READ ME Expanded FAQ (Recommended)

Q: Who or why should be repped?
A: Every community has their own rules on how reputation is handled, so please be sure to consult that particular community first. However, for more general rules on reputation, feel free to read DataStorm's Advice on Reputation.

Back to top!​

Q: Ok, TS is too much, but how to gain rep?
A: Let traders rep you on your reputation thread(s) around in the associated communities (please follow the rules on such, some of those communities are very strict on what rep is allowed).

Remember: Quality is way more important then quantity.

/revised: June 17th, 2013

Back to top!​

Q: I donated, but I'm still not listed on SR as donator?
A: Diego and HelenAngel check the SteamRep Paypal for donations. This can take between 2 days and a week. Once one of them has seen the donation, he or she will check the Steam ID and add the tag. If no steam ID was included, see below.

Also, the minimum for Donator status is $ 10,- per paypal (minus fee if applicable).

Back to top!​

Q: I had some bad experience in trading, and don't know if I should report.
A: Yes, make a report if a trade or attempt to trade went wrong. Please follow the format: Guide to make a report
While the "offense" may not be within our investigative policy, we may find other things along with it. One note on this tho: We only investigate issues with at least one side being Steam trading for Steam games or Steam in-game items.


/revised: June 17th, 2013

Back to top!​

Q: What is a "Valve Trade Lock", "Valve Trade Ban", "Valve Trade Probation" and what does that mean vs SteamRep?
A: Valve has several states for accounts, which reflect their levels of investigation and judging:

1. Normal:
   1. Visibility: Not visible to others
   2. Limitations: No limitations whatsoever.
   3. Reasons: None, normal account.
2. Trade Locked:
   1. Visibility: Not visible to others.
   2. Limitations: Cannot trade, cannot buy games or items in-game.
   3. Duration: varies, depending on the reason. This may or may not end up in a Valve Trade Ban or Valve Trade Probation.
   4. Reasons: Valve is investigating the account due some issues. Valve may remove items fraudulently gained.
   5. Action: Contact Valve via Steam Support. SteamRep cannot help you in this.
3. Valve Trade Ban:
   1. Visibility: Visible for everyone, even when profile is set private.
   2. Limitations: Cannot trade, often cannot buy games or items in-game.
   3. Duration: varies from temporary to permanent. For non-permanent trade bans, a "Valve Trade Probation" usually follows after a trade ban.
   4. Reasons: Reported offenses in scamming, duplication, or other trading-related offenses as determined by Valve.
   5. Action: Contact Valve via Steam Support. SteamRep cannot help you in this. In fact, SteamRep cannot nor will not remove any negative VALVE tag for ANY reason. Valve controls their tags 100%. The tag is done by valve on the profile of the offending account, SR simply checks for it and displays it. Therefore, we cannot change it.
   6. SteamRep sees this as the same level as a "Scammer" tag. You cannot trade with a trade ban.
4. Valve Trade Probation:
   1. Visibility: Visible for everyone, even when profile is set private.
   2. Limitations: Vary, often can trade, but some trade/purchase limitations may still be in effect.
   3. Duration: varies from temporary to permanent.
   4. Reasons: The account has in the past been trade locked or received a Valve Trade Ban.
   5. Action: As with all Valve tags, contact Valve via Steam Support. SteamRep cannot help you in this. In fact, SteamRep cannot nor will not remove any negative VALVE tag for ANY reason. Valve controls their tags 100%. The tag is done by valve on the profile of the offending account, SR simply checks for it and displays it. Therefore, we cannot change it.
   6. SteamRep sees this as the same level as a "Caution" tag. We advise caution, but aren't saying you cannot trade with those (unless the person in question has other scammer tags, of course).
5. VAC Ban (in general):
   1. Visibility: Visible for everyone, even when profile is set private.
   2. Limitations: Is a ban per game, that the account cannot join a VAC secured server of that specific game where that account cheated with.
   3. Duration: permanent
   4. Reasons: The owner/user of the account cheated (Aimbot, speedhack, wallhack, etc) while connected to a VAC secured server (near all of the servers).
   5. Action: None, VAC bans are permanent.
6. TF2 / DOTA2 VAC Ban (if it was trade related):
   1. Visibility: Visible for everyone, even when profile is set private.
   2. Limitations: Cannot join VAC secured servers (roughly 99% of the servers around or 100% of the servers for DOTA 2). If it's trade related, a full wipe of the backpack may be done and a trade ban will be in effect. In some cases, the account cannot receive at all items anymore.
   3. Duration: Permanent
   4. Reasons: Serious and/or repeated breech of Valve's ToS.
   5. Action: None, VAC bans are permanent.
   6. Note: Can be accompanied with a Trade Ban.
7. Account disabled:
   1. Visibility: Not visible.
   2. Limitations: Cannot log into the account or use it in any way.
   3. Duration: Either permanent or until a charge-back to Valve is resolved.
   4. Reasons: Payments to Valve have been refuted or "charged back".
   5. Action: Pay.
   6. Special note: Most often a "carder" account. Has often only TF2 Premium and bought a number of keys.

Back to top!​

Q: What is a Carder?
A: A Carder is a account that is been used by somebody that uses stolen credit cards to buy keys on Steam, and often sells those for PayPal in order to launder/fence the items.
Common properties of a Carder account:
- Only very recent "reps" on the profile.
- Very recent account
- Only has TF2 Premium (and maybe some F2P games "recently" played for 0.1 hour)
- Has bought a lot of keys, or had them, usually within a recent period of time.
- Ask yourself this: Why would somebody buy keys for 2 dollars or more and sell them for 1 dollar-ish?

Things commonly bought by carders are:
- Keys
- Items from Mann Co store or Dota2 items that are easily sold.
- Games.

Anything they can easily sell fast with paypal. They are always in a hurry, and try to do their stuff in the weekend specifically to be longer under the radar.

/revised: June 10, 2013

Back to top!​

Q: I've been trade locked/banned due a carder, what do I do?
A: Well Valve will probably have already Trade Locked or Trade Banned your account (see above) for this, what you can do is:

• Contact Valve via Steam Support, give them everything you have on the carder.
• Make a report on him here on SteamRep, for carding and endangering your account. Please take into account that often the games that get revoked are already traded a number of times, and that the account you traded with for the game/keys/etc may not be the account that purchased these.

Back to top!​

Q: Does adding collateral protect against anything from Valve?
A: No, collateral items don't add any "protection" in any way. Valve knows rough values, so an unusual for a key is clearly an unbalanced trade. If the item is scammed or hijacked, it does not matter what is in the trade. Valve is fine with one-sided trading. The only time you have anything to worry about is if you're doing something you shouldn't be (e.g. scamming, sharking, etc.).

Back to top!​

Q: Does that mean any trade with a scammed or hijacked item is "foul"?
A: No, if you give full worth of the item in items back to the scammer or scammer alt, Valve will trace those instead of the scammed items. Does that leave you entirely out of the loop? Nope, Valve can still consider that you are "fencing" or "laundering" scammed items by some elaborate scheme, and can still Trade Lock you, and give a Valve Trade Ban for it.

It used to breach our rules too, but this is no longer the case. Repeated trading can however mean that we may consider it being brokering, see: http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/policy-change-trades-with-scammer-policy-end-of-life.119528/

Revised: Jan 30, 2016.

Back to top!​

Q: When (in time) should I appeal?
A: As soon as possible. Really, nobody remembers all details of a case that was a long time ago. Waiting only aggravates the problem to resolve the original offenses.

Back to top!​

Q: I Scammed, what should I do?
A: Pay back ALL your victims in full (appeal requirement). And make an appeal thread: Read here how

Back to top!​

Q: How do I see who are scammers on my friendslist?
A: Your Steam Profile needs to be public so the SR thread can compile a list. Once your steam profile is public, visit your SteamRep profile, and scroll down to review them. It can take some time before the friends list is displayed. Scammer tagged are red, admins Green, Cautions orange, and Valve Employees are purple, altho most Valve employees are having a tag, some don't. If you encounter such you can always ask them to identify and they certainly can do a number of things that only Valve employees can, like having Valve tags on their name on comments, being member of the official Valve group etc.).

Back to top!​

Q: What are the consequences for trading with a scammer.
A: Well, that varies, on a lot of conditions.

First: Limitations...

• SR will not look at a items vs items trade or multiple trades of total value less then a Bill's hat worth.
• Promo's like Bill's hat, Max head and any Unusual will be checked out with below ruling (even if that unusual is worth less then a Bill's hat).
• If cash trading (paypal, webmoney, etc) is involved this will be looked into, no matter what value.

SR will not look for trades for a scrap, refined or a key with item vs item trades. We do not expect people to bother to check SR or someone's profile for such low value. It also prevents "troll-marking", where a scammer would trade some items to a account to get that account marked for w/e reason. Also, most beginner traders won't have that much to trade with anyways, so that acts as a protection barrier.

Second: Various levels of actions can be done, a Warning can be given, a Caution tag, or even on more rare cases a Scammer tag.

Third: There are no exceptions, marked Scammer ppl ask us every now and then if they could cash out their items to somebody without giving those a problem, but it doesn't work that way. We provide no exceptions in that. There may be arrangements in repaying victims in items, as that is a requirement for appeal on SR, those may not be the same as what they scammed, but should be to the value of what was stolen. This is not to say that one can give high value items that are hard to sell to repay their victim as replacement for their stolen items. Preference is the item(s) themselves are returned that where stolen, and otherwise promo's/keys/refined to their value.

"Warning"
If such happens (trade value of bills or higher or unusual), a first offense can be done off with a warning, depending on the circumstances. This is often done in chat with the offender. A note of the warning is stored in private notes on their SR profile.

"Caution"
If the circumstances don't allow for a warning, for it was too obvious a alt, repeated offenses, should have known to check SR etc, then a Caution tag is applied. The caution tag or subsequent Scammer tag (see below) can be one time appealed to lower 1 level. A caution tag will therefore be lowered to a "Private" caution tag that is only viewable by SCA's and SR admins. If at a later date a offense occurs, its upgraded again, and cannot be removed. There are some exceptions, and those are within the freedom of the admin dealing with it. Basically the admin can say: this was accidental or could not foresee or w/e and not upgrade the tag, but it would be recorded also.

"Scammer"
Once its been multiple times, and the above warning/repeat offenses/caution didn't work to prevent the trader to continue to trade with scammers, a scammer tag will be applied.

Conclusion:
The idea is to catch repeat offenders who do it for gain. There is no gain in small items or intent in accidental trades. The reach is also towards obvious scammer alts accounts.

Any designated green tagged group, including affiliate community admins (Such as: Admins, MM, etc.) are held to a higher standard. For those should know better and be able to check accounts out by their experience, and should do so by habit. As those higher standards are always discussed when such occurs, there is no generic rule(s) on those to display. In general SR likes the responsible community to deal with the case, although we may do a recommendation. If lacking action, or SR doesn't see eye to eye with the respective communities solution, SR may choose to override it.

We no longer enforce the rule against trading with scammers. Please see the following announcement: http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/policy-change-trades-with-scammer-policy-end-of-life.119528/

Back to top!​

Q: I've been scammed, what are my options to get back my items/money?
A: We're sorry to hear so.

The things you can do are:

1. Report to Steam support you are scammed by that account, deliver them as much information as you can.
2. Report to SteamRep (not affiliated with Valve, if you're reading this, you are on the Steamrep site) to mark the account as a scammer.
3. Report to Law enforcements (Police, cyber crime departments, depends on your country, above a certain ammount its a federal charge in the USA).
4. File a civil suit in your country, demand from valve account info on the guy etc by orders etc, discuss with your lawyer to find your options.

The chances of getting some back with above:

1. Small chances, only in very rare cases steam support grants the items back, and not if any money trading was involved.
2. Small chances, the offender would have to appeal, and requirements to the appeal is that they have to repay their victim(s) in full by items (we generally advice not to accept money transfers).
3. small, depends on how law enforcements is handling such in your country.
4. Depends, on how much money, time and effort you are willing to spend to do this, and depending on the laws in your country.

In general, the chances of getting your money/items/value back are slim. The above will get you some things:

1. Steam support has awareness of scamming accounts, if enough report them, they will get a trade ban for short time up to perm depending on the reports.
2. The account gets a permanent scammer tag, this warns other traders of this account to not trade with it.
3. if caught, Jail time for wire / internet fraud.
4. If found and done trial, you can demand your costs back on lawyers etc.

We know its crap on getting your value back, but steam support was abused on scam's and hijacks, so all these possibilities are locked off with very few exceptions. SR will mark scammer, but is not about recovering your lost stuff. Other possibilities to regain your money/items are slim at best, and require a lot of effort and money at worst before you may see some in return.

Back to top!​

Q: What is SteamRep's stance on Game CD key trading?
A: In general we advice to NOT trade for Game CD Keys.

To some it's something else to trade with a reputable trader, or somebody they know very well (personal friends, family, ppl you have in friends for years and talk a lot with, etc) but with strangers with no special rep, its a gamble, which may even be a risk to your account if the trade is successful.

Apart from the possibility to be scammed, there is the issue of somebody knowing information about a activated game on your steam account. Which may run into issues with hijacking possibilities (see: https://support.steampowered.com/kb_article.php?ref=2347-qdfn-4366 ). So that is the 2nd reason why we are against such trades.

Then also, once a dispute on a CD key develops, there is NO way to verify who activated a CD key:

• Cannot see if "victim" or "scammer" has activated it.
• Cannot try the CD key, for if the "victim's" steam is not accepting, then it would be activated on the party that tries it, which runs into other problems for that person. Admins are advised by SR to NEVER do so.
• Even if the game or DLC was not activated on either the "victim's" or the "scammer's" account, there is no way to tell if either had activated it on a alternate account.
• Even if a key "looks" legit, it doesn't say it actually is. There is no way to "verify" a key to have been ever valid.

The very rare cases we accept such reports is that such report is without any doubt and very clear that the person tried to scam, which is maybe less then 1 % of all those reports, hence we do not waste our time processing such reports atm due other reports being deemed more important and a better return on the effort.

CD-Keys are PRIVATE, and for the owner of the key to use on their own account. They have the Proof of Purchase (CD key label, digital transaction / page etc), nobody else.

Its not for nothing that Humble Bundle now requires to be logged on to steam to activate their games on steam. This is to prevent that ppl are trading those CD-keys individually.

Also, Valve doesn't support such and the above risks may apply, which means you cannot expect any help on their side on any issues due this. They will only help on issues with activating owned games.

TL;DR: Don't trade in Game CD keys.

Back to top!​

Q: My appeal is pending for so long, will any action proceed my appeal faster?
A: Short answer: No.

The long answer: The problem is that a appeal takes on average 1,5 hours for a admin to research, review all linked reports, go thru all the notes, etc. Also there always where a very limited number of appeal admins, for several mostly practical reasons. There have been cases that a appeal took 3-6 hours just to review all. The record is that a admin needed a more then a week of all his free time to review all the evidence of the case. With so many appealing, we internally decided that oldest go first. Basically, when your number is up, its up. Till then nothing you can do will expedite the appeal.

Special notes:

• Do not Bump, those appeals get locked if still bumping after a warning. This is in your disadvantage, for then the open questions you have pending to answer, you cannot give anymore.
  
• Creating multiple appeals does not work. If you have more info to add to the appeal, you can just make a reply and add your notes or attachments.
• Creating a thread in General Discussions will not get your appeal to be handled any earlier.
• The only 2 exceptions are:
  • When the appeal went wrong, for example on a earlier appeal that is closed the admin said to solve the other tags first on the other communities and the follow up appeal after that got wrongfully denied for having a denied earlier appeal. You then may create a thread in General Discussions to get the error looked at.
    
  • The appeal is for being hijacked, and the account got tagged for phishing, scamming etc during the hijack. We try to prioritize those.
  
  
  
  Back to top!​

Q: What are the definitions SteamRep works by for Items, Collateral, Scamming, sharking, trading with scammers, etc?
A: As this is a bigger entry, it will be expanded over time for more definitions.

What do we mean by item(s):
Any steam items, which can be:

• TF2 items like weapons, hats, unusuals, keys, etc in various qualities and colors.
  
• DotA2 items like keys, couriers, etc. in various qualities and colors.
  
• CS:GO items like weapons, skins, keys, etc. in various qualities and colors.
• Steam items like game cards, chat emoticons, profile backgrounds, etc.
  
• Steam games, Downloadable content, etc.

Basically all that can be traded using the Steam client on various platforms.

What do we mean by money:
Any form of money transaction system where one can send money to another person:

• Direct bank transfer.
• Paypal
• WebMoney
• PayPal
• BitCoin
• Etc. We cannot possibly list all the possible ways to transfer funds between people.

We do EXCLUDE the Steam Wallet for it can ONLY be used to purchase on:

• In-game content in the various shops, of TF2, CS:GO, DotA2 etc.
  
• Steam Marketplace. Items that other users have put on the market for a fixed amount of money.
• Steam games and DLC in the Steam Store

I do REPEAT: Steam Wallet can NOT be used to send money in any form directly to somebody. Only via the above methods it can be used, end of story.

What is Collateral?
Collateral is the practice to alleviate risk of loss. Couple of examples:

• Trader is loaning a unusual to somebody, when asked for collateral, the debtor gives some in equal in return. This is generally some that is mainstream like Promo's or keys. Say that unusual is worth 2 buds, the debtor gives then as collateral 2 buds to insure the loaner that he'd get his unusual back. Its not uncommon to ask for a higher collateral then the worth of the item (up to 150-200 % of the original value), especially if the trader is emotionally or personally attached to the item.
  
• Traders decide to trade a non-tradable item for items, and buyer provides a Gift Wrap to wrap the item for the trade. Example:
  • Trader A and Trader B decide to trade trader A's item Z for Trader B's item Y. Item Z is non-tradable, and Trader B is required to provide the gift-wrap.
  • Trader B trades the gift-wrap to A in exchange for a Key (gift wrap is at the time of writing worth about a key)
  • Trader A wraps item Z with the gift-wrap.
  • Trader A trades Item Z to trader B for item Y + the key.
  • As you can see, at no time during this trade either trader was at risk to lose anything in this trade.

Scamming:
When negotiating between 2 traders, a agreed transaction of items vs items or items vs money is not uphold by 1 of the parties. This can have many forms:

• Not paying the money after receiving items
• Not giving the items after receiving money
• Inserting a fake Middleman into the trade to give a false sense of trust to the trader.
• Quick-switching item for a lower value same looking item.
• Lying to the other trading about the quality or name of a item.
• Etc.

Once a agreement is struck, and the trade itself begins, the agreement must be upheld by both parties. Things that gets often a question are:

• If at any time either of the traders decide to cancel the trade before any items or money have been exchanged, the trade is seen as failed. Any party may cancel the trade before such a time that any is exchanged.
• A trade agreement can ONLY hold current trade. There cannot be a demand to trade next week some other trade. Exceptions:
  • For example, a buds is sold, but the other party has only a part of the money. Seller MAY agree to get the whole or remaining part of the payment at a later date. We do strongly advice against such however.
    
  • The trade is a loan with collateral. However, we do not process these reports normally. Collateral should be a agreeable price of a item that was borrowed from the loaner. If it was not, then the loan was not arranged correctly.

Trading with a (obvious alt of a) scammer:
Trading with a marked scammer that was marked more then 24 hours prior to the trade. However, as SteamRep has the function to show reports on the profile page, its long before noticed that accounts have pending reports. This is also taken into account for SteamRep. Gauging a report should be done by the trader itself, instead of been believing the scammer's "excuses".

For the consequences and limitations, please read this post: http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/expanded-faq-recommended.7263/page-2#post-120656


Obvious alt:
Accounts which are often:

• Only months old
• Have less then 100-300 hours playtime
• Low steam level
• Not much games (generally less then 10)
• Number of friends doesn't say anything, most people accept invites, as a result: having certain people in their friends list does not say anything.

Those obvious alts have often high value items, like a number of keys, Unusuals, Buds, Bills etc. No trader goes inexperienced into higher value items. And doing money trading with such should give any experienced trader pause. Especially when they do not have any rep tread anywhere with some (smaller purchase) history.

However, we've seen alts that are actually quite old, those are often purchased accounts from various sites. So be wary of accounts that where never active in trading with no rep treads anywhere etc.

Sharking:
A sharker is a trader that abuse the newb/noobs on various games for being uninformed about the worth of their own items, and unaware where to check for that. By offering very low value items for high value, without telling them that the victim's item(s) are in reality worth much more. Its not defined as scamming by SR, for at the time of the trading both parties agreed to the trade, and neither changed any outside such agreement. Its simply the disparity between the sides.

Basically we can most times only get a story, and a screenshot of the trade history... which is not much to go on. Therefore SteamRep advises sharking victims to:

• Report the sharker via the Steam Profile ( "More" button on the sharker's profile, and select "Report Violation" and go from there)
  
• You can report to various communities like TF2 Outpost, Harpoon Gaming, etc. A number of individual communities do ban for such.

SteamRep's stance is that we really dislike this, and we reserve the right to tag extreme cases, but we will not normally tag for such for various reasons:

• How much disparity must there be between the sharker and the victim. This would potentially set prices to the market, which SR doesn't feel its their role.
  
• Problems of acquiring proof of the trade agreement, the sentiment of the chat etc.

Back to top!​

Q: Can I RE-appeal or not?
A: There are only very small grounds for re-appeals, for (1) the Processing the report is done by one admin, and (2) appeals by another. So if after a appeal the admin does not lift the ban, the admin has validated the Report(s) as being handled correctly, and the actions done by the banned person to mitigate the ban as not been sufficient. (Pay back the victim(s) at earliest possible time, have public profile etc, see the appeal guide for more).

First off, appeals are mostly done by the oldest standing admins on SR, that have years of experience with SR by now, and a LOT of experience with reports, the issues and researching.

Therefore, most re-appeals are straight cut down, and denied again. The only grounds we allow a "re-appeal" is for one or more of the following reasons:

• The admin has told the appealant that he could re-appeal after a defined period or action or event.
  
• The admin has been grossly neglect or wrong. However, the new admin will then ONLY look if that is really so, therefore he'll decide only on to uphold the appeal verdict, or to render it null to be done again. (No, disagreement with a verdict does not count.)
• Evidence. Not a argument "augmentation", just plain hard evidence of innocence.
• Not all reasons for re-appeals are pinpoint-able, but it must be a strong point, that cannot be ignored.

When can I NOT re-appeal?

• When you lied in your previous appeal (Should always tell the full truth, without holding back, we have more resources then your words).
  
• When you falsified evidence in your previous appeal.
• When you falsified evidence in responses on the report(s).
• When the admin canceled chats with you for using abusive language.
• When the admin turned down the appeal thread for using threats.
  
• When you do not comply to our guide's rules for appeals, the rules there apply as well on re-appeals.
• Arguments. Literally. Changing your argument or story does not make you eligible for a re-appeal.
• And other things in line with these. Admins have to endure enough drama every day on SR to not want such in the appeal threads or other communications.

Back to top!​

Q: I was scammed/sharked, can I get my items back?
A: Almost always: NO.

Steam Support:
Steam support will ONLY restore items with the first time you got hijacked with your items stolen. They will NOT give you items back if you got scammed sharked or w/e other situation you can come up with.
So steam support is generally not where you can get items back from.

SteamRep:
SteamRep is NOT affiliated with Steam, Valve in any way, and is a volunteer site that warn traders of problematic traders. We have NO access to the back-end of Steam or its trading facilities, and therefore cannot do anything to get your items back.

If you report the offender here on SteamRep, part of the appeal requirements is that the offenders have to pay back all their victims. We cannot find all victims, but every victim that got scammed and reported it here with what items where involved in what value etc, will have the potential to get their item(s) back when that happens. If you reported and have a discussion with the offender about this, you can point to:

http://forums.steamrep.com/threads/appeal-tips.66354/
Especially point: 10 and 11.

Vigilante actions:
On occasion, people that got scammed find it justified to scam themselves. Or people around them to try to scam the offender in order to get their items or in valuables back. It also has happened enough times that somebody was complaining about a trade, called it a scam (while also in cases it wasn't technically a scam), and a friend of theirs then scammed the other trader. Those do get banned here on SteamRep, for these are offenses that SteamRep WILL ban for.

Back to top!​

Q: When I trade, the other party gets a warning about me, what is that?
A: When others report you to Valve on your Steam Profile, you will get this.
Everybody will get this message for a limited time after that happened. At the time of writing it was understood to be for about 3 weeks, but as Valve does not notify users of changes in this, this can be changed even now without us knowing.

It looks like this:



Steamrep AND Steam Support cannot help you with this, this is a fully automated system by Valve. You will have to ride it out.

Again: There is NO point to make a Steam Support ticket about it, for they will only answer that they cannot change anything about it.

Back to top!​