Market Discussions

I know Eve is a cruel dark universe and people need to learn from their mistakes, but I guess I am just a softy when it comes to Plex mishaps. A couple times a month someone will unload a plex or 10 onto my order for 1 or 2 orders of magnitude below the going rate. Invariable this is followed up by some evemail asking for it to be returned. On most markets items I just look at this as a little bonus (hello 6 mil jump freighter), but I feel bad for some poor kid you just spent his weeks allowance to get some ISK and is now left with nothing. My “normal” response is to request they explain to me what they need the ISK for, why they can’t just buy another plex (their gerbil needing surgery was my favorite so far), and what they are going to do to prevent this from happening again . If they do that I contact the plex back to them.

Why do I ask you? Recently someone did this and I couldn’t give the plex back to them. Mostly because their character name is “IjustTOOKyourMONEY”. Clearly I couldn’t return it, but I did feel awful about it. In the end I sent the plex to “Plex for Good”, but it did make me curious about other traders' policy. What do you do when someone makes a mistake that really affects them, but is a rounding error to you? Do you ever make allowances, do you heckle them, do you just ignore it?

-FM

Last time I made an order mishap, I sent the lucky purchaser (who got 5 Ishkurs for 12m total when fair price was ~117m after I sold to buy orders but forgot that my goods were not at the hub but elsewhere in region) an EVEmail.

It read:


Good Fight
Nice trap you set on the market order for those Ishkurs.
You got me.
Respect.


Incidentally I sent an almost identical EVEmail to someone that popped my Ishtar a while back.


On PLEX - I would assume that when you post a buy order for PLEX, seller mistakes are a big part of your profit. You might make 10m-15m per transaction on the ones where noone screws up, then on the small percentage where a seller messes up bigtime, you'd make 50+ times that amount. If even one transaction in 250 is an error like that, those screwups are 20% of your profit.


If I had Zahara's luck, I'd keep 10 of the PLEX, donate 30 to the PLEX for Good appeal, then talk to the person and see if they deserve the other 3 back.

Never returned anything from a market mistake someone made and allways did send a ''congrats on your cheap purchase enjoy it mate'' to those who profited from my mistakes.And mistakes i did make , if i recall right the best profit i ''gave'' someone was selling them 6 freighter bpo's when i was selling off a load of freighter bpc's i had.

It's a game and we all make mistakes , shrug it off and carry on is my motto generally.

It depends ...

For my errors, I never try to get stuff/money back. It was my fault - I should live with it and learn from it.

For others - that pretty much depends on how I am approached by the person and on the state (age, wealth) of the character. Granted the later isn't too telling, but nevertheless.

The last person that contacted me, because he sold stuff to my buy order (a regular one with a fair buying price, not a 10mil for 100mil one) instead of setting up his own sell order got his stuff back for me. And although I intended to gift it back via contract (polite question, a few weeks old char and such ...), he insisted on paying me back the amount I payed for. We're talking about a low 2 figure million amount here = pennies for me, but a fortune for him.

out of the market errors that I have "corrected" no one has ever sent me a mail. so I haven't felt the need to send anything back.


although I have had a few run ins with various people that I have found comical and have sent them stuff as a result.

..That's the truth.

I get it very regularly on small amounts (e.g. I have the cheapest Heavy Neutron Blaster IIs for sale in Dodixie at 1275k ISK, someone comes along and buys 6 of them for 1725k each).

Amounts that are large enough to matter are much rarer.

If someone contacts me and they're not rude I'll give it back, but most don't bother. I don't get that many missing zeroes anyway, people are fast on contracts and I don't have many buy orders set up.

When I drop an oh I consider that ISK lost, then I send an ego stroking congratulatory mail and politely ask if they wouldn't mind sending some back, ensuring I don't forget my pleases and thank yous. Those can be some profitable mails ;).