Jeff’s account for the gaming platform Steam has been disabled, locking him out of Team Fortress 2 and other games he’s purchased. When he asked why, Steam support was tight-lipped, saying only that he was accused of “scamming or hijacking another user’s account,” refusing to elaborate or let Jeff make his case.

Hello, I have had a horrible experience with Steams (Valve) customer service.

On March 10th my Steam account was banned with no reason given to me.
Over the course of this month I have been messaging them back ASAP
attempting to get my wrongfully disabled account back. I have spent
$100’s of dollars on games on Steam, so it was a little shocking to
see that my account was disabled with no reason given.

After 6 Days of waiting they got back to me telling me that my account
was disabled due to an activity in Team Fortress 2, which is a game
owned by Valve that I played on Steam. This still wasn’t a very
specific answer. So I took it upon myself to try to help them
understand that I haven’t broken any rules on Steam.

After responding to their message on March 16th (15 minutes after I
received it), I got word from them almost a week later. Seeing as I
have put $200 – $300 into this account which I have had for maybe 4
months I was pretty upset that I was being shown the door without an
explanation. So once again I asked them to specify why my account was
disabled.

They responded the 22nd, 6 days after their previous response. And
they got a little bit more specific but I still wasn’t sure what they
were accusing me of other then “scamming or hijacking another user’s
account”. Seeing as I have been active in trading items on Team
Fortress 2 and I had heard many stories of Valve wrongly banning Steam
users who traded (unknown to the user) keys or items that were
purchased with a stolen credit card, I explained that I thought this
may be the case. Seeing as I have never attempted to log onto another
Steam users account I realized that well, I’m not sure where they got
the idea I was trying to hijack someones account. I asked them to
check my IP address and see if my change of location was part of the
reason my account was disabled. I was on a trip across the country
when I found out my account was disabled.

After I responded to them, letting them know that I wasn’t guilty for
this and giving them as much information about my situation as I could
possibly think of, I said that I would like to be shown evidence or
informed about the situation that they disabled me over so I may clear
my name. They simply responded with: “Hello Jeff,
The issue is not for discussion or debate. The account will not be
reactivated. Thank you for contacting Steam Support.”

As you can imagine this left me a little confused because I was under
the impression Steam Support was supposed to offer me support or
attempt to help me. Seeing as I had just been ripped off for a few
hundred dollars I was a little frustrated as you could imagine. And
now after having the so called Steam “Support” refuse to help me, I am
a little confused. I am a little confused about why my Steam account
was wrongly disabled, why they will not tell me what the incident I
was disabled over was, why they aren’t trying to help me get my
account back, and why they generally aren’t interested in helping a
customer who was given them $100’s of dollars over the past couple
months.

TL:DR: Steam disables my account without giving me a reason. When I
ask why I was disabled they refused to tell me and state that this is
not for discussion. I’m in awe of how they treat their customers who
have spent $100’s on their products. I end up being a little
frustrated after Steam Support refuses to offer me support.

I really hope you find this all of interest and are interested in
spreading the word. I hope to get my account back from Steam but I
don’t have much hope anymore. If this is published then I feel I may
actually have a chance. I also don’t want other people to go through
what I have and hope that Steam realizes that with 25 Million users,
having about 4 people handling support isn’t quite enough. I have
included a PDF of this whole event and I’m more then happy to send any
additional information you’d like.

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