Gaia Interactive Inc. Is an online community. They claim to be a free, advertiser supported service, but they require "donations" to purchase certain items.
These donations are taken as payment for virtual items which are used to to dress your avatar or exchange for other virtual items or gold in Gaia Interactive's online community called "Gaia Online" (http://www.gaiaonline.com/).
When you create an account, you are required to agree to certain Terms of Service, which outline many common rules of friendly social conduct, and prohibit such actions as scamming other users of the community for gold, selling virtual gold or items for Federal Currency cash (like Gaia Interactive themselves do, in taking "Cash Donations" in exchange for virtual items), or "botting" which means to use automatic scripts to perform actions for you without human interaction.
Also in the Terms of Service, you must agree to allow Gaia Interactive Inc. Terminate your account "in its sole discretion" and "for any or no reason".
After receiving your donations and allowing you to invest into your account in both time and money, becoming an active member of the community, Gaia Online and Gaia Interactive staff then go and terminate accounts in mass quantities, flagging accounts for normal actions within the game. For instance, giving gold away to family or friends is flagged for "selling gold for cash". Active posting in the forums is flagged for "botting". Transferring any large amounts of gold from one account to another (many users hold multiple accounts) is flagged for "hacking". Any report for "scamming" or "hacking" sent in by disgruntled users who hold a grudge against another user are accepted without question, and no solid evidence of such action is required, resulting in a permanent ban of the victim's account.
These flags and reports all result in an immediate ban, and no investigation is given prior to the ban. When the loyal, paying customers of Gaia Interactive Inc. Then log in to find their account has been terminated without warning, they will attempt to contact Gaia Interactive for a resolution to the unfair banning, usually to no avail. Gaia Interactive staff will take one or two pieces of "data" which could possibly line up to one theory of scamming, hacking, or botting, and will ignore all other theories which line up even more plausibly to the exact same data. Their ban is the Word of God, and no mountains of evidence to prove your innocence will amount to anything. Your termination has been given in Gaia's "sole discretion", and you have agreed to allow them to do this "for any or no reason".
There are hundreds of complainants to these unfair bans, who have done nothing wrong. Most are big-time "donators", who have paid Gaia a lot of money to furnish their accounts with virtual items. Many have their accounts terminated with $20, $60, $100, or more dollars in unused "Gaia Cash" in their accounts, which is credit paid to Gaia via Credit Card, PayPal, or through Cash Cards at Target.in other words, "real money". These people would never have any cause to lie, scam, hack, bot, or in any other way cheat the system. They have paid their dues fully, and it is beyond ridiculous to even consider that they would perform such action. They are NEVER allowed a proper investigation into their case. Even though the data provided by Gaia Interactive Inc. Is obviously incredibly lacking, and any logical being could devise about 20 different situations which would line up to that little bit of data, and would prove the user to be innocent of any breach of contract, Gaia Interactive Inc. Will continue to claim that their one theory that this could be a scam, hacking, or botting situation is unrefutable.
When these complaints are brought into a public forum on the Gaia Online website, the moderators working under Gaia Interactive Inc. Will ignore the pleas of the dozens of complainants, and instead tell everybody "Abandon this thread, do not read these posts, the instigators will be properly dealt with shortly".
Thus, we have no other recourse but to file these claims to outside sources such as the consumer complaints, and pray for our voices to be heard.
Ned
Edmonton, Alberta
Canada
0 comments