I have had the exact identical problem as you, David and am frustrated by the results.  I am a 36 yr old CPA who has casually played the game for 3 years.  I got the same "exploitation" message over the weekend and have been banned.  There is no way I have exploited the game as I play conservatively. 

I called the 1-800-59blizz number and was told that I had to submit an e-mail for an "investigation" to begin.  I too ran the anti-spam/anti-virus scans and found no keyloggers, etc. on my system.  I’ve paid blizzard hundreds of dollars and they can’t even give me a human to talk to resolve.  I was also told I would continue to be billed during the suspension. 

P.S. I came across your webpage as I tried to google "warcraft account adminstration phone number"

I have to agree with David here.  Blizzard is severely lacking in their customer service department.  When "GM’s" in game are only capable of responding via canned macro scripts and emails are responded to using standard form letters frustration abounds.  Unfortunately I’m too much of an addict to quit because of this.  I just wish they’d get a clue.

Honestly, Blizz needs to get rid of trial accounts, period. They are used by spammers to annoy others, and honestly as a consumer, you are better off buying the game and getting your free month with full playing privledges, than spending the "free trial" period functionally crippled (no mail, no trades).

Bottom line, you get what you paid for. If you want to play the tame, pay the price.

Never have seen this problem with my accounts.  btw, I put the game on the shelf 6 months ago with 2 70′s all epic. 

One thing that could be suspicious is that you said you had created several characters and "we" were putting them through thier paces.  Were you the only person playing?  The number of recently created characters vs playtime could raise a flag or 2 if they were out of balance.  Leveling services and gold farming services are huge now adays.  Blizzard takes those issues very seriously.

Also, I gotta ask…why "research" a game that has been out for the better part of 3 years? 

On the other hand of customer service, blizz’s gm’s are the best customer service I have ever ran into….albeit a little slow, but nonetheless very effective.

It only took three days but I finally received a response from a GM:

“I’d like to let you know exactly what happened. First off, nothing you did on the account was objectionable; this was an error on our part, and I apologize for the inconvenience it caused. As part of our aggressive efforts to protect the quality of the game experience for all players, we monitor our realms and regularly take strong action against accounts that are used to exploit game elements or spam other players with website ads. In this isolated occurrence, the account you were playing on was mistakenly identified as such.”

If they had IM or phone contacts, I could have told them this earlier. A veteran WoW player assured me I would hear back from the company, and he was right.

If it’s true that Blizzard’s parent Vivendi ended the phone support that could have helped fix this, shame on them.

On a typical day, I get off work, grab a shower get some food and then relax in my comfy black leather chair, and engage in World of Warcraft. I get to play seldom during the week, with work and jogging, and all that other fun stuff. Today however, Blizzard had different plans, I was farming on my Mage in Netherstorm and poof..I was disconnected from the game and then emailed stating that I had done some criminal act and have been completely and permanently removed from the game. I couldn’t believe it, I’ve played this game since release and have never had any issues until yesterday night.

I am the guild leader of a guild on feathermoon and we were just starting to get our 25 man raid going, apparently I epic farmed my way to a permanent ban? The reason on my ban stated was that I was using 3rd party programs? Which means what? I’m some sort of bot or something? I’ve done 10 man, 25 man instances and am the guild leader of my guild, I really think they screwed up on this one. I tried calling blizzard, and was told repeatedly that only account administration can handle such issues. I tried pleading with the person on the other line but, what is some 19 year old kid going to do, really? Next step I took was emailing blizzard at their account admin email, and was basically given the same bogus excuse, it’s almost really as if he/she didn’t even look and just went along with whatever the original person did.

I’m fairly disappointed because I’ve put in 3 years of my life into this game and I don’t want it to mean nothing because of some idiot who completely missed the ball and thinks I’m using some sort of hack or 3rd party program like a bot? I’ve never even heard of the term "packet sniffing" software that they mentioned and accused me of using. Frankly what are my options at this point? It’s been a day thus far, but I feel helpless and I basically have to hope that someone out there will care enough to look into things and actually investigate my issue.

If anyone has any feedback or advice, let me know, at the moment I’m just basically stunned at the randomness of being booted off, forever for something which is completely false.

Sincerely,

Jonathon/Phase – Feathermoon (RP)

My account was placed on a 3 hour suspension because of language useage in GUILDCHAT…I was reported AS A JOKE by one of my guildmates for cussing durring a raid and blizzard suspended my account…even after the individual told the guy several times it was a joke and didn’t even think you could be suspended for cussing in raid chat.

I logged into another account to discuss this issue with a GM and was told by the GM "You need to log into the account that is suspended to discuss questions and details pertaining to that account, we cannot assist you unless you are logged into the account in question"

apparently the logic behind trying to log into an account that cannot be logged into missed this guy…so I said screw it and went out and got some cocktails that night instead of messing with it anymore. 

I tried to log in the next day and my account had been banned because of security reasons.  as well as my friends account that I logged in to in order to talk to a GM.  Apparently we have been banned because we are sharing an account in order to exploit the game is the reason we have been given.

Blizzard’s AA department takes at least 24 hours to return emails and there is no way to contact them by phone that I have been able to find.  I have tried to reason with these people in every way possible yet they seem hell bent on just sending me canned/automated responses to my emails instead of actually looking at the situation.

the lack of phone support or even an IM support is the most absurd thing I have ever heard of…especially when the delay from email support is 24 hours or more.

I’ve had this game, paid my monthly bill, and played it just fine since November of 2004…at $15 a month for 42 months that comes out to $630 and for that price I cannot even get 2 minutes of someones time on the phone…its completely absurd

i have a similar problem, i recently started playing world of warcraft again after about a year of not playing. me and my brother started new characters on a new server. second evening into my accnt i try to log on after a little break and i get the banned message…i am currently waiting for a response from blizz but looking at the storys on here im becoming less and less hopeful by the minute. wow is a joke to begin with there customer service and GM "help" has been utterly useless to me in my experience and now for no reason at all i cant play on my acct…maybe because ive played for about 12 hours in 2 days on 2 different characters they think im hacking? i dont know, i do have a few UI mods but the blizz support websites say that stuff is all good. this is ridiculous. i also have a forsaken mage, after playing with a warr for a day. maybe the chinks have figured out some uber way of grinding using UD mages and this is the result, innoccent bans.

Not long time ago I sold my WoW account, and in about 2 weeks blizzard contacted me and told me that my account was stolen however they restored all the data and gave me access. I mean I didn’t ask em to, why should they bother if I don’t?

Well I can tell that i’ve been banned a week ago. Haven’t got any mail what i’ve done. My main problem is that they doesn’t answer me, so made a trail and started to spam GMs which was the only way i could communicate with them. They couldn’t help me at all, every time u launch WoW they are checking for files which shouldn’t be there. So well i was sharing comp with my bro he had a bot and i got banned for not using it =S. This shows how we can trust them, and how their system works. ! 

Well.. I had 4 70′s, though I only played 3.  Two of which were in full season 3 with over 2k ratings in arenas.  I only logged in for arenas, so I really didn’t spend too much time online unless I was actively working on something.. I didn’t raid.  I was playing arenas on the 20th, when I got suddenly disconnected.  Attempting to log back in brought up a message saying my account had been closed.  I waited for an email that never came.  I got an email from my cousin, one of my arena partners, saying he had been banned for 3rd party software which is what they claimed in the email he received, and when I still hadn’t received anything myself, I sent Account Admin an email asking for an explanation.  Three days later I got a generic, obviously cut and pasted, anonymous email that covered all the reasons they would ever ban someone.  It ignored basically all of the questions I asked.  I sent another email appealing the ban as that email explained I should do, but It’s now been twelve days with no response. 

I have never used a 3rd party program or shared my account info.  I had logged in three days before from my cousin’s, but that was a fresh reboot and I had closed all programs that were not necessary for performance reasons.  I know nothing was running in the background.  It is the only time I have ever logged in from that IP address.

I called Billing and was told that my first email was treated as my appeal, so other emails will be ignored, nevermind that I was never given a reason to begin with and that the purpose of the first email was simply to figure out what was going on.  I asked to speak to his supervisor and my request was denied, as was my asking for any other phone number I could call.  I was given the postal address for their Legal Department, but beyond that, the call was pointless.  I was told that I had agreed to their terms of service when I played and that maybe I should play a different game. 

I would think that someone who has been a member of the wow community since its beginnings should at least be given the courtesy of talking with another human being over something that they have put so much of their time into. 

I plan to continue calling on a daily basis,  though I am far from optimistic at this point and to send their legal department a letter. 

One very disappointed Former Blizzard supporter

I had someone hack into my account and change all of my information.  Even though I had no back up supporting info – i dont keep my game cards after I use them and I also didnt put my name on the account that I created.  My account was back up and running in less then 24 hours.  It only took so long becuase I had to wait for the office to open as I am on eastern time.

I had good customer service with Blizzard, when I lost my CD-key once from a package and had to reinstall, I called up customer support who sent me to the email address, and quite quickly validate who I was and issued a new key, and got me back up and running.

I came home on May 20th, to find that both my wife’s account and mine were closed permenately due to vague reasons (wont bother listing, you are all familiar with the form letter).  We are both in our thirties, and recreational players.  I have two 70 lvl toons with about 50g total across all my toons, my wife has one 70 and is the guild leader of a medium sized guild on muradin.  There is absolutely nothing in our play history that would indicate that we are bot’ers or have hacked the system in any way.  We have been playing for over 2 years, and agree with the above posters that our loyalty to the game deserves more attention than what we received.  So those are the basics of our account closures.

We have gone back in forth with Account Admin for over a month, during that period (about a week after our closure) there is a big security alert on WOW.  The security issue is that Adobe has a patch that fixes a huge hole in Flash that allows attackers to ‘remotely’ operate your system without any knowledge of the user.  In the course of my emailing account admin, they mentioned that security of an account is completely on the user’s side.  My issue is that Adobe presented the patch on April 8, 2008, Blizzard didn’t mention it until May 29.  Therefore if they knowlingly allowed a hack into the system, then security no longer rests on the shoulders of the user.  Considering that from Adobe themselves, the hole in flash allows the attacker in, and there is no way for the user to know. 

We have a small business that specializes in security, and wow was the only program that was allowed through the firewall…since the account closure, we have had numerous security issues with the network ie clients having to change their credit card numbers. 

I have opened a BBB compliant with the idea of addressing these security issues with Blizzard.  After waiting a month on a response to my BBB complaint, this is the ‘form’ response:

An investigation into the allegations contained in the complaint of Mr. ###### in association with account #######, BBB Complaint number ######, has revealed the Account was found to be employing a third party program that automates the actions of the characters in-game. On 5/16/08, 5/17/08 and 5/18/08 when the account #######, logged into the game server, Blizzard’s system detected a third party program that has been prohibited for use in conjunction with World of Warcraft by Blizzard. According to the World of Warcraft Terms of Use Agreement which all subscribers agree to upon registering an account to play World of Warcraft, “You agree that you will not (i) modify or cause to be modified any files that are a part of the Program of the Service; (ii) create or use cheats, bots, “mods”, and/or Hacks, or any other third party software designed to modify the World of Warcraft experience.” Under these circumstances, the account, ####### was terminated on 5/20/08. A notice of Account Closure detailing the Terms of Use violation was sent to ############# on that day. Any disputes or questions concerning this account action can only be addressed by Account Administration at wowaccountadmin@blizzard.com

Which is funny because this was my wife’s account, who wasn’t even online during that period.  I however was, on my acount farming for mats to make a cloak that I got to use ONE day.  Regardless, my BBB complaint had nothing to do with the account closure, but the security hole that they knowlingly allowed into my network.  Point, if Blizzard doesn’t even read the BBB complaints, what will they read?  I am going to start hunting for a lawyer or class action suit already filed, because I can’t be the only one that has received actual harm from wow.

In regards to WOW, this is a lifelong Blizzard fan (diablo, starcraft…etc) that is now looking forward to Stargate Worlds, and will never give Blizzard another dollar.