Market Discussions

You have to set your collateral at the market price or better of the goods you are having hauled, other wise people will take it and sell it them selves.

I'll make sure the collateral is correct next time. I just figured people wouldn't take a mission if the collateral was too high. Mostly, I was wanting to make sure I understood precisely what happened, and it seems like I had it correct.

I'm quickly learning that EVE is full of players with ... loose morals who use the "It's a sandbox" to justify any behavior. But, as mentioned, the solution is there, high collateral.

Thanks for the info. I'll take it into account next time.

Thanks, Tekota, I'll be sure to use market value collateral. Seems that the ways to extort, scam or steal from other players is bound only by the creativity of other players! Very much like real life - minus the courts. Heh.

The scenario you just pointed out helps open my eyes a bit more on how everything in EVE works.

So, basically, I should have put a collateral at about $50k or $60 with a delivery payment of $40k to completely avoid the situation.

I base rewards on the size of the ship needed to haul the goods and the jumps. Anything under 10k M3 can be done by a newish player, who's other income opportunities limit how much they can make doing other things, so I price to be competitive with their other activities. Something 500,000 M3 is an older player with a freighter, so have to price with their opportunity cost in mind.

I tend to under cut red frog a little bit when doing contracts. I also only do hisec shipping anyway

Greetings, I am the evil courier that stole this fine gentleman's priceless commodities!

I was bored the other night and decided to start a courier service par excellence - one that would never deliver a single package. I did spend around 30 millions on some low paying contracts. Mostly with ridiculous rewards like the one Rezig put out at 3000 ISK per jump. It felt a little bit like playing the lottery.

To my own surprise I actually made an overall profit. But it is unlikely that I'm really going to bother picking up most of the junk that my collateral bought me. The laughs I had and a few mails written in tasty tears made it worthwhile anyway. More to come as I have like 17 contracts still in progress.

It turns out that people that are to cheap to properly pay for the work of others also have a tendency to undercollaterize. Maybe they think that more collateral would also mean a higher fee or as in this case no pickup at all given the pitiful reward. The best contract so far came from a guy that thought he might find some sucker willing to transport his 9,5 mil worth of PI stuff for less than 2000 ISK / jump. 500k collateral - Thank you sir!

Being a new player myself I became filthy rich by doing a lot of trading the last two months. Mostly by working with couriers, who enabled me to trade in goods too bulky and far too valuable to carry in my humble badger. Still I managed to pay them fair rates and in addition actually always tried to put in a little extra, even at times when I was pretty short on cash myself. Not because I'm running a charity... but because I value their service and believe that in a solid and continued business relationship everyone involved should prosper. I received a fast turnover in return and better profits for myself by doing so.

This also gave me some insight into the public courier market and it is disgusting at what kind of rates some people expect others to do deliveries for them. Trolling them is a delight.



How nice of you! Whom other than yourself would you do a favour with this? Funny how you manage to realize that your 40k reward is a pittance and call it a favour in the very same sentence.

If you really mean to do some new player a favour then pay him a real reward instead of exploiting the fact he is poor and limited in his options. That your cargo isn't worth anything doesn't really matter either, someone else still has to fly 12 jumps to deliver it.

Please spare me the "I can not afford to pay more, because..." bs. If so, get up and do the work yourself.

tl;dr

You get what you pay for.

You wanted a free ride. Come on, in your case the reward is hardly worth even clicking the two buttons to accept and finish the contract, let alone the time necessary a real courier would need to check that he isn't about to get scammed himself.


Create them applying common sense and with respect to your fellow players and chances are that they will treat you the same way. Even in EVE.


They were meant to be, glad you enjoyed them.