Quite frankly after looking at the OP’s post history and lack of returning to the thread I get the impression it was just a bait thread.
But I’m a sucker for a debate about these kinds of things (because even if this particular case never happened it definitely does happen)
This isn’t an accurate comparison.
It’s more like walking past a bunch of stalls selling apples for around $2 a pound, picking a random stall, handing over the credit card, and after swiping it realize you got dinged for $500.
Yes, the person selling the apples listed them for $500, but he put his stall in line with the rest of the other stalls hoping that you’d walk by all the stalls selling them for $2 and that when you decided to buy you weren’t really paying attention anymore because you had formed your assumption that all the stalls were all reasonably priced. Maybe you went to his stall because he had no line formed and his apples looked just as good as the others.
What people fail to understand about the art of this practice is that it ONLY works if the person posting obscene prices is able to post amongst all the other reasonably priced products. You don’t see people posting like this except in markets that are oversaturated because they need that saturation to exist in order to blend in.
And to add to that extent people do need to have some level of personal responsibility and say I should be aware, but personal responsibility and accountability of the scammer aren’t mutually exclusive because at that point you’re arguing that the person who sells his apples for $500 a pound had honest intentions with his pricing. If you believe that they you’re just playing the devil’s advocate because you believe intention cannot be discerned or just lack any sort of moral compass.
Edit: I also want to point out that if that did happen in real life you could dispute the credit card charge easily, and people would be yelling at that vendor for what he was doing. Likely someone would stand in front of it and tell anyone who approaches not to buy, and the farmers market would kick him out.
Not at all. The $500 is clearly there, marked on the board. You hand your credit card and the person stares at you and says: “You know I’m going to charge you $500, are you really sure you want to do that? Like I need you to verbally say you understand.”
You say: “Yes, charge me $500 for that apple!” - and then walking away you realize they did, in fact, charge you what they said they would charge you and get upset, calling the police to try to shut them down.
This isn’t a scam because it’s clearly marked in many places and you have to very clearly mark “Yes, do what I said!”. Maybe that person worked really hard to grow that apple and felt their apple really was worth $500. You bought it and clearly agreed that that $500 apple was worth that much. Was this possible? Unlikely, but still, that’s not the point.
The AH is the one area that players actually have agency in this game. We can’t decide metas because that’s determined by game mechanics, we can’t decide rarity of items, we can’t decide anything about raids, we can’t decide anything on classes - but we can, as players, control the AH. If players start telling Blizzard to step in then it removes player agency from the one place we really have it. What shall they do? Shall we demand they lock in certain prices? Can items only be put on for 10% more than a vendor would buy them? Can we only sell items if vendors don’t sell it? Can we only list items with a 5% bid/buyout price? What if we don’t want a buyout price? Can we no longer list items without a buyout price?
This isn’t for Blizzard to decide, it’s for players to decide. The player needs to simply ensure they never buy that 2500g item, then confirm they buy it. If nobody buys it then the people won’t put it up for 2500g or obscene prices. Asking Blizzard to essentially take over the economy though won’t work out in any way as good for the game.
You’re basically ignoring the unattetive aspect. The person agreeing to it is yakking on their phone, chatting with friends, or otherwise just not paying attention. That’s why after the charge happens they go OMG WHAT JUST HAPPENED. Everything catches up to them.
You keep trying to pretend that the person agreeing to the sale has actually processed what is transpiring, but for whatever reason they haven’t.
I have clearly explained how this scam operates as it pertains to WoW. They put their auctions in a sea of other reasonably priced goods and hope you spam buy without looking. Yes there are confirmation windows, but what they want you to do is spam buy auctions where you are rapidly hitting buyout Yes buyout yes buyout yes.
There is a level of personal accountability to be had here and anyone who falls for it likely never will again (forever scarred by losing half or all their gold). I don’t really think anyone disagrees but pretending the process is not a scam by nature is just showing off how dense someone is.
why would someone post 1 runecloth for 999g buyout. please tell me the legitimate reason for doing this. are they hoping that the price of runecloth shoots up that much?
If this type of logic were actually true then you could do stuff like write a contract for literally anything and throw a random line halfway in there that says “you owe me $10 grand a week for the rest of my life” and it’d hold up in court.
Spoiler Alert: It won’t. It’ll get thrown out even though it was plainly in the contract for all to theoretically see. It’s known as acting in bad faith because even though you’ve theoretically done nothing wrong you’ve done something in a way that was an attempt to mislead someone.
In a similar sense the person posting their AH is doing the same thing. A low/reasonable bid with a high buyout so someone spam buying goes into autopilot mode and buys it.
The scam process revolves around preying on inattentive people buying something en masse.
I’m ignoring it because it doesn’t come into play. Not being attentive is a personal issue, not societies issue. It only becomes societies issue when the person not paying attention becomes a danger to society, like texting and driving. It does not become an issue when someone someone walks into a store and buys something not on sale, or buys an apple for $500. That’s not a scam. That’s 100% a personal issue.
You are trying to mark it as a scam and it simply is not. There is no way to scam someone when it’s plastered everywhere what the price is. This is 100% a personal accountability thing just like the farmers market example. Trying to paint it as anything else is simply wrong. This cannot be compared to lying to someone as the person did get exactly what they paid for. It’s not a bait and switch as the price was listed and agreed on in multiple ways and again, they got what they paid for.
Scams are, by nature, difficult to avoid. This is simply not, as you can see the price marked and simply keep walking.
Bro it’s literally the focal point of how this particular scam operates. Scams need to target you in some way to get you to fall for them.
Scammers call old people because they’re feeble and easy to trick. Gullible.
Scammers will tell you that the IRS is after you and you’ll be arrested unless you pay now. Fear.
Scammers tell people they can make quick easy cash to prey on people in debt who are desperate for help. Desperation.
What do all of these scams have in common? Have it happen fast with minimal thought processing. They all work differently, but the goal is the same. In the case of the AH spam they want you to be buying products quickly so you lose focus on theirs.
You realize that in order to argue your stance you have to believe the person selling the herb for 900g or apple for $500 genuinely believes their product is worth that much?
A simple question to you is if you believe the person posting them believes that. Do you think the person has good faith in their dealings or not?
Factually inaccurate. There is no definition that describes scams as hard to avoid. The defining feature of a scam is that it is dishonest.
Another hallmark to scamming is that the scam wants you to act quickly because the moment you walk away from it and start to think about the situation you realize how absurd it is. This AH scam does that in its own way based on how people will buy stuff at the AH in WoW. It just requires the existence of other auctions to camouflage itself.
Can your guildy read? Did she click “OK” when it said buy this auction for 2500g? Also this is not a scam. Posting something overpriced and purchasing that item is free customer choice. Please do not accuse players of scamming when its false. owned
So looking at this: “Scammer wants you to act quickly” - They do this by constantly pressuring you. “You need to buy it now before it’s to late. It’ll cost you more later.” Doesn’t apply as the price is literally listed and you can walk away without anyone saying “You’ll regret this!”
Scams are hard to avoid or they wouldn’t be scams that people fall for. They make convincing arguments that you need to perform a certain action or you’ll fail/fall behind/be arrested/lose something. They aren’t scams because they openly list a price.
Who are you to say that they didn’t list that apple for $500 because they value it? Likely not, but it’s not your place to judge their intentions when it’s a price listed on their store front.
There is zero way to police someone going store to store and buying stuff. There are fake websites that look like a product and take money, but that’s not what happened here. They didn’t take the money and run, they delivered the exact product that was being sold. It also wasn’t a fake site that was offering the same product for more money. It was clearly listed in a line with others that were “legit”. This person made a choice. It’s not a scam.
You simply cannot compare someone threatening a person or bait-and-switching someone when the exact product is being sold. They didn’t promise “better healing” or anything, it was literally the same product.
If you get a quote to have work done on your house and you have two people from two different companies standing in front of you at the SAME TIME: One company says “I can do the work for $20,000.” The other guy says “I’ll do the same thing he’ll do, but I’ll do it for $500,000.” and you pick the guy with the jacked up price - then you’re going to pay $500,000 for that work and no court is going to get you to not pay that. You had multiple clear choices, and your failure is not a failure of the system. The other guy didn’t scam you for the $500,000 - he did the job perfectly and without flaws as he said he would. You just paid more. You not paying attention to his price is not his issue and it’s not your neighbors issue, it’s not a court issue. You handed him the check for what he said he would do, and he did it. No scam by any definition was performed in this transaction.
Did you know IRL companies price their goods and services at different amounts and then its up to the consumer to do their due dilegance, shop around, compare prices… If they want the best deal.
Not just spam buy everything and then complain that they found it cheeper at a different location.
Its a free market. Be aware how you are spending your hard earned money.
The price was clearly stated. Don’t be click happy and purchase things without looking at their prices.
How it is a scam that she mindlessly bought out something without checking the total buyout price? If anything is a scam it sounds like she scammed herself