one of my friend's account is banned, he needs help

[Eldeath]

Excuse me,One of my friends whose account is oraclewisesage has been banned since 4 days ago. He tried to submit a ticket to the in-game support team to file an appeal, but only received an email said that:"Your account was accessed from a location confirmed to be involved in gold farming and gold selling activities. It will remain permanently suspended and all future inquiries will be closed without response."
Then, he tried to login this website——my.lotro.com?but he saw this note:"You have been banned for the following reason: No reason was specified.Date the ban will be lifted: Dec 13 2040, 10:18 PM"
He said he never did anything about gold farming or gold selling. If really did, it must be someone else hacked his account. He submitted a ticket to the lotro accounts/store support team yesterday, but still don't receive any response. Since he received an email said"all future inquiries will be closed without response", this won't help.
Our English is poor and has difficulties to call the support team.

P.S:If it is necessary,we can provide these e-mail screenshots to prove he is innocent!

[Flixxer]

i am afraid the fastest way to get this solved is to contact the wb helpdesk by phone or skype

[Gagmuk]

like previous poster said.

Best way to get this issue resolved is have your friend call on phone or skype their customer service. it will get the issue resolved a lot faster and more accurately than trying to do it via tickets and emails.

[Yula_the_Mighty]

Excuse me,One of my friends whose account is oraclewisesage has been banned since 4 days ago. He tried to submit a ticket to the in-game support team to file an appeal, but only received an email said that:"Your account was accessed from a location confirmed to be involved in gold farming and gold selling activities. It will remain permanently suspended and all future inquiries will be closed without response."

First off all account inquiries, tickets and question are a private matter between the account owner and the Turbine employee on the other end. Turbine will never discuss and accept anything for an account unless it is the owner. Turbine does not accept any screenshots, chat logs or information provided by the customer. If they can't find the information themselves it does not exist.

If your friend got that response from his ban appeal, there is no further recourse. You only get one chance at a permanent ban appeal to the in game support team via a ticket.

The only possibility at this point is for your friend to create a new empty account. Start over.

[Singbard]

I just read Yula's response up there and, wow, this seems pretty harsh!

As I don't know the facts about the case I'd like to assume two extreme cases as boundary conditions to explore this situation a bit:

• A free to play account holder who never ever spent a single cent on the game is breaking the rules and tried (or succeeded) selling in-game currency for real money.
• A year long VIP player who spent between 500 and 1000 US dollars worth of Turbine points suddenly finds his account banned, not knowing and understanding why.

To make things a little more interesting, let's also assume that both players do not speak the English language well enough for effective communication.

In case 1, I can understand Turbine's harshness and if there is proof for misbehaving, it seems fair that a player earns himself a permanent ban.
However, if people do not speak the language, or if an account was taken over, I think even a F2P player should have means and opportunities to clear his name other than a one time chance to win or loose it all.

In case 2, I as an affected player would be extremely offended (beyond measure, really) by this kind of reply. Add 'inability to express yourself properly in writing or on the phone' to the case and you will 'create' someone who is so angry that he or she is ready to take legal action.

Mainly the fact that Turbine denies any means of communication at this stage seems wrong or at least unwise in my humble opinion.

I can only hope that my account never gets hacked, that I always remember to disable my VPN connection before launching the game to prevent that my IP suddenly seems to originate from a 'problem zone', and that my nieces who play from time to time never ever break any rules that are considered unforgivable.

Well now, before anyone gets the wrong impression: I do love the game and always found Turbine helpful and friendly. This is not a complaint and I am not taking sides in the current case at all. I was merely a bit shocked about the reply above and thought of what I might do if I was the affected player.... I really wished in that case that I would get a fair chance to make my case. Not all is always as it seems.

Cheers

[Sapience]

Our policies are designed to protect the account holder. By locking an account it is frozen and cannot be futher compromised or 'hacked'. We also only speak to the account holder and they must verify their identity (as noted calling is far and away the best and fastest way to get this resolved) to again further protect the account from someone impersonating the account holder.

It's for this reason I must lock this thread. The only person we can discuss this with is the account holder.