Menu
What's New
By:
Filters

Question: Thoughts on auction scamming

lethal

lethal

Prowler
Joined
Nov 3, 2015
Posts
1,138
Avatar Name
lethal jewgirl saint
I want to start by saying this screenshot isn't proof of someone's intention to scam, but this same tactic is very often used to scam players. A reasonable start bid is posted, then an unreasonably high buyout that appears reasonable at first glance is made. This is particularly common on items with a lot of 0s in the sale price as it can be hard to quickly distinguish a single digit difference when there are many numbers present. For example 170000% vs. 1700000%. If you're like me and a lot of other players who buy dozens of items every day on the auction house, then sometimes being really tired or having an off day can cause you to make a mistake. Never keeping money in your wallet isn't a solution, because you're often spending 5,000-10,000 PED in oils or other items multiple times per day. I made the mistake once of seeing a "reasonably priced" item after searching it and just pressing the arrow up and clicking buyout. I've never let it happen again, but in my opinion it's shameful that many of these scammers have so much success with accidental bids that they do it for years.

I'm curious as to what other people's opinions are on this matter.
Here is an example of one of these auctions that at a glance just looks maybe like a slightly cheap but "reasonable price" That can ger someone to dump their ped card on it. Keep in mind that there are cases where someone may search for this item specifically, and at a glance think it's a good deal. There's also the case where someone accidentally double clicks the "buyout" tab and accidentally has the highest buyout item on top instead of the lowest.


index.php
 
Last edited:
Unethical for sure, probably can considered scam too, and pretty sure it is intended by seller in a hope of some extra ped.

Have seen a similar during Easter mayhem, tons of mayhem amps were same priced, like 180p each (1800%) and 1 was posted for like 1600p (16000%).
If you short by price its jumping to 1st place because first shorting is price decreasing, like 10+ for 180p and 1 at the top for 1600p but looks 160p if you arent carefull. I was like wow, 20p off, almost purchased it.
(Not exactly these prices, as it was a month ago, but something like this, maybe 150-1700, etc)
The next day somebody had bad luck, it was sold, was clearly visible on daily MU of that amp.
I still remember the name, was wondering why he doing it, i remember his name looting expensive rings from box a few weeks before that, so not like that 1,5k ped changes much for him.
 
Not easy to prove, but not impossible to prove.

Seeing how the auction works per today "accidentally" putting a 0 to much in BO is however not possible to do unintentionally :p I don't see how it could be penalized.

Seems like one of those things to tell people to be carefull wil be more helpfull.



As for the screenshot, seems like a bit of a daft thing to try and get that scam going on though if it was so (no proof but its impossible to accidentally type 50k instead of 5k soooooo) I would imagine most people eagerly wanting a adj resto, can likely afford just that adj resto, perhaps a little more, but i feel that they wont have 50k sitting around and "eagerly" spam click to buy a adj resto. xD
 
Mika said:
but i feel that they wont have 50k sitting around and "eagerly" spam click to buy a adj resto. xD
Click to expand...

They dont need to have 50-48k sitting in ped card, its enough if you have 7k and click on BO because you belive its 4800p you BO.
Than your 7k ped will be on it as a bid.
Seller probably neither expecting it to be sold for 48k, that sure would end up as a case, that price was set to be able to mislead peoples as 4.8k and make unaware people bidding on it more than 4.8k
 
When someone's moral compass is messed up and their reputation means so little that their idea to make PEDs is to use a trick like this, then most likely they're open to even dirtier schemes.

I hope auction implementation in UE5 will prever someone to list something in auction too cheap or too expensive, relative to markup. Maybe list something between 75% to 150%?
 
Hego Damask said:
They dont need to have 50-48k sitting in ped card, its enough if you have 7k and click on BO because you belive its 4800p you BO.
Than your 7k ped will be on it as a bid.
Seller probably neither expecting it to be sold for 48k, that sure would end up as a case, that price was set to be able to mislead peoples as 4.8k and make unaware people bidding on it more than 4.8k
Click to expand...

That is fair i did not think about that. That would make "mr.eager" also get trapped.


Perhaps time to make a copypasta bulletin for trade channels to help new people avoid diong the mistake. Or have the MA people in rookie channel post it on ocassion in some way.

I do often think about it myself when i accidentally click on a item and notice it has no BO, i'd be merily pissed if i got scammed by this myself after all too :p
 
Hate stuff like this. Honest mistake maybe, but likely a scam. Hard to prove so reporting will do little....

I have almost fallen for this when stocking up on amps during mayhem. Luckily I did not have enough on my card for the purchase... If I did, would have been pissed and probably rage quitted for a week...

I hope with unreal they will update the auction and put another safety measure in.
 
There should be a report option in AH when this kind of stuff happens. Its true you can sell at whatever price you want or that the buyer should pay more attention, but this is clearly an attempt to trick people. However you need quite a stash of ped to missclick.
 
Hego Damask said:
Unethical for sure, probably can considered scam too, and pretty sure it is intended by seller in a hope of some extra ped.

Have seen a similar during Easter mayhem, tons of mayhem amps were same priced, like 180p each (1800%) and 1 was posted for like 1600p (16000%).
If you short by price its jumping to 1st place because first shorting is price decreasing, like 10+ for 180p and 1 at the top for 1600p but looks 160p if you arent carefull. I was like wow, 20p off, almost purchased it.
(Not exactly these prices, as it was a month ago, but something like this, maybe 150-1700, etc)
The next day somebody had bad luck, it was sold, was clearly visible on daily MU of that amp.
I still remember the name, was wondering why he doing it, i remember his name looting expensive rings from box a few weeks before that, so not like that 1,5k ped changes much for him.
Click to expand...
Unfortunately all that matters to some people is the money. I had very little money when it happened to me a few years ago, so it felt devastating. I bought a limited item worth about 170 PED for 1600 PED. I reached out to the player who sold it for about 2 weeks before they finally would talk to me, We ended up coming to an agreement where I gave the item back, and they kept I think 800 of the 1600 PED. I still see the same person listing items in this manner occassionally.
 
Ok, first post here was deleted for calling someone a scammer.. I'll rephrase! (you could have just deleted the name kind admin sir/madam)

MA doesn't care about auction mistakes. They happen all the time and have been for years, all trades are final in the end. It's atleast a couple of times/month people sell a stack of deeds for the price of one. Certain resellers continue making orders for them hoping someone makes a mistake.

Unreal will fix everything... :p
 
Killahbee said:
Ok, first post here was deleted for calling someone a scammer.. I'll rephrase! (you could have just deleted the name kind admin sir/madam)

MA doesn't care about auction mistakes. They happen all the time and have been for years, all trades are final in the end. It's atleast a couple of times/month people sell a stack of deeds for the price of one. Certain resellers continue making orders for them hoping someone makes a mistake.

Unreal will fix everything... :p
Click to expand...
I think there was atleast one time when MA "forced someone" to give back deeds to person who made mistake and sold 100 for a price of 1. But like we all know we are not equal in MA eyes
 
unufain8 said:
There should be a report option in AH when this kind of stuff happens. Its true you can sell at whatever price you want or that the buyer should pay more attention, but this is clearly an attempt to trick people. However you need quite a stash of ped to missclick.
Click to expand...

never kept peds on card, i usually keep 5-10k max on card rest in storage. Ive seen so many auction mistakes bids so i dont want to risk it.
 
I pointed this and other "naif programming" in ah
1. Evay say : range 75% to 150%... i disagree.. 100% is TT VALUE, no start offer under TT value must appear
2. "stock exchange book" feature, with on the left Highest BID and on the right LOWER OFFER should appear, no initial and buyout, BUY PRICE if you are not first one, line up
3. minimoum purchase 1 item, no fixed minimum fee, just a percent on sale price (10 basis points? 1/1000th of commission, if under 1 PEC free sale (it is just frictionless market)
4. PRICE CHECK second confirmation : YOU ARE PAYING 100% MORE THAN LAST DAY, 110% more than last average 100 sales are you sure=? button
5. "error claim" automatic rollback if error is over 1k ped (sorry admin cannot address stupidity if there is a second confirmation
6. free delivery, one auction for all universe
7. BOX listed in term of PED and PEC and not absurd percentages (and some eventual negative numbers to "cheat" the system to use prices over 32 bit numbers,,.... OMG)
8. make SI weapons and vibrabt sweatauctionable
9. some of us have not eagle eyes, remove the friggin transparencey, if i try to look at AH i dont care the wall behind
 
Msturlese said:
4. PRICE CHECK second confirmation : YOU ARE PAYING 100% MORE THAN LAST DASY, 110% more than last average 100 sales are you sure=? button
Click to expand...

Think this is all you need.

Place the bid.

"Are you aware you are paying 10000% or +10000ped more than the latest weekly average?"

"Yes" "No"

"Continue"

To simple maybe?

Edit: Suppose where this may fall over is items with no sales. However still it'll flag up so shouldn't matter.
 
Art Jennifer said:
Think this is all you need.

Place the bid.

"Are you aware you are paying 10000% or +10000ped more than the latest weekly average?"

"Yes" "No"

"Continue"

To simple maybe?

Edit: Suppose where this may fall over is items with no sales. However still it'll flag up so shouldn't matter.
Click to expand...

Even if they make 10 check boxes people will just click through and make mistakes. I'm not sure there is a perfect solution.... Could require another code from app to confirm bids over a certain amount, tideous if there is a bidwar tho...

A "simple' fix for deeds is to set a price PER deed instead of a price for full stack but this has been asked for many times before.
 
That's why separators are used every 3 digits (comma or space)... But considering that a few months ago there were negative values in the auction... let's see the changes in the new version of the game
 
Evey said:
Range of MU. So if an item has an avg MU of 10k/mo, then the cheapest you could list it for would be 7500 and the highest 15000...
Click to expand...
And what if a clever one will list it at 150% and a friend of him buy it, the lowest list price then will be higher than item really worth. What if they repeat it several times? :D What if they list for 75% of item value several times? this wont work
 
The problem with setting a MU window is it doesn't work with new items/items that haven't sold on the auction before. If some turkey sells a mod nano for 100k and sets the trend then that practically bricks the AH for that particular item. Who will be the next generous person to sell the next one for 150k?
In addition, how do we handle different tiers of items?

The suggestion has too many shortfalls, we need a solution but I don't think this is it.
 
Well, it could pop up a notification before the confirmation of bid showing that bid is under or over it's curent value when value exced with any margin MA likes, same like MA does when u list an item cheaper :)
 
Katie Chalmers said:
The problem with setting a MU window is it doesn't work with new items/items that haven't sold on the auction before. If some turkey sells a mod nano for 100k and sets the trend then that practically bricks the AH for that particular item. Who will be the next generous person to sell the next one for 150k?
In addition, how do we handle different tiers of items?

The suggestion has too many shortfalls, we need a solution but I don't think this is it.
Click to expand...

New items - no worries, no AH history, can set whatever.

New items with too low first few sold can be a problem, for example summer ring 2020 in 2020, first few were sold 30k on AH, few months later the off AH trading reached 60-70k, so wont be able to post on AH, could be an issue.

Same for some 2.0 stuff, like for example 1-2 AH sold 2.0 gun have much lower price in MU history than current prices, like you can see LP-40 under 40k or IMK2 around 40-50k, wont be able to post those tiers for sale with that rule.

Tier wont be issue, ingame MU showed for every L and UL item based on current tier.

Base idea not bad, just need to solve a few possible issues.
 
If there is one thing in EU that will make me reverse course is auction scamming and unethical behavior. It's part of the reason I took a very long break many years ago. Not a whole lot has changed in the auction so I just really pay attention to prices and items before clicking buy. Same goes for P2P trades. The mechanics of the auction could be better. MA could also crack down on unethical behavior and reverse some of these obvious scam auctions or orders when a player makes a mistake instead of their washing their hands of it. Scams and unethical behavior will continue unless the powers at MA step up to do something about it. For now just be extra careful when buying and selling.
 
There's people in this game who look at trade chats and auction all day waiting to take advantage of your mistakes, what OP has posted is just one of the tricks they use. You can easily avoid them by being careful, especially with significant purchases.

Also avoid any kind of risk when drunk because mistakes can be brutal in this game.
 
I hate the way CLDs, Moon, UG, etc.. deeds are sold on the Auctioneer. It is way too easy to sell a stack of deeds for the price of one to a buy order. Oof
 
Y'all are a bunch of blind archers. Good grief.

People often use very high BOs because people often sort descending by buy out on the auction. This gives this item an enormous amount of visibility. Then it usually attracts some people messaging the seller of hey will you take this or that or buy it for X - because not all items are sold on the AH.
 
atomicstorm said:
People often use very high BOs because people often sort descending by buy out on the auction
Click to expand...
True, im too used to do that every day (i mean BO descending search), to see what top stuff available to buy, but not to see an adjusted resto :D
 
JohnCapital said:
I can't understand for the life of me, why doesn't MA just add delimiters in the numbers?

70,000,000 MUCH easier to read than
700000000


(Or, did you not notice, which is my point exactly.)
Click to expand...
This would be great. But don't some countries (like Sweden?) use a . Instead of , when listing numbers?

Not that it would be too difficult to standardise I guess.

Numbers | Large numbers: important differences between English and other European languages | Home UTLC

www.utwente.nl www.utwente.nl
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top