So I have not been personally hit but have heard stories of others falling for this trap. The one I am talking about is the low bid and super overpriced buyout scheme.
I highly doubt blizzard will do anything about them however we the players can combat them.
So a few things to understand first.
They generally will cancel all their auctions before they finish
They generally use items with little or no deposit fee to minimize losses (ie enchanting mats)
Cancelling an auction with a bid causes a fee equal to the AH cut (5% unless using neutral)
The 3rd point there is how we can get back at them and what I’ve been doing. If you just hit “bid” it’s not a big deal as they lose the 1c or whatever 5% of the tiny amount. However if you bid a reasonable amount, enough so selling would still be below market price and they will cancel, you can drain the max amount of gold from them.
Keep doing this on hundreds of their auctions to intentionally lose them massive amounts of gold over time (you get all your gold back when they cancel or even better a super cheap item you can resell if they fail to cancel)
If we get enough people all fighting back we can make this financially a bad decision for them and they’ll be forced to give up.
That’s not true in the slightest. I know because I’ve cancelled things before when a guildie asked if they could have the thing I was posting and the person had bid but not done a buyout and it said I’d have to pay the amount + the deposit fee would be lost
Also I’ve had these same scammers message me telling me to stop bidding. They wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t working.
That is a time-honored AH strategy, that some players have used since 2005. I don’t use it personally, but only because I’m just too lazy to think about bids. I only use buyouts, for both buying and sellilng.
Remember, the auction house is a player-vs-player game. It is supposed to be that. It is designed that way. It isn’t a vendor – WoW has NPCs for that. The sellers are players, who set prices to maximize the gold that they make.
Like any other PvP situation, you can be tricked. You need to be careful about that. But it can’t be a “scam” if “tricking” is perfectly acceptable – and it is.
Whenever I see a “bid” price that is way different from the “buyout” price, I assume the “bid” price is fake. Maybe the seller uses an addon that posts items in “lowest bid first” order. Maybe the seller plans to close out the sale before it expires. I just don’t expect any successful purchases from my bids.
Well you can say it’s not a scam but I think we can agree it’s annoying. So I am just “persuading” them to stop it by draining their gold with every auction they post. If the general scheme ends up costing them more gold than it makes from stupid people they would logically knock it off.
“A seller can cancel an auction at any time, although they will lose the initial deposit (and if the item has been bid on, they will also be charged a percentage of the bid).”
I’ll bid on everything that’s 1c just because. They usually cancel but eventually you’ll win something essentially for free. Plus they get mad. Win win! Recently won 15+ wiz oil for 1c each.
