Banned from paid for subscription website

The_Ejaculator

I've been banned from an online football management game I pay to play for using fruity language in a "Newspaper" section against a player that was constantly cheating.

I have 6 months remaining on my membership but can no longer log in. I contacted the admins and just got an automated response stating that I am now permanently suspended. The "Warning" on the website states that abusive articles will be removed and that people doing this will lose the ability to publish any further items, not have their membership revoked.

As they have taken my money and are now not allowing me to continue my subscription what are my options? It's not a financial thing, just a point of principle as far as I'm concerned.

Is there any legislation governing subscription based websites? Do I have an argument to make against them?

visidigi

what terms did you agree to?

The_Ejaculator

This is what they have in the T&C's -
We reserve the right to remove or suspend users at any time for any reason and without a refund of previously purchased items.

• Some examples of reasons that may result in us removing or suspending a users account are listed below:
  • Continued cheating on the site, especially the transfer market section;
  • Trying to rig/fix match results;
  • Playing with more than one team in the same Game World;
  • Using multiple accounts to circumvent the one club per Game World limit;
  • Using the site in a way that we consider to ruin the experience for other users;

Considering the person I used the fruity language at has just been banned for 1-4 above, I can only presume they are trying to invoke #5 as this is a bit of a wishy washy statement.

mynameistallulah

What do you mean by "fruity language", were you swearing at/ about people? If so this would definitely fall within point #5.

happyinflorida

How much did you pay and how did you pay?

If over £100 and you paid by a card - then you could possibly contact the card company to ask them to refund you.

Have you got an address for them? Write in and complain and ask for either a refund or that they follow their own rules and only remove your post/s.

Good luck!

mynameistallulah

happyinflorida wrote: »

How much did you pay and how did you pay?

If over £100 and you paid by a card - then you could possibly contact the card company to ask them to refund you.

Have you got an address for them? Write in and complain and ask for either a refund or that they follow their own rules and only remove your post/s.

Good luck!

There have applied their own rules:

We reserve the right to remove or suspend users at any time for any reason and without a refund of previously purchased items.

Guardsman

Football site I presume that swearing is the norm even on the old BBC 606 they would have just removed the offending words or used the filters to stop swear words being posted on the site.
If you have been racist homophobic etc then you undoubtedly did deserve a ban.

The_Ejaculator

xxx manager is a dirty cheating xxxx etc was the norm. Nothing sexist/racist. I only paid about £20 for the year. It's not the money, it's the fact that they kick me off without any right to appeal, losing all the clubs I'd worked hard building up etc. If you can imagine I've been using this game as a boredom filler for some 3 years now so a lot of time and effort into it.

Seems the generic #5 means they can ban anyone for anything they fancy unfortunately.

mynameistallulah

The_Ejaculator wrote: »

xxx manager is a dirty cheating xxxx etc was the norm. Nothing sexist/racist. I only paid about £20 for the year. It's not the money, it's the fact that they kick me off without any right to appeal, losing all the clubs I'd worked hard building up etc. If you can imagine I've been using this game as a boredom filler for some 3 years now so a lot of time and effort into it.

Seems the generic #5 means they can ban anyone for anything they fancy unfortunately.

Yes, as it is a private site they can ban you as they wish. You have no right of appeal unless they decide otherwise.

Darksun

mynameistallulah wrote: »

Yes, as it is a private site they can ban you as they wish. You have no right of appeal unless they decide otherwise.

A contract term that allows someone to cease supplying the service without any form of refund would almost certainly be considered unfair and therefore unenforceable

System

Darksun wrote: »

A contract term that allows someone to cease supplying the service without any form of refund would almost certainly be considered unfair and therefore unenforceable

I wouldn't think it would be considered unfair based on the fact the OP referred to a fellow subscriber as a ****.

I suspect that's acceptable grounds to ban someone from a site