Possible Unmerged Account Problem

[Dirrrty]

Hi Guys/Girls

Just a heads up and I am not scaremongering in any way. I have bought lots of unmerged accounts in the past and have not had any problems at all. However, I bought 3 last night and merged 3 characters into my main account. The transfer went as well as it always has and there were no problems. I started playing around with the newly transferred characters and then logged off for the night.

This morning I awoke to 3 emails all saying the same thing:

Greetings,

This notice is being sent to inform you that we were unable to successfully process the recently requested Paid Character Transfer on the World of Warcraft account ************@********.com. As such, the character has been locked pending review by Customer Support. No charges have been processed for this Paid Character Transfer.

1. WHY WAS THIS PAID CHARACTER TRANSFER DECLINED:
This Paid Character Transfer was declined due to one of two reasons:
- You did not recently request a Paid Character Transfer, and the service was requested by another person. It is possible your account has been compromised, or accessed by an unauthorized party.
- You did recently request a Paid Character Transfer, and the method of payment used to purchase the service was declined by our systems.

2. CONTACTING CUSTOMER SUPPORT FOR ASSISTANCE:
If you believe your account was compromised, please go to the following website https://eu.battle.net/account/suppor...-recovery.html. Our support staff will assist you as soon as possible. If you are unable to access your account due to the password being changed, please visit our Login Support site here: https://eu.battle.net/account/suppor...ord-reset.html

If you requested the Paid Character Transfer yourself and your credit card was declined, please contact our Billing department via telephone.

You can find our phone numbers at http://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/200502. Please note that our Billing department may be unable to assist with the issue if it is compromise-related.

3. SECURING YOUR ACCOUNT:

We highly recommend that you follow the below steps to protect yourself and the account from unauthorized third party access.
- Use up-to-date firewall, antivirus, and anti-spyware software to scan your system regularly for viruses, Trojans, and key-loggers.
- Keep your operating system and other software up-to-date and be careful when downloading new software.
- Be wary of "spoof" and scam websites and e-mails that pose as Blizzard Entertainment and request account or personal information. As a reminder, Blizzard Entertainment representatives will *never* ask you for your password.
- Keep your login information confidential. Account access can only be shared with one minor of whom you are the parent or guardian. Sharing access with anyone else is a violation of the game's Terms of Use. You are also responsible for every use of an account on which you are listed as the registered player, whether the use was authorized or not.
- Use separate, unique passwords for your email, Battle.Net, and any other online accounts.
- Change your passwords regularly and keep Battle.Net account information updated using the Account Management page at http://eu.battle.net/account

For additional security tips and information, please visit the following sites:
- Account Security: Battle.net
- Unauthorized Account Access Policy: http://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/100912

If you are looking for an added layer of security, we currently offer the Blizzard Authenticator, an optional device that can help prevent unauthorized account access. For more information about how the Authenticator works or how to add one to a World of Warcraft account, please visit the Blizzard Authenticator FAQ at http://eu.battle.net/support/en/article/912.

We apologize for the inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your patience in this matter.

Regards,

Customer Services
Blizzard Entertainment Europe
World of Warcraft


I now have 3 characters locked on my main Warcraft account and to be honest I may be laying bricks a bit :P I have had this account since the beginning. I am waiting on some advice from people who know these services inside out and will update this post as to what happens. Again I am only creating this post to inform people. You may do the same thing and be fine. I was unlucky this time.

Cheers

Dirrrty

[Dirrrty]

It also states in the email that payment has not been taken, well it has, have receipts and emails from paypal to prove this, bit weird.

[Dirrrty]

Ok

just been having live chat with GM, I think they are now checking that names match on accounts. that's why this has happened.

[Bsmunban]

In all honesty I believe there's always a chance you can get caught. It's just the risk you take when buying such things. Of course, this is quite minimal, but I guess it's just unlucky more then anything else mate

[Dirrrty]

yep, I agree. However I talked with the GM through live chat and he didn't know why the payment was stopped. He said that he had to talk to the "hacks" department as they were the ones who stopped it. he then said that its obvious that I do not own the merged accounts as 3 accounts with different names. he said they were in the process of locking the accounts and that he couldn't do anything about it. Unless it was a random check maybe.

[LoveOne]

Almost all unmerged accounts get locked in a few days after you merge them if the account names don't match, happened to me several times, best thing is that you don't try to transfer the characters as they will be instantly triggered as stolen.

[Eryx]

Interesting read, please keep up updated what happens, Dirrty!

[dnawlols]

I'd also like to mention something as it is quite important to note...

If a GM REMOVES an unmerged license, or it gets rolled back (if say, someone was able to recover their acc or claim hacked), your characters your transferred off WILL be removed/rolled back onto the unmerged as well.

I'm only warning people as I've had a character (thankfully nothing really special on it), removed off my main account and after later investigation it appears that it was due to a GM removing the unmerged off my other bnet, thus rolling back all the characters. This happened about 1-2 months AFTER the transfer.

Don't spend too much time/money on a character you get off an unmerged because there's always the chance it gets rolled back.

[Cecu]

Dirrty, I am pretty sure, you have made single mistake, which was crucial for the case. You merged three!!! accounts in single day to your battle.net. That had definitely triggered some flag on Blizzards already mentioned "hacks" department.

Try next time, to do it with one by one, separated by few days or a week.

FYI, I never had problems with unmerged accounts in Europe, used several as "mains" - shuffle or play accounts with tons of 90s on them, these even got some 72h suspensions, even a permanent closure for botting (Overtuned after resting for half a year), and still these were never locked for identity check.

Yes, I had few mindless gather or pickpocket bots, banned for botting, and then locked after appealing, but they are too rare, to change anything ... on my side at least.

P.S.
Since you are rare achievments/mounts/titles lover, you could try different stuff - Just merge the accounts into fresh battlenets, registered under your name, so you could smootly x-fer them into your bnet later.

[Dirrrty]

Well, I think in the end I must have triggered something and or been very unlucky. I have done this a lot, I did nothing that I haven't done many many times before. Has anyone successfully merged and transferred characters since yesterday?

Account status = banned for all three

[Dirrrty]

This is exactly what I did when merging:

Merged 3 accounts into a fresh unused battle.net (recieved 3 merge confirmation emails)

Activated 10 day mop trial (to check accounts, maybe this caused a flag?)

Logged in game.

Viewed characters moved some items/gold around

Initiated character transfers (lowbie characters stayed on account ie 3-50) of 70-80 level characters, of which there were three.

Paid via paypal (which I always do, GM said they have extra security protocols for paypal payments)

Recieved 3 emails from paypal about charges

3 emails from Blizz confirming char transfers

3 emails from Blizz confirming char transfer complete and are ready to play

Logged in game started leveling, moved some gold and heirlooms. Probably played them for approx 3 hours logged off for the night at approximately 2300gmt

Recieved char transfer failure emails from Blizz approx 0600gmt

Spoke to a few people on here about advice on how to proceed

Contacted GM via live chat

He didn't actually know what had happened. It took him approximately 25minutes to come back to me to say that he needs to speak to "Hacks department as they were the ones who put a stop on it"

20 minutes later he comes back and gave the you're not the original owner of the accounts and that's why the transfer was stopped. I did ask if he needed my id, he said if I managed to have 4 different id's for these accounts he would be very impressed, also I have managed to live in a couple of different countries at the same time.

He was ok about it to be honest, I was expecting ban hammers and I asked him if this would happen he said very unlikely, "just play your account".

Not sure if this helps anyone, but this is basically what happened and how I have always merged accounts. I have done quite a lot of them and have this is the first sign of trouble.

[Aes]

This is all expected. Though its VERY rare that they will reverse the character transfers. ive only seen a handful of cases like that.


But still, main account is not effected, etc, just really shitty that you lose the toons that you transferd.





Edit.

IMO if blizzard do something to your accounts that have anything to do with unmerged accounts(ban them, stop transfers, whatever). DONT make a ticket about it, youll make it a lot worse for yourself. just accept it and move on as its all expected that anything could happen.

[Dirrrty]

Yep I agree, first time this has happened to me, I have had accounts banned of course. Just not had the characters transfer reversed. I have checked and double checked, but I still have a few of the characters FOS, weird.

[dotcha]

Just an observation, but you tried to pay with paypal?

Hasn't using paypal always been a bit buggy? I've had instances when paying with paypal, where the character was moved, but locked because of a charge problem, and then moved back to the original account.

[Dirrrty]

I had always used paypal before. Never had a problem with. Although from the GM "they use extra security protocols for paypal payments" I have used in the past different named paypals to pay for accounts with different names for years and never had a problem. Just my bad luck I think.