Locked out of Steam/Civ V because of PayPal security

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First off, if you're going to tell someone to "think for a second," at least take a minute to read the original poster's post. Paypal made the acccusation, not Steam, you say?

"PayPal put a hold on the $12.48 payment for some reason, and Steam locked my account under the classification of fraud.[/B]"

Do you get that? STEAM locked his account under the accusation of Fraud. Not Paypal, Steam. That you start out with an accusation that I'm not getting my facts straight while it's you that's making a blatant factual error doesn't help your case much.


I would like to introduce you to the concept of "Cause and Effect."

"PayPal put a hold on the $12.48 payment for some reason, and Steam locked my account under the classification of fraud."

PayPal's error, being an alleged arbitrary hold on funds, led to Steam handing a game to a customer- and then never getting paid for it. Steam not getting paid led to Steam withholding their services. I would also like to know what PayPal's justification for freezing an account "for some reason", if not an implied accusation of fraud. If you think that a pseudo-banking organization is justified in arbitrary withholding of your money, I don't understand how you can then say that a DRM organization is wrong for assuming that you owning a game without paying for it is theft.

The point remains: Don't use PayPal with Steam. If PayPal arbitrarily decides not to pay for purchases, and you know that Steam will react this way- and there is an alternative... use PayPal? No. Use your debit card. PayPal is notorious for this kind of action, and honestly, has a worse reputation that Steam ever will. Granted, if Steam thinks you are screwing them... they will eff you hard. However, PayPal has a history of just screwing you- regardless of what you did.

Make a purchase? Just kidding! Withholding funds.
Hold some money? Just kidding! Empty your bank account.
Transfer funds? Just kidding! Thanks for the cash.

However, the reason that Steam will close your account is that... it's not your account. It's Steams account- and they can close it whenever they want. As a DRM company, if they can't confirm that there is only 1 copy of the game out there... they will consider your copy forfeit. Most games EULA's as well as Steam's EULA are written this way. If you violate the terms of the contract, the company's obligation to you is nullified. Yes, it is a misunderstanding in this case- and Valve has atrocious customer service... but these are all very, very well known issues. The cause of this dilemma is PayPal just cancelling transactions because it's Friday. Or the moon is out. Or your socks are white.

I will admit (and have admitted), Steam needs to make these kinds of issues easier to resolve- but it's not their fault that PayPal is an unreliable, garbage system that is marginally better than handing your credit card information out on one of the various "chan" forums.
 
I avoid paypal at all costs as several of my relatives have lost money through it, so I don't know their policy on suspected fraudulent transactions. I do know however that my credit card monitors transactions for suspected fraud, looking particulalry for small transaction, to somewhere I haven't used before or recently and overseas. In my case when I started using Steam it ticked all 3 boxes and I had a call from the card company asking me to confirm the transaction. Luckily I was there to take the call otherwise it would have been stopped and I may well have been in the same situation. This is a 2 edged sword, on one hand it may protect me from people using my card details fraudulently (I have had this system catch 2 fraudulent transactions in the past), on the other it is a lot of hassle sorting things out when good payments are stopped. It sounds like a lot of hassle if it happens with steam.
 
Call in the lawyers!!!

Some lawyer must know everything in fidgeridoo vs muckisinmybackside!
It's going to depend on the country. In the U.S., EULA's are legal documents- so long as it doesn't infringe on your natural rights (They can't literally enslave you, for example) you are held to that contract. If you violate it, they can cancel your subscription. This leads to the blanket statements you commonly see in EULA's.

For example, Steam's EULA says that they can freeze your account based on "suspicion" of illegal activity.

Granted, nobody reads these... but people should. They sound scary, sometimes, but if you aren't trying to screw the company they generally will return the favor. Others just have humorous clauses. For example, you cannot use iTunes to build weapons of mass destruction- per their EULA.
 
I don't understand Steam's reaction. Fraud intended or not, wouldn't the right response be to halt the purchase in question rather than the entire account? Just don't activate the DLC being purchased while the issue is being sorted. How are they going to lose anything with this approach?

I mean Steam already received the 100 bucks paid for the delux right? How is it fair to go back and take away something which has already been paid for?

Whether their EULA says they can is beside the point, it's downright overboard.
 
And the only thing you can criticize is Paypal, and see *nothing* wrong with Steam whatsoever?
No, because Steam had nothing to do with this, Valve did and I had nothing to say about it. There reaction isn't very good, but you do get the game immediately after purchasing, before the money even goes through though they could just delete the game I guess.

Payments go on hold sometimes for legitimate reasons and it's not just paypal that does it. If Steam's reaction to this is to lock an account and accuse the owner of fraud, you really see nothing whatsoever wrong with that? I hope this guy finds some way to appease them, but I get the feeling that as long as Steam has people who will unconditionally support it and repeatedly shuffle any blame that might be directed towards it to other sources they really don't have much reason to bend for their customer base.
And you are completely leaping to your own pet conclusion that I think Steam and Valve are perfect and infallible, which they are not. And as esemjay said, Paypal is notorious for screwing its customers

Spoiler :
I would like to introduce you to the concept of "Cause and Effect."

"PayPal put a hold on the $12.48 payment for some reason, and Steam locked my account under the classification of fraud."

PayPal's error, being an alleged arbitrary hold on funds, led to Steam handing a game to a customer- and then never getting paid for it. Steam not getting paid led to Steam withholding their services. I would also like to know what PayPal's justification for freezing an account "for some reason", if not an implied accusation of fraud. If you think that a pseudo-banking organization is justified in arbitrary withholding of your money, I don't understand how you can then say that a DRM organization is wrong for assuming that you owning a game without paying for it is theft.

The point remains: Don't use PayPal with Steam. If PayPal arbitrarily decides not to pay for purchases, and you know that Steam will react this way- and there is an alternative... use PayPal? No. Use your debit card. PayPal is notorious for this kind of action, and honestly, has a worse reputation that Steam ever will. Granted, if Steam thinks you are screwing them... they will eff you hard. However, PayPal has a history of just screwing you- regardless of what you did.

Make a purchase? Just kidding! Withholding funds.
Hold some money? Just kidding! Empty your bank account.
Transfer funds? Just kidding! Thanks for the cash.

However, the reason that Steam will close your account is that... it's not your account. It's Steams account- and they can close it whenever they want. As a DRM company, if they can't confirm that there is only 1 copy of the game out there... they will consider your copy forfeit. Most games EULA's as well as Steam's EULA are written this way. If you violate the terms of the contract, the company's obligation to you is nullified. Yes, it is a misunderstanding in this case- and Valve has atrocious customer service... but these are all very, very well known issues. The cause of this dilemma is PayPal just cancelling transactions because it's Friday. Or the moon is out. Or your socks are white.

I will admit (and have admitted), Steam needs to make these kinds of issues easier to resolve- but it's not their fault that PayPal is an unreliable, garbage system that is marginally better than handing your credit card information out on one of the various "chan" forums.

I agree very much with this, Paypal needs some serious competition (there is Google Checkout but it has not been widely adopted) and to shape up. Valve also needs a more user friendly reaction.
 
I would like to introduce you to the concept of "Cause and Effect."

"PayPal put a hold on the $12.48 payment for some reason, and Steam locked my account under the classification of fraud."

PayPal's error, being an alleged arbitrary hold on funds, led to Steam handing a game to a customer- and then never getting paid for it. Steam not getting paid led to Steam withholding their services. I would also like to know what PayPal's justification for freezing an account "for some reason", if not an implied accusation of fraud. If you think that a pseudo-banking organization is justified in arbitrary withholding of your money, I don't understand how you can then say that a DRM organization is wrong for assuming that you owning a game without paying for it is theft.

Well, steams actions are somewhat as follows:
"I go to a store and bu some groceries. At the check-out the lady says that will be $20. Mistakenly I hand her a ten dollar bill. The store security guard immediately detains me in accusation of fraud an holds me until the police arrive."

The store can do this legally, however it is incredibly bad customers service, and I would probably never visit that store again. A more correct response of the store would be for the clerk to say: "Sorry, you handed me ten, I asked for twenty."

Similarly, the reasonable thing for steam to do in this situation is to inform the client that they have not received their payment and request that he/she makes the payment in some other form. Possibly with a warning that if they do not do so within X amount of time their account will be frozen. Where X is something reasonable like 72 hours. It is not like Steam has anything to loose by assuming a little good faith on the part of its customers and delay freezing the account by a couple of days.
 
Trias, let me make Your example more accurate:

At the check-out you give the lady envelope (paypal transfer) saying that there's $20 inside. Lady in the store don't know if you payed all, but let you go with your groceries (steam still don't have the money, but you received game and are able to play it). Lady opens envelope and finding only $10 inside. She will yell at security guard to catch you and you won't be allowed to leave home until full bill will be payed. But if you already go home, at this point you're thief.

My point to example: in grocery store you can't start using product until you pay for it.
 
Trias, let me make Your example more accurate:

At the check-out you give the lady envelope (paypal transfer) saying that there's $20 inside. Lady in the store don't know if you payed all, but let you go with your groceries (steam still don't have the money, but you received game and are able to play it). Lady opens envelope and finding only $10 inside. She will yell at security guard to catch you and you won't be allowed to leave home until full bill will be payed. But if you already go home, at this point you're thief.

My point to example: in grocery store you can't start using product until you pay for it.

In that example you are deliberately trying to cheat the store which is not the case. And of course, what really happens is that Steam not only suspend the actual product you have a dispute over. They close the entire account!

So in your example the security guard goes home and take back everything you have bought from them in the past!

Would love if I could take back all the money I have spent on Steam if one game wasn't working for a minute...
 
In that example you are deliberately trying to cheat the store which is not the case.

bugfix: your mom gave you envelope and sent shopping.

Why should i blame grocery store for holding me, if it's my mom's mistake.

And of course, what really happens is that Steam not only suspend the actual product you have a dispute over. They close the entire account!

So in your example the security guard goes home and take back everything you have bought from them in the past!

Would love if I could take back all the money I have spent on Steam if one game wasn't working for a minute...

With this one i agree, banning whole account is a bit to much, but that's their policy about payments and there's not much to do about it.

At this point i have almost 50 games on my account so i wouldn't appreciate ban like this. But i believe it's solvable by contacting with steam, only takes to long.
 
Trias, let me make Your example more accurate:

At the check-out you give the lady envelope (paypal transfer) saying that there's $20 inside. Lady in the store don't know if you payed all, but let you go with your groceries (steam still don't have the money, but you received game and are able to play it). Lady opens envelope and finding only $10 inside. She will yell at security guard to catch you and you won't be allowed to leave home until full bill will be payed. But if you already go home, at this point you're thief.

My point to example: in grocery store you can't start using product until you pay for it.

It is Steam's own choice to let you use the product before they have confirmed payment. By itself, this is not an unusual arrangement, many service providers use a similar arrangement. The difference being that service providers, will typically send you several reminders, if they didn't receive their payment, before cutting off their service.

Another example, I pay my utilities via automatic invoice. It can happen that such an invoice bounces due to lack of funds. When this happens my utility company does not immediately cut off my utilities (which is the equivalent of what Steam did here), instead they send me reminder invoice that my bill wasn't payed (possible with some added interest) with the kind request that I pay immediately. (And some fine print stipulating that if I don't within XX days they will cut off my utilities.)) This is normal (even for utility companies, the embodiment of corporate bastards).

Not behaving in a similar manner, and assuming good faith from your paying costumers, is incredibly bad form. doing so, means that the company is behaving as a complete and total [###]. Arguing that steam's behavior in this case is completely normal and acceptable, is simply impossible, because it is not.

EDIT:
There is no reason for Steam, to adopt a "block first, ask questions later" policy. It cost them nothing to ask questions first, and block later. Especially since the ask questions part here would be an automated E-mail, with the request to pay, no human intervention required on Steam's part. But apparently they choose to act like bastards, and they deserve to be chided for that by their costumers.
 
Solution, don't use Paypal. Seriously, Paypal sucks and does crap like this all the time.
The only solution is to use pre-paid cards for online gaming transactions.

I've seen too many billing issues with too many online games to risk supplying my credit card information ever again, too many cases of accounts being mysteriously re-activated months after being canceled to expect anything but the worst.
 
... I've got mine set to offline mode, but I've never tested it if actually lets me play offline...

I can answer this. You are set to offline mode. When you start the game, the first thing Steam does is go online. It goes online to see if there are any updates for Steam and, presumably, for your games. To the best of my knowledge, it will try to update itself, whether or not you're set for offline play.

I don't know about the games, but I presume it will try to update them as well, whether you're flagged for offline play or not.

Also note that Civ5 itself will try to get online. Not Steam, but Civ5.

I know this because I keep Steam in a box. I only let it out when I want it to get online access. Each time I start the game, Steam reports that "it can't get network access, do I want to play offline?".

Now, I don't know what would happen if you did that while not flagged on their website for offline play. You might want to try it.
 
I avoid paypal at all costs as several of my relatives have lost money through it, so I don't know their policy on suspected fraudulent transactions. I do know however that my credit card monitors transactions for suspected fraud, looking particulalry for small transaction, to somewhere I haven't used before or recently and overseas. In my case when I started using Steam it ticked all 3 boxes and I had a call from the card company asking me to confirm the transaction. Luckily I was there to take the call otherwise it would have been stopped and I may well have been in the same situation. This is a 2 edged sword, on one hand it may protect me from people using my card details fraudulently (I have had this system catch 2 fraudulent transactions in the past), on the other it is a lot of hassle sorting things out when good payments are stopped. It sounds like a lot of hassle if it happens with steam.


A simple solution to this is call and give the credit card company a heads up.
I had my credit card frozen one time while travelling outside the country. When I called to confirm it was a valid purchase, the customer service person suggested that I call the credit card company and let them know I was travelling. I've never had a problem since.

Frankly I'm a little alarmed at Steam's rather heavy handed response. I only installed Steam for the express purpose of playing Civ. I'm a little worried now about adding more games to my account
 
When Pay-Pal froze the account, that is the same as "Card Declined" when making a purchase. The reason your account is frozen is because you made the purchase, and you have the game... and you didn't pay for it. They just don't have any other way to protect the property, other than freeze your account.

Seems to me that the problem here is that Steam has frozen the account rather than just disabling the game.

The net effect is no different than if you paid Amazon for a game, it shipped to you, you told the credit card company not to honor the charge, and in response Amazon sent a raiding team to your house to confiscate every Amazon purchase you'd ever made.

It's legitimate to question why Steam can legally take the action they did, but Amazon is prohibited from doing the same. Especially since a just remedy (disable the game, not the account) should be technologically feasible.
 
The more I read this thread, the more inclined I am to not spend one penny on a DLC from Steam. I've lived OK so far without the additional Civs, I can tough it and keep living without them.
 
This is merely an example of the larger trend of the lower/middle classes becoming slaves to the wealthy/corporate elite. Unfortunately the wealthy elite is very good at using rhetoric to blind the public to what is really going on (a good example of this is the recent debate of public unions - the wealthy elite is branding the relative increase in public wages as greedy public servants so people won't notice that private wages have been frozen for over 40 years).

No due process. Corporations HATE due process. I can think of many EULAs that force people to surrender their day in court (banks are famous for this).
 
No due process. Corporations HATE due process. I can think of many EULAs that force people to surrender their day in court (banks are famous for this).

The EULA is a paper shield, and worth about that much. If you take this thing to court, it's not going to get tossed, and it will get decided on the question of whether or not Steam's action was legitimate. If deemed illegitimate (which is going to depend on the relative ideology of the jury or appellate judge), the ceiling on damages is going to be small even if tripled punitively.

You're missing what's going on here. The customer has a legitimate grievance, but the value of the grievance is sufficiently small that it isn't worth the costs of filing a lawsuit. Class action lawsuits are no remedy; it isn't worth your time to fight the lawyers to get a fair share of the proceeds from the lawsuit.

Organized interests are always going to defeat individuals under our present legal system. It really is that simple. Due process doesn't matter unless you do serious physical/economic harm to somebody, and that's what corporations have realized.
 
I got the NFL gamepass thing so I could watch games, since they are rarely on in Brazil.

After nearly 2 months, they informed me that they hadn't been paid, and the transaction didn't show up on PayPal, so...tried again, and it didn't go though again. With 2 weeks left in the season, my wife and I paid with a credit card, which did, finally, go though (but due to it being overseas and the first time with them, it was held until after the season was over.)

There was not a SINGLE MINUTE that I didn't have their service.

Of course, this is a $300 service...we are talking about a $100 "account."

The NFL had more reason to be mad and cut off service than Steam ever will for a single game.

So what was Steam to do? Maybe what big companies like the NFL do! Obviously a company that has existed for nearly 100 years and makes several billion dollars a year is quite a model. I find it hard to believe anyone would think Steam's approach is better.

I will be buying the game pass again next season. The inability to pay with PayPal did not result in the lock of my account for a moment, let alone forever.

I am curious as to why ANYONE thinks it is justified that Steam lock an account over such a small thing, in spite of what other companies do, particularly when the OP bought the game from GameStop.

What in the world gives one company the right to prevent you from using what you legally purchased from another company?

The example with the grocery store...try this: You go to a computer store and buy a computer, then get $20 worth of groceries, but your card had a problem in the store was never paid. Therefore, the grocery store goes to your house, takes back their food AND your computer.

He got the game from GameStop and Steam says he can't play it. Why can you buy the computer from a computer store and the grocery store tell you that you can't use it?
 
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