A gigantic mess involving credit cards, unauthorized charges, chargebacks and an unresponsive company has suspended the accounts of many unwitting World of Warcraft players.
In a nutshell, here's what happened: first, the accounts were suspended because of "a chargeback filed against the account's past payments." For those not in the know, that is when a credit card company forcibly returns disputed funds to a person claiming unauthorized use. But here's the problem, neither the players were claiming the charges were unauthorized, and further, many didn't even know they were doing business with the company that applied it, PaymentOne.
PaymentOne does provide a system that bills a user's ISP for his or her Warcraft accounts, but those who had used it say they last did so a year ago and canceled the accounts. Nevertheless, they're still running a negative balance with Blizzard, which suspended the accounts. At least they're willing to take calls about resolving the situation; PaymentOne is said not to be taking calls, hanging up on people, or placing them on infinite hold. Ars Technica, which first reported the controversy, says "A quick Google search shows this isn't the first time that allegations of fraud and unexpected charges have been leveled against the company."
Unauthorized Charges Getting WoW Accounts Suspended [Ars Technica. Thanks Tim A.]