SWTOR Banned for No Reason Help and Guide

Have you been banned from Star Wars: The Old Republic, but aren’t sure why, this guide can help you track down the issue and dispute your ban to hopefully get your account back.

Why was I banned?

If you were banned from Star Wars: The Old Republic, you likely broke either the Terms of Service or the Rules of Conduct.

Some common reasons to be banned from the game include:

• Exploiting the game or hacking
• Harassing or trolling other players
• Scamming other players
• Macroing or cheating the game mechanics

If you are banned for any of these naughty reasons, you should receive an email about it, and the only thing you can do is email swtoraccountdisputes@swtor.com to request an unban and explain your situation and hope for the best.

However, sometimes players get banned even if they have barely said anything in chat and haven’t done anything bad.

Banned for ‘No Reason’

A majority of the time when players get banned who haven’t done anything wrong, it involves an automatic ban relate to your payment, subscription, or credit card that has been marked as suspicious, and your account is automatically banned to prevent more suspicious behavior.

These ‘suspicious’ trigger behaviors include:

• You requesting chargebacks on your credit card for SWTOR or other EA game purchases
• Your bank requesting chargeback for SWTOR or other EA game purchases, with or without your knowledge/permission, thinking it was fraud
• Your credit card country not matching the country you are purchasing from
• Your credit card country not matching your account’s country
• Trying to use your credit card to pay for someone else’s account subscription (ex as a gift for a friend or family member, especially if in a different country)
• Multiple failures when trying to pay via Credit Card or Paypal
• Using some types (not all) of Pre-paid credit cards for a re-occurring subscription
• Paying from an uncommon country (not from USA/Canada/Germany/France/UK)
• Issues with your bank account or debit card around the same time as trying to pay for SWTOR

Although these may just be you actually trying to pay in a slightly less common way and getting flagged, the system may automatically assume you are trying to pull some type of financial scam and will automatically close your account.

The email you receive about your ban may be very vague about why your account was banned and may not clearly state what happened, and may say something not useful like “Violation of our User Agreement or Terms of Sale” as the reason.

If you haven’t played or purchased anything for a long time, and randomly got a banned email after not even logging in for months or years, there is a chance someone may have “hacked” your account and gotten access to it, and either accidentally triggered an automatic ban or specifically did something naughty while logged into your account. In this case, you also need to contact support using the methods below, and make sure to include the information that you have not played since x time / x years ago.

How to Request Help From Support

While this should be a simple thing to resolve, unfortunately, if your account is banned it can often be very difficult or time-consuming to get your account unbanned, according to many players who have been through this process.

• If you are lucky, they will simply find the issue, unban you, restore your account, and maybe even gift you some free play time. You may never even receive information about why your account was banned.
• Many players never get their accounts back and start new accounts, while others move on to other games.

If your account is banned, all you can do is cross your fingers, contact support, be polite and give as much information as possible, and hope support will help you.

1. Contact Support via Phone

Although calling by phone is a pain, and is not actually recommended as the first official way to contact support about account disputes, I would recommend if at all possible to call first and try to talk to a real person.

Here is the phone numbers to call SWTOR.

When you are calling them, let them know you are having an issue with the payment related to your account, rather than immediately demanding to be unbanned. The goal is to figure out what happened the flagged your account by accident, and see if they can help fix it. The customer support person on the phone may not even actually be able to unban your account themselves – but they may be able to help figure out what was wrong with your account, potentially fix any issues on it, and even if they can’t unban it yourself, you’ll have a lot more information when you later contact the official account disputes support.

When on the phone, the details you will need are:

• Your SWTOR account username
• Your SWTOR account email
• As much details about what happened when you were trying to pay as possible, for example
  • Which credit card or payment method you were trying to pay on
  • What country your credit card or payment is from
  • What country you are in right now
  • If you had any errors or failures when trying to pay, where those were (example were they in your bank? your credit card? your paypal?)

If you do not have any payment related issues, and were banned for a different reason, note that support will often not help you over the phone and just ask you to email account disputes directly. So if you did something naughty yourself, or someone else got access to your account and did any of the normal bannable offences, phone support may not be useful at all, as they would rather you go through the email system where a specific team can look at your account history in-game and not just your banking/payment issues.

2. Contact Account Disputes Support via Email

One you’ve gathered as much information as you can, contact the account disputes email, it is: swtoraccountdisputes@swtor.com

Make sure to include your SWTOR account name and SWTOR account email so they know which account to look at.

In the email, explain you were having issues with payment, and think your account may have been banned accidentally. If you have any of the potential issues listed above that might have triggered that automatic ban, make sure to include as much information as possible. For example, if you were trying to pay via Paypal, but had a bunch of failures while trying to pay but it eventually went through, let them know that. If you were trying to buy a SWTOR subscription for your girlfriend with your credit card on her account, but you are in different countries, let them know that.

If you instead have no interesting payment issues, and were banned out of the blue especially if you have no logged in in a long time, make sure to include that info.

After that, all you can do is wait and hope they reply! Good luck!

If you’ve gotten back a reply and are unhappy with it, you could always post your information and the reply you received to https://www.reddit.com/r/swtor – make sure to remove any account names, email address or your personal details before sharing it though. While no one in the community can unban your account, they might be able to give ideas about what might have happened or other avenues to request help.