World of Warcraft users hit with fake charges

WoW player accounts suspended.

The legions of World of Warcraft are finding their accounts suspended because they apparently owe cash to an outfit called Payment One.

Forums are abuzz with complaints from players claiming that their accounts have been suspended because of charge-backs filed against them by Payment One.

The scary thing is that most of the users have never heard of Payment One and when they try to get in touch with the outfit no one will talk unless they settle their bill.

According to Ars Technica players have received the following message when trying to figure out why their account is currently inaccessible: "Access to the World of Warcraft account *********, has been temporarily disabled due to a chargeback filed against the account's past payment(s) which were billed to a telephone number via PaymentOne."

Payment One is a payment service provider and has a system in place to bill players' ISP accounts for their WoW subscriptions.

Charge-backs are to protect punters from dodgy retailers. Exactly why and how these charge-backs were applied to the aforementioned accounts has yet to be determined, but they've caused the accounts to have negative balances with Blizzard.

But most of the punters say they have never used Payment One or signed up for the company's services. Those who have used them had cancelled them.

Payment One has been in hot water before over accusations of dodgy billing. Apparently WoW players who have got through to the outfit say it seems unwilling to help players reach a solution that doesn't involve simply paying these unauthorised charges.

Question is, what is Blizzard doing about protecting its users? [SFX: wind, tolling bell and rolling tumbleweed]