Can a Company do this? (Virtual Currency Problems)

[wwworldclique]

What is the name of your state? New York

There is a gaming site similar to Second Life where customers purchase virtual money in order to use in-world. (I'll call the Company XYZ). The virtual currency is for purchasing clothes, items, and furniture for their avatars, and it is bought at a certain exchange rate (much like foreign currency).

Officially, you are supposed to buy this money at Company XYZ itself. However, certain customers stockpiled so much of this virtual currency that they started a third party money exchange where they could sell it (in exchange for real money) to customers who wanted to purchase this currency at a lower exchange rate. Once purchased at a third party vendor, customers can use this money inworld as if they had purchased it from the company itself.

Company XYZ has allowed this practice, but does not oversee it or associates with it.

A few weeks ago, someone stole a credit card and purchased some of this virtual currency officially from Company XYZ itself. Then this same person sold this currency to several people as a third market money exchange vendor and received real money as a result.

When Company XYZ discovered this, it reversed the charges on the credit card to compensate the person whose credit card was stolen. But it also confiscated the virtual currency from the customers who'd unknowingly bought it from the thief. In other words, if you had purchased 3 million XYZ dollars from this guy at the third party exchanger, it was confiscated from you by the company. And since you had paid $300UD or so for it, you were out that much money.

Now what's happening is that people who had bought XYZ dollars from the thief are screaming that Company XYZ was in the wrong for confiscating their XYZ dollars. They are claiming that Company XYZ is stealing their XYZ dollars. Either that or they are demanding that Company XYZ should compensate them for the actual $USD that they spent, because it was the company's fault for being defrauded in the first place. So now there is a huge debate raging about who is in the right-- the customers who had bought the XYZ dollars or the company itself.

Who is in the right? Can Company XYZ just take its dollars back from people who had bought XYZ dollars from this thief? Do the customers have a right to keep these XYZ dollars or at least be compensated?

Thanks.

 

[Ozark_Sophist]

Can the company recover the stolen goods? Yes.

 

[racer72]

Who is in the right?

The company. Just like anyone that buys stolen merchandise, their problem is with the person that sold the stolen items.

Can Company XYZ just take its dollars back from people who had bought XYZ dollars from this thief?

The company did not take the money back form the people that bought the stolen items, they took it back from the thief.

Do the customers have a right to keep these XYZ dollars or at least be compensated?

No, they will have to go after the thief. It has never been legal to purchasers of stolen merchandise to keep the items.

 

[xylene]

It has never been legal to purchasers of stolen merchandise to keep the items.

Unless you are an art museum.

The poster problems arise from the fact that the XYZ 'currency' is a digital product and not a bona fide currency.

I would also say that XYZ company is very negligent in allowing an exchange market to develop for its play money.

 

[wwworldclique]

Guys, thank you so much for your answer! It's all I needed to hear! I wanted to ask this question at a place like this so that I would be "prepared" before plunging into the huge debate that is actually brewing at Company XYZ. You see, I figured that the company was in the right-- that it was merely taking back stolen property, but I didn't want to say that at the actual site without "having backup." The debate is getting really ugly, so if I had just walked into it and said what you said, I'd be called an idiot and a moron and basically flamed.

As for the company being negligent, I wouldn't say it was negligent in allowing the third party exchange, but negligent in making customers understand that it has no obligation to them if they are defrauded of XYZ Dollars. I think this would've all been avoided had this company set up a system where money purchased from a 3rd party is "held for clearance" before it's accepted into the game world. That way customers would know right off the bat that they run a risk of buying at a 3rd party vendor.

BTW, is there a law that says that a business isn't allowed to just seize property from someone who unwittingly bought stolen merchandise? Or can a business just do that? This is another sticky point that people are arguing to death. They are saying that Company XYZ seized the Dollars illegally, because it should have gotten law enforcement to do so.

Thank you.

 

[fattttony]

Go back to your original post.

Change "virtual money/currency" to "plasma TVs"

Change "Company XYZ" to "Circuit City"

Does that answer your question?

Now go back to that website and tell all of your dungeons and dragons friends the same thing.