Selling your WoW account

[Blaze]

I've been trying to sell my WoW account for a while now, and thus far, no luck.

However, I have been noticing a trend on the messages I get back from prospective "buyers" (Read: Chinese who will strip your account and then cancel payment).

[19:56] Them: hey dude
[19:56] Them: r u there??
[19:56] Them: selling your wow acc still?
[19:56] Them: hey dude
[19:56] Them: hey dude
[19:56] Me: 0_o
[19:56] Me: You just sent me 5 messages in like, 3 seconds.
[19:56] Me: Sloooow down.
[19:57] Them: sry about that
[19:57] Them: have u sold your wow acc?
[19:57] Me: Talking to people about it right now, so maybe.
[19:58] Them: ok
[19:58] Them: what price range r u looking at?
[19:58] Me: 300
[19:59] Them: sounds fair
[19:59] Them: r u the original owner and have the full info?
[20:00] Me: Yep
[20:01] Them: is this an active acc?
[20:01] Them: have u linked the battlenet?

Hrm... This sound familiar!  Oh yeah, I just had this exact conversation a minute ago.

[19:53] Them: hey dude
[19:53] Them: r u there??
[19:53] Them: selling your wow acc still?
[19:53] Me: Hello, there.
[19:54] Me: Depends
[19:54] Them: what price range r u looking at?
[19:55] Me: 300
[19:57] Them: sounds fair
[19:57] Them: r u the original owner and have the full info?
[19:57] Me: Yep
[19:58] Them: is this an active acc?
[19:58] Me: No
[19:59] Them: have u linked the battlenet?

I've had this conversation with about 15 people in the last week.  It's getting old. 

So, they've been wasting my time, so I've had the idea of wasting their time.  Getting personal for no reason, just to see how far they'll go.  I'll post my logs if I get anything funny. 

[warz]

There's a few things I think you should say to people when selling accounts. These are all designed to turn away people looking to just do what they did to mine - strip it, delete the chars and pass the gold to their own chars via the auction house, and then cancel payment without being traceable.

- say the account is not active. a scammer will not register an account with their credit card. they want active accounts. everyone knows you can't steal a wow account for the long term, so the only people that will try stealing are going to just vendor all your shit and delete your chars.
- say it's not linked to battle.net account. it's easier to hijack this way, because they just change the email login and then you have no way to keep tabs on the account, or characters.
- make sure their paypal is confirmed. (the person that tried scamming me was using an unconfirmed one)
- try to communicate over email, or something. i've found that AIM is useless because you can't tie their AIM account to their email, usually. unless they tell you their AIM in the email, i guess. I wish I had communicated primarily over email because then I'd have more official logs, and could have checked to make sure their email kind of matches their paypal email if it's not the same.

these might reduce the initial value of your character, some, and make it hard to find offers, but if you think youve got a serious buyer then you can tell them the truth about things.

just basically, try to have some sort of a link between the various parts of the transaction - initial communication, paypal email, the email they used when contacting you, their AIM name, whatever.

i've sold characters/accounts 4 times. 3 of them went flawlessly, and this last one he tried stealing from me. all of the times that it went well, the people i spoke too were more genuin, and were not quick to do the transaction. the fourth person who tried scamming was very quick to buy it. he tried shooting me a lower price and as soon as I said no he said "ok fine 400 is good". it just didnt feel right from the start. which sucks because i was waiting on another buyer to log back online, but this second dude that tried scamming messaged me while waiting and wanted to do it right that moment. like 5 minutes after this guy, the original one logged back on. =(

or, you could just sell locally and use cash!

[Blaze]

I've also noticed that none of these guys like to use a real location of where they live.  If you ask them, most often they'll say CA or Cali.  However, most of them can't even spell California.

[20:06] TreopLm: hi
[20:06] dxfor: Hello there
[20:06] TreopLm: u wow account still for sale?
[20:06] dxfor: Depends
[20:07] TreopLm: would u mind show me the armory link ?
[20:07] dxfor: What country do you live in?
[20:07] TreopLm: CA
[20:07] TreopLm: you ?
[20:07] dxfor: CA meaning?
[20:09] dxfor: Hello?
[20:09] TreopLm: califianial
[20:10] dxfor: Oh, I don't like califinial.

In fact, I hate califinial.

[Lead]

I would try craigslist quite honestly. I see a lot of people who put their accounts up their and are only willing to go local with them.

[Rule]

Warz' tips are excellent.  But if it seems like too much of a hassle, or if it's going to lower your price substantially, the two most important things to look out for are:
1) Suspicious behaviour (discretionary)
2) Unverified paypal accounts

In the absence of suspicious behaviour, in my (out of date) opinion, you can feel safe about a trade with a verified paypal user.  The number of verified transactions they've done on PayPal is also another useful indicator.