INITIAL STAGES
There is a big difference between being locked out of your account and being frozen. First, let’s talk about determining if and why you were frozen.
Are you actually frozen?
So, you’ve just attempted to log in to your account and it’s not working. Before you fret, make sure you are actually frozen. It’s always recommended that you have a document on your computer wherein you keep track of the details of your account: all of your past and present passwords, PIN numbers, etc. because you never know when you might need to provide this information to TNT.
The best way to check if you are frozen is to log into a side account and then lookup your main account. You can either search your username in the bottom search bar or go straight to the userlookup URL. If you are frozen, you will see the sad Blue Grundo when you manually search your username, or you will see the following alert when you look up the URL:
Do you see these? You’re frozen. Let’s talk about what to do next.
Why were you frozen?
When you first started playing Neo, or if you’re an “old player”, meaning that you’ve been around before major changes were made to the site in the mid-2000s, you might be familiar with the period of time when TNT would tell you why you were frozen; you would log into the site and there would be a notification giving you a reason why you were frozen. Unfortunately, we are not offered this consideration by TNT anymore. The reality is that you will not be told why you were frozen until TNT responds to a ticket that you submit, if you choose to do.
You’re frozen. Now what?
You might be guilty. You might know why you’re guilty, you might not. The reality is that both you and TNT make mistakes, and either of you might be right. Stay calm. Let’s talk about how you should approach the ticket submission process.
SUBMITTING A TICKET TO NEOPETS
There is no way to have your account unfrozen by TNT without submitting a ticket. You must submit a complete and thorough ticket. Now, there is no way to know for sure why you were frozen; even if you are knowingly guilty of something, you cannot be sure that is why TNT decided to freeze you. For this reason, you do not want to admit to anything in your very first ticket submission, and you don’t want to list any assumptions you might have. Your first priority when submitting your ticket is verifying that the frozen account is yours, without question, and inquiring as to why you are frozen. That’s it.
Here are some tips for your very first ticket submission:
- Be extremely thorough and provide all of the information that you have about your account at your disposal. This includes but is not limited to any and all passwords you have ever used, emails you have ever used, PINs you have ever used, the birthday and zip code associated with your account, notable items in your safety deposit box and closet, neofriends, users you have recently corresponded with on neomail, recent pets you have transferred and/or pounded from the frozen account, among others. Any practical information that will certifiably verify that the account is yours should be included. This is very important because TNT is infamous for often taking a very long time to reply to a ticket. You do not want to wait months for a ticket response only to have the response be about owner verification. Don’t give them any reason to doubt that this is your account is frozen! Then, you can get on to the more important correspondence.
NOTE: TNT is extremely particular about email addresses. If you cannot provide the email address associated with your frozen account, there is a significant chance that your account will not be returned to you. For any reason, TNT may also ask you to provide the account’s original email address (i.e. the email address used to create the account); they don’t always do this, but if they do and you cannot provide the correct answer, your account may not be returned to you. For this reason, we highly recommend maintaining a document on your computer in which you keep track of all of the personal information about your account, most importantly the emails, passwords, and PINs, so this info is always available in case of an emergency. - Do not go into details about why you may have been frozen. Do you know that you are guilty of something? The reality of the situation is that you have no way of knowing why you were frozen until they respond to you, despite any inklings you might have. Do not give them any reason to be suspicious of you. You do not want to accidentally incriminate yourself unnecessarily. Wait for TNT to respond to your ticket and tell you what is going on. You could be frozen for a reason entirely unrelated to what you had intentionally done! You have nothing to lose; you should simply ask why you were frozen and leave it at that.
- Be respectful and cooperate. I know that it might feel unfair, and I know that the possibility of waiting months to hear back about your account is not something to get over easily. Still, I promise that going out of your way to express your anger, frustration, sadness, and/or exasperation to great degrees will do nothing to garner you a quick response to your ticket. It’s okay to be upset and mention that you want to get your account back. That being said, keep it toned down as much as you can, and make sure you are approaching the situation as someone who wants to cooperate. As predictable as we want TNT members like Tony and Alice to be, they often are not, and you don’t want to risk annoying or insulting them. Play nice.
A note about the tricky Help Page
To submit your ticket, you will go to the Help page and click “Request Support.” From there, you can create a ticket.
The Neopets website is quite glitchy. Have you tried submitting a ticket, but you’ve found the ticket submission link leads you nowhere? The Help page and ticket submission form has a bit of wonky coding associated with it, but don’t worry!
If you’re seeing this, you will not be able to submit a ticket:
This page appears to have redirected from neopets.com, takes up the whole screen, and has the URL listed above (which is NOT /help.phtml). This is not quite what you’re looking for.
If you’re seeing this, you will be able to submit a ticket:
As you can see, we’re at the appropriate neopets.com URL and have remained onsite. All of the links on this page will work perfectly fine.
If you find yourself at the first example above, and you’re unable to submit a ticket, manually typing out the correct /help.phtml URL should redirect you to the onsite help page. Refreshing the page won’t work because the URLs are different, so make sure you’re directing your browser to the correct URL.
Sorry for this bit of trouble, but don’t let the site’s glitchy nature stop you from trying to get your account back!
CONTACTING TNT AFTER YOUR TICKET SUBMISSION
As I’ve mentioned — and you probably already know — TNT is known for taking their sweet time to respond to tickets. If you’re wondering if there’s something else you can do in the meantime to express your concern to TNT, the answer is yes! Remember, just as you do not want to send in multiple tickets for the same unresolved issue (they really don’t like that…), you don’t want to go overkill on any of your correspondence. Still, there are a few things to do to continually let them know that you are waiting on their end to resolve your issue.
- Email TNT at support@neopets.com. In your email to them, you need to mention your ticket number, which will be at the homepage of the Help page once you submit your ticket. You do not want to reiterate your entire ticket, and provide the copious amount of information that you (hopefully) submitted alongside your ticket. The point of the email is to remind them that you have a ticket full of information that needs to be resolved. Write to them with a message like this in mind:
Dear TNT, I have recently come to find that my account, account name, is frozen. I have read the site rules and regulations, and I have found that I am not guilty of going against any of them. I have submitted a ticket: #XXXXX-XXXXX. Please review it and respond. Thank you.
You do not want to be rude! This email is meant to be a simple reminder.
If you do not receive a response to your ticket after 2-3 weeks, you can resend your email. You don’t want to spam them, but it’s okay to send continuous reminders over time. - Post on the Neopets Facebook page when it is active. While they do not post often, this is a very effective way of having your ticket made into a “work in progress,” which means that a moderator with TNT has been assigned to your ticket. This may or may not guarantee you a response, but it is certainly a step closer. For this reason, you should make the effort to monitor the activity of the Facebook page; you can turn on the notifications for that page, or you can join other online Neopets communities where people will likely let you know when the Neopets Facebook page is active. Whenever the Neopets Facebook page does update, you should leave a comment with your ticket number and politely ask for someone to take a look at it; the page is usually active for an hour or so after updating, and they will often reply to your comment and let you know that your ticket has been assigned to someone.
RECEIVING A RESPONSE FROM TNT
So you sent in your ticket, verified the frozen account as being yours, and waited…and waited…and waited. You get a notification in your email inbox that you have a response from TNT! Finally! This email should tell you exactly why you were frozen and, hopefully, what you can do to let TNT know that you are innocent or worthy of having your account returned to you.
TNT responds in a few ways: they will let you know what you have apparently done wrong and tell you that “the account will not be returned” to you; they will tell you what you have done wrong and leave it at that; or they will ask you for more information to verify your account. Despite the various options, none are necessarily a lost cause. Let’s talk more about what to do depending on why it is you are frozen.
Understanding why you were frozen
There are a lot of reasons users are frozen, and some of these reasons are fairer than others. That being said, TNT are much stricter about certain offenses compared to others. Here are some of the following reasons people are frozen and a bit more on what TNT thinks about them:
- You were frozen for using a code or bot to cheat at games, auto-refresh, etc. TNT has very little patience for game cheating systems. Unlike a purchased UC, which can be refunded, or doing dailies on a side account, which can be an accident, users must (almost always, save for refreshing) go out of their way to intentionally cheat at games when they are guilty of this. For this reason, TNT will not be very forgiving of game cheating. If you have been accused of this by TNT yet you know you have not intentionally cheated at a game, this is likely to do with refreshing too much. Hopefully, clean account history and an honest explanation as to your innocence should be enough to get you unfrozen.
- You were frozen for attempting to scam other users out of items, Neopoints, Neopets, or their accounts. TNT is very strict when it comes to scamming other users, because it puts the community in danger. It’s possible that you had a miscommunication with someone over neomail and they reported you, or that you were misinformed about the price of a specific item when trying to sell it to someone. You could have violated the terms and conditions without realizing it, and that does happen. Still, you’ll need to ask TNT for more details in regards to what you did (if they did not provide them) and make a case as to how you have played the game fairly thus far; any and all examples you can provide will certainly help. If you did purposefully try and scam another user, there is a good chance your account will not be returned to you.
- You were frozen for offering services (such as blinkie making or web design) in return for items or Neopoints. It’s important to remember that services — anything from customization help to CSS making — must be free on Neo; it’s okay to accept gifts that people might give you as thanks, but you cannot encourage or require this. This is a very fine line, and sometimes users cross it without realizing it, or it may appear to TNT that you have done this because they don’t always have context for the service/item exchange. Make sure that if someone sends you a ‘thank you present’ that you make it clear via neomail that this was not necessary. Neomails are great evidence because TNT can see them even after you have deleted them.
- You were frozen for multiple account abuse. Users often to dailies on their sides (especially Trudy’s Surpise) by accident, so TNT is used to users occasionally slipping up. If you were frozen for multiple account abuse, you’re likely guilty (and you know it) or you were using your side accounts to do something that affects other players. For example, it would be worse, in TNT’s eyes, if you were using your side accounts to vote in the Beauty Contest than it would be use your side accounts to spin Trudy’s Surprise. The former means that you could be taking something away from other players and making the game directly unfair. They don’t like that. Still, unless you are a serial multiple account abuser, this is not a very big issue that it tough to reverse.
There are plenty of other reasons for being frozen, but these are some of the most common responses, especially for those users that are, at least relatively, innocent. Now, let’s talk about what you should say back, especially depending on your situation.
CRAFTING YOUR RESPONSE: GUILTY VS. INNOCENT
Responding to your ticket after TNT has given you a heads up regarding your account is often the deciding factor that TNT will use when determining whether or not to return your account. You need to take into consideration why you were frozen and essentially make a gameplan, because there are a few different ways to approach your situation. First, you need to ask yourself: are you knowingly guilty, or did you make an honest mistake and feel you are innocent? You should know the answer to this: it’s intention vs. accidents. Buying a UC off-site and getting caught means you are a guilty party. Accidentally spinning Trudy on your side account means you made a mistake and have no “bad” intentions. Certain offenses are harder to play off as accidents than others, so keep that in mind.
Depending on which camp you are in, let’s discuss some approaches you can take when responding to your ticket.
Innocent
It happens to everyone, even if everyone isn’t frozen for it: you break a rule that you didn’t know existed. TNT understands this, and sometime they need to freeze you to stop you doing whatever it is you’re doing, or to verify that you’re doing something by accident and want to work to fix your actions.
There are a few things you should include in your ticket if you feel as though you’re truly innocent, or you made an honest mistake about something:
- Apologize. You did not know about the specific rule that you broke and you made an honest mistake.
- Make it clear that you have since read, or re-read, the site rules. While you should have already done this (at least, in TNT’s eyes), mentioning that you have since re-read the rules will prove that you are making an active effort to be a better user. They will appreciate this!
NOTE: If you broke a new(-ish) rule, such as rules regarding Trudy’s Surprise, make sure to mention this! It is much more in your favor to say that you were unaware of a recently-introduced rule than one that has been around for years. - Reinforce that you have a clean account history. A couple of warnings or silencings is nothing to be too concerned about; most active users have received one or two in their time. If you have never been frozen before, and you have never committed any serious offenses, make sure to bring this up. This will frame you as an honest and trustful user, and they want people like you playing the game.
- Be respectful, and use correct grammar and punctuation. I know this will feel unfair, or that TNT acted too strictly for freezing you, but don’t take it out on them… yet. You are allowed to be displeased, but you want to cooperate. You can begin doing so by responding in a professional manner; it makes their job easier and they will appreciate it.
It’s obvious to say this, but don’t forget to mention that you have no intention of committing the offense you were frozen for again. Did you refresh too often? Did you spin Trudy’s Surprise on your side accounts for the Basic Gift Boxes? Make it very clear that you understand what you’ve done wrong and that you have no intention of doing it again! The point of reinforcing your clean account history is to make a point that they should trust you.
Now, there are some (very few, but they exist) users that are frozen for reasons they are completely innocent of, or so it may seem, depending. For example, if TNT freezes you for refreshing too often and accuses you of using an auto-refresher, but you are certain that you have not done this, there might be little you can do. You should certainly respond to the ticket and say that you are completely innocent of this; you can even ask how you can prove this to them, and they will usually respond and let you know if there are further steps you can. Appearing keen and cooperative is always in your best interest.
Guilty
Listen, we are not here to judge. You have your reasons for playing the game with a little extra help (if you know what I mean) and we don’t blame you in the least. We’re sorry you got caught! Now it’s up to you to decide: do you want to admit that you cheated and apologize, do you want to play the fool, or do you want to give up? It may feel like it’s worth giving up depending on the offense, but let’s read through our options first.
- Admitting you cheated and apologizing/reversing the damage as best you can is an option and it can work. I’m speaking with experience: I have, in my early and naïve days, purchased a UC and been frozen for it (thank goodness I know better now!). I explained to TNT that I had a very clean account history, which they could verify, and I reversed the original charge from having purchased the UC. With a screenshot of this evidence and a sincere apology, my account was returned to me. This is a risk, and you cannot guarantee that TNT will always be forgiving; still, they have made it clear to a huge majority of users that take this route that they are willing to return frozen accounts that have made off-site purchases and had charges reversed. If you were frozen for a different kind of purposeful cheating, such as multiple account abuse or restocking bots, it will be harder to convince them that you will stop because you cannot reverse the damage you have done. In these instances, you should sincerely apologize and reinforce that you have an otherwise clean account history; they may be willing to give you another chance because you admitted to the offense.
- Playing the fool has worked for some users. Obviously, some very intention offenses, such as downloading and using restocking bots, cannot be played off as “an accident.” Other offenses, such as multiple account abuse, can, depending on the circumstances. Here, you will want to follow the steps under the “Innocent” section explained above. Do you understand English as a second language? Have you recently taken a long hiatus? Anything you can mention that will help your case — that you were unaware of a certain rule or two — can help you if you decide to take this route.
- There are a few instances in which it might not be worth bothering. We don’t generally recommend this because it’s always best to kindly push for a response until TNT blatantly says “this account will not be returned.” You never know what could happen if you really try! That being said, if you are certainly guilty of scamming other players, using restocking bots a lot, or hacking accounts, for example, the possibility of getting your account back is so slim that you may not want to put forth the effort.
I cannot recommend a particular method over another when it comes to approaching your ticket because it very much depends on your account history and your specific offense. Remember to take those into consideration when crafting your response.
NOW WHAT?
Did you get your account back? Congratulations! Remember to be careful with it in the future.
If TNT has made it clear after 1-2 messages that they will not be returning your account, it’s time to take some steps in another direction. You can decide whether you want to quit the site completely, rebuild a new account or one of your side accounts, or purchase a new main account. In the advent that you are not able have your account unfrozen, despite all of our wonderful advice, don’t fret, as we have many incredible main account packages available:
NOTES
- A note about different TNT mods: there are different members of TNT that respond to tickets, and they have different perspectives and moods. I cannot tell you which mods are “better” than others, and you should not lose hope because a certain mod is attached to your ticket. Follow this guide, be respectful, and be patient, and things will pan out how they will regardless of which mod you are assigned.
- Yes, it is okay to use your side account while your main account is frozen. You can resume any and all normal activity, including dailies, on another account if you do not have access to your main account.
