Scammer Question For GMs

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

I have reported several scammers I found in Arch advertising one product and selling another (scammers are a pet peeve of mine). They count on those foolish enough to not check the items description before buying. I want clarification from GMs that this is indeed against TOS and will be handled. This most recent scammer I found was so brazen that he was actually the leader of a now defunct guild and had paid to upgrade to the cowshop license.
I would also welcome any suggestions on how we as a community can deal with them. I wish we could track them down and string them up by their... well... use your imagination.

[pssst, can still see the name in the shop window]

EDIT: oops missed blurring players name in catshop window


UPDATE: 8/13/09 Scammer remains. No action has been taken to stop him. Today he is selling one blemished for his advertised price of 4850 and 5 slots of shabby (Lvl 1) for the same 4850.

UPDATE: 8/14/09 Scammer was apparently deleted yesterday. Today a new catshop is in the exact same location, selling the exact same items, for the exact same amount... sigh... there really is no stopping him is there? Note: Thank you GMs for trying. Like you say, this is a battle hard to win and must be fought one scammer at a time. It appears he has been made a bit more timid since he no longer stalks hundreds of gems.


UPDATE: 8/15/09 As of 8:00 ET scammer remains. This, of course, does not give GMs time to have responded today and I'm not suggesting they should have taken such quick action. I had set up a catshop next to him to point out his scam. Some time during the night he moved and did manage to sell 25 gems for a profit of 108,000. His entire stock (just under 250 gems) isn't worth more than 120k.

Update: 8/17/09 2:00 PM Scammer remains. Now he is back to using a cowshop and has hundreds of shabbies. This scammer is even confidant enough that GMs will take no action that he is willing to sell clothing items along side his scam.


This has become quite an interesting debate between those who believe scammers should be held accountable and those who believe in buyer-beware. It has stoked hot emotions for some as they, like me, loathe to see a thief rewarded for his exploits. Some have suggested that catshops can't even be considered a scam since properly observant buyers would read the items description, that this is no different than department store sales tactics. I (and I hope the mass majority of players) see the sophistry of this argument... and it is how real life scammers have defended their actions for years: the victim was greedy, he should have been more careful, he learned a lesson. For scam defenders its all about the victims responsibility. They do not address the scammers faults or ill-gained profits. One frustrated player compared blaming a scam victim to blaming a **** victim. Although this is extreme and raised offense with another player, the point is sound; you don't blame the victim of a crime for his own lack of awareness. The culpability lies solely with the perpetrator - in life and in game.

MentalEdge - Heavens Tear

They're just a minor irritation for me,hate having to go through 4 different cat shops advertising common gems but selling blemisheds and shabbies for same price every cs reset but,no big deal if you're carefull.

I don't believe it is against the tos,though i'd chuckle if it was bannable.

eatwithspoons

We deal with those on a case by case basis, what you describe sounds like the perfect thing to report. Sending a ticket was the right thing to do because we can look into it further.

As far as my thoughts on a community solution to this, I can't see a viable one other than to keep sending them along to us. People would suggest having a server blacklist, but accusations can easily be made falsely against players with no way to prove it one way or the other, so something like that definitely would not work.

bloblette

Nice work bluring the name in the world but leaving the name intact in the shop window b:chuckle

Vellamo - Heavens Tear

This case is the only one I have ever discovered that would have a viable community solution. Because this moron was foolish enough to use a character that was leader of a now defunct guild it would actually be possible for a curious person to discover who was last leader of that guild. Odds are this leader passed the guild to an alt that he then used as a catshop... or he would know who did take over his guild. Of course this wouldn't be proof enough to act on, but would be highly suspicious.

Mantas - Sanctuary

well, maybe im blind, but i cant see where he's trying to scam?

Dandelyn - Heavens Tear

Yeah I've fallen for that scam before (once), I left him a nice thank you message and went about my business with my ego bruised but otherwise unscathed.

*Sighs while shaking head* "Some people..."b:scorn

Darkjagans - Heavens Tear

Mantas - Sanctuary wrote: »

well, maybe im blind, but i cant see where he's trying to scam?

Shop Name: "CHEAP BLEM 4850"

In-Shop: Shabby Shards for 4850

Mizuoni - Dreamweaver

Mantas - Sanctuary wrote: »

well, maybe im blind, but i cant see where he's trying to scam?

it says he is selling blemished shards but its only shabby shards

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Can you prove he did not have the other type of shards as well? Even if he did not, can you prove he did not put those up by mistake, that he had several stacks and grab the wrong ones? Maybe he was in hurry and did not bother to read what it said, like the people that fall for it did not bother to read what they got...

And he did not change the name on the shard, so it does show what they are.

Not saying it is a nice thing to do, but people need to take a little responsibility themselves for what they buy and click twice, after having to drag the item to the buy area.

Mantas - Sanctuary

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Can you prove he did not have the other type of shards as well? Even if he did not, can you prove he did not put those up by mistake, that he had several stacks and grab the wrong ones? Maybe he was in hurry and did not bother to read what it said, like the people that fall for it did not bother to read what they got...

And he did not change the name on the shard, so it does show what they are.

Not saying it is a nice thing to do, but people need to take a little responsibility themselves for what they buy and click twice, after having to drag the item to the buy area.

^^ QFT.
And i cant even imagine how u can scam ppl in this game. If u dont pay attention to what u are buying - that's your fault.

Fruitluips - Lost City

^ What they said.

You can't be sure that he didn't have blemished ones for 4850 earlier or that it was just a mistake on his part. Mind your own business; if anyone gets "scammed" like this, they should have paid more attention.

_DarkSeph_ - Sanctuary

Absolute bull, I can't see why anyone would give a completely obvious scammer the benefit of the doubt. The guy setting out only to rip people off, face it -.-

And it's not your "responsibility" to be doing a scam-check on every single item you buy. The only reason you're forced to is because of lazy good-for-nothing scammers who decided to take advantage of peoples trust.
What's even worse is that their excuse is "duh itz ter fault 4 bein stoopid", ....like they're an intelligent individual and the ones who don't scam, or trust each other are brainless lesser lifeforms.

Scammers are idiots who completely fail at life.

Lady_Selan - Sanctuary

Hmmm.... idk why anyone would buy shards from cat shops anyways (ya know the ones used for crazy stone only, not the others). It's usually cheaper and the npc won't scam you.

Aldryami - Sanctuary

Was he/she also selling Blemished shards? If so then I don't see that the shop title was innapropriate. Perhaps he/she did not have enough space to include all the things he/she was selling?

Sometimes my shop title is "Crit Arrows" and I am indeed selling such arrows. But I am also selling various other objects such as HP food and Coin Chests ( b:angry ). If someone was to buy a coin chest from me, thinking it was a crit arrow I would not consider myself to blame.


edit: oops people got in before me with these thoughts

MentalEdge - Heavens Tear

Aldryami - Sanctuary wrote: »

Was he/she also selling Blemished shards? If so then I don't see that the shop title was innapropriate. Perhaps he/she did not have enough space to include all the things he/she was selling?

Sometimes my shop title is "Crit Arrows" and I am indeed selling such arrows. But I am also selling various other objects such as HP food and Coin Chests ( b:angry ). If someone was to buy a coin chest from me, thinking it was a crit arrow I would not consider myself to blame.


edit: oops people got in before me with these thoughts

Well crit arrows and coin chests don't share the same graphic so no one would ever say thats a scam O.o

Solandri - Heavens Tear

This is just a variation of the classic bait and switch scam. It astonishes me that some people feel the onus is entirely upon the buyer not to be defrauded in this way. You can get in a lot of trouble for running such a scam in RL. If our RL courts have decided this, I think it's pretty reasonable for players to expect scammers running it in-game get similar treatment.

LadyWench - Heavens Tear

there are 3-4 scammers of the blemished and common stones, and at least 1-2 who try to sell healing orbs as ultimate substances.(heavens tear server, obviously)

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Solandri - Heavens Tear wrote: »

This is just a variation of the classic bait and switch scam. It astonishes me that some people feel the onus is entirely upon the buyer not to be defrauded in this way. You can get in a lot of trouble for running such a scam in RL. If our RL courts have decided this, I think it's pretty reasonable for players to expect scammers running it in-game get similar treatment.

The difference is, in this game they cannot show you one item in the shop, than give you a different one, you looked at the items, and you chose to pick it up, and you even confirmed it. The signed up front may or may not apply to the item you chose to buy.

I am sure if you went to court, after you saw a 1930 car and said the sign up front the dealership said 2009 cars for sale, and you took the car for a test drive, the vendor never claimed that the car you were test driving was 2009, that the court, after laughing at you, would dismiss the case and make you pay for the dealership's legal costs.

There is such thing as buyer responsibilities... If you buy a car as is, and later you find problems, you cannot go back to the vendor and demand they fix it.

And to be honest, this is a variation of the "special sale, one unit only (in small print)" to get you in the store, just to find out that nothing else is on sale, and that the one cheap item was limited to one per store....

StormHydra - Sanctuary

Thats right, youre always a victim, its never your fault, you have your rights.

=_=

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear

Oh come on people, there are a number of notable scams in the CS area either they use Shabbys when purporting to sell commons, blems or roughs, or they put a low price on the first 4 gems then price the last one a hundred K or more higher.

Then there are those that spam chat they are selling Beautiful Citrines cheap when they are actually Shabbys.

While I haven't yet fallen victim, it disappoints me that there are so many players that actually have so low morals that they think it is fine to do it.

It is even worse that there are so many players on this forum actually defending these players when a GM has clearly stated it is not an acceptable thing.

It doesn't stop just there, I have seen someone sell a poor newbie Cleric a Veno pet egg at some inflated price then proceed to march her off to the teleporter because she needed to go somewhere else to hatch it. Presumably that person intended to give her the slip at that point.

At the very least we should feel grateful when someone points out and reports a scammer.

kkammy

What this idiots get is not my coin and that's for sure, I rather buy from the next catshop for higher price ALL of the shards than giving those low dirty lifers 1 cent of my cash.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Oh come on people, there are a number of notable scams in the CS area either they use Shabbys when purporting to sell commons, blems or roughs, or they put a low price on the first 4 gems then price the last one a hundred K or more higher.

Then there are those that spam chat they are selling Beautiful Citrines cheap when they are actually Shabbys.

While I haven't yet fallen victim, it disappoints me that there are so many players that actually have so low morals that they think it is fine to do it.

It is even worse that there are so many players on this forum actually defending these players when a GM has clearly stated it is not an acceptable thing.

It doesn't stop just there, I have seen someone sell a poor newbie Cleric a Veno pet egg at some inflated price then proceed to march her off to the teleporter because she needed to go somewhere else to hatch it. Presumably that person intended to give her the slip at that point.

At the very least we should feel grateful when someone points out and reports a scammer.

Because it starts with this, next, it will be someone that sold out his items that gets reported, than, since it will be people that run fbs and picked up a DQ item when they said "tabber gets all drops", than, it will be the guy that said he would help you, but ended up not being able to, so you report him for lying to you. With limited resources, do you really want GMs to dig through logs to see if the player even has the advertised item in his inventory or ever had it up on the shop, or do you want the GM to look at logs to try to figure out what is causing the double-jump bug? The guy trying to pass the gems can only get away if the buyer is asleep at the wheel.

The issue at hand, although of very poor character, is only possible if people are not paying attention to what they buy, after clicking on things 3 times. You have the option to not buy from them. And when you highlight the item, it clearly states what you are buying.

Want to really get back at him/her? Don't buy from him/her. If everyone pays attention and does not buy from him/her he/she will get stuck with all those stones. You can also write down his/her name, and make sure you never buy from him/her again.

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear

The onus is on the reporter to prove it with screenies etc. I doubt GMs will even give reports without hard evidence provided a second glance. This is one of the reasons I haven't reported any myself it is a pain to do so. What is most upsetting is if you even try to tell people in chat about the scammer you will get some unpleasant people saying stuff like "STFU, if they are stupid enough to fall for it they deserve it."

I think we are all well aware that scammers abound and seem to be getting bolder and more prevalent. A small amount of deterrence will go a long way to reducing the number of scammers.

Mantas - Sanctuary

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear wrote: »

Oh come on people, there are a number of notable scams in the CS area either they use Shabbys when purporting to sell commons, blems or roughs, or they put a low price on the first 4 gems then price the last one a hundred K or more higher.

So if i set up catshop and wanna sell 1 tt math which is worth, let's say, 200k. Accidentally i put it for 20k. So if any1 buys it i need to send a ticket cuz i got scammed?

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear

Mantas - Sanctuary wrote: »

So if i set up catshop and wanna sell 1 tt math which is worth, let's say, 200k. Accidentally i put it for 20k. So if any1 buys it i need to send a ticket cuz i got scammed?

I don't know what you are talking about. There is an obvious difference between an honest mistake and a systematic Scammer. You see the same shop doing the same thing day after day and they are still there obviously because some people are falling for it regularly.

When someone spams trade chat for an hour that they have Beautiful Citrines cheap and they have nothing but Shabbys from the beginning, that is not an honest mistake.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear wrote: »

The onus is on the reporter to prove it with screenies etc. I doubt GMs will even give reports without hard evidence provided a second glance. This is one of the reasons I haven't reported any myself it is a pain to do so. What is most upsetting is if you even try to tell people in chat about the scammer you will get some unpleasant people saying stuff like "STFU, if they are stupid enough to fall for it they deserve it."

I think we are all well aware that scammers abound and seem to be getting bolder and more prevalent. A small amount of deterrence will go a long way to reducing the number of scammers.

This reminds me of a game I used to play..... it was a pvp game, with 3 nations, after awhile people were able to report players from another nation (their enemies) for killing them....... You had to ask permission before PKing someone, and you had to stop when they told you to stop, or they could report you...... This is the way we are going, if people do not take responsibility for their actions.

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

This reminds me of a game I used to play..... it was a pvp game, with 3 nations, after awhile people were able to report players from another nation (their enemies) for killing them....... You had to ask permission before PKing someone, and you had to stop when they told you to stop, or they could report you...... This is the way we are going, if people do not take responsibility for their actions.

I give up. b:surrender

I used to think that FTP was a good idea, now I see that it lets in all kinds of undesirables. -- Hey your scammer account gets banned, start another, its free. And so what if a few people leave nasty messages and hate on me I have my supporters like IceJazmin.

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear wrote: »

I give up. b:surrender

I used to think that FTP was a good idea, now I see that it lets in all kinds of undesirables. -- Hey your scammer account gets banned, start another, its free. And so what if a few people leave nasty messages and hate on me I have my supporters like IceJazmin.

Never said I support their actions. I, in fact said it was very poor character. However, I take responsibility for my actions, if I ever fall for it, it was my fault, I will write their name down on my notebook, and make sure they will never see my business again.

However, do not make this personal, since you will be breaching of forum rules.

Read section 7
http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=63291

@Spoons - In my opinion, the only way to prevent things like this from happening would be to stop all direct trade interactions between players, that would include trading and catshops, and force everyone to use Auction House to sell/buy items in game. As long as people are allowed to trade directly, there will be the chance for this to happen, both on purpose or accidentaly.

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear

IceJazmin - Heavens Tear wrote: »

However, do not make this personal, since you will be breaching of forum rules.

Read section 7
http://pwi-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=63291

Ooohh I soooo scared ... NOT. b:laugh

Mantas - Sanctuary

Viper_girl - Heavens Tear wrote: »

When someone spams trade chat for an hour that they have Beautiful Citrines cheap and they have nothing but Shabbys from the beginning, that is not an honest mistake.

With this one i agree b:cute
Dont think that im vote for scam. I played other game where scam was a real problem. They wanna trade u someting. They "accidentaly" turn off trade window. Then swap things and voila! And they were good at it. Thing is, in pwi its harder to scam ppl. If u buy something form catshop u cant blame them cuz u noticed other price after u bought item. And those sellers looking for inconsiderate ppl.