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BGonline.org Forums
Let's break it down
Posted By: Steve Mellen In Response To: Re: Kit does some homework and speaks (happyjuggler0)
Date: Monday, 21 May 2007, at 7:13 p.m.
THE SITE WILL MONITOR ANY PERFORMANCE OF ANY OF THE RESTRICTED ACTIVITIES LISTED ABOVE AND IN ANY EVENT THE COMPANY DEEMS, AT ITS SOLE DISCRETION, THAT SUCH RESTRICTED ACTIVITY WAS PERFORMED...
"Sole discretion" means that they have the right to make this determination and no one can question it. Under US law (and, most likely, Israeli law as well), there's an implied requirement that the discretion has to be exercised in good faith. Still, if you wanted to go to court and reverse their decision, you'd have to prove that it was made in bad faith, not merely that they got it wrong. That's a high burden to meet.
...IT MAY IMMEDIATELY TERMINATE YOUR ACCOUNT, WHETHER TEMPORARILY OR PERMANENTLY, WITHOUT NOTICE...
Pretty much self-explanatory. It's interesting, mind you, that although these sites claim to monitor for cheating and suspicious activity, the only time they ever seem to catch anyone at it is when you try to withdraw your funds.
...AND THE BALANCE IN YOUR ACCOUNT MAY BE FORECLOSED BY THE COMPANY AND USED TO FINANCE THE COMPANY'S COSTS OF MONITORING, PREVENTING, AND DEALING WITH ENFORCEMENT OF THE AFOREMENTIONED RESTRICTED ACTIVITIES.
Here's the kicker, friends. They claim the right to confiscate your entire account balance, based upon a determination made at their "sole discretion" - and they claim that right completely independent of whether your balance was actually obtained by cheating!
If they included a clause that said "we reserve the right to keep your money if we feel like it" no court would ever uphold that. But they're trying to be clever and get around that, by claiming that they need to keep all your money in order to "finance" their enforcement program. It's still just as objectionable, though.
Let's be fair, however. The reason not to do business with this site is not because of the legalese in their user agreement. The reason is that they have a documented track record of trying to confiscate people's money for shady and undocumented reasons. And I think it's safe to assume that for everyone who posts on the GoL forum about their bad experience and gets their money back, there are God knows how many other people who got ripped off and didn't make such a post.
While I try to always assume the best of my fellow man, I'm troubled by the number of people who want to give these guys the benefit of the doubt because, you know, it's possible they're just "incompetently" confiscating thousands of dollars from innocent players rather than trying to steal.
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