Account Permanently Banned Without Warning – No Access to Appeal Status or Support Response

AnnJu2811 · January 18

Hello everyone,

I am writing this post because my husband and I are completely confused and deeply disappointed by the situation that happened with The Elder Scrolls Online, and we hope that someone from the community or the support team can clarify what is going on.

On January 16, 2026, my husband’s ESO account and his account on elderscrollsonline.com were permanently blocked. He received an email from support with case number 260115-003404, stating that his account was banned due to alleged fraudulent activity.
However, he has never engaged in any fraudulent actions or violated the rules intentionally.

On the same day, he submitted an appeal, which received ticket number 260116-000446.
The problem is that he cannot check the status of this appeal, because his access to the personal account on elderscrollsonline.com is also blocked.

In the appeal, he honestly explained that sometimes we allow our son to play on this account, and it is possible that he may have done something unknowingly that violated the rules. There was no malicious intent, no attempt to exploit the game, and no prior warnings of any kind.

Since January 16:

The appeal was sent immediately

Three additional messages were sent to support

Today is January 18, 2026, and there has been no response at all

This raises several serious questions:

How long does ESO support usually take to respond?

How can we check the appeal status if access to the website account is blocked?

Why was a permanent ban issued immediately, without any warning?

Why is there no explanation or communication from support?

We started playing ESO together, as a couple. We always played side by side, and the game was an important part of our shared free time.
Now I honestly don’t see any reason to continue playing alone.

We are active and loyal players:

Both of us have annual ESO Plus subscriptions

We have spent thousands of hours in the game

We purchased all major expansions at full price

And yet, despite this, such actions from the developers completely destroy the motivation to continue playing and financially supporting a beloved game series.

It is very hard to accept that no player is protected from permanent bans without warnings, clear explanations, or timely support responses, especially considering the well-known technical issues of the game and the noticeable decline in online population over recent months.

We truly hope for:

Transparency

Fair consideration of the appeal

At least some communication from support

Because situations like this make loyal players feel ignored and disposable.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to read this.
We would appreciate any advice, similar experiences, or help from the community or ZOS representatives.

SaffronCitrusflower · January 18

Oof. I agree that this action is probably overzealous. But with that said, the ToS is very clear about letting anyone other than yourself play an account. Letting your son play on your accounts, assuming he's not playing on your same network, could be a reason for triggering an auto ban.

@ZOS_Kevin might be able to help.

And two days to hear back from customer support is normal. Sometimes it takes more than 4 days, but not usually.

valenwood_vegan · January 18

Usually Kevin or one of the forum mods can check on a ticket for you like Saffron said - just keep in mind that it's a holiday weekend in the US so some of them may be out of the office until Tuesday (I believe Kevin mentioned this in another post somewhere).

Support can normally take a few days to respond and unfortunately in many cases the first response from support seems either automated or chosen from a set of templates, and isn't always very helpful. If that's the case, make sure to reply and explain again.

Sending additional tickets to support can actually move you to the back of the queue, so it's best to wait until they reply.

Not trying to make excuses for them, many players have issues with the support process, but you should eventually be able to get a human to look at the appeal and hopefully make a reasonable decision.

freespirit · January 18

Have there been any chargeback's made on the affected account?

That is a very fast way to get an account suspended, although I cannot remember if when I ran into that issue, whether the mail said "suspended" or "banned". Also cannot remember if "fraudulent activity" was stated.

If you did buy something and then cancel the payment via your bank or card company that could easily be your problem and for me at least it was sorted out fairly quickly, always deal directly with ZoS otherwise they will get upset!

AnnJu2811 · January 18

Thank you all very much for your replies, explanations, and for pointing us to someone who might be able to help — we truly appreciate it.

To clarify a few points:
Our son only plays from our own Steam accounts and on our home network, and only in the games that belong to us. He really enjoys ESO, and we were actually already considering buying him his own computer and creating a separate account for him in the future. However, at the moment we still want to closely supervise his activity on the internet, which is why he does not yet have his own accounts.

There have been no chargebacks or payment cancellations on my husband’s account. The ESO Plus subscription is active and paid until April, and all purchases were made normally and directly through official channels.

That is why this situation is especially upsetting for us — a permanent ban without any prior warning feels extremely harsh, particularly when there was no intentional wrongdoing involved.

We understand that support responses can take some time, especially over a holiday weekend, and we will wait for their reply. We sincerely hope that support will review the appeal soon, look into this case properly, and help resolve what we believe is a misunderstanding.

Thank you again to everyone who took the time to respond and share advice — it really means a lot to us.

freespirit · January 18

Other things that might cause issues......

Do you PVP? Have there been any incidents recently that may have got your Husbands account reported? Is there any possibility your son has done something in PVP to cause a problem? Something like teabagging an opponent repeatedly?

There have been some issues with addons that have caused bans, specifically last year there was an external fishing bot that caused some issues, I believe the thread linked below has some relevant info....

https://forums.elderscrollsonline.com/en/discussion/678021/automatic-ban-for-cheating-exploiting/p1

The fact that you mention fraudulent activity, is it possible you may have inadvertently got caught up in and gold selling/laundering chains? Things like recently buying some too good to be true deals or even buying crowns off the same(new to you) person several times recently?

I hope you get it sorted but if you can narrow down what might be the cause, that will likely help no end with doing so. ZoS are not great at revealing indepth reasons for bans, if you can get close and approach them with absolute honesty that will help.

Unfortunately there is also the case that it isn't anything you've done at all but a mistake by ZoS, the thread I linked above makes for some quite eye opening reading!

AnnJu2811 · January 18

Thank you for the detailed suggestions, we really appreciate you taking the time to think this through.

Regarding PvP: my husband has not played PvP for quite some time, and our son has also never entered PvP modes on this account. In general, we are not big fans of PvP in ESO, mainly because we often encounter players using scripts or other suspicious behavior, which is usually quite obvious from how characters act in-game.

As for purchases and transactions: all purchases were made exclusively through the official Steam platform. Everything that was bought on my husband’s account was also purchased on my account as well — and my account remains completely unaffected and unbanned, which makes this situation even more confusing for us.

Because of all this, the decision to permanently ban the account is still very unclear to us, and we genuinely hope that support will take a closer look at the case and help us understand what happened.

Thanks again for trying to help and for sharing your perspective.

freespirit · January 18

Just one more thing......

At top left of the page there are a number of options, the last of which is "Support", if your husband clicks on that and picks "account" then "I can't log in" the next option asks if you are "banned or suspended". I didn't want to go any further but maybe he can put his ticket number in there to ask for it to be looked at?

Good Luck!

valenwood_vegan · January 18

@ZOS_Icy @ZOS_CouchTato @ZOS_Hadeostry

I know it's a long weekend, but just wanted to tag some mods so maybe someone can check on OP's ticket sooner.

Kappachi · January 18

uh, you let someone else play your account and don't know if they might've done anything malicious? that's that. there's no second chances for some things, next time keep it your own personal account like the game rules state.

AnnJu2811 · January 19

Our child is not “someone else” in the sense of a random or unknown person. We are parents, we actively supervise what games he plays and how he behaves online, and we take responsibility for that.

What is most upsetting in this situation is not the rules themselves, but the fact that the account received a permanent ban without any warning or clear explanation. If you read through the forums, you will see that there are many reports of automatic bans issued by the system, and in some cases they were later acknowledged as mistakes.

At this point, we genuinely do not know whether this happened because of something our child may have done unintentionally, or because of a system error or false positive. That uncertainty is exactly why we submitted an appeal and are asking for clarification.

We are not trying to avoid responsibility — we are simply asking for transparency and fair communication in a situation that currently lacks both.

Kappachi · January 19

And they are not required to give you that transparency if that "someone else" aka the child did something on the account that triggered a permanent suspension. It is someone else and not the person who should be properly playing on the account at the end of the day. Honestly the admittance of that seems enough to keep the account banned permanently as well.

Having two people play on a single account is a massive advantage not afforded by regular players, regardless of age, it means they can be farming items for the account while you're not even playing, how is that fair to any normal player who has to work for their gold or achievements?

AnnJu2811 · January 19

To clarify, the mention of our child was only one possible assumption, nothing more. The main issue is that for three days now there has been no clarity at all about what actually caused the ban.

What makes this situation especially frustrating is the contrast we see: in some cases accounts are permanently blocked immediately and without explanation, while at the same time — judging by numerous third-party websites, player reviews, and in-game experience — real-money trading of gold, crowns, and other services continues to thrive, along with widespread use of bots and macros, especially in PvP. These issues are openly discussed across many resources, and we have personally encountered and observed them multiple times in-game. Yet despite this, long-term players can still be removed instantly, with no warning and no communication.

We are not asking for special treatment — only for transparency and fair communication. And sincerely, I would not wish this situation on anyone. I truly hope you never have to experience being permanently banned without clear reasons or timely responses.

Kappachi · January 19

AnnJu2811 wrote: »

To clarify, the mention of our child was only one possible assumption, nothing more. The main issue is that for three days now there has been no clarity at all about what actually caused the ban.

What makes this situation especially frustrating is the contrast we see: in some cases accounts are permanently blocked immediately and without explanation, while at the same time — judging by numerous third-party websites, player reviews, and in-game experience — real-money trading of gold, crowns, and other services continues to thrive, along with widespread use of bots and macros, especially in PvP. These issues are openly discussed across many resources, and we have personally encountered and observed them multiple times in-game. Yet despite this, long-term players can still be removed instantly, with no warning and no communication.

We are not asking for special treatment — only for transparency and fair communication. And sincerely, I would not wish this situation on anyone. I truly hope you never have to experience being permanently banned without clear reasons or timely responses.

that one possible assumption is literally the same as a botting offense. letting someone else play your account when you don't have the time to do so and they make any progress such as exp/items/etc is no better than botting and I stand by that.

AnnJu2811 · January 20

The fifth day is already coming to an end, and there is still no response from support. The situation remains completely unclear, and it’s very frustrating and disappointing that there has been no reaction at all so far.

Recent · January 27

I'm extremely sorry for what you are going through. I love eso so much that the possability of my account being banned gives me nightmares. It would be impossible for me to find another game that entertains me as much.

I personally feel that you allowing your child to play on your account is rather an innocent thing to do, not malicious in any way. I remember allowing my kids to have a go on another rpgmmo i played many years ago prior to eso when they were little, with supervision afcourse. Feels like that was aeons ago, they are young adults now and have their own computers. I don't hold you in contempt for allowing your child to play on your account cos i know many parents do it and they just dont get caught. Kids are interested in the games mum and dad or their older siblings are playing. Eso is fairly tame as long as you turn off chats cos some conversations can get quite 'adultish'...inappropriate for young children.

I hope that you get a helpful response cos I believe in what you said. Eso is much more fun with family and or friends.

Hang in there and please let us know how it all turns out for you. ❤️

AnnJu2811 · January 28

It has now been almost two weeks since the ban, and out of all our messages and appeals we have received only one generic, template-style response — and nothing else. Even in this post, none of the previously mentioned ZOS representatives have replied or acknowledged the situation.

It is very disappointing to see such a lack of communication and engagement with players. Situations like this make it feel as though player concerns are simply being ignored, which is truly unfortunate.

Major_Toughness · February 2

AnnJu2811 wrote: »

It has now been almost two weeks since the ban, and out of all our messages and appeals we have received only one generic, template-style response — and nothing else. Even in this post, none of the previously mentioned ZOS representatives have replied or acknowledged the situation.

It is very disappointing to see such a lack of communication and engagement with players. Situations like this make it feel as though player concerns are simply being ignored, which is truly unfortunate.

Happened to a friend on mine too. He got one email reply to his appeal which was a template response, I doubt any human even read the appeal, and since replying to that has had no responses.

Also because your account is suspended/deactivated, you can't even access the support portal on their website, which is ludicrous.

Terrible customer service.