How is this legal?

This makes sense, too.
Of course, she's said she *has* called them, but I tend to believe she's been, well, hysterical, when she has.
Further EDIT: Do you think it would help to construct a time-line of what happened when *for here*, or should she just do it to straighten her own thoughts out for the hotline?

Absolutely! A timeline is a great idea, both for her and for anyone she needs to give the information to. At the very least, doing so could well help her calm down enough to work through the problem better.

"Sensitivity" on "Resident Answers"??

That'll be the day. This is the judge, jury and executioner's forum.

Now if you go to the thread called "ignore this thread and let it die." you can discuss kittens, cake, latte, and wish everyone a "good morning" and "good night," and chatter endlessly about nothing in the most icky sweet, vacuous and cloying tones possible.

A paradox neh?

Says the person who compared the effects of playing World of Warcraft to those of live combat.

My comments which some blind as a bat, people feigned offense to, were related to physiological effects discovered in studies of some people, especially young people, spending months in intense video combat 8-10 hours a day, in video battlefields and dungeons, that showed that intense computer warfare can produce similar physiological effects as the real thing....That the body and brain chemistry doesn't know the difference, between simulated war and the real thing.

Adrenaline is adrenaline. Stress is stress. Grouped with 40 people in an intense warcraft raiding environment for months on end, causes phisiological effects in some people, resulting in PTSD type phyisiology.

If a person watches a movie of a rollar coster ride, the body reacts as though it is a real roller coaster. At the mechanical level, the body does not know the difference. A hundred foot monster is a hundred foot monster. This must be too hard for some people to grasp.

Of course I explained that i was taking about medical studies, numerous times but some people like to hear what they want to hear because they have little awareness or education about the mechanisms of mind and body and how it works or studies that have been done on severe computer addiction and intense combat simulations or perhaps no experience in that type of intense video combat going on for months on end, or real combat either for that matter, nor any experience working with people with PTSD.

Good Morning Rebecca, would you like some cake and latte?

Not even close.

For God's sake, take this crap elsewhere. Quit derailing with this garbage. We're well beyond that, read the friggin' thread in its entirety before getting bitchy.

Okay okay WoW is the debil, or the greatest thing since sliced bread , or whatever, we know.

Rebecca you came out of left field on the whole sensitivity bit. If as a forum we are harsh and judgmental, then you would have to be included with us.

And Cristalle's right, take it to another thread - it doesn't help this person try to get their account back.

No she didn't.

The OP mentioned it first.

But don't let's have that fact get in the way of the usual wagon circling, ridiculing, and denials.

Okay .. by left field I meant a huge over-response to one comment.

I am sorry I maybe took a poetic license with the term.

Also if you notice I didn't do any denying just some including.

This thread was derailed as soon as the horse was out of the gate. I commented on the usual nastiness and was promptly attacked with airhead comments for comments I made 6 months ago on an unrelated subject. I re-explained that reality again and was attacked again by more airhead, big mouth comments.

just in case there's any salvaging this thread...
I don't see where it is necessary to post a complete timeline here, it could border on "personal information" which is a thin fuzzy grey line. But we might be able to help if there are any things on the timeline she isn't sure of or how best to explain. Also, if possible, I know I appreciate a quick follow up post after she calls so we know an overview of how things went.

good luck -V

Uh, no, the OP has received quite a few helpful, on topic suggestions.


Actually, I was pointing out your hypocrisy, not 'attacking' you. You haven't demonstrated any more sensitivity on these boards than anyone else, and quite a lot less than some others.


I play WoW. WoW is not reality and, while there may be some physiological effects similar to other exciting or stressful stimuli, no one dies. That's a crucial point: there is no actual threat of injury or death, or the necessity to inflict the same on someone else, which all but eliminates any psychological conflict. In WoW, if your 'toon dies, you run back from the graveyard or get someone to resurrect you...it's an irritation, an inconvenience, nothing more. Real world soldiers are not so lucky.

We have combat veterans and people close to those vets on this forum and your repeated comparisons of a game involving Elves and cow-people to live combat have belittled their (potentially horrific) experiences, whether you initially intended that or not. And now you say they're feigning offense?

The refusal to back down clearly demonstrates your lack of sensitivity on this topic...you HAVE to be right, regardless of how that affects others. It'd almost be sad, if it weren't already so cruel.

Okay... I was kind of hoping that I would be able to put it all down here -- with such gems as 'August 15th -- our RP group leader suggests I create an avatar for her to use at her own computer. I contemplate ways of shocking him through his mouse, but merely reply in the strong negative, citing IP concerns.'
And a friend of hers has said, and this is a direct quote, "he said, they wont release my account(s) and they will never let me make another one, until whoever is disputing the linden retract their charges, or resolve their dispute". She concludes that "Therefore, whatever I do... won't help at all."
This sound accurate?

EDIT: She mentions a story about someone who, with approximately one million Linden, was banned over less than 10,000 lindens being disputed. Two years ago, without resolution to this very day. Has anyone heard this one before?

FURTHER EDIT: She still hasn't called, though -- she was kind of ill the past two days, plus it's the weekend... I suggested she finally do the call tomorrow, even after all the above. (Okay, I pretty much shouted at her, "THEY DO NOT HATE YOU! They WANT your money, and HATE HAVING this dispute in the way of GIVING THEM MORE!" Though I was a hair nicer than that.)

What is the source of the dispute? stolen Lindens?



No - sorry. Never heard of it. I would think this case would be infamous on third party sites.

Okay, about time I reiterate, with some new info, so here goes...

Her first dispute was a double-charging issue with her premium account -- as she puts it, and she wasn't very clear at first, she had both payment options attached to her account simultaneously. (I can see it seems to be possible to do this, though for the life of me, I can't figure out why, unless she was often short on one or the other.) This was before the end of March, but she noticed it in July, that her credit card and PayPal had an identical charge for $72 US. She disputed this with PayPal AND her credit card company, and wrote a support ticket. She was banned from her Primary immediately, and her Secondary, who she'd been purchasing the Lindens for and transferred them to, a few days later. (She creates her third alt, 'a chat window with legs' as I put it, to tell her friends of this. I suggest she actually share her e-mail address with two or three of us, and she agrees.)

She has no luck remedying this situation with support tickets, and finally calls, where she's told she cannot have her accounts released until the dispute is resolved. Her response is to cancel the disputed charge with her credit card and PayPal, and eat the $72. She tells me this through her secondary avatar -- which has become her primarily-used av, particularly with her design advisory business. So that dispute should be gone, or so we both think.

Within a week, all three of her avatars are blocked, due to the secondary avatar 'receiving disputed lindens in excess of L$5000'. They don't tell her this for three days, though, of constant ticketing from all of her avatars. They have not said who allegedly gave it to her, though she actually hasn't ever purchased L$ directly using that avatar, period -- she did so at first by buying them from her primary, and then transferring them to her secondary, but for a few months, her income was for design help. The major kicker is that I hear about this through another avatar, who she creates, again, for communications' sake at first. (I think this was a bad idea, too, but from her perspective, she was told how long disputes take to resolve the previous time, and she knew she had no control, and ... she just couldn't stay away.)

A week goes by, and she's starting to get depressed from not getting a straight answer as to what happened, and how long this is going to take, and she wants to get back into the RP group in the meantime, so she asks for some help getting her to look like 'herself' again. A mutual friend agrees to go looking for gift items, but the skin she used isn't available as a gift. So, said friend gives her the money for the skin. She is logged off and blocked from that avatar within the minute.

So the first dispute was resolved to their stated satisfaction, and the second dispute is quite a mess ... she says she's had several people pay her more than 5000 lindys for her work. (Awfully impressive, though it's not the actual outfits if I understand it, it's the designs of the outfits, so she really doesn't give them anything concrete in return. Though I will double-check with her on that, it makes it difficult to prove her reasons for being paid.)



I do hope you're right... it seems to be a massively extreme case, and I've yet to know how her lawyer friend heard of this. But it was meant to illustrate the point that Linden Labs can ban you because they feel like it, as long as it's not obviously a case of bias. My counter-point is of course "But they LIKE you giving them money, so they want to resolve this if at all possible."

okay thats a bit hard to follow. I understand whats happened now

They Double billed her - But to their system its a legit charge

She cancels both payments - So to them she didn't pay

She reinstates both - So now shes paid.

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

Shes was passing around Lindens between accounts that are probably flagged by billing.

And then she gets Lindens from a disputed source so she gets suspended.

Its part of the Risk API stuff.

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

Did they say why the lindens were disputed?

Billing probably thinks her account is used to scam people.

How is it possible to have two payment methods attached? It always required me to cancel whatever the current one when I made changes in the past.

It isn't, when you change cc info, the original info is deleted first.

You can't have two methods, not as long as I've been a member. I sincerely wonder if this person knows what she was doing at all. Honestly, at this point, I think she should just suck it up and take the billing as is because they are probably right.

Not sure that matters since that problem evidently has been settled.

She cant take the billing as it is since shes banned due to the disputed Linden Payments.

Yeah, I didn't think two methods was possible, but I haven't changed mine in over a year so I figured it was possible some change had been made since then.

Here's what I'm wondering: is this credit card attached to her PayPal? Because, if she didn't have sufficient funds in the PayPal account, PayPal would have billed the credit card as a secondary funding source. At first glance, that would give the appearance of a $72 charge on both, even though the money had actually only been deducted once.

Definitely possible, and so far no one knows if it's at all possible to set up a double payment system ... I do notice that the screen for billing information only implies that your previous credit card will be deleted, as does your previous PayPal information. I say implies, because it's entirely possible that a card's deleted when a PayPal account's entered in (and I'd almost go so far as to say 'likely', though I've never used PayPal for SL so I have no way of knowing). It's supposed to be moot, however, as she dropped the dispute entirely.

And, as for Collette's question, she hasn't been told very clearly why they've been suspended, although apparently she's been told in one live chat about 'multiple chargebacks and disputes'. When asked for a clarification, noting that the only dispute she's ever heard of was settled, she was given the silent treatment for an hour.

EDIT: I did click on deleting and continuing to PayPal just now, and it doesn't seem to have deleted my credit card. Can't finalize it of course, since I don't have an active PayPal account. Has anyone ever tried to have two at once? (Kind of a longshot, I know.)