DocJeckyl
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Posted - 2010.01.06 19:43:00 -
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The Character Bazaar represents a very useful part of the game allowing the sale of characters that are no longer fitting in with the selling player's needs, and the purchase of characters that fit in with the buyer's needs. But it has an underside. People will try to scam you. I'm writing this to tell of my personal experience with being scammed so others will not come to the grief I had. I want to start by personally thanking Senior GM Zworm for resolving the matter to my satisfaction. Zworm took a sitution that sucked radioactive space turds and turned it around. I also want to caution others that it almost wasn't resolved the "right" way because of my mistakes and failure to follow the rules to the letter.
I'd been lurking and looking for the perfect charater for a long time. I finally, finally found the exact toon I wanted, and placed my bid. Later that night, the scammer contacted me ingame under a different account, professing to be the alt of the toon I wanted. That should have set off loud, red sirens in my head. But he seemed knew all of the details of the character intimately. He told me all kinds of sweet lies that began to give me confidence that he must be the legitimate owner. After all, he knew all about the toon! He gave me what seemed like a reasonable reason for why he was talking to me from his "alt" account -- and then proceeded to lower the price by a billion because he needed the cash "for another deal". Instead of another set of warning bells I saw what looked like a good deal turning into an awesome deal. Instead of becomming more cautious I got more excited. Anyway, to sum it up I transferred the ISK. The next day after the downtime, instead of a shiny new toon to show for my billions of ISK, I had a contract for 3 veldspar crystals. WTFPWNED! TO SUMMARIZE: - FOLLOW THE RULES TO THE LETTER. Especially the one that the character being sold must receive the ISK. Additionally, have whatever chat discussions you need with the character you are purchasing. - Document all of your chat sessions and save the log files. Don't count on the GMs having access to your chat transcripts. - When you transfer the ISK, send an email documenting every detail of the deal to serve as documentation. CC all involved alts. - If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. If you about to sell a character you've spent months or years training to high levels, would you sell it at bargain basement prices? - Realize that many of the details you will be discussing about the toon are public knowledge, or are unverifiable by you. Hearing something like "I got into a massive PvP fight the day after I trained up Hull Upgrades to 5 and it really made a difference because..." seems to really create credibility. But think about it... for all you know it's a simple combination of public knowledge (HU5) with a healthy dose of storytelling. That's what scammers do. - YOU contact THEM in game. Make sure you get the spelling of the character right. Copy-and-paste the name from the forum post into the search box in game. This will protect you from people messaging you in-game with look-alike character names.
In the end, I got really, really lucky to get my ISK back. Most scams are allowed in EVE. The character baazar is one of the few exceptions, and you're really only protected if you follow the rules. The GMs could have rightfully denied my petition because I didn't follow the rules. It was my own stupidity and greed that ended up creating this situation in the first place and chewing up their time to rectify it. I'm writing this exposing my stupidity to public ridicule solely because I'm so damn grateful to them. If by telling my tale I can prevent them from getting a few more petitions, then I'll consider their Karma repaid. Don't expect you will be as lucky as I was. Know the rules. Follow the rules.
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