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You're Not Alone
Written by Ziggy
"I had been playing Neopets constantly for over two years. I logged in everyday and, if truth be known, frittered away hours each day on the site. Never in my Neopian life had I ever cheated, scammed or broken any rules.
In fact, I regularly reported scammers I found on the site! I had more than one account but I had been told by a staff member personally that that was FINE as long as they weren't used to cheat. Needless to say, they weren't. I'm just a pet fanatic and like to have more than 4!
So you can imagine my shock when I logged on one day to find one of my accounts frozen. The reason given was that I had cheated by voting multiple times in the beauty contest. Well, anyone who knows me knows that I loathe the beauty contest and how much of a popularity contest it is as opposed to being about art.
I DID have a pet in the contest that week, which was a very rare occurrence for me.
But it got worse. That wasn't the only account they had targeted. I logged in one by one to my precious accounts, seeing which had survived and which had been frozen. I was left with my main account, thank god, and a very important one pet wise. Everything else was gone.
I was in tears, I don't mind saying it, and I'm 21! I can't imagine how upsetting it must be when children are wrongly frozen. I had over 3 million worth of battle items, not to mention lots of high stat painted pets, trapped forever on my accounts.
So I did some investigating and found to my surprise, that in fact, there HAD been multiple voting coming from my accounts- but it wasn't by me.
My younger brother, all of 8 years old, had LIMITED access to my accounts so he can battle my pets and show them
off, being too young to have anything special on his own account. 99% of the time I was there to supervise him while he used my accounts, even though I trusted him, you can never be too sure with an 8 year old.
As soon as I found out I was frozen, I confronted my brother about it who admitted that yes, he had logged into some of my accounts to vote for my pet because he thought he would be helping me out. He genuinely didn't
realize that it was against the rules to do that. He knew all too well not to use multiple accounts for the once per day activities, but he did not know the beauty contest was also out of bounds. Take a look on the neopets
site - at the time of writing, the ONLY place it tells you that multiple voting is not allowed is on the Beauty contest chat boards. And naturally, being 8, my brother wasn't allowed on them. How was he to know?
There was no way he could have known and to be perfectly honest, I didn't know either
until this incident.
Obviously he apologized profusely and we had our share of tears but at the end of the day, the damage was already done and I now had to see if I stood any chance of getting my accounts back which included two baby pets that I'd worked for months to
achieve.
So I started with the usual method, I filled in the 'wrongly frozen' forms and crossed my fingers.
Days passed and nothing appeared in my inbox. My accounts were still frozen. I tried again, having been told by a fellow neopian that
persistence was the key and that she herself had been unfrozen purely through dogged
determination and constant mail. I tried again and again and finally received something......but it was no more than an automated response telling me what I already knew: That I'd been frozen for cheating.
I needed to speak to a real human being and explain my situation. An automated response wasn't helping me at all.
So I went down the road of mailing Neopets staff members personally, using their own email
addresses, since it seemed that filling in the official form was getting me nothing more than a cut and paste response each time.
Typically, I received nothing and I began to start to come to terms with the fact that I was unlikely to be listened to by anyone.
Then, a month later, I received a mail from a staff member telling me she had unfrozen two of the four accounts for me and she understood completely what it was like to have a young brother. Though she warned me not to let it happen again, she was very helpful and I was halfway back to my former Neopian glory, not to mention now having some renewed faith in the Neopets team. If this person had helped me, then maybe there was hope. After all, this person had believed me and been sympathetic, so surely other Neopets staff would be too?
How wrong can one person be?
After more mail, I received a personal reply from a member of the staff who I will call 'Chris' for this article, though that is NOT his real name. I am dubious to give it out since I have been told that sometimes the neo staff visit PPT, and I don't want to end up being frozen out of spite because I mentioned this person's name.
His mail was short and to the point 'how long was I going to keep asking for accounts back?'
I told Chris in as polite a way as I could (and it must be noted that every mail I had sent previously had been extremely friendly and polite, you catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar) that I would keep mailing
until my final two accounts were returned to me as I had done nothing wrong. I received
a mail back from Chris almost instantly implying, in no uncertain terms, that I was a liar (yes, that word was used) and that he didn't help liars.
I told him I most certainly was NOT a liar and that he was making a very serious accusation toward me when he had no proof. I explained that yes, cheating HAD happened in my accounts but it wasn't me behind the keyboard at the time. In a way, it was no different to people who get scammed and have someone else take over their account and get them frozen, and the neopets team never accuse THEM of being liars. The only difference was, I knew the person who had gotten in my accounts.
The next mail I received told me again that I was lying and that I would get no help from him.
I asked why then, did he not just say from the offset 'sorry, I cannot help you'. Why had he mailed me 3 or 4 times to accuse me? It seemed very childish and NOT the
behavior of someone who is in charge of a site with children on it! In the end I feel I did win in a way since I had remained calm and mature throughout while he resorted to name calling and accusations. I
definitely left that argument as the bigger person.
So, was I just unlucky? Did I just get a particularly immature moderator? Unfortunately not. Stories similar to my own are being sent to me on a very alarming basis: people being frozen through no fault of their own or by a bug or glitch and
receiving abusive mail accusing them of lying. It's not just me.
I realize I was wrong to let my younger brother use my accounts. The passwords are now all changed and he is banned from doing so. But as was mentioned, Neopets didn't seem to think I was responsible since they returned two of my accounts. Had I really done something wrong, I would not have gotten ANY of them back. In a way, they admitted their mistake by returning my accounts.
But the two I fought Chris so hard for are still iced. And I'm becoming increasingly angry and disturbed at the stories I'm hearing from all over Neopia from people who have
received abusive treatment at the hands of the Monitors. Is this acceptable on a site with children? I don't think so.
Neopets is going to shoot itself in the foot if it can't even treat it's players with respect. We keep this site going and if they continue to accuse the innocent, freeze the innocent and mail us with childish comments, they wont have players for long"
Thats my article. I was wondering if you could use it to perhaps let other Neopians who have suffered similar abuse
realize they're not alone. I thought I was the only one until I started hearing other people's stories.
Thanks!
Ziggy
Stories From Readers - Kaleb Fenoir
I too, was frozen for no apparent reason. To start telling the story, I had been
on Neopets for about two years. Just me and my SINGLE neopet, a red Acara that I
never want to change, as she's perfect the way she is. (She even has a fan
following now, and has had several 'marriage proposals' from other neopets! XD).
Now see, for those two years, I'd been saving up NP into my bank with the hopes
of later buying a paint brush or something of similar, insanely-high price
value. I never let anyone know my password, changed it regularly, and never left
the computer unattended on the Neopets site, while I was logged in. So the only
way someone could get into my account was through 'cracking' or something.
Now, one day, I received an neomail from (supposedly) TNT, stating that they
suspected me of CHEATING by using flash-based software. In other words, that I
had some program on my computer that would allow me to 'tap' the flash games for
as much NP as I wanted. Naturally, I did NOT have any such program, and I abhor
cheating (heck, I even reported to them later, when a glitch happened at
Christmas, and upon opening a Christmas cracker, got TWO sets of prizes!).
Anyway, the neomail stated that they were going to perform an investigation, and
that I should probably stop playing games for the time being, so that their
results would not be marred by additional scores. I obliged.
The next day, I was FROZEN from my account. My dear little Acara was stuck on
one side of an icy fence, and I was on the other. Much like Ziggy, I was almost
mad with grief. I hadn't cheated, I didn't have any mega-valuable items that
COULD have been stolen, and I only had ONE pet (unlike some newbs who make up
four pets different types, and then put them up for adoption... -_-)
Searching neopets related sites, I happened to find PPT, and the 'How
to Get Unfrozen' article, as well as some of the emails to TNT members. I
submitted a carefully worded letter to two of them, expressing my fear that I'd
lose my neopet, and that I didn't care if they confiscated my items and NP; I
just wanted my Acara back. A week later, I got a response from one of them (I
think it was a woman), who said she would look into it, and thanked me for the
kind letter. I hoped I would get my account back. So I waited.
Someone upstairs must have been watching over me and my pet, because the next
week, I got her back. Granted, the 250K in my bank and the 4K spending cash was
confiscated, as well as the special sword I'd just finished getting right before
this whole fiasco started (I wonder if purchasing the sword might have been the
factor that even STARTED this), but I had my pet back. That's all that mattered
to me.
Now, two years later, it's taken me a LONG time to get back to my former
'comfort zone', but I'm back, and happy. I'd just like to add to the list of
frozen/unfrozen people, as well as to give a thumbs up to that how to article
that helped me. It was a life-saver (my pet's life!)
I sincerely hope that Ziggy gets their accounts back. All of them. I think one
of the members I emailed was that 'Chris' (I know it's a pseudonym, but his
reaction strikes me as the same as one of the ones I got from a non-helper). I
also suggested to TNT member that helped me, that maybe they should check up on
their own members from time to time; some of the mods might be corrupt, and
targeting certain accounts because of NP amounts, in the idea that if they
freeze and confiscate the items and NP, they can just use it themselves. That it
doesn't go through the higher-ups, but is more of a private affair. Perhaps TNT
does need to 'cull the herd' of their mods... get rid of the bad apples. There's
a few of them, at least as much as I can tell.
Stories From Readers - Dizz
I am writing this in response to Zizzy’s article "You're Not Alone" as well as Kaleb Fenoir story. Both, I must, admit made me feel more sympathetic towards others who lost accounts, as well as relieved that I am not the only one who has been frozen unjustly. It has inspired me to write out my story which I hope others will wish to read.
It has been around two years since I have last seen my beloved pets, and it all started prior to the first Meridell invasion. It was exciting time for me since it would have been the first war my zafara would be strong enough to fight in and all I wanted was to afford codestones to train him with. I had four pets but my favorite and my strongest was a
faerie Zaffy that I called Tank (real name is longer with some numbers attached). He was my pride and joy. I wanted him to be strong once the time came to battle Lord Darigan and his minions.
So I did what almost any other Neopian would do in order to scrape up some np: I played games. One day however I notice the game I was playing was moving a little slower then usual, but did not think much of it. I mainly blamed it on my bad dial-up connection which seemed to have a habit of slowing up during days when most people are online, but then just a minute or so after sending my score I got logged out of my account. I thought it was just a routine check the neoteam was doing since it happened before, but then the ‘this account has been frozen’ page came up and my heart sank.
Without hesitation I sent e-mails to the address for frozen accounts. I politely
asked why I had been frozen and calmly explaining to them that I have read the terms and conditions and broke no rules. A week later all I got in reply was that they suspected me of cheating when I took to long to finish a game of volcano run, and that they will never unfreeze my account. Just like Ziggy and Kaleb, I cried when I knew I’ll never see my pets again.
I always followed the rules and knew them well, never thinking it was possible for me get frozen; but how was I to know that playing a game to long would cause me to lose my account forever? Without as much as a warning all my pets, hard work, and hopes of fighting in a war were over. I left neo for
a few good months before deciding to start over again. By time I returned the war was over, although upset at missing it, I was glad to have been gone, without Tank I would not have been able to fight anyway.
I have a new account now and have once again become attached to the neopets I own; especially one
christmas Zafara that I named after my beloved Tank. Out of fear of losing him along with three other pets I play games less often and during times my internet is slow I don’t go on neo at all. I still try to get my old account back, but after almost two years I forgotten my password and it is near impossible to find anyone who’ll believe that one account really belonged to me. However I still hope that somehow I can get it back. Good luck to Ziggy, I hope you will get your accounts back someday as well as anyone else in Neopia who has lost theirs unfairly. |
