The Scam/Not a Scam debate storyline

[MagikFingerz]

It's a lazy cop out of an answer, saying it's "impossible" to tell their intentions when it is in fact incredibly easy to tell. When the item is literally exactly 100x more than an already existing version of itself on the market, there is no other answer.

 

But yea, fixing the UI would probably solve or at least greatly reduce the issue. That's what's being exploited right now to scam people.

 

So if someone's listed items that normally go for X amount of thousand credits for 100x LESS, does that mean all the other listings have bad intentions?

 

Not possible to determine intent with 100% accuracy. Try again.

[Eanelinea]

Good one OP! This is Hillarious!

 

And in other news...

 

Senate Marketplace, Coruscant:

 

Trading houses across the galaxy are in a state of pandemonium as millions of upset traders have blockaded access to GTN terminals demanding that authorities take action against so called GTN scammers. The protesting traders demand an end to the practice of sellers freely listing items for whatever price they deem fit alleging that the "willing seller-willing buyer" model is fully open to abuse by unscrupulous traders who vastly overprice their items and then trick unsuspecting buyers into purchasing them.

 

"The authorities need to put a stop to this. I lost my entire fortune on the GTN today" says one Miss Atta Batta, a regular trader at the Coruscant GTN exchange. Miss Batta paid a staggering 1040001 credits for a stack of 3 Opilla Crystals having misread the price and thinking that she was getting an absolute bargain of 346.667 per crystal. "It's an absolute outrage! The seller refused to refund my credits claiming that I had agreed to the purchase and that all the information was listed upfront. But im too lazy to read the prices and I shouldn't be forced to read them so carefully just because all these sellers are trying to scam us!" Another trader, Mister Oojoobi'Jubna of Ithoria, quickly agrees, having similarly lost over 7 million credits for a pack of 11 Resolve stims. "Sellers shouldn't be allowed to list for whatever price they want" he argues. "They are intentionally deceiving us by putting these strange figures that can be misread by careless people like myself!"

 

These are but some of the many tales that are repeating themselves at Trading Houses across the galaxy. Gullible traders are targetted by unscrupulous sellers who trick them into purchasing goods at vastly inflated prices using figures that are easily misread by the careless amateur trader - circumventing the spirit of the stringent GTN requirements of presenting all information upfront. Trading House managers say they are powerless to take action against these unscrupulous sellers noting that the sellers have not broken any galactic laws or GTN regulations as they are free to list items at any price they choose and that the buyers have full freedom not to buy any overpriced items. "We advise all traders to read all the details on screen carefully and to confirm a purchase only after they have double checked the total amount they will be paying" says president of the Huttese Trading Association, Moh'Neh the Hutt, who is responsible for managing many Trading Houses across the galaxy.

 

This statement does not help Mister Oojoobi'Jubna and the millions of others who have since been reduced to utter poverty. With little legal recourse to recover their hard earned credits, they feel they have no choice but to publicly vent their frustration in the hopes that they will eventually get things changed for the better. "I won't let a single transaction to take place at this GTN until I get my money back or some law is passed to put a stop to this menace" he says.

 

 

 

You have won a shiny new 'Internets'. How would you like it delivered?

 

This was BRILLIANT! =D

[LordArtemis]

PVP greifers find weaknesses and exploit them. The poor pvp flagging mechanic is exploitable. See what I did there?

 

Unless you practice double standards you cant say the argument is not applicable. If people tricking people who dont want to pvp into accidentally flagging is acceptable to you, then people listing prices in such a way so as to appear cheaper to people who can't be bothered to read properly should also be acceptable.

 

It is ALLOWED. There is no circumstance where it SHOULD be acceptable, but folks can find it so. Dishonorable sales practices, like over-inflating prices or drastic undercutting is not often acceptable behavior in the market despite the fact it is allowed.

 

IMO it should be behavior that is rewarded with a lack of patronage. That is the best way to punish less scrupulous sellers.

[TUXs]

You're not serious... right? They don't have access to people's minds, therefore there is no way of proving someone's intent from something as simple as a GTN listing. If they were going by reasonable suspicion alone, there'd almost certainly be quite a few honest people being punished wrongfully.

Sure am. Bioware can pull the posting history of players and see if there's a trend, or see if maybe this is a mule toon used for scamming. And like I said, they don't need to "prove" anything, they just need to be reasonably sure.

[TX_Angel]

"Goodbye, enjoy Skyrim.

Maybe you Will learn how to read Numbers there."

 

Would be my answer hearing that.

 

It might be yours, but it shouldn't be Bioware's answer. You never want to say that to paying customers (which is what anyone who loses a million credits is, a sub, a paying customer.

[LordArtemis]

7) Default the GTN to sorting by lowest price first, or lowest per unit price (maybe a toggle to pick?). There is really no good reason for the current sort system, it is a jumble of high and low prices and the need to sort the list every time is pointless. If I can set eBay to always sort by lowest price first, I should be able to with the GTN as well.

 

I will add that to the list TX.

[MagikFingerz]

Sure am. Bioware can pull the posting history of players and see if there's a trend, or see if maybe this is a mule toon used for scamming. And like I said, they don't need to "prove" anything, they just need to be reasonably sure.

 

The point isn't that they NEED to be reasonably sure to make the call, they technically don't need any reason to ban someone if they so please. The point is that even being reasonably sure, honest people are bound to be punished for something they didn't do just because someone was "reasonably sure" their intent was to "scam" people. FACT: No numerical log can prove someone's intent with 100% accuracy.

 

Jeez, it's like talking to a brick wall...

Edited November 10, 2014 by MagikFingerz

[TX_Angel]

Here we go again.

 

And, yet... you claimed we should all just shut up because YOU don't think it is an issue...

 

And I said it would keep coming back until Bioware does something.

 

Eric has now responded, he pointed out that people have the right to post stuff at any price they want. He is right. However, he also said he would bring this to the attention of the powers that be.

 

If we make enough noise, those powers that be will pay attention. That is what a protest is.

 

I'm protesting the design of the GTN, it should auto-sort by lowest price first, every time you open it. Make that change and most of this problem goes away.

[LordArtemis]

Lol wut? Learn to read numbers.

 

This is your argument against the removal of the display of fractional currency? What does learning to read have to do with the annoyance of the display of a currency the game does not use?

 

And on a side note, once again, the onus is on us, as buyers, to punish sellers that participate in dishonorable selling practices.

Edited November 10, 2014 by LordArtemis

[TX_Angel]

So if someone's listed items that normally go for X amount of thousand credits for 100x LESS, does that mean all the other listings have bad intentions?

 

Not possible to determine intent with 100% accuracy. Try again.

 

100% accuracy is not required, just what a reasonable person would think.

 

If items normally sell for 100 credits, and someone is selling them for 100,000 credits in a way to make it appear to be far less, a reasonable person would see something wrong with that.

[TUXs]

The point isn't that they NEED to be reasonably sure to make the call, they technically don't need any reason to ban someone if they so please. The point is that even being reasonably sure, honest people are bound to be punished for something they didn't do just because someone was "reasonably sure" their intent was to "scam" people.

 

Jeez, it's like talking to a brick wall...

They've banned innocent people before - I'm sure they'll do it again. I have no issue with them offering a 'warning' first, but after a single warning per account, then they should ban the abusers.

[Lotharofxev]

Just so I'm clear on this:

 

Instead of using time, money, resources to oh, I dunno, introduce NEW CONTENT, there are various forum posters who want the parent company to pore over logs, monitor the GTN and ALL sales, not just to "determine patterns", but to determine "intent".

 

You must lead very sheltered lives is all I can say.

 

Oh wait, that's insensitive.

 

 

IT'S A SLAP IN THE FACE OF ANY GTN USER THAT WE BE HELD ACCOUNTABLE FOR OUR OWN ACTIONS!

[TX_Angel]

For every new thread that is started on this topic, I think I'm going to list a dozen items on the gtn at "scam-y" prices. Serioustly, there has to be at least 6 threads on this one topic on the front page alone.

 

Edit: I just counted. It's 8 threads currently on the front page.

 

Or... perhaps... lots of people don't like this behavior and want Bioware to do something about it...

 

Ever consider that possibility?

[Jadescythe]

Sure am. Bioware can pull the posting history of players and see if there's a trend, or see if maybe this is a mule toon used for scamming. And like I said, they don't need to "prove" anything, they just need to be reasonably sure.

 

No, they actually do have to have proof. Or EA gets sued. And then it goes class action when they can't prove that any of these potential scammers were actually scamming since all they did was list items on the GTN for more than everyone else. And while there may be malicious intent (which can't be proven anyway), it certainly doesn't break any current rules or terms of SWTOR. In the same manner that if I charge 100x as much for my goods on e-bay and you buy it because you didn't notice an extra digit, you won't get your money back.

[Nel-Luc]

BUT!

 

I spilled my coffee in my lap. And it was piping hot.

That must be someone elses fault, like the person who sold me the coffee!

 

I should sue for fifty million, because it's CLEARLY not my own fault, it's the sellers fault.

 

I just wanted to add to this analogy that the coffee was served at 190°F (3rd degree burns in 2 seconds). If the coffee was served at 160°F (which is the max temp coffee shops do) she would have had over 20 seconds to prevent that same level of damage. It was a product safety case. She also got $600,000 - not $50,000,000.

[TX_Angel]

In short, to use a real world model .... If i am selling you a slice of pizza for $20. and you only want to spend $5. don't buy my Pizza. However if you really LOVE my Pizza, you're gonna pay the price i charge.

 

And that would be fine, but that isn't what is happening here...

 

If the Pizza normally goes for $5, and you use the "Pizza listing service" to make it appear to be $5 while actually charging $5,000, you'd be way out of line.

 

This isn't a matter of charging double or triple the normal price, it is charging a thousand times higher for the normal price.

[g_land]

Ugh.

 

[begin Rant]

 

I really hate it when people use this example as if the famous lawsuit was somehow frivolous. The coffee in question was way, WAY, WAAAAAY too hot. The person it spilled on received third-degree burns and had to have skin grafts applied to her mutilated genitals. Please use a different example, because in this particular case the lawsuit was completely justified.

 

[End Rant]

 

Doesn't change the fact that she was a complete idiot for putting a hot squeezable cup of coffee between her legs rather than in a cup holder and then driving off with it.

Edited November 10, 2014 by g_land

[LordArtemis]

Blockbuster is a good example of what happens when you improperly inflate prices. The company specifically stated that increasing the price of the streaming service beyond what consumers would generally expect to pay in the market was probably a direct contributing factor in the companies downfall.

 

In other words, consumers made them pay for their greed in the only proper way...they refused to give Blockbuster their business.

Edited November 10, 2014 by LordArtemis

[OddballEasyEight]

It's a lazy cop out of an answer, saying it's "impossible" to tell their intentions when it is in fact incredibly easy to tell. When the item is literally exactly 100x more than an already existing version of itself on the market, there is no other answer.

 

But yea, fixing the UI would probably solve or at least greatly reduce the issue. That's what's being exploited right now to scam people.

 

As if it's impossible to accidentally put one zero (or even two) more on the total price when posting it?

That'd be like saying it's impossible for someone to accidentally sell items for less than theire worth by accidentally forgetting one 0.

[CmdrShpd]

Doesn't change the fact that she was a complete idiot for putting a hot squeezable cup of coffee between her lags rather than in a cup holder and then driving off with it.

 

Seriously, please read the link that was provided earlier in the thread. She WAS NOT DRIVING when this occurred, and there were no cupholders in the car.

[Grayseven]

Yup. Alot of people here seem to view the world in black and white.

Either you are with them or you are the enemy.

 

Nobody is defending the people putting things up for sale at those prices.

But it's not a scam.

You can clearly see the price if you're paying attention.

It's unethical behaviour, sure, but there are no rules being broken here.

Just scumbags being scumbags and idiots being idiots.

 

And I'm saying that as someone who actually fell for this once.

 

It's the same reason I have an account I use specifically for internet purchases. I know there are people out there looking to make free money by stealing CC information but I'm not going to cry out for the 'gubmint' to ban internet sales. Instead, as a smart consumer, I pay attention to who I buy from and I've set up a safeguard that ensures I don't lose money due to a breach in security of my card.

 

It's my responsibility as a consumer to ensure the safety of my money in real life as well as in this game. Crying out for a change that will do nothing to "fix" the problem is just another case of wanting something to be done just to have something being done.

[OddballEasyEight]

I just wanted to add to this analogy that the coffee was served at 190°F (3rd degree burns in 2 seconds). If the coffee was served at 160°F (which is the max temp coffee shops do) she would have had over 20 seconds to prevent that same level of damage. It was a product safety case. She also got $600,000 - not $50,000,000.

 

I'd just like to add that this has been pointed out several times in the thread and answered several times by me

[TX_Angel]

See now you're learning, hopefully you understand how this is not a scam now.

 

Regardless if this is a scam or not, have you considered that what once was legal, can be made illegal?

 

How about Bioware says, "fine, the past is the past, but going forward, this is no longer allowed".

 

If Bioware said that, would you be ok with it and respect it?

 

What we are asking for is for Bioware to declare this behavior to be against the rules and be reportable.

[OddballEasyEight]

Doesn't change the fact that she was a complete idiot for putting a hot squeezable cup of coffee between her lags rather than in a cup holder and then driving off with it.

 

But she didn't.

I suggest you read the link someone posted earlier to the case details.

[Cernow]

With that in mind, I am going to pass these issues back to the dev team and see if there is anything we can work towards in the future for the GTN to help alleviate these issues. Thanks everyone!

 

Whilst ultimately players need to take responsibility for their own purchases, I feel there's one thing that the devs can do to help assist with creating a safer / better shopping environment:

 

Remove decimal points from the GTN. Round everything to the nearest credit. There is absolutely zero benefit to the buyer from showing unit prices to decimal point precision. All it does is cause confusion. The total price will be rounded to the nearest credit at purchase anyway because 1 credit is the minimum unit used in game.

 

A fix such as this should surely be relatively easy to implement and would alleviate the majority of the problems some players are experiencing.