Crapgame wrote: »

I belong(ed) to 5 trading guilds since I usually play solo I only need a guild so I can sell my wares.

I've been leveling my crafting so I need bunches of materials. I started yesterday and needed Ebonthread. TTC showed it for 12 on the low end so I asked my guilds if anyone would sell me stacks at 2k each. Many people sent me stacks at that price (10 each).

Today, I've moved onto Kresh fiber and again the low end was 12-15, however the average was 22. I asked the same guilds if anyone would sell me stacks at 2k each. I had a few takers and bought 550 at 10g each.

It is all good up to that point. Then I saw messages in guildchat.

This is the conversation that followed from there:

• Guild member: Um, sorry hon, but the TTC for Kresh Fibre is double that. TTC Price for [Kresh Fiber] : Suggested : 21 ~ 26 [Avg 44.41/Min 4/Max 14,153.33] (206 listings/18,940 items) So a stack would be 4k.
• Me: People do sell below MM price. I just received 550 units @10. So there is that, hon.
• Guild member: Good for you, but please don't try to rip off your fellow guildmates by asking for mats below market value. It's kinda rude.
• Guild member: If you negotiate a lower price, of course, that's totally fine. But asking for it outright... yeah, sorry, love, but I can't let that happen. Sorry.
• Me: People with extra mats and all slots full will accept a lower price. I'm not twisting anyones arm. You're not "letting anything happen." If they don't want to sell, they won't.
• Me: I only asked one time and got more than enough so obviously people think that is fair enough
• Guild member: you are speaking to an officer. Show some respect. This is your second warning, because I know that you did this yesterday and another officer told you not to. This is not "one time" this is the second. Don't ask for items under market value and don't be an arsehole when we let you know what the market value is, on the of chance it was a genuine mistake.
• (I went AFK here.)
• Guild member: Well?
• Guild member: Answer me.
• Guild member: Very well.
• Guild member #2: bye.
• (I return and find I've been kicked from the guild.)
• Tell to guild member: I had to go afk. I have no hard feelings about any of this. You're an officer so you are allowed to do what you'd like. In many guilds, people will freely trade things below fair value as that is one of the major benefits to a trading guild. Each member is entitled to sell his wares at whatever price suits them. For instance, I had asked to buy some ebonthread @10 and instead someone sent me 100 units for 0. That was their decision. I was only offering a price.
• r/ from Guild member: Yeah, I wasn't the one who kicked you. I was busy sending out guild mail at the time, which I would have had to start all over again if I exited the mail ui and entered the guild ui, and given the fact MailR tends to take a full half hour to send otu mail, I wsn't going to do it. It was another officer who kicked you.
• r/ to guild member: Also, I was never "warned" of anything. Someone just mentioned that the price was below market and we left it at that. It doesn't matter who kicked me. As I said, no hard feelings.
• r/ from Guild member: I relly, truly hope there aren't, and I hope you can find a good home trade guild, but... well, I'm sorry; but we can't allow such drastic undercutting. I mean, like I said, if you negotiate it between yourselves that's a different issue, but asking for it outright? That's just devaluing the hard work that went into getting those mats in the first place.
• r/ to Guild member: There aren't. However, I was kicked for doing nothing wrong other than looking to buy some mats from my guildmates. Not looking for handouts. "Undercutting" is a mischaracterization of a "request to buy" in guild chat. I read the rules. There is nothing in there about not requesting trades at below MM values. Just as there is no penalty for requesting more than fair market value for an item.
• (No more replies.)

I am serious when I say there are no hard feelings. That is why I haven't named any names. Every guild is free to operate as they choose.

The reason I'm posting this long winded story is that I want to make sure I'm not being inconsiderate in this situation. Is it bad form to ask for prices below market value when you're buying in guildchat from your guildmates? If it is, I will refrain from doing so. However, it doesn't make any sense to me at all. I sent out that same request to all of the other guilds that I'm in and received plenty of Kresh.

You joined a cartel never join a cartel. If you are not familiar on what a cartel is then I suggest you look it up. Many of the “guild traders” operate as cartels. Some of the “guild traders” work with the “guild traders” to form syndicates. If it operates like a cartel then it is a cartel and you shouldn’t waste your time with it. If do anything the “boss” doesn’t like then normally you get killed. But seeing you just respawn in eso they will kick you out most likely add you to their shared black list.

Crapgame wrote: »

I belong(ed) to 5 trading guilds since I usually play solo I only need a guild so I can sell my wares.

I've been leveling my crafting so I need bunches of materials. I started yesterday and needed Ebonthread. TTC showed it for 12 on the low end so I asked my guilds if anyone would sell me stacks at 2k each. Many people sent me stacks at that price (10 each).

Today, I've moved onto Kresh fiber and again the low end was 12-15, however the average was 22. I asked the same guilds if anyone would sell me stacks at 2k each. I had a few takers and bought 550 at 10g each.

It is all good up to that point. Then I saw messages in guildchat.

This is the conversation that followed from there:

• Guild member: Um, sorry hon, but the TTC for Kresh Fibre is double that. TTC Price for [Kresh Fiber] : Suggested : 21 ~ 26 [Avg 44.41/Min 4/Max 14,153.33] (206 listings/18,940 items) So a stack would be 4k.
• Me: People do sell below MM price. I just received 550 units @10. So there is that, hon.
• Guild member: Good for you, but please don't try to rip off your fellow guildmates by asking for mats below market value. It's kinda rude.
• Guild member: If you negotiate a lower price, of course, that's totally fine. But asking for it outright... yeah, sorry, love, but I can't let that happen. Sorry.
• Me: People with extra mats and all slots full will accept a lower price. I'm not twisting anyones arm. You're not "letting anything happen." If they don't want to sell, they won't.
• Me: I only asked one time and got more than enough so obviously people think that is fair enough
• Guild member: you are speaking to an officer. Show some respect. This is your second warning, because I know that you did this yesterday and another officer told you not to. This is not "one time" this is the second. Don't ask for items under market value and don't be an arsehole when we let you know what the market value is, on the of chance it was a genuine mistake.
• (I went AFK here.)
• Guild member: Well?
• Guild member: Answer me.
• Guild member: Very well.
• Guild member #2: bye.
• (I return and find I've been kicked from the guild.)
• Tell to guild member: I had to go afk. I have no hard feelings about any of this. You're an officer so you are allowed to do what you'd like. In many guilds, people will freely trade things below fair value as that is one of the major benefits to a trading guild. Each member is entitled to sell his wares at whatever price suits them. For instance, I had asked to buy some ebonthread @10 and instead someone sent me 100 units for 0. That was their decision. I was only offering a price.
• r/ from Guild member: Yeah, I wasn't the one who kicked you. I was busy sending out guild mail at the time, which I would have had to start all over again if I exited the mail ui and entered the guild ui, and given the fact MailR tends to take a full half hour to send otu mail, I wsn't going to do it. It was another officer who kicked you.
• r/ to guild member: Also, I was never "warned" of anything. Someone just mentioned that the price was below market and we left it at that. It doesn't matter who kicked me. As I said, no hard feelings.
• r/ from Guild member: I relly, truly hope there aren't, and I hope you can find a good home trade guild, but... well, I'm sorry; but we can't allow such drastic undercutting. I mean, like I said, if you negotiate it between yourselves that's a different issue, but asking for it outright? That's just devaluing the hard work that went into getting those mats in the first place.
• r/ to Guild member: There aren't. However, I was kicked for doing nothing wrong other than looking to buy some mats from my guildmates. Not looking for handouts. "Undercutting" is a mischaracterization of a "request to buy" in guild chat. I read the rules. There is nothing in there about not requesting trades at below MM values. Just as there is no penalty for requesting more than fair market value for an item.
• (No more replies.)

I am serious when I say there are no hard feelings. That is why I haven't named any names. Every guild is free to operate as they choose.

The reason I'm posting this long winded story is that I want to make sure I'm not being inconsiderate in this situation. Is it bad form to ask for prices below market value when you're buying in guildchat from your guildmates? If it is, I will refrain from doing so. However, it doesn't make any sense to me at all. I sent out that same request to all of the other guilds that I'm in and received plenty of Kresh.

This is why I don't like having to belong to a guild in order to trade. I wish it was just a neutral auction house like in SWL Or WOW even. If a guildmate asked to buy mats at a profit of any kind I'd be ok with that and if I felt it was too low I would negotiate what I felt was fair. I really hate how much the gold mats go for on the Trade market its just obscene, I know they are hard to get but REALLY .. any way that's my opinion such as it is .

That's not what I got from it. My take is that he recognized the MM price was inflated. Sometimes items are worth so little they become scarce in kiosks despite being abundant in player inventories.

OP:

Me: People with extra mats and all slots full will accept a lower price. I'm not twisting anyones arm. You're not "letting anything happen." If they don't want to sell, they won't.

You might think this is fair, I might agree, but yeah he *did* try for what he knew was a bargain.

The true value of any item is what someone else is willing to pay for it. There is nothing wrong in any environment to ask to buy something for less than what other people think it's worth.

To go off on a tangent here; basically I agree with you. I am a capitalist, love Milton Friedman. Still, that doesn´t mean I am for a completely unregulated market. If nothing else it might help with bots dumping prices. I´ve worked (and still work) in a country where people are most definitely being taken advantage of because they have little other option. It´s not a pretty sight.

The trading guilds in this sense are not entirely capitalistic though, they are also protectionist. You are frowned upon for price dumping. There is actually pretty interesting human psychology going on here IMO; within the group (guild) people generally help each other out, but those same people might have no problems behaving completely differently towards people not in the group (non-guildies). And this seems to happen naturally within the system.

And I agree with you on MM. I´m not going to buy those 5k lvl 1 rings rather than wait a bit. And of course "1 sale, 25 days" is not a value set in stone. Sometimes I´ve paid 10 times what an item is worth, because I needed to get that research going now. Stuff like that happens.


My point is you have a right to dump prices and to go for bargains, but not in guild chat. And if you are told not to do it in guild chat, don´t keep doing it. And if you are going to keep doing it, don´t go AFK in the middle of a chat with an officer .

Regarding the prior "warning":

The day before this happened I was buying ebonthread. I made the same offer in guild chat (2k a stack) and a guild member messaged me privately to tell me had some to sell.

After a brief pause, he messaged me again and told me that ebonthread is worth 20g each and that he wouldn't sell at that price.

I said, "OK."

That was the extent of my "warning" which I had no knowledge was a warning until this officer informed me about it.

Secondly, as I have said before, this guild DOES NOT have a rule against selling/buying in guildchat and the reason that I asked for the mats in guildchat is because I would see plenty of others selling items in this fashion.

Lastly, my character is level 42. That is my highest character.

I do regret going AFK but in my defense there was a long pause in our conversation so I thought it was over. I had stuff on the grill and I had to go.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

No, it's not reasonable at all because tools like MM and TTC only provide basic indicators of the value of an item which is contingent on many factors such as supply and demand.

Yes but in this case it was very clear from the conversation the OP knew he asked for a bargain basement price.

Furthermore, everyone has access to tools like TTC and MM, so they can judge for themselves whether it's worth selling.

Console issues aside (which ofc don´t apply here), actually not everyone does have MM. You could argue people *should* and they have only themselves to blame if they don´t, but really, not everyone knows the usual price of an item.

If that player was to dump them all on the market, the value would quickly decline. Further, this player may have accumulated so much Kresh Fiber because it's not worth it to them to use a guild sales slot to sell. So they may be happy to sell it via a quick COD. There's no harm to anyone in that scenario.

There is a difference between selling things cheaply because you have a ton of them, and going into guild chat asking to buy things for a price you know is less than half of the average.

This is a case of Admins power tripping which is pretty common in MMOs.

Probably, yes.

Another thing maybe to think about is that the guild told him/her to stop doing it. In the end, it's their guild and their rules. Of course, the OP knows that and said no hard feelings. But I don't know what guild that is or what the culture is like. Maybe all the members have a common understanding and trust that they will only post buy orders for items at market price. Could be a totally legit rule if the guild was based around that and new members are told that from the beginning.

Crapgame wrote: »

Regarding the prior "warning":

The day before this happened I was buying ebonthread. I made the same offer in guild chat (2k a stack) and a guild member messaged me privately to tell me had some to sell.

After a brief pause, he messaged me again and told me that ebonthread is worth 20g each and that he wouldn't sell at that price.

I said, "OK."

That was the extent of my "warning" which I had no knowledge was a warning until this officer informed me about it.

Secondly, as I have said before, this guild DOES NOT have a rule against selling/buying in guildchat and the reason that I asked for the mats in guildchat is because I would see plenty of others selling items in this fashion.

Lastly, my character is level 42. That is my highest character.

I do regret going AFK but in my defense there was a long pause in our conversation so I thought it was over. I had stuff on the grill and I had to go.

OP you did nothing wrong. Half the people saying you have or seeing some hypothetical ‘crossing the line’ haven’t read your entire post clearly enough, as is evident in their responses.

There are a lot of guilds out there so I wouldn’t worry about it, just find another and hope there are nicer people in them. I’ve been in a few guilds that sell at rocket bottom prices to guildies because they are guildies. You’ve dodged a bullet with this one mate.

MaleAmazon wrote: »

There is no negotiating when they're not allowed to trade within the guild, and have to follow specific prices. He has to use the guild store. If you don't follow those specific prices, you're (in your own words), taking advantage of those 'poor low CP people' that don't know better.

??? Officer said it was fine if price was negotiated, not if it was asked for outright.

You (and others) seem to have this idea that he's taking advantage of people who don't know better, this doesn't have to be the case.

I never said he was taking advantage of people. I´m saying being told not to ask to buy things for way under MM price is a reasonable way to prevent people from being taken advantage of.

Bottom line: it is perfectly acceptable in some places to ask for a dumped price. In other places it is not. This was apparently one of the latter, and when in Rome...

How the heck do people negotiate prices without someone starting by asking for a particular price? Seems like a silly comment that the officer didn't think through. Either they have restrictions on intra-group sales prices or they don't. They don't need to confuse the issue by introducing an ill-defined concept of "negotiation".

OP you did absolutely nothing wrong. It's that Guild Officer that was being a primadonna butthat in need of a ***.

And for those people who say you were undercutting. LOL... just LOL.. Things are only worth as much as someone else is willing to pay for them. Apparently there are a lot of people whom have forgotten how to haggle down prices. I hardly ever pay full or even full-SALE price for anything I buy in real life. I go into the store, look at an item and if I want it, I talk to the manager or business owner on duty and haggle down the price. Just because a Manufacturer Suggests a selling price (MSRP), doesn't mean the business has to sell it at that price or that I as a buyer must pay that amount.

Secondly, if the guild rules are not clearly stated somewhere on the guild page in game, or on a third party guild forum where you need to sign up, or in Discord if that is used, then as far as I'm concerned, it's not a guild rule, no matter what is said by any officer after the fact. It's like of like ambiguity in a contract. Which will favour the person signing the contract, not the person who put it together.

If there are other members clearly buying and selling in the guild chat, then there is obviously no rule against it and someone was just pissed you were getting mats from other members at a decent price or pissy you weren't willing to spend more for them after they noted they were worth 20g each instead of the 10g.

Having been in this game from the beginning, I have sooooo many refined mats in my crafters bag, I will often just vendor them for the 800 gold to clear them out from time to to time. So, as far as I'm concerned, if the price is anything over the 800 gold you would get for a stack from a regular in game vendor, then you aren't under cutting anyone. I'd gladly take that for a stack of Kesh or Ebonshadow or whatever else.

Either way, you are much better off not being in that guild any more. You'd likely be better off finding at least one social guild who happens to also have a trader from time to time. They are more likely to help you out with mats when needed.

PS: @Crapgame PM me the name of this guild so I can avoid buying anything from them in the future.

Allypage wrote: »

TBH they were ALL too snarky for my taste.. even my Real life husband wouldn't dare call me Hon...

How did "hon" get to be such a patronizing name?

SnubbS wrote: »

" you are speaking to an officer. Show some respect. This is your second warning, because I know that you did this yesterday and another officer told you not to. This is not "one time" this is the second. Don't ask for items under market value and don't be an arsehole when we let you know what the market value is, on the of chance it was a genuine mistake."

Casuals in MMOs are actually *** weird.

What makes you think this involved "casuals"?

Sounds like you need a different trade guild. (not your bad by any stretch)

I had an experience of almost the opposite, in a social guild.

I get a drop of an exemplary necklace , offer it in chat 20k below avg, both MM and TTC prices.

I get a bunch of TTC Reccomended prices quoted at me (as we all know 1/3 of the avg) and start getting abused by people who weren't even interested in the item to begin with for trying to help out a guildie who might need it.

I left the guild, and the GM asked me to come back and kicked those creating conflict where none was needed. He then allowed me to choose whether those people came back, and I agreed for them to come back, and just asked them to espect that a guild is a group of people who work together not against each other.

I guess my point is, there are both ends of the spectrum here, and if a trade guild has officers that don;t understand what "trade" means, you probably are better off with a guild who does.