There is a confirmation window that pops up when you buyout an auction (and bid for that matter). It says: Buyout (Bid on) auction for: X amount. Accept/Cancel.
True. I’d love an improvement to the AH’s sorting. In my opinion it should sort by buyout not bid price. But even that would likely have the “no changes” crowd screaming as well. They wanted TBC warts and all, this crappy design is a wart.
or just look at the cost of what you’re buying
Pssssst
PSSSSSSSSSST
…that’s exactly what a scam is. I don’t even think scam is legally defined, if it’s a dishonest scheme to deprive someone of their assets it’s simply defined as fraud which is illegal.
So the term use of scam to point out a dishonest scheme is pretty much right on the money. People have this INCORRECT concept in their brain that if someone theoretically agreed to the transaction it can no longer be a scam, but we are all sitting here discussing how we know that based on the way the transaction is set up that it is done in hopes of someone hastily/unattentatively buying auctions.
This is far less rocket surgery than some people want to make this out to be.
Given how quiet the #nochanges crowd has been about same faction BG’s I really don’t see that as an issue.
How is it dishonest. The buyout price is clearly posted. There not hiding the fact that there way over charging. Its upfront. Buyout… Pay attention.
No person would intentionally purchase such an auction. The person who lists the auction is hoping to exploit a tired or rushed individual into making a mistake when purchasing. This is true for any scam. Whether it’s an IRS scam, a tech support scam, or a gift card scam.
AH scams may be a lot more straight forward and transparent, but they still rely on the same basic tactics to function. Hence, it’s a scam.
Not paying attention to the ah totals of an item is nothing like someone calling an old person and lying to them about being a Nigerian prince.
It’s not rocket science to understand the differences between negligence and fraud.
Agree to disagree. I can overcharge. The price is clearly displayed… You can choose to not buy it. End of discussion imo.
Oh but what if they call a young person who should know better? Would we not prosecute the person for the fraud then because he should have known better?
No. You prosecute based solely on the intentions and the act of the person performing the fraudulent activity, how victims respond to it is irrelevant.
A scam is not inherently illegal. It is nothing more than a dishonest scheme and no one here seems to disagree that posting items with a low bid and a massively inflated buyout price isn’t being done with less than good intentions, you just want to get caught up in the wrong area of what makes something a scam.
I know we are going around in circles here but I’ll say it anyways.
The dishonesty of the scheme does not revolve around the AH in it of itself, in fact the scheme cannot succeed if it is the only listing on the AH. The dishonesty revolves around placing an every day item (an herb, a potion, a flask, etc) with a buyout WAY above market value in a way that places it amongst a sea other auctions at market value because they want it to blend in with them so when people buy them in a large quantity they accidentally purchase theirs. They don’t put items like a BoE crafted up there like this because it’s a one time purchase so anyone buying it is going to look at that specific auction before purchasing. When you buy every day mats or consumables they are hoping you go on autopilot mode and just spam buy since you see all these AHs for 2g bid/2g 50s buyout and as you spam click buy you gloss over their 2g bid/900g buyout. The bid is put at market value to put the item in with the rest, giving the bid value the overinflated price would remove it from anyone ever seeing it and no one would ever buy it because they’d never see it.
That is what the scam revolves around. Thinking the scam revolves around the specific item they’re posting shows a severe lack of critical thinking.
I’m going to be straight up. It’s 100% her fault. Next time I bet she’s gonna read before buyout. I have 0 sympathy for stupidity. It sucks ill admit…
I guess the days of people taking personal responsibility for anything are behind us.
People actually requesting the Nanny-State now.
QFT. Best post in this thread.
These are scams because they exploit the badly designed AH and hope people will do a mistake which they will due to the bad interface. It’s the reason there’s AH addons and it’s the reason why sometimes you sell stuff you just posted even tho there’s cheaper ones available; the way the AH list things is very bad and outdated.
If only there were addons which make it almost impossible to fall for that. Git gud.
I think to erase the sting of “stupid” that everyone who buys off the AH should get a participation trophy and a sticker that says “I’m important and STRONG!!!” “She” is at fault. “She” needs to put on her Big Girl panties and suck it up and maybe go farm some more boar asses to pay for her mount. Or maybe the OP needs to just give his friend the 2500g back to make her feel better if he’s so concerned.
She needs an auction addon.
Any way the guild chips in and helps her get back to 2500?
Difference between someone calling you up and trying to tell you that your PC is infected and Microsoft is putting a warrant out for your arrest with the IRS - and someone on a street corner at a farmers market selling apples for $500 each right next to a stall selling them for $2 a pound.
You’d generally look at that person and call them crazy, and if you see someone walk up to them and offer to buy it for $500 each you wouldn’t call the seller a dishonest scammer, you’d call that person stupid for buying those apples. You might step in and say “Hey… you shouldn’t do that… why are you doing that?”, but you would certainly not call the police and ask for them to start controlling how much apples can possibly be sold for throughout the country.
Why hasn’t blizz just added a sort by bit/buyout toggle? It would fix this problem pretty much immediately. Though I still don’t know why people look at bid prices when they are buying out and then confirm the amount lol.
There is nothing moral about an unconstrained free market.