Topic: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

It has come to my attention that after multiple attempts from the same user to try to scam me out of my KTK Bloodsoaked Champion Foil Promo, that the pricing disparities between here and TCGPlayer is giving people a route to try to rip others off.

The problem as you can see when you check the price of a Promo KTK card on here it shows the same as a normal set card....which is massively incorrect in most cases. I've had multiple attempts by the same person to try to trade for this card at the value as stated on here, which is at least $2 short of what the card actually trades for. Then after informing this individual about this the first time, he opted out of the trade due to being called on this. Then yesterday I again receive a trade from the same person for the same card attempting to trade for it at it's *still* incorrect value on here. I then change the card to a normal version of the champion that is actually valued at what would make the trade fair, then the user doesn't accept the proposed trade that isn't ripping the other person off...this should be corrected.

Thank you,

Nick

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Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Did you list your Champion as being from the KTK prerelease by specifying this in the set option? Or did you just turn on the promo flag and say it was from KTK? If you did the latter, this could explain the pricing issues.

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Which is the user that is trying to take advantage of this? We do not allow such behavior.

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

You don't have a prerelease promo Bloodsoaked Champion in your inventory, you just have a Khans version with the promo flag selected.  The price displayed is for the Khans version, since that's what you have listed.  If you chose the right version, it would show the right price (except in this case, the card is so new that there is no pricing data yet for the promo version.)

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

If you go to TCGPlayer it's priced. The fact that it isn't priced on Deckbox just reflects poorly on Deckbox's pricing... no offense.

Also, more-generally, why does the promo flag still exist? All the promo cards now have their own custom sets. It seems like it just causes confusion nowadays... which is a problem if people are taking advantage of the confusion. I'm still a bit salty about the guy who bought all my KTK prerelease cards at normal rare prices because I had them flagged as promos rather than having chosen the prerelease set. Maybe I should've considered this behavior exploitative, but at the time I blamed myself for not flagging the cards as being from the prerelease accurately (which, in my defense, is an easy mistake to make when promo cards are often not immediately given promo listings and I'm also updating my inventory via a cell phone at the prerelease as I open the packs..) It really seems to me like the promo flag is causing a lot of problems, though.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-10-28 18:39:27)

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

The promo flag doesn't do anything. It's just a visual cue. Sebi said at some point that it was going to get removed. Not going to bother finding the post, but he did say that.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Hijinks wrote:

It has come to my attention that after multiple attempts from the same user to try to scam me out of my KTK Bloodsoaked Champion Foil Promo, that the pricing disparities between here and TCGPlayer is giving people a route to try to rip others off.

The problem as you can see when you check the price of a Promo KTK card on here it shows the same as a normal set card....which is massively incorrect in most cases. I've had multiple attempts by the same person to try to trade for this card at the value as stated on here, which is at least $2 short of what the card actually trades for. Then after informing this individual about this the first time, he opted out of the trade due to being called on this. Then yesterday I again receive a trade from the same person for the same card attempting to trade for it at it's *still* incorrect value on here. I then change the card to a normal version of the champion that is actually valued at what would make the trade fair, then the user doesn't accept the proposed trade that isn't ripping the other person off...this should be corrected.

Thank you,

Nick

OP what you are missing is that you have it listed wrong. See the image you have to select from the set icon, which set it is from. Promo's are a different set than pack editions of cards. The deckbox site looks up the price based on what set you have selected. At any rate, the prices of both cards are within 50 cents of each other, the pack foil being higher than the pre-relese promo. Not sure if the price was fixed since your post but I don't see how someone could rip you off, deckbox lists your card at $8.25, other popular sites list it at $8 and the pack foil at $8.50. Trading for 8.25 is close enough that nobody is ripping you off (again assuming it wasn't a different price when you posted)

http://i.imgur.com/J7ZvAl8.jpg

Your listing should like this, for comparison.

http://i.imgur.com/M2C7YlY.jpg

Last edited by jassi007 (2014-10-28 19:08:17)

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Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Kammikaze wrote:

The promo flag doesn't do anything. It's just a visual cue. Sebi said at some point that it was going to get removed. Not going to bother finding the post, but he did say that.

Removing it would certainly put a damper on the possibility of ever having a simple "Is promo: True" setting in the card search filter.  As of now, if I want to see all of someone's promos in one place I have to select "Edition Owned - Is one of - media inserts, judge gift program, happy holidays, super series, friday night magic, magic player rewards, arena league, champs, wpn/gateway, launch parties, release events, prerelease events, dragon con, worlds, magic game day cards, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera", and since there is no "saved searches" feature, I have to do this every single time.

Lucky for me, I'm not particularly interested in other people's promo cards and I have all of mine in one box for easy access, but I imagine this might be more of a big deal for some other folks.

Last edited by IronMagus (2014-10-28 19:11:20)

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

IronMagus wrote:
Kammikaze wrote:

The promo flag doesn't do anything. It's just a visual cue. Sebi said at some point that it was going to get removed. Not going to bother finding the post, but he did say that.

Removing it would certainly put a damper on the possibility of ever having a simple "Is promo: True" setting in the card search filter.  As of now, if I want to see all of someone's promos in one place I have to select "Edition Owned - Is one of - media inserts, judge gift program, happy holidays, super series, friday night magic, magic player rewards, arena league, champs, wpn/gateway, launch parties, release events, prerelease events, dragon con, worlds, magic game day cards, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera", and since there is no "saved searches" feature, I have to do this every single time.

Lucky for me, I'm not particularly interested in other people's promo cards and I have all of mine in one box for easy access, but I imagine this might be more of a big deal for some other folks.

The flag probably isn't reliable for searches as more people figure out how to list promo's they're unlikely to use it anyway.

Last edited by jassi007 (2014-10-28 19:14:32)

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Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

IronMagus wrote:
Kammikaze wrote:

The promo flag doesn't do anything. It's just a visual cue. Sebi said at some point that it was going to get removed. Not going to bother finding the post, but he did say that.

Removing it would certainly put a damper on the possibility of ever having a simple "Is promo: True" setting in the card search filter.  As of now, if I want to see all of someone's promos in one place I have to select "Edition Owned - Is one of - media inserts, judge gift program, happy holidays, super series, friday night magic, magic player rewards, arena league, champs, wpn/gateway, launch parties, release events, prerelease events, dragon con, worlds, magic game day cards, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera", and since there is no "saved searches" feature, I have to do this every single time.

Lucky for me, I'm not particularly interested in other people's promo cards and I have all of mine in one box for easy access, but I imagine this might be more of a big deal for some other folks.

If that's the case, then cards belonging to the promo sets should just be automatically flagged as promos for these searches. If they aren't, then this is already a problem since I don't flag my cards as promos when I choose to put them under a promo set.

And yes, I know that the promo feature is going away eventually when the new tagging features are rolled out, but its deprecation is causing issues in the present and it seems like this comes up every week or two... which just begs the question of how often there's an issue that *doesn't* come up. I'd say the promo flag should be hotfixed out *immediately*, but I realize that this could mess with people's inventories.... although how much I'm not sure, since it basically doesn't work right now. It seems like people are starting to systematically exploit this, however, which is a problem for this site.

Last edited by 9700377 (2014-10-28 19:16:50)

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

jassi007 wrote:

The flag probably isn't reliable for searches as more people figure out how to list promo's they're unlikely to use it anyway.

9700377 wrote:

If that's the case, then cards belonging to the promo sets should just be automatically flagged as promos for these searches. If they aren't, then this is already a problem since I don't flag my cards as promos when I choose to put them under a promo set.

Indeed, these are both true.  Perhaps instead of setting/forcing the flag, the filter "is promo: true" could just be a shortcut to "edition owned - is one of - [blah blah blah blah blah]" without us having to manually go through and select all the possible promo editions each time.  Additionally, regular and foil printings could be listed as different editions, so when you entered Bloodsoaked Champion, for example, you would select from three different possible editions: Khans non-foil, Khans foil, or Prerelease promos.

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Hello,

Sorry for the late reply to my thread here. I was not aware that we now had the selection of choosing the promo cards from a drop down list of card editions, previously it's always just been selecting the card as a promo gets the job done. I will correct my entry methods for these types of cards moving forward as well as edit my old ones.

So does that mean if we select that option it is automatically assumed that the card is a foil as well? Or Is there going to be some level of issue with selecting the proper card, then if someone selects foil for the chosen card(which they all are), will that impact how the pricing information is gathered / output from the UI?

Jassi - To address your statement about them being the same price...this gap is quickly closing now in terms of pricing online, but was MUCH greater the first time this trade was attempted with me by user gtfotis. It's not only that fact...its simply that the user was taking advantage of the fact that the promo option is misleading to the user when it exists as an option to select on any card but has no impact on the pricing, but when you select foil from that menu it actually DOES change the price of a card. From a UI design standpoint, this seems broken.

This is abundantly clear in my first encounter with said individual because he specifically only selected 2 of my promo cards(Dissolve FNM Promo & The Bloodsoaked Champion Promo on 10/12/14). Granted both of these are in fact entered incorrectly based on how the design seems to actually work, but the design is flawed thus causing these types of situations. That time is where I referred this person to the TCG pricing of these cards and he acted aloof...suspicious. Then here we are again 2 weeks later and he is trying to rip me on the same card again because he knows it's listed wrong. If you look into his trades you can clearly see that he has the cards listed properly in his inventory when it comes to promos...then plays dumb when I call him out on the pricing difference. I don't think this is a pricing problem at all with Deckbox, it's a UI design problem.

Last edited by Hijinks (2014-10-28 22:15:19)

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Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Hijinks wrote:

I don't think this is a pricing problem at all with Deckbox, it's a UI design problem.

It's both. It's a pricing problem because once you choose the correct listing, it will no longer have a market price for your promo. It's the same for my Utter End from prerelease - TCGPlayer puts it at $5 but Deckbox doesn't have a price for it (at least it didn't last I checked.) Granted, some promos (like the FNM ones) seem to be priced okay, so maybe there's actually a bug in the pricing algorithm rather than some sort of structural shortcoming.

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

The promo flag is indeed confusing, and will be deprecated in a release today, and will be removed at a later date.

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Hijinks wrote:

So does that mean if we select that option it is automatically assumed that the card is a foil as well? Or Is there going to be some level of issue with selecting the proper card, then if someone selects foil for the chosen card(which they all are), will that impact how the pricing information is gathered / output from the UI?

AFAIK there is no such thing as a promo that was printed as both a foil and non-foil. As such, each promo will have only 1 price associated with it and that price will be listed whether the foil flag is set or not. It will be up to the traders to know whether the promo is actually foil or not.

Profile  Tradelist

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Just wanted to note that just because something is listed on TCG player for a certain price doesn't mean anyone has actually paid that much for it.  What a vendor lists a card at and whether anyone's actually paid that much are two different things.

On the subject of Promos, can someone do the community a favor and purchase a Cryptborn Horror Prerelease Top 8 promo from a vendor for a real price?  Maybe Sebi can waive the fee this one time.  The card is not worth $9 smile

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

I'd like to point out also that just because somebody proposes a trade using Deckbox values without consulting TCGmid first doesn't mean the person is trying to scam the trading partner. We're all responsible for determining our own perception of value on our cards, and while one might feel this card is worth $2 more or that card is worth $4 less, others might not. A Black Lotus may be worth thousands, but to me it would only be worth hundreds (I'd rather spend the money elsewhere), so it's a matter of worth to any given individual.

Card prices fluctuate, and TCGmid is not the alpha and omega of card pricing — it simply happens to be the one many use as their pricing standard. I suggest being more empathetic of other traders and not assuming people are trying to scam unless they're doing something that shouldn't be able/are not allowed (which, proposing trades, regardless of the values involved on either side, is not equivalent to scamming).

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

renoan wrote:

I'd like to point out also that just because somebody proposes a trade using Deckbox values without consulting TCGmid first doesn't mean the person is trying to scam the trading partner. We're all responsible for determining our own perception of value on our cards, and while one might feel this card is worth $2 more or that card is worth $4 less, others might not. A Black Lotus may be worth thousands, but to me it would only be worth hundreds (I'd rather spend the money elsewhere), so it's a matter of worth to any given individual.

Card prices fluctuate, and TCGmid is not the alpha and omega of card pricing — it simply happens to be the one many use as their pricing standard. I suggest being more empathetic of other traders and not assuming people are trying to scam unless they're doing something that shouldn't be able/are not allowed (which, proposing trades, regardless of the values involved on either side, is not equivalent to scamming).

+1

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

renoan wrote:

I'd like to point out also that just because somebody proposes a trade using Deckbox values without consulting TCGmid first doesn't mean the person is trying to scam the trading partner. We're all responsible for determining our own perception of value on our cards, and while one might feel this card is worth $2 more or that card is worth $4 less, others might not. A Black Lotus may be worth thousands, but to me it would only be worth hundreds (I'd rather spend the money elsewhere), so it's a matter of worth to any given individual.

Card prices fluctuate, and TCGmid is not the alpha and omega of card pricing — it simply happens to be the one many use as their pricing standard. I suggest being more empathetic of other traders and not assuming people are trying to scam unless they're doing something that shouldn't be able/are not allowed (which, proposing trades, regardless of the values involved on either side, is not equivalent to scamming).

Sure, and if I trade for a playset of a card, I doubt anyone will really notice. When a player suddenly trades for say 20 copies of a card, and only the promo version whose price happens to be under market value, tcg/ebay/any market, and doesn't trade for any of the non-promo copies etc. it is more clear what is going on.

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Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

jassi007 wrote:
renoan wrote:

I'd like to point out also that just because somebody proposes a trade using Deckbox values without consulting TCGmid first doesn't mean the person is trying to scam the trading partner. We're all responsible for determining our own perception of value on our cards, and while one might feel this card is worth $2 more or that card is worth $4 less, others might not. A Black Lotus may be worth thousands, but to me it would only be worth hundreds (I'd rather spend the money elsewhere), so it's a matter of worth to any given individual.

Card prices fluctuate, and TCGmid is not the alpha and omega of card pricing — it simply happens to be the one many use as their pricing standard. I suggest being more empathetic of other traders and not assuming people are trying to scam unless they're doing something that shouldn't be able/are not allowed (which, proposing trades, regardless of the values involved on either side, is not equivalent to scamming).

Sure, and if I trade for a playset of a card, I doubt anyone will really notice. When a player suddenly trades for say 20 copies of a card, and only the promo version whose price happens to be under market value, tcg/ebay/any market, and doesn't trade for any of the non-promo copies etc. it is more clear what is going on.

I don't know, jassi007, I'm not sure I see anything wrong with that (I'm guessing that's what you're trying to imply with that comment). Buying when there's a good deal (e.g., store sales, stocks during recession, house flipping, etc.) is what we all try to do in various markets. Cards have no centralized pricing database (and rightfully so, otherwise that would be a form of price fixing), and each market is allowed to determine a cards worth on it's own terms. Just because a card is valued lower (even much lower) here than on other markets (TCGmid, for example), doesn't mean it's any more or less valid. I'm positive if you take a quick spin through eBay's latest sold listing for any given card, you'd find plenty examples of people winning bids (or even Buy it Nows) for values much lower than what TCGmid shows. However, that's not considered scamming. Instead, it's praised by other buyers as having "found a good deal." The difference here is that suddenly we all take on the hat of the seller (by way of valuing our cards when trading) and some people aren't emotionally equipped for that. They don't want to be responsible for making valuation decisions and instead want somebody else to protect them.

This can evolve into a greater discussion on how much protection does a person deserve from his or herself, and I think that may be outside of this discussion's scope. However, I'll say that IMO sellers/traders are responsible for determining their own card values and shouldn't look to Deckbox to protect them from people looking for good deals. $100 for Underground Sea is a no-no for one person, and a rent-saver for another. There's no need to be insulted just because someone low-balls them. If they don't like it, they can counter, IMO.

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

renoan wrote:
jassi007 wrote:
renoan wrote:

I'd like to point out also that just because somebody proposes a trade using Deckbox values without consulting TCGmid first doesn't mean the person is trying to scam the trading partner. We're all responsible for determining our own perception of value on our cards, and while one might feel this card is worth $2 more or that card is worth $4 less, others might not. A Black Lotus may be worth thousands, but to me it would only be worth hundreds (I'd rather spend the money elsewhere), so it's a matter of worth to any given individual.

Card prices fluctuate, and TCGmid is not the alpha and omega of card pricing — it simply happens to be the one many use as their pricing standard. I suggest being more empathetic of other traders and not assuming people are trying to scam unless they're doing something that shouldn't be able/are not allowed (which, proposing trades, regardless of the values involved on either side, is not equivalent to scamming).

Sure, and if I trade for a playset of a card, I doubt anyone will really notice. When a player suddenly trades for say 20 copies of a card, and only the promo version whose price happens to be under market value, tcg/ebay/any market, and doesn't trade for any of the non-promo copies etc. it is more clear what is going on.

I don't know, jassi007, I'm not sure I see anything wrong with that (I'm guessing that's what you're trying to imply with that comment). Buying when there's a good deal (e.g., store sales, stocks during recession, house flipping, etc.) is what we all try to do in various markets. Cards have no centralized pricing database (and rightfully so, otherwise that would be a form of price fixing), and each market is allowed to determine a cards worth on it's own terms. Just because a card is valued lower (even much lower) here than on other markets (TCGmid, for example), doesn't mean it's any more or less valid. I'm positive if you take a quick spin through eBay's latest sold listing for any given card, you'd find plenty examples of people winning bids (or even Buy it Nows) for values much lower than what TCGmid shows. However, that's not considered scamming. Instead, it's praised by other buyers as having "found a good deal." The difference here is that suddenly we all take on the hat of the seller (by way of valuing our cards when trading) and some people aren't emotionally equipped for that. They don't want to be responsible for making valuation decisions and instead want somebody else to protect them.

This can evolve into a greater discussion on how much protection does a person deserve from his or herself, and I think that may be outside of this discussion's scope. However, I'll say that IMO sellers/traders are responsible for determining their own card values and shouldn't look to Deckbox to protect them from people looking for good deals. $100 for Underground Sea is a no-no for one person, and a rent-saver for another. There's no need to be insulted just because someone low-balls them. If they don't like it, they can counter, IMO.

While you can debate the merits of doing that or not, the deckbox admins have banned someone for the exact scenario I have outlined, so on this site it is not cool. You have to understand, they're under pressure to make deckbox generate revenue to be worth their time, which I understand and support. However in the process of doing that, they lost their price data from tcgplayer. Basically TCGP saw them as competition, and no longer allowed them to import price data. So they had to on the fly come up with pricing. The deckbox team said they had been working on this, but they weren't ready. So for a period of time deckbox prices went to hell to be frank. It is my impression that a lot of people took a vacation from deckbox. Deckbox prices got better, but a lot of people just don't have faith in them, and still look up card prices on TCGP.

All that being said is to make this point. When there is a price error on deckbox compared to other sites, it reinforces the "don't rely on deckbox prices" mindset. It is obviously in the deckbox teams best interest to squash this behavior ASAP so people have as  much faith as possible in their prices. It isn't exactly the same as an issue where "a card spiked and the vendor hasn't updated pricing" It sort of is, but the vendor is deckbox, and users want to be able to trust their pricing data is up to date and accurate, so they sort of have to take this stance.

I am not saying whether I agree or disagree, just making the point that I don't see what alternative the deckbox staff has. I do agree that you should be aware of the value of what you have, and not to sell for a price less than you are comfortable with, but if you don't think people essentially pick a market that they trust to price their cards for them, well I'm not sure what to tell you. That is exactly what happens in almost every trade/sale that I am aware of.

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Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

The suspension jassi refers to is here https://deckbox.org/forum/viewtopic.php?id=22970

It also has nothing to do with tcgplayer or with trying to monetize the website, i'm not sure how you got to that conclusion.

That user clearly tried to take advantage of market price fluctuations and deckbox bugs to abuse other users via the trade system, so he was suspended.

It also has nothing to do with buying and selling, and could have happened very well even if our prices were not based on our market, but on some other external source. Prices were many times off when we got them from tcgplayer too.

Like in any kind of partly protected system, we here want to protect our users from abuse. In that case 20 people were just about to lose 10$ each, due to a fluctuation that deckbox prices did not respond to (so a deckbox bug you can say), and a guy who thought he's entitled to steal that value because he noticed the bug. Also he did not bother to tell us about it when he saw it, instead he opened 20 trades with people who did not know the price spiked 2 days before.

The case referenced before is not about marginal arbitrage. The card was mistakenly marked on deckbox as being three times less expensive than 90% of all other websites - ebay, tcgplayer, amazon, star city games, adventureson, all of them, with a 10$ difference on a 5$ card.

I'm not yet sure what the solution to this problem is, or how to phrase a rule that clearly explains what is abuse. But I still stand very decided that arbitrage of that sort on market fluctuations is pretty clearly abuse. Preventing that is of course not an easy problem to solve, but I would still like to prevent it. Until we have a good solution, suspending people who blatantly do it is a temporary one.

Feedback is as always welcome on the topic. I do not want to ignore the problem.

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

Well, honestly I assume you choose to get involved with issues like that because you are trying to monetize the site and provide your own pricing data. I have not seen another online trading site/forum that steps into trades to enforce pricing errors, the general understanding of online trading is both parties are responsible for valuing the trade and deciding if it is fair. What you have done is unusual. And when i say this, it isn't me agreeing or disagreeing with the action you took, just that taking action like this is not the norm in my experience.

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Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

I'm not really familiar with other trading websites who also display card values. I assume PucaTrade has such fuctionality, but I am not sure what they do when their price data is off or stale.

Re: Pricing differences causing shady behavior

I'm of the opinion that it's only deckbox's responsibility to do accurate pricing to a certain point.

If Walgreen's has a sale on toothpaste and you buy at Wal-Mart at the regular price then it's not Wal-Marts fault you didn't shop around; is it? apples/oranges... right? maybe, but the point is the customer is responsible to a degree as well.

I think the deck box team needs to do their best to get prices right, but there needs to be a disclaimer somewhere that says basically 'hey, we're not responsible if you let yourself get boned".   People will take advantage of market fluctuations and even minute variations in prices.  Did this user basically "price gouge" his fellow traders? probably.  He deserves a slap on the wrist/warning/punishment of some sort, but people are also responsible for their own ignorance.

TLDR; don't trust any one site for prices, do your homework and don't be a fool.

Last edited by elpablo (2014-11-06 17:57:05)