Pink Poogle Toy Forum

Hello: recently my account was frozen because I posted on the boards looking for help because I am a blind Neopets user. I mentioned that I received help from a sighted person who lives with me to play the games because they are inaccessible to a blind person. So my account was frozen give nthe reason that "several users playing from the same account"
However I came across this website today and under the rules I found:
Sharing Accounts
list of 3 items
• The only time this is allowed, is if you are assisting a somebody (preferably a family member) who is physically unable to play their account by themselves
(EG: They are too young to play, or they have a physical disability)

So that covers me. I have put in a few online forms explaining the situation and requesting my account be returned. I also called TNT and sent emails, but nothing has elicited a reply.
Anyone have any ideas on how to get TNT to reverse something that was wrongfully done? I mean I know they are flooded with requests from people saying that they were wrongfully frozen, but my situation was stated right there in the rules section.......
Anyway, any advice, help, or input would be greatly appreciated. I've been going through severe Neopets withdrawl since then.

Bambookitten, I'm sorry that's happened to you. I agree that you should be covered by the rules. Just keep filling out the form and hopefully you'll get a response. Games are a major source of income, and it doesn't seem fair to me that your account should be precluded from those just because of your disability. There's another thread here where someone mentioned getting frozen and contacted Charlotte (whose contact info was taken off a pinkpt page on help for frozen accounts).

Good luck and let us know how it goes. TNT is notoriously slow, but hopefully they'll eventually listen to you.

P.S. If TNT ends up ruling against you, let us know so we can flood the NT editorial with letters of protest.

Sorry to hear that this has happened to you too bambookitten. You're going to have to prepare yourself for a long fight in order to gain your account back, but you got my support here.

In the mean time, start a new account to play with while you try to get your old account back.

With you all the way.

Hi, thanks both of you for the support. I sent in another letter with the rule in it and hope that might spark someone to help take me seriously. I figure I'll wait about a week since TNT is slow before submitting another one if this one doesn't get answered. I'm guessing nobody knows any specific NPusername of a moderator I could bug personally or maybe a time of the day that I should submit my request to hopefully get a nice person. I looked for the Charlotte person mentioned earlier, but I couldn't find any information on them.
As for creating a new account, I went ahead adn did that a couple days ago so if anyone wants to keep in touch via that route let me know.
Thanks again for the support guys, it really helps!

Not a problem Bambookitten. Best of luck.

As a general rule of thumb for me, anything before three days is nagging. All is fair game after the three day mark.

Let loose with those emails!

If I could also add a bit of legal help...considering that right now this is technically discrimination against a blind person, you could pop them with a lawsuit.

But seeing as that rule right there has everything pretty plain as day, they should unfreeze you. :|

Hope you get your account back. ^^

Well, I wonder where I'm supposed to give up being ignored and turn it into a legal issue. I agree that it is discrimination and I looked at the matter through that light until I found that rule which basically means they already covered discrimination and thus had that in place, but if the monitors aren't adhering to that then technically they are still discriminating. I really don't want any trouble, but all of my emails and contacts are being ignored. I mean I know if I could just get in touch with a monitor and spell out my situation they would see obvious reason and restore me, but none of my requests to be unfrozen have even gotten a single response to date.
That's what's frustrating me most of all.

Of course. Unfortunately TNT hold all the power here so just be patient and keep sending your emails - that is all you can do at this stage I'm afraid (if you want your account back).

Any updates on this?

*sigh* nope, not a single email from TNT.
It's been over two weeks now.
I was thinking that maybe I'd go around and ask as many people as possible to write in to the editorial and ask for my restoration (with a brief explanation as to why I deserve it -- I.E. since I was within the rules) but I wanted to organize it so that everyone sent their question out on the same day and hopefully on a day when TNT is actually going through editorial questions for the next week. I figure maybe if my situation is brought to their attention by many people all at once, it'll be alot harder for it to slip into the cracks like perhaps my single emails are going. The only thing is 1. will they consider that spam somehow (I don't want anyone else in trouble on my behalf) and 2. I had all of 1 neofriend so I'd have to ask people like you all to help and not sure how much support I could get.

Any input on this idea?
I even have a live journal chronicling all of the happenings in case some sort of log is needed.
Aside from a monitor just choosing not to read my emails I have no idea why it wouldn't get a response by now. I even quoted the rule to them, but nothing.
I'm really email clueless though and i noticed the form said that any "Mail.com" emails won't allow neopets emails to be received, but I sent it through rocketmail so I'm assuming that's not the same thing?
Thanks for asking and sorry for the long-winded rant again ^_^

Hang in there. If you give up, then there is no chance of you getting your account back. Getting your account back will always be a fight so you need to be prepared to be in it for the long haul.

I'm happy to send in an editorial question too. Let me know when you plan to do it and I'll do it as well.

I'd love to have a read of your LJ once it is done. I'll even feature it on PPT as well... that might give some exposure to your cause.

I'm hoping that the saying "there's strength in numbers" holds true. I'm asking everyone who believes in my cause to send a question to the Neopets editorial asking to look into my account freeze. Maybe if the username midorikame comes up enough the writers will actually look into it. They admitted they make mistakes so why haven't they owned up to mine?
For those who read this and haven't read anything before about my problem:
I'm blind, I've been blind since I was 8 years old due to optic nerve damage. My friend introduced me to Neopets and I began playing about a year ago. However since many features are inaccessible to a blind person, I have been getting help from my bf who lives with me to use those features, like most of the games. According to Neopets rules this is perfectly acceptable. On march 11th, 2009 I went on the help boards and asked if any other blind people play Neopets and knew of any other accessible ways to gain neopoints so I didn't need to bug my bf to help me with things like games so much. Well a few of the kids on the boards reported my post and rudely accused me of lying about my blindness. They were very rude about my disability and instead of them getting in trouble I was ban because (I'm assuming) a monitor saw that in the post I explained how I received help to access things like games on the site. I've never been warned ever on the site, but that day without even a single warning my account was disabled. The reason displayed is several users sharing a single account -- which again I've only ever had one other person help me with my account and according to Neopian rules it was allowable. Since then I've been writing and calling and all of my attempts have gone unanswered. So I'm engaging plan C.

I'm asking anyone who believes me and believes that I was wrongfully frozen to send in a question to the Neopian Times editorial. Please include in the subject line or somewhere in the question Midorikame (my username)
The question can be anything from "it states in the rules that if you have a physical disability you're entitled to help. Midorikame did just this and was frozen. Why hasn't she gotten her account back?" Or anything related to helping me draw somewhat positive attention to my situation. I'm hoping if a TNT member reads enough of these they'll actually take heart and unfreeze my account.

So start sending those letters!. And for anyone who is willing to help me with this, thanks so much in advance and I'll keep you posted on the results.
Midorikame

p.s.
my whole acount freeze struggle and my steps thus far are chronicled at voice4equality.livejournal.com

*happydance*
My account is back!!!!!!!!
I didn't get any type of email or anything, but I tried to log in, just cause I try every once in a while to listen to the sad frozen message and it let me log in again! So I'm a little sad I didn't get a TNT appology but hey, I'm just happy they finally fixed me!
Noooooo idea how it happened, but maybe some editorial questions already reached the right people and they corrected me?
So thanks everyone for all of the help and if anyone ever needs my help for anything let me know.
you guys rock!
and thanks TNT ^_^

TOSOEdit: Merged threads. Please do not create more than one thread on the same topic.

Bambookitten, so glad your account was rightfully returned to you. I still think it's worth asking the editorial for rules clarification regarding disabilities, just to raise awareness and hopefully prevent a similar situation from happening to you or someone else again.

Wow Viacom never ceases to enfuriate me. I posted a few weeks ago about being frozen because I stated on the boards that as a blind person I have a sighted person help me with Neopets games. Well, since I was given my account back, I have been having this person help work with me to see if the new version of JFW (screen reading software) might be able to work with some of the flash games on neopets now and somehow make at least a few of them playable. Well along with being freeze happy, Viacom also is code sloppy because I was able to recognize some flash buttons but they were all labeled as random numbers. Anyway, before I bore you all t o death, I was able to memorize certain placements of buttons on flash games -- I.E. "unlabeled button 5" is the "send score button" for game X. So one game, advert attack, it sometimes tells me that my score's being reviewed by staff and such and there's never been a problem. I'm assuming that is the score/game that they must be freezing me for because it says that it's being reviewed for being high or something. Anyway, if they've always accepted my scores before, why suddenly accuse me of cheating? And how is trying to find accessible gamess for me to play as a blind individual and this consequently making me hit random buttons until I figure out what means what cheating in any way? TNT is extremely ignorant about blindness, but this is no excuse for them to be discriminatory or to refuse to get educated about it. One mistaken freeze I can chalk to sheer ignorance and maybe a grumpy person, but now twice, the second time for trying to actually play Neopets more independently as a blind person and not rely so heavily on game help from another person? It's rediculous and again I ask you all to flood the editorial on behalf of Midorikame and beg TNT to open up and at least try to work with me or any other blind neopets user on accessibility issues so that this type of thing does not happen again. On a more radical note, because of my lack of response by TNT over my first issue, I won't hesitate to seek legal advice over this matter, but being out of work since last year, I am flat broke. So if anyone knows of any legal entity that would advise me probono please let me know. I refuse to let Viacom's ignorance continue.
P.S. for anyone who missed the first drawn out wrongful freeze it is chronicled at http://www.livejournal.com/users/voice4equality
P.P.S.
I'm a last-year graduate from UC Berkely, I use the cutest black lab guide dog named Electra, I've been out of work and struggling financially for the past 6 months, and Neopets has been my main source of entertainment for the past year. I am enfuriated at these repeated freezes, but because of the fact that online blind-friendly entertainment is very limited and the fact that Neopets hhas been such a de-stresser, I really want to work with TNT not just walk away from the blatant ignorance and discrimination. Why can't they just take the time and talk to me? Just try to understand a blind user of the website instead of ignoring me and hoping I'll eventually get tired of fighting and go away?

TOSOEdit: Merged threads. Please do not create more than one thread on the same topic. Also, please do not double post on any thread. If you have something new to add, edit the post and it will be bumped to the top.

Wow, so apparently TNT replied to me and said I'm not getting my account back. I even offered to go down to HQ and show them exactly how I've been attempting the flash games on my own. However I'm sure they'll ignore or tell me that 's not an option and simply tell me that I have to "deal with it" which I will in no way do because I am guilty of nothing! Anyway fellow Neopians I need your help now more than ever. I put over a years worth of hard tireless work into my account and this isn't fair. Anyway I've copy/pasted the conversation between me and the TNT staff member. If anyone has any additional suggestions or help please please let me know.

Midorikame:

Hello: I did not use any "program" to play flash games. As I stated before I am a blind user and I use JFW = Jaws for Windows to read what comes on my computer screen. That is all I use to access Neopets. If that registers as a "program" on your end, I'm really sorry, but I never cheated. Neopets is inaccessible enough as is now, I'm sure any "cheat programs" are even worse, so even if I had wanted to somehow cheat that would be impossible. I understand that you all get many dishonest people on your site, but I did not cheat and you already froze my account once wrongfully simply because I posted on the neoboards about being blind and little kids accussed me of lying and spammed the "report post" button. This is not fair in any way and I will happily come to your offices with my laptop and "show" you all just how I play the like 3 flash games that are accessible enough for me to even try out on my own. Also, I'm a UC Berkely grad, I'm no idiot, if I wanted to cheat it wouldn't have taken me over 1.4 years to make a measly 1.6 million on neopets. It's really unfair that I be accused of cheating wrongfully, when you have thousands of obvious cheaters on the website, making billions, always on the high score tables, but instead you choose to go after someone who does nothing but keep to herself and endlessly play solitare just to gain a measly 50np on average because that's how limited my options are as a blind person. Again, I'm really sorry that you have to sort through hundreds of these messages every day, but I really would appreciate if you at least gave me the chance to prove my innocence, which I will do because I never cheated on any game ever.

Natalie




--- On Tue, 4/28/09, -Removed- wrote:



From: -Removed-
Subject: RE: Other Submission - frozen - (username midorikame)
To: -Removed-
Date: Tuesday, April 28, 2009, 10:40 PM


Hi,

You cannot use a program to play Flash games. You were frozen because you cheated on Flash games. It has nothing to do with being blind. I'm afraid your account cannot be unfrozen.

If you have any other questions, don't forget to include the entire text of this e-mail with your username clearly at the top. This will help me better address your situation.

-Removed-

Private email addresses and names have been removed. Please do not post those, as their owners may wish for them to remain private.