Hi there!
I made a little comment about it in the Steam group already, but I think it's worth a forum post here.

Basically… on the last day of the holiday sales, I wanted another few games. Like S.T.A.L.K.E.R for 2.- which wasn't even available to me and stuff.

So… I got two good friends in the US who got me games before during the deal (and I got them some with fair conversion rates in return).

Friend 1 tries to gift me the stuff I want… and the Paypal payment gets declined at the end, because the payment supposedly couldn't be verified by Steam. (This kept happening for the rest of the day.)

We give up at one point and friend 2 tries to gift me the games instead. And guess what? Exactly the same result!

Mind that both of them bought stuff for themselves and me, just one or two days prior and that their Paypal accounts were fine.

And apparently that error occurred for other people too.

So… in the end both of my friends filed a support ticket (as suggested by the checkout system).

Valve's response (which obviously didn't come until the next day) was basically "Pfft, whatever, the sales are over so you're not getting the games for that price anymore."

One of my friends now informed the FDC about this (and will probably also inform the BBB later on), because they basically lured people in with their discounts, then made the actual purchase impossible to complete until the offers were over, then refused to sell the items for the advertised price.

And here's the best part: Just for filing the ticket with the Steam support, both of my friends' accounts are flagged by the fraud system now and they need to verify who they are, before they can purchase anything again! :D

Steam must truly loves their customers, no?