Anyone can face a bad deal. Just like in real life, virtual items and goods are no different. Just imagine that 70% of buyers or sellers look for an opportunity to scam you. Sound scary?

Well for optimists yes. But, in the trading you must have your feet on the ground and always ask yourself about what yours and other traders’ next move will be. Like in chess. Don’t be afraid of the worst scenarios and plan in advance. Doing that, you can ‘smell’ possible treats and scamming attempts.

Scamming can be done in many ways. It can be done by retrieving account once when you sent the money, or by sending you the false info, broken items, etc.

World of Warcraft, as a biggest and the most popular MMORPG is on the top of those games who are under biggest threat, but honestly no online game is immune to scams.

Although many Realpoor members already wrote a dozens of articles and topics on how to avoid being scammed, it’s always good thing to remind on some basic steps that should be performed during trading process.

Here are few steps and the obvious signs you should look for in the trading process.

Pricing

Always inform yourself about pricing. Don’t rush into deals. Take some time to explore trading topics, people inside and prices they’re dealing with. Check the maximum, minimum and average prices to be sure for how much you’ll sell or buy.

Many times people get cheated while Selling wow accounts, because they weren't aware of the prices and have been misinformed by others.

Don't buy from strangers

If you’re new on the forum, then anyone is a stranger to you. That’s true. So again, take some time to explore. When you’re new member, you’ll notice the older members who are selling or buying items. And how to recognize the most reliable among them? Always ask for background from the forum moderators or administrators if you’re not so sure. But good traders always respond in the trading topic, leaving the price or another offer (item, account,..) if they’re exchanging items. Also, in good trader’s topics you’ll always find others’ responds before that topic is closed as Sold.

What you should avoid are traders that contact you via Private Message system only, without posting in your topic first. Most likely, this type of traders will try to scam you.

Good indicator for good trader can be his/her reputation in form of Sold marks in the profile. However, that can be easily misused, so always ask for others replies and background from other members.

Do a background check

This can be separate tip, although it’s been mentioned above. Chances that person who’s trying to scam you, scammed someone before. So, besides asking mods, admins or other members, you can perform your own background check. You can search for suspicious trader username and email or Instant Messaging address in the major search browsers like Google. Results you got using this method, can be useful to reveal if you are dealing with a scammer.

You can even include ‘scam’ besides name and email to boost the search and get the right results.

Legal action

Unfortunately, RealPoor is only able to provide banishment of fake traders and scammers. For legal action you have to learn how to deal situations when your payPal payment has been disputed or when wow account that you’ve just purchased is retrieved by seller.

There are plenty of good articles and posts written by RealPoor members that will provide you with useful info on what to do in such cases.

The two most often scam attempts are:

1)    PayPal payment dispute – Happens when buyer of wow account stops the transaction when he/she received WoW account

Resolution: PayPal should be contacted to resolve the issue

2)    WoW account retrieval – Happens when the seller of the account retrieve it (with Secret Question most usually) when he/she received a payment.

Resolution: Blizzard should be contacted to resolve the issue.

As a conclusion, you cannot be too cautious and you must accept the fact that anyone can be a victim of the scam. That’s a sad truth. However, it’s important that we take necessary measures, because then it would be a lot easier to avoid possible frauds and scams.

Stay safe