I bought Sulfuron Hammer from the AH for 1800g and I know they meant to list it at 18,000g. I feel really bad, what should I do?
I’ve run myself ragged today, posting glyphs for 8 hours. I was babysitting them, cancelling undercuts and reposting. I was also popping up on a few twitch tv wow gold live streaming events, and chatting to streamers and guests and offering a little advice. I was on twitter, chatting away to twitter peeps and helping with queries.
I even had advice requested by whisper in game. This time was about ethics of buying items that are accidentally under-priced. “L” had seen an item for 1/10 its normal selling price on the Auction House and pounced on it, before having an attack of the guilts. Regular readers of the Gold Queen will know I often wrestle with my conscience, and try to act fairly and generously to other players. Here is the advice I gave “L” today.
“I bought Sulfuron Hammer from the AH for 1800g and I know they meant to list it at 18,000g. I feel really bad, what should I do?”
First of all don’t panic. You didn’t purposefully try and take gold or money away from a player. If you hadn’t bought his item, then someone else would have done.
I recommend hanging on to it for 24 hours. That gives the seller a window to contact you and beg you, nicely, to give him a break.
If you’re too late, and you’ve already resold the item, like “L”, then don’t beat yourself up about it. I told “L” that a lighthouse doesn’t go running around the island trying to save ships. There is only so much you can do to help this guy with his stupid mistake. If they contact you and they’re nice, you might want to offer them a share of the profits, to help them and you to feel better. I told “L” that if he was rude, nasty, or arrogant, then not to bother.
It’s a personal choice. Your ethics are your ethics, not mine.
What if you’re the seller who made the mistake?
The best you can do is to ask. If you don’t ask, you won’t get. But you’re not likely to get any response except for trolling, so be prepared for a “no”. It happens to all of us at some point, and the best thing to do is separate our emotions from our gold and move on.
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About the Author
The Gold Queen is written by Alyzande. With many level 100s, 9 years expertise in making gold, 10 garrisons, 16k achievements, 1505 days played, and over 18m gold earned. The Gold Queen blog teaches you how to make gold playing World of Warcraft using ethical trading, auction house flipping, crafting, reselling snatch lists, and farming gold making.
There’s really only so much worrying one can do.
The advice you gave was spot-on. If the original seller is polite in their request for the item back, by all means, make a deal with them. If, on the other hand, they’re a huge jerk, laugh and carry on with your life.
I’m a firm believer in rewarding, or at least being equally polite in response to, politeness in any online game, since it’s so freaking rare.
I’ll seriously scan the AH 3-4 times a week for minerals or herbs to snag then make items to disenchant or whatever is needed. I get bored of making money though, as the competition drives me nuts. It’s not the 1-2g undercutters, it the ones who undercut by 50% on a 200g item (which I buy out and repost, tyvm!)
Is this honestly any different than buying a stack of enchanting vellium for 2 gold from a vendor and selling it for 50 gold on the ah. If the item is posted at a given price then you shouldn’t feel bad about buying it for that price even if it is outlandishly low. At the worst….it is a lesson learned about checking your posts on the AH.
Yeah, part of being a gold-maker is this: You are a capitalist…. PERIOD. Now, I’m not saying you have to be “evil”, but if someone doesn’t check their postings, that’s their problem, not mine. I post hundreds of things every day, I’ve spent a LOT of time tweaking my addons to ensure that I don’t post things for too little (like the hammer above), and when I accidentally do post something like that, I take it as a learning experience and tweak my addons again.
Experience is the best teacher, and the best way to get experience: FAIL.
Honestly, I would relist it and be done with it. When you post the auction you see the price and you can cancel if you screwed up. If you cannot be bothered to check your auction prices, I’ll gladly help you learn 🙂
BTW I did a lot worse: in LotRO there was a time where Symbols of Celebrimbor were going for 20 gold each. Someone had the nice idea to undercut and put one up for sale at 19…. silver. Now, what you may not know is that in LotRO the gold/silver ratio is 1000….. Let’s say that I made a quick 20 gold that day 😛