (“mum” and “dad”)

      • -A chargeback issue is a forced return or reversal of funds that were previously used for a purchase of goods. It is initiated either by YOU personally or by YOUR bank.-

        So according to WG, a chargback can NOT be initiated by the reciver, ONLY the giver or his/hers bank.
        WG need to find a solution to this,,,, cos forcing me to pay for a thing I did not buy = for sure I will newer buy anything from you again.

        • If you are accepting stuff not knowing where it came from then that makes you just as guilty, it’s like buying a TV from a bloke down the pub when you know there’s a fair chance it was stolen.

          • First, the bloke at the pub did not steal the TV, it was payed for. Only after giving the TV to me, he goes back to the TV-shop and take back his money.
            I don’t see how that can turn into my problem. When I recived the gift it was payed for and not stolen.

            • It was paid for until a chargeback was initiated. After that, WG had to return the money to the credit card, at that point it was no longer paid for. For all we know, the credit card was actually stolen, and the chargeback originated from the owner finding out and disputing the transaction.
              The same happens when you pay with rubber checks: you get the product, afterwards the seller finds out you actually don’t have the money, and then you get in trouble.

        • Forcing you to pay for things you did not buy?

          Don’t accept gifts unless it is from people personally known to you.

  14. “This method can unfortunately be abused to cause intentional damage to players to have their account locked and there is very little you can do about it. Imagine “buying” someone you dislike a huge ass “gift” for 99 Euro… you get the drift.”

    This method can also be used as a revenge against the bieloruskies, if one supposedly has a disagreement with them. Imagine making a new account, buying the most expensive gift in the gift shop (or just buying 30k gold), and then chargeback the money. Since it will probably be the first chargeback you’ll do, you won’t have problems with the bank/Paypal/any other institution involved.

    It’s your second account that’s involved (so no other player gets in trouble). Just a thought…

  15. How about WG actually treats the “disease” (misuse/abuse of credit cards) instead of the symptoms (gifting something in WoT/WoWp -> chargeback) . They could easily make their legal department work with the banks to counter this asshole behaviour.

    But i guess that is to much effort instead of just dumping a pile of shit on their customers….

    • How, without making it impossible for those of us who genuinely want to send gifts to friends? Which is what they did once before, simply stopped the ability to gift anything.

      You are assuming people are using their own credit card to make the purchase. I find that unlikely since making a chargeback against a purchase you made is already fraud.

      • Well…there are methods of increasing security on online card purchases if they really wanted to do that.

        Either way, if they would actually want to do anything for the customer, they could just remove(with a notification) the gift received, be it the tank, gold or anything purchased as I’m sure they have a log of every transaction that a player made.

        Blocking the victim’s account is utter bullshit as the victim has no blame for what happened. The entire blame falls on the person that initiated the fraud and WG for failing to prevent that type of abuse of their system.

  16. WG’s system for gifting is terrible…

    I mean every MMO Game I played, even Steam itself, has a proper working gifting system. You send a gift to someone, the sum of the cost is deducted to you, no “refund bullcrap” or “backout options”.

    How on earth could a highly professional company like WG have an utterly bad gifting system… >_>)

    • For the record, you can in fact do the same thing with steam if you live in Europe. You see, you can *always* do a chargeback, no questions asked. The store has to give up the money, or more to the point, never actually gets it. Of course, your steam account is going to get locked right away – which is not all that legal, never mind EULA BS, but that is another can of worms.

  17. SS, you’ve taken WoT donations long ago. Looks like you’ve just reminded some more stupid guys how to screw you…

    I’d like to know what happens to such givers. It should be insta-permban for such behavior.

  18. So it could ultimately be WarGaming themselves doing this… “Fake account, don’t know who it was, even if we have their credit card information”… And for all of the “it could be stolen credit card etc”, yeah sure, every chargeback situation is mafia doing money laundering…

    • And why would WG do that? It’s bad rep, it costs them money, it frustrates players, which are then less likely to spend money on the game.
      And yes, there is definitely a money laundering problem on the internet. Some time ago, there was quite some uproar in the polish and czech community, as it turned out that a popular polish gold reseller boned a lot of people by selling cheaper gold than WG themselves using stollen credit cards. Lots of people had their accounts blocked because of cahrgeback, and WG had to remove the ability to gift to other players temporarily because of the extent of the scam.

  20. I think I know who can abuse this kind of system against Greek’s… *rolls eyes at Turkish players, who are genuinely pissed off at Greek clans* Seriously, I’m a Turkish player myself, I won’t do it (Because pissing off Greek’s is easier than locking up their accounts, just say “your grandpa got asskicked in Anatolia” and let the troll moments begin), but if I was smart and ruthless enough, I’d do this against a “newborn” Greek player with pleasure.

  21. That sucks for the guy but he really should of checked with his friend instead of just blindly accepting it.

  22. “the total gift package cost will be deducted from the gift recipient’s account”

    So why didn’t they just remove the E25 and garage slot from his account and be done with it? Why the ban?

  23. How about chargeback the gift giver in their account?
    I mean you “did” need to have an account to access the shop

    I kind of understand the WG need of damage control but it feel wrong to get it out of the victim

  24. Great method of banning idiotic, team-killing tomatoes, especially ones who already spent fortune on this game :)

  26. The exact situation happened in one clan of our gaming community. A guy that spent quite some time in the clan bought gifts to a number of clan members. And one day after that, half the clan was banned. Thing is… WG’s system concerning this type of issue is fucked up.

    They say not to accept gifts from strangers. Well, everyone knew that guy. He was a fellow clan member. Of course, they made tons of support tickets but WG’s answer remained the same: “LOL! There’s nothing we can do. You must pay us now! How terrible…”

    Thing is, almost everyone that got screwed decided to leave the game and I’d do the same and I’m sure most of the guys playing this game in a casual manner would say “bye bye” if such a problem would appear. So… nice job loosing clients, WG.

    • I call BS.

      If he provided documents that support his claim (gifts were paid off and there was no chargeback) support would un-ban all accounts.

      Something similar happened quite some time ago – wg run some adhd script that checked paymants on gifts on the eu server and said script banned some poeple, who bought gifts for their own account. After proving that everything was ok, support un-banned those guys.

  27. While playing tier II tanks, I see player defghig1, defghig2, etc. constantly advertising discounted gold at http://www.mook.com or something like that. The name is an immediate give away.

    I immediately call them a thief (to warn the other players) and send a spam report on them. I used to TK them, but realized later on that they just go AFK anyway.

    These guys prey on new players who don’t know the scam.

  28. “…why would you actually accept gifts from strangers?”

    The most common reason people accept gifts isn’t gullibility, but greed. People like to get free stuff, simply put, and even then, a lot of these people don’t ask questions about it, as stated in the old phrase “don’t look a gift horse in the mouth”.

    As for why these people pull this shit…well…most of the time they’re just the many misanthropes that populate the internet, the scum of this Earth that don’t contribute anything more than grief to society, and would be better off dead to spare us the trouble of putting up with them.

  29. It makes more sense to ban the user from which the gift was sent (demanding he makes the payment or stay banned). Why should the responsibility of payment fall on the individual who receives the gift?

    On the other hand, a person may create an alt account to buy gifts for his main account using stolen methods of payment* (*debit, credit, whatever) with little consequence to himself.

  30. If the gift was just a tank, then WG should take it back and possibly unlock the account (If the IP’s of the theft don’t match the IP of the player) and such.

    I had this happen to me in Eve_Online, but it was a Ingame item I purchased for virtually nothing.. The person had used a stolen CC to buy ingame currency and then flooded expensive items that could be resold for cheap.. The logic was simple, they thought that by exposing hundreds of people that CCP would ignore it and that their character who was also buying said goods, would get away with it.

    No doubt the same logic is happening here, buy 200 people gifts and there is likely only 1 account that was behind it, but will WG ban 200 accounts. The answer would appear to be Yes.

    WG should provide IP, Contact Details, and any personal information on all of those accounts to the police and hopefully a common IP or user would stand out. Sadly this happens in online business, I don’t feel sorry for them but users should beware.

    In Eve, I once had another gift given to me (much more expensive), so the day I received it I sent a note to the staff asking if they could confirm it is legit. If the people who get gifts like this in WoT still have the Tank/Gold/Silver then WG should take it back, If they say they cant pay for it then WG should offer to take back what they have and have the people pay the difference.