To begin, I am going to provide some information about myself and how I came to be an an World of Warcraft account reseller / owner of Masked Crusader, Masked Armory, and Twink Info.

I am 25 years old and currently located in Northern California. I came into the RMT (Real Money Trading) market 5 years ago this coming May on a site called Markee Dragon. I started by trading World of Warcraft accounts and got burned far too many times due to chain traded accounts, so I decided to try my luck with selling instead. I made the vow to only work with the Original Owner of accounts unless I knew the seller and they backed the account regardless if it was resold or not.

5 years later, I am still in the market and have the reputation as one of the most high-end account sellers for World of Warcraft world-wide. I deal with about 10-20 accounts per month because I look at quality over quantity and want to ensure that I am offering my customer base the best possible accounts on the market.

As I had to learn early on, selling an account for any game can be a daunting task with scammers lurking behind every corner with hacked Paypal accounts, stolen credit cards, and hacked Instant Message clients. I have had to develop some solid selling practices in order to minimize my risk when selling accounts. Are they selling practices 100% effective? Of course not. Any seller wants to do his/her best to minimize the risk of being scammed, but some scams just happen.

I am going to go ahead and go over the available payment methods and how they protect or do not protect you when selling your intangible good (this is what Paypal categories video game accounts as).

Paypal

Paypal is a great way to sell virtual goods if you adhere to a couple of tips/tricks. If you are selling to someone you just recently spoke with and they adamant about paying with Paypal, state that they will receive the login and password for the account upon receipt of the payment. NEVER, EVER, EVER give out any account information prior to a sale unless a person has VERIFIABLE feedback. That means, that they can send you a private message from a forum/website that they are a member of and verify that they own that account. Make sure that they mark the payment as 'Goods' and that the Paypal address that they have listed is the one that they want the rest of the account information sent to (SQA, Full Name on the account, etc). I would advise that you cover the cost of the shipment (Fed-Ex 2-day shipping is about $20-25 within the United States so it is worth the actual insurance for you to be protected!) as a good faith gesture. Make sure that you retain the tracking number and file it away somewhere so as to not lose it in the event that the buyer is a scammer and files a chargeback down the line.

One discrepancy that most people have with Paypal is that they offer something called a "Gift" payment. This is under the "Personal" tab when you send money. What this does is enables the party sending money to negate the Paypal fees associated with sending the money. Most people believe that this type of payment is not able to be disputed. THAT IS 100% INCORRECT. Gift payments are like regular payments. The payee can still call up his/her own bank or credit card company and dispute the transaction as unauthorized and you are going to lose the dispute 99% of the time. That is just how chargebacks work within the Paypal system; intangible goods are not covered by Paypal's seller protection policy.

Western Union + Moneygram

Please note that Western Union and Moneygram work the same way. The only thing that is truly different are the fees associated with sending money and how much you can send.

Western Union is 100% safe for the seller and it is very simple to use. The payee can either go into a store that has a Western Union or pay online. They are given a MTCN (Money Transfer Control Number) once the transaction is complete and they give this number plus their name and address to the seller and the seller goes to a Western Union location and picks up the funds.

Western Union does not protect the buyer whatsoever. If the seller is a scammer, then you are quite literally...screwed. I have never heard of anyone being able to get their money back from Western Union without Western Union coming after them legally for a fraudulent unauthorized transaction claim.

Google Checkout

I have not had a lot of experience with Google Checkout as not a lot of people or businesses allow payment through it. The couple of times that I have used it, I found the system to be very user-friendly.

I do want to note that, just like Paypal, Google Checkout does not cover intangible goods. There are people out there that believe they do, but they do not. Here is a link to their Seller Policies FAQ where it is states just that: https://checkout.google.com/seller/policies.html

Bank-To-Bank Transfer + Wire Transfers

A lot of people think that Bank-To-Bank Transfers or Wire Transfers offer you the best BUYER protection against scams. That is 100% INCORRECT. These types of transfers 100% final when they are completed. They are no different from Western Union or Moneygram other than the fees to send money are often MUCH less.

I hope that this article was helpful to those sellers out there that may have some questions/concerns about selling their account and want all of the facts before making the plunge.

If you have any questions/concerns, please leave them here and I will address them. If you have any corrections or additions to this article, please post them here and if I find them relevant or helpful to the user base, I will make the changes.

Thank you all and be safe selling!

- Shane aka Masked Crusader

Hello Shane,

I wanted to thank you for sharing this guide with us. It seems as though you've done a very good job covering the bases of protecting yourself from scams in terms of payment methods. I am sure this will be very helpful to both the beginners and experts of all types, especially the beginners.

I look forward to reading more from you.

Regards,
Joostin

As a buyer and seller (mostly buyer) of MMORPG accounts, I find this information extremely helpful and very well laid out. Anyone wanting to consider the buying/selling of this market should definitely take all of these points made into consideration. I know way too many buyers and sellers that have suffered at the hands of scammers and fraudulent behavior. It is sad that this happens, but with the information provided here, I believe many potential dealers are now better informed and more prepared. Scammers are everywhere on sites like this one (usually the more reputable website, the more scammers there are).

I must give my thanks; I didn't know some of these facts, but I'm glad I know them now.

One thing I might add is the importance of Identity Verification. It is always wise to be dealing with someone who is verified, should something go wrong with the trade/sale. It is not expensive to get verified, and many (if not all) of the top sellers on this website are verified. The reason for this is simple: You don't want to make a deal with someone based on just a username. It's dangerous, and it can lead to a scam.

Thanks for this information!

Totally agree. 100%, being new to this whole thing I found this article extremely helpful. Decided to go about rephrasing some points in my current ad as well as disclaiming that I would ship the original disks to anyone in Canada and the USA. Just so I can hit upon the point of the tracker number mentioned in this article. Very informative. Thank you. ^-^