SMEDLEY: Credit Farmers Costing SOE Big Money

Iakimo · Unread post by **Iakimo** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:32 am

I'd always thought it would take some real bite from credit-farmer/RMT companies to motivate the game companies to get serious about shutting them down. Well, here's an excerpt from massively.com's interview with John Smedley, showing such a cost....

Massively: Earlier you mentioned the problem of farmers with regards to Station Access. I know that's something the company feels very strongly about?

John Smedley: I think the issue of farming is higher on the radar now than it ever has been. The behinds the scenes things are really frustration. A lot of these farmers are essentially stealing from us. What they do is they charge us back all the time. They use a credit card â€“sometimes stolen, sometimes not â€“ to buy an account key. They use the account for a month, and then they call the credit card company and charge it back. We have suffered nearly a million dollars just in fines over the past six months; it's getting extremely expensive for us. What's happening is that when they do this all the time, the credit card companies come back to us and say "You have a higher than normal chargeback rate, therefore we'll charge you fines on top of that." We're really trying to get on top of that. We're taking our current efforts up about five notches to Defcon 1 on this issue. They bug us even more than they bug our customers, and we're definitely taking steps to implement rigorous anti-farming efforts....

http://www.massively.com/2008/01/14/a-c ... dley-pt-2/

About the only question I would raise is whether such a large number for card chargebacks is entirely due to credit farmers, or whether a part of it is from people sampling a SOE game, and deciding it sucked. But I'm cynical that way.

Istik · Unread post by **Istik** » Tue Feb 19, 2008 7:48 am

Surely the bank would investigate such a large number of chargebacks and not keep allowing it for the same transaction over and over.

swalmy · Unread post by **swalmy** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:15 am

Why and how are you even allowed to charge back that?

A'Ton Sands · Unread post by **A'Ton Sands** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:19 am

I read some ware that a Uk bank is refusing to make WoW payments from cards because of fraud.

found it:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/02/15/halifax_blizzard_block/

Toucan · Unread post by **Toucan** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 4:55 am

banks do charge it back

like any business they make risk analasis
if something is costing them money, then they will put in measures to recoup it

these charges are there do encourage the businesses to take every possible step to prevent fraud

if they are gonna get fined, then they will do everything they can to prevent it

Iakimo · Unread post by **Iakimo** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 10:42 am

swalmy wrote:Why and how are you even allowed to charge back that?

Here in the USA, credit-card laws are in place that give people who purchase products with a credit card, 30 days to request that the card provider not issue payment to a seller for a product purchase. It was intended as a safeguard against fraud, either in the form of mail-order companies not delivering the ordered product, or traditional retailers doing things like not honoring warranties in the event of product failure, but such laws do indeed appear antiquated in this era of downloaded computer software, as Smedley said.

Istik · Unread post by **Istik** » Wed Feb 20, 2008 11:24 am

Iakimo wrote:
swalmy wrote:Why and how are you even allowed to charge back that?

Here in the USA, credit-card laws are in place that give people who purchase products with a credit card, 30 days to request that the card provider not issue payment to a seller for a product purchase. It was intended as a safeguard against fraud, either in the form of mail-order companies not delivering the ordered product, or traditional retailers doing things like not honoring warranties in the event of product failure, but such laws do indeed appear antiquated in this era of downloaded computer software, as Smedley said.

What i was trying to ask is how they manage to do this over and over again. To the same company. You would think that it would flag something in the system if the same person, or the same card holder, repeatedly purchases and uses chargeback on the same service or company.

Surely they arent using that many credit cards?

swalmy · Unread post by **swalmy** » Thu Feb 21, 2008 1:07 am

Why do you keep calling everyone surely?

Iakimo · Unread post by **Iakimo** » Sat Feb 23, 2008 9:41 am

Istik wrote:
Iakimo wrote:
swalmy wrote:Why and how are you even allowed to charge back that?

Here in the USA, credit-card laws are in place that give people who purchase products with a credit card, 30 days to request that the card provider not issue payment to a seller for a product purchase. It was intended as a safeguard against fraud, either in the form of mail-order companies not delivering the ordered product, or traditional retailers doing things like not honoring warranties in the event of product failure, but such laws do indeed appear antiquated in this era of downloaded computer software, as Smedley said.

What i was trying to ask is how they manage to do this over and over again. To the same company. You would think that it would flag something in the system if the same person, or the same card holder, repeatedly purchases and uses chargeback on the same service or company.

Surely they arent using that many credit cards?

Good question. Smed was implying the cards are often fraudulent -- often stolen, or possibly ginned up as some sort of temporary card.