Neopets class action Lawsuit

[cpvr]

Wow, I was doing some research on Neopets - and a few users are mad as heck, they want to file a class action lawsuit against Neopets/Viacom for bad customer service, and losing their accounts for no reason.

http://www.la.bbb.org/Business-Repor...tscom-13161104
it has a rating of F
lol
We strongly question the company’s reliability for reasons such as that they have failed to respond to complaints, their advertising is grossly misleading, they are not in compliance with the law’s licensing or registration requirements, their complaints contain especially serious allegations, or the company’s industry is known for its fraudulent business practices.

Check this out http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/...e-dispute.html
OP said:

I understand that neopets is soon to be sued for closing accounts wrongly--and perhaps fraud etc. Can I join in and where do I send details.

I emailed WLD last week and was told to wait until today to see if any lawsuits might be filed???

Please help!


Ann

Can they really file a lawsuit on Neopets?

User 2:

I am filing in small claims. They closed my account with no justification.

Accounts seem to be getting frozen for no reason a lot - have you been frozen for no reason?
Another:

My account was frozen after I visited a user shop with a cookie grabber. I filled out all the forms and sent them in and got some scripted responses saying I did not have enough information to be sure it was my account. I knew the email addresses associated with the account, the password, pets created/adopted. More than enough to substantiate it was my account. I had bought neocash through paypal and my name and email address matched and everything. I offered to scan my driver's liscence and send it in. No reponse. I tried replying to the scripted answers and they ignored them all. I tried sending in the forms again and was no longer answered at all. I spent over $475.00 on neocash and was a premium member paying the yearly fee for 3 years. I filed a complaint with the BBB and they ignored it.

3 years, and banned for getting cookie grabbed? Ouch. What do you think?

Hi, I work for CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) and am looking for a Neopets user from Calgary, Alberta. If you are, could you email me with contact information at meghan.grant@cbc.ca
Thanks, Meghan Grant - CBC Radio

I would also like to take part in this lawsuit. My accounts keep getting frozen for no reason even after I create a new one after the others were frozen first. My account has over 1500 dollars worth of Neocash and Keyquest Tokens, not to mention random codes from other things. I've had no luck with emailing them, I just get sarcastic useless remarks from this company.

Please email me n3rdymama@aol.com

Frozen for "auto-buying" when all I did was buy items.

Neopets needs to be put to a stop. Ever since Viacom bought them out, they are all about our money. As soon as I buy something from them, I get frozen. Please solve this issue as its been going on to everyone
worldwide for too long.

Also, they have automated staff and if there is actually a human staff, they repeat the same thing and are very rude and refuse to help. Their customer support needs improvement as well. They also lack a business number to contact them via phone for quality service and proof of human monitoration. Everything is automated on Neopets, this should be stopped.

Buying items in the main shop isn't something that'll get you banned for no reason.

I think due to many complaints against Neopets, the lawyers here have an investigation ongoing and may help file an action with the Attorney General offices, as a class action.

What did the BBB say about all of that? Neopets never responded at all?

Page 2:
http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/...dispute-2.html

I also have had My account frozen "for the users protection" after I unknowingly went into a shop that was obvioulsy a cookie grabbers shop, and its been 2 weeks now. It took them less than 12hrs to freeze My account after I notified them that I had been scammed but I have yet to receive an email back from them about getting My account back. I canceled My premium member ship because of this and I spent hundreds, possibly even thousands of dollars in on neocash for this site. They do nothing but use their customers and dont care an inkling about how they treat them. I think the next step for people who have been screwed by them is to start complaining and writing emails to their sponsors. Im sure that companies that sponsor them wouldnt want to be associated with such treatment as what they give their customers. I hope that this site is shut down and that the people running it are run right into bankruptcy.

Hi, I was unjustly frozen as well. My account was nearly 10 years old and I've been paying for Premium since its inception. I submitted a ticket, certain that this would be straightened out, but I've received two canned responses, basically blowing me off. The Neopets Team claim that I was "buying neopoints from a scammer" and that they have proof, yet they refuse to produce it. I am an adult, not a child. I play Neopets while my son is napping, never would I have a reason to cheat. The idea is absurd. This site has gone way downhill since Viacom bought it out.

Neopets' customer service strives on auto responses - agree or disagree? Their customer service isn't up to par - have you ever gotten a response from Neopets?

Page 3:
http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/...dispute-3.html

would like to be a part of a class action lawsuit. They froze my account for something I don't even understand and are not replying back to me (buy/sell neopoints? they only allow you to buy/sell items through 3 methods; trade post, auctions, and shops). I wasted money (over 500 bucks) on their NC Items and I wasted more money on their monthly Premium Service. They have yet to show me why they REALLY froze and banned my account!! And where is evidence? What practices are they employing to come up with any 'so-called evidence', which they will probably tell me they have. I would like to see what they 'have'. They are a joke and RIPOFF!!!!!

Send me a message at sparkle772@gmail.com


The BBB rating for Neopets is a big fat F!

Can I also sign up for this? My five year old account just got frozen for 'buying neopoints/items/pets' when in reality I'm just a good reseller/restocker. My poor friend who JUST got the ball rolling on neopoints also got frozen along with me because apparently our interaction must have been suspicious.

As players - why are we getting banned for no reason, when our accounts are old?


Page 3

http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/...dispute-4.html

They froze my account for buy/sell neopoints when I was under the impression that they only offered certain ways to buy/sell ITEMS only (trades, auctions, and shops). They say one of my recent trades was a buy/sell neopoints attempt. It would have been nice for them to have explained the situation the first time around so that I would have understood what they were implying from the beginning. Instead they take forever to respond with automated messages and when they finally do respond they are rude and un-helpful!

They are unjust....unfair.

How was I suppose to know not to accept the trade? Neopets could have warned me! Now my hard work was a waste; as well as the hundreds of dollars I spent on NC Mall Items and the Neopets Premium Service.

I am really disappointed here at this loss. A lot of time and effort went into my account, don't forget money too (over 700 dollars I am sure of). I feel as though I did all that (for almost 3 years) for them to make up lame excuses to freeze people; without proof too! Then they refuse to investigate the issue for you. Neopets knows I asked them to repeatedly. I loved Neopets. I loved the NC Mall. I never cared about Neopoints. I wanted to have a mass collection of Mall Items and I DID! They took it away. They need to refund all that money!

sparkle772 @gmail.com

Spending money on Neopets, and getting banned for no reason? We're trying to support the game, why are they doing this to premium account users?

I also would like to join in on this, they've frozen my 2 older accounts which would be 8 or 9 years by now. They're very unjustly when it comes to freezing accounts for wrongly assumptions. The two old accounts I got frozen over were because I was being harassed on the boards and the people harassing me then I reported them but come to find out they reported me so Neopets froze my accounts. Then I summit an idea last week on my account and one of the staff members comes back and says this rude message which I have a screenshot of here:

http://i110.photobucket.com/albums/n...opetsstaff.jpg

Also, I have heard from a friend that Neopets had frozen ALL of his accounts because he had adopted and created many of the same pet? How is that against the rules if he REALLY liked the pet and wanted multiple ones? I don't understand.. Because last time I checked it wasn't against the rules to create the same type of pet. (UNLESS they updated their rules..) That's like saying "Oh, I'm sorry but we are going to have to freeze your account because you have too many Lupes, etc." You know, whatever pet you may like that you "may" have too many of.

This is beyond cruel, you'd actually think the staff members would be nice to their paying customers who play their games but no people who actually pay actual REAL money for games like this and end up getting treated like crap like this how do they intend on keeping their customers and their games up and running if they treat us like this?

They said this game was firstly made for college students when their staff is acting like a bunch of children.

This is the last time I'll ever give my ideas to people like them. Which makes me never want to spend another dime on Neocash for exclusive nice items for the pets.

I really hope the BBB actually investigates this, regardless of Neopets being one of my favorite sites, I'd rather see it shut down just so other people don't get treated like crap after spending money and all their time into the game for being wrongly frozen, rude answers to suggestions, question, etc..

Children are getting banned too?

http://www.worldlawdirect.com/forum/...dispute-5.html

I would also like to be involved in a class action against Neopets. I self froze after being key-logged on my Premium account and now they won't return my account saying I can't prove my identity. They are still debiting my C/Card though for my frozen account and alias even though they have said I am not who I say I am and I have been using the same C/Card for quite a while.

More information can be found at BBB about Neopets and their terrible customer service and complaint resolution procedures!

What does everyone think about this so-called lawsuit? Do you think it'll go anywhere, or no?

[Corleone]

That's really messed up, but could they actually win in court?

[Carl]

http://ssokids.mtvnservices.com/terms/

All their players have agreed to these terms, so they don't really have much of a case.

[astrail]

Alright then... lets begin. THIS WILL BE LONG, I KNOW IT. AND ITS PROBABLY NOT GOING TO MAKE MUCH SENSE

First of all, if neopets can be sued for bad customer service... then deviantart better watch out. Deviantarts customer service, from what I know and in my opinion, is much worse. Lets just mention the gender vs sex drama from last year, and the deactivation drama from end of last year/ beginning of this. Both examples of major slip ups by the admin team.

And now lets take a look at some of these claims.
The person who said their account was "Frozen for its protection"? Has no right to complain. Their account WILL be returned to them. It was frozen to stop someone else on the account!! Sure, customer service is slow... but er...
Players Online: 18,430 and Total Owners: 185,107,576
Do they really expect customer service to be fast when there are that many players? True, not all of them are active. But remember the economy right now is in a recession, and no doubt Neopets INC are running on the lowest amount of staff possible (Like. everyone. else)
Buying neocash, and having premium membership, also does not entitle you to special treatment on neopets. You get nice things, thats it. Your account will not be seen as "better" than a non premium/ non DONATER. Because its unfair treatment for people who have the money to spend. If you do something to warrant being frozen, TNT aren't even going to look to see how much money you've spent on the site. You break the rules, you pay for it.
http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index....rial&issue=350 - No staff member is a "bot".
http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index....rial&issue=382 - Older players do not get treated differently for the same thing. It all depends on your record.
http://ncmall.neopets.com/mall/shop.phtml?page=&cat= - There are no refunds on the NCmall
http://www.neopets.com/ntimes/index....rial&issue=336 "We try to do our best though. We do read your emails, and yes, our support staff does read your ideas and forward exceptional (and funny!) ones to our content staff. Aside from our pre-scripted "we got your email" responses, any other reply (while it may be a standard one) is sent to you from a real staff member who has read your email. We get thousands of the same questions/concerns a day, and in order to get through the massive amounts of email, we have to standardise some aspects unfortunately."

That being said, there are some people who may be innocent. Buying items/nps with real money is quite a tricky one. Especially when you know you don't even go onto those websites. On the mod side of things, if they see something kinda suspicious going on, they will take action. E.g. if a rare item from a stolen account finds its way account hopping, TNT are going to assume its being sold. Or if a brand new account is suddenly gifted loads of nice pets, items, nps etc. Or if you give a new account loads of nice things. It seems as if you're buying/ selling nps to the mods. Unfortunately, all you can do in that case is try to argue against it and providing proof.

Plus a lot of people claim they were frozen "Unfairly" because they have no idea the actions they did were against the rules. The problem with neopets is the rules are a bit here, there and everywhere.... if they're even written at all! There are rules for the BC that have never been written on site, and the majority of them are only in the editorial. If there was a standardised page with all of the rules in it, I think it would stop a lot of this. PLUS if TNT quoted the exact post you made/ the exact transaction etc etc that got you a silencing/ warning/ suspension/ freezing I think people are going to find it a lot easier to understand what they did wrong, and how to stop that behaviour. Its not too hard to avoid getting those if you pay attention to the rules. My main account has no warnings on it and hasn't for 3 years. All because I know the rules, and stick to them.
Found someone on Aywas the other day who said they were frozen "unfairly" and yet they let someone else petsit on their account. Which is against the terms of service AND written on the chat rules page!

As for the person who was shot down for trying to provide proof. Erm....
sorry but your drivers licence isn't going to prove a neopets account is yours o_o". It really is not. TNT have a standardised proof form. Account name, password, PREVIOUS passwords used, email address the account is created on, pets created on the account including those you have abandoned, stocks on the accounts, recent trading record, neomails in your inbox, neofriends usernames. That kind of stuff. These are all things only the account owner is going to know. You gotta provide enough.

I know their customer service isn't perfect- but it is getting better. The new ticket system (even if it DID manage to destroy a few FAQs, BC FAQ I'm lookin at you) is a massive improvement. Beforehand you were only guaranteed a decent reply if you mailed staff directly. Now you can even see how far along your ticket is. A friend last year was averaging about a reply a week from one staff member.
I know back when my old account was compromised (It was not a cookie grabber, as it happened when I was offline), I reported it as stolen. And it was quickly frozen for its protection... by a staff member called Amanda. Most people know her as contest_judge. She froze me because she saw me mention it ON THE BOARDS. This was over 3 years ago now. My new account then got compromised the week afterward, and was self frozen. I sent her an email, and she unfroze me THE SAME DAY (Saturday!), told me you need less proof for a self frozen account and told me the above piece of information about how my old one was frozen. Thats amazing customer service, from a woman whose job isn't even to do that!

As for whether people can actually win in court.
We got ourselves a business (if we exclude Viacom from this), vs a bunch of players.
Who do you think can get the better lawyers?
The better lawyers are more likely to win. I honestly don't think this lawsuit will go anywhere.
Yes, TNTs customer service needs to improve. But I don't think these guys have any legal standpoint, because I as a regular member (with no legal training) can argue against them using quotes FROM TNT and knowledge gained by reading the editorial weekly.

[cpvr]

What about this issue? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toby_Studebaker

Toby Studebaker was a former U.S. Marine who abducted a 12-year-old British girl in 2003 after grooming her via the Internet and was jailed for four and a half years.[1][2][3]
He was born in Constantine, Michigan[1] in 1971, and trained in North Carolina with the 4th Marine Expeditionary Brigade, an anti-terrorism unit. Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, he was posted to Afghanistan, where he helped guard Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects at Kandahar International Airport.
He met Shevaun Pennington[4] in July 2002 through Neopets when she was 11 years old, though she had originally claimed to be 17. She left her home in Leigh, Greater Manchester on July 12, 2003, telling her parents she was going shopping. However, they flew to Paris and stayed in a hotel for two days, where they had sex, before traveling to Strasbourg. They were gone a total of five days, but he was finally arrested in Frankfurt and extradited to the UK in August.[1][2][3]

[astrail]

Not quite sure how THAT would relate to the lawsuit.

I would assume she was breaking the rules to begin with, by faking her age.
Not to mention, TNT have numerous rules in place in order to STOP this kind of thing happening. Okay, I can't be too certain about in 2002/ 2003 (it was a very long time ago now XD), but I don't think they've added anything to those rules. Just added ways that make it harder to go around (Back when I was under 13, for a while I used to be able to edit pet lookups and stuff, but that was eventually stopped). They don't allow you to disclose personal information (Where you live for one). Essentially, the incident is not the fault of the admins, as they had the rules in place. It is the fault of the child for choosing to ignore them (And choosing to take a plane to France to see this guy!) as no doubt these things went on through neomail (Which is private, so no one can report it but those on either end). You can't sue a website when their ToS (Which you agree to before signing up) said these kinds of things were disallowed on the website. It is both the child and their parents' fault.

Okay so this is from the recent ToS, but anyway:
Do Not Try To Share Personal Information. Please do not try to share with anyone your personally identifiable information such as your e-mail address, physical address, school name, last name, photographs of yourself, instant messenger username or telephone number. Likewise, do not ask for any such information from other users. If you think anything is suspicious, make sure to report it privacy@Nickelodeonworlds.com
She would have agreed to something similar upon joining the website. Even if she didn't read it... checking that box is basically like signing a legal document. You cannot really sue for breaking the legally binding agreement you made.

[Andie]

Neopets is terrible at monitoring their boards. There are tons of children under 13 on their site who use the boards openly. (Or at least there was in 2002/2003). While legally they aren't at fault due to the fact that she would have indeed lied about her age, morally you would think a company which targets children would put more rules and effort into keeping them safe. I know Powerpets is known for being extremely strict about minor rules because the staff want to protect children. Neopets is a company that wants to make money and that's all they really care about. Nothing more, nothing less. It's what they do, they have no other mission then making money. They do not really care if they've created a safe online game environment for children, as long as they aren't liable.
Back in 2002/2003 ish I also frequently saw people posting personal information on the boards. Nobody there cared.
It's not about if they are legally responsible, more about if they are morally responsible I think...

[kuitsuku]

There was a glitch to my account a few years ago that switched my age to below 13, which meant I couldn't access most of the site or send neomails. It was very frustrating, especially since this was my main account that got a lot of traffic because of my older petpages.
I had to mail them a copy of my driver's license and they did end up fixing my account...3 months later. I wasn't in any rush so it seemed fine for me. I've heard horror stories about their customer support team, so I was grateful to get my account back.

I don't think anyone who agreed to the terms has a chance of suing them.

Also, before viacom owned Neopets (I think) they sent me a warning-to-sue unless I signed their fanart license agreement. It was..interesting. 8)

[Slashmaster]

What's their fan license agreement like?

[Rebel Networks]

Before Viacom owned neopets, it was owned by Scientology Before that, it was owned by Adam and Donna. Adam and Donna have not been a part of Neopets, for quite some time now. I still have to dig up that video interview I had with them at PAX. NeoPets is a corporate entity, not just some small business, they have a team of lawyers, and they make upwards to $4M a month! You can be rest assured that they have all the legal precautions put in place to protect themselves against idiots like this.