EVE General Discussion

This is a serious exploit that needs to be addressed. I know you guys allow and even encourage scamming, but this is going too far. There is no way in game to check if a buyer actually has the cash to cover his buy order margins, and I see this exploited all over the place. You can't even see who the buyer is before you buy, and bank upon his reputation. Scams are one thing, but scams with no countermeasures are too much. There are plenty of expensive items that are 100% believeably priced in the hundreds of millions of isk. Scammers place a buy order for a tempting price, and then drain their accounts of money so that it can never be filled. They then sell the same item elsewhere for inflated prices still well below their buy order. There is often no way to investigate the true value of the item if there is little or no trade history, and prices naturally fluctuate for rare items. This ruins high end trade markets! I'm not going to risk an investment if there is no assurance that buy orders are valid. It's one thing that people can cancel them before I get there, but another to let them leave bogus orders up when they arent even online. When I first found out about this tactic I could not believe that it was allowed. There are enough other ways to scam people in this game. DO SOMETHING about this one.

Thank you...

---

I'm sure it will go no-where, but if enough people make a stink, who knows? I'm a newer player and I'm sure everyone thats been around a while has become complacent or just doesnt care about this, but come on... This is very lame and goes above and beyond Eve's "no hold's barred" spirit. And no I did not fall for this, but I almost did. As I say it ruins the trading market for rare, high dollar items.

A partial solution to the problem that doesn't affect legitimate margin trades... Just make it so that we can at least check the buyers current capability to complete the order. Even if they can drain their accounts before I get there, at least they couldnt do it while offline. A way to rate sellers&buyers like ebay would be another nice option.

I'd have no issues with this really.

I've always thought that buy/sell orders should be labeled or such anyway, I'd like to sell things from my corporation and have them known by name. Just let people pick anonymous or not when posting it.

Seriously, those margin scams stick out like a sore thumb. If you fall for it, trading isn't what you should be doing.

Oh, it most certainly is a solution. If you never attempt to fill buy orders, but instead set up your own sales then you are NEVER going to fall for a margin scam. Ever.

Not to mention your margins will be bigger. It's a win-win!

Solution: Same as real life- don't invest in anything without doing your homework.


If none have sold in the last 90 days in your region, take 5 minutes to log an alt into The Forge and check their market. Still no trade in the last 90 days? There is no market for the item and it's a scam. We do have module channels you can get price checks and valuations as a backup. Even legit trades in rare items can go sideways fast. Don't trade in those items unless you know what you are doing.

How much ISK did you lose?

I know it sucks but you just gotta realize if it looks too good to be true it more than likely is a scam.

Good news is I bet you wont fall for it again.

If a market order looks to good to be true it probably is, always practice caution when attempting some get rich quick scheme on the market.

That said it's easy to exploit new players using margin scams, maybe to easy...

You never have any guarantee that a buy order will still be there, margin trading or not.

Furthermore, the entire game of arbitrage is research, which you failed to do.

You took a risk with the intention of profiting from that risk, and you failed to do so, as was an inherent possibility of said risk.

TL;DR Cry some more. They're never going to change it.

It looked to good to be true, and it was. A fool and his money.