Your thoughts: EGS Middleman Service

[Infamous Flame]

Originally Posted by GunslingerV

Cost: In regards to cost, I think it should be scaled according to cost (maybe 10%, with a minimum of $5). There are many people selling some accounts for maybe under $50, and buyers would not be willing to pay potentially double the price for insurance.

I think this is definitely something we can look into, although I think we'd struggle to find any middlemen willing to complete a trade for only $5. I'd think something like $15-20 would be the absolute lowest limit we could actually find anyone to do it for us at.

So that would mean if you have a $500 account, you'll be looking at paying $50 for a middleman service. Or if you had a $100 account you'd be looking at paying $10. This seems quite reasonable, although we'll need to double-check that we can find middlemen to do it at this price.

Duration: I agree with deviant, the "within 36 hrs" isn't acceptable; that's WAY too long. However 10-15min at whim would be very difficult to implement. I'd recommend the construction of a timetables with hours when multiple middlemen would be available. For example (weekdays from 9-12 AM, 5-8PM) etc; this way, buyers and sellers would know when to both be online to conduct the transaction.

This is an interesting idea, and one for investigation, although I have two points that might render this inappropriate:

• Given we have potentially such an international audience (middlemen from different places, sellers from another different place, buyer from yet another different place), I'm not sure we'd really be able to get everyone online for the same time. Perhaps you can see a way around this problem?
• Maybe I've missed something, but do we actually need to have everyone online at the same time anyway? The brief outline of the process in my eyes is:

  Client uses Plimus and then posts their unique service thread

  Middleman or other appropriate eGaming Supply staff member verifies Plimus number and posts in their thread to that effect, also instructing seller to PM login details to them.

  Middleman verifies login details, and contents of account etc., then informs buyer to pay seller.

  Buyer pays seller, and then posts in service thread to this effect.

  Seller confirms receipt of payment, and then leaves feedback for trading partners, and buyer does the same

So far as I can see, none of those steps involve having two parties online at the same time? Can you double check this for me?

Security: To prevent scamming/fraud, I think everyone should be required to enter a phone number registered under the same name as they used to register on the forums. They would have to use that phone number to call an automated answering system without blocking their caller ID for automated verification. I think that'll keep scammers away for sure. Or at least make the option available so people would know who's been verified or not.

We do record phone numbers through Plimus, although I think an automated phone system would be out of our league, being realistic, as we don't have huge funds to do that sort of thing. I think XStealth6 was planning on incorporating his own manual phone verficaition process into the mix, but that's probably going to impact on transaction times, which is something we don't want.

Do you feel our service isn't secure enough as is? Thanks for your feedback!

Originally Posted by optimo twist

please add a MM service for guild wars.

i see no feedback for any gw mm services in the past and all i can find is 1 old post saying that you plan to include guild wars in this service in the next week (dated april 24 2008), any updates on this, please?



http://www.egamingsupply.com/forum/n...expansion.html

I'm really sorry there hasn't been any update on our progress, it totally slipped my mind. The thing is that there hasn't been any progress to update you on anyway We're still looking for a middleman for Guild Wars. Most of the ones we looked at either balked at the prices and payment system, or just weren't up to scratch for our high standards. Do you know anyone who would make a top-quality middleman that we could approach?

heres another idea, for guild wars account sellers and traders, make it mandatory to post ur in game title/xp screen (they can edit out their ingame names if they are worried about anet trolling egs to ban them), that way buyers can compare the numbers to known scammer accounts, many of these titles involve MANY hours of grinding and many scammers wont want to put in a huge amount of hours grinding titles or xp, to get the account to where its not recognized any more, and even then this would be pretty obvious because all title or xp points will always be higher than before, making it real easy to tell.

Sounds interesting, but would scammers not be able to just copy images from other trading sites and repost them as their own?

as far as the cost, i am willing to pay $30 for this service, but i agree with the other guy, 3 days is too long.

I'll work on cutting down the times. Thanks for your feedback!

Originally Posted by kedg

I think the cost should be a % base, if you are sellling an account for $60 bucks and then pay $30 bucks for the service its point less. Maybe have a minmum charge and a %.

Thanks for the feedback, I'm taking your views into consideration along with GunslingerV's.

Originally Posted by Puffnstuff

When browsing the buy/sell section, I keep seeing MM post and offer their services. I see it as spamming when they tend to do it to every post, atleast 50% of them. We all can see that your offering a MM service through its particular section as well as certain people's signatures.

The reason for that is twofold:

• We don't charge anyone anything for posting on the site. We have considerable and ongoing costs that we have to pay to provide this site, and the only way, at the moment, that we are making anything back on it, is via the middleman service. Thus, the middlemen need to get as much business as possible, so that we can stay afloat and keep providing you this service. We're also trying to get a bit of profit ourselves for what we do, heh.
  
• By increasing the community's awareness of the middleman service, and persuading as many people to use it as possible, we hope to weed out scammers. The hope is that if everyone uses the middleman service, then any scammers will stick out like a sore thumb by not using it. This is all for community safety and security.

As for the current price I would agree with GunslingerV. Pricing needs to scale a bit better for lower costing accounts/trades. If there would be a higher end flat cost for a higher estimated account value...then I would expect the time it takes when dealing with a MM to be very low. Since with most companies, the more you pay...the faster the product usually is completed.

I'll take this into account when proposing a revised fee structure for the middleman service, as well as other posters' views.

For security...this may sound kind of "Gestapo" like but maybe for a premium account being traded/sold/bought (something of massive value) have both partys scan a copy of their ID (given to the MM) for verification with certain things omitted/blocked out like the actual issue #. Though it may only work on proving the buyer and if they are the original owner...dunno, just an idea there.

I'm not sure I follow. You mean ID as in driver's license or passport or whatever? Or do you mean an ingame ID?

About working with a % scale...the problem there is that if its too low, then the MM wont have the incentive to do the service since they may feel they are under appreciated by getting a lower fee for performing the service. There has to be some sort of compromise between MM and purchaser of the service when it comes to the value of the account vs the fee of the service.

Definitely right there, I'm going to try to see if we can't find a better balance though.

Thanks for the feedback!

[Infamous Flame]

Originally Posted by NewJose

Cost: I think it should be a maximum of 30$, but a minimum for the cheaper accounts. If you're buying a 150$ or less account and spending the full 30 on MM, that's at most at least a fifth of what you're already paying, so I think that should be based on some kind of percentage. As for the higher end accounts, I don't think that should be based on a percentage as that could lead to sellers of higher end accounts avoiding MM services, thus leading to less customers and more scams.

Well, as for the sliding scale/percentage idea, I'll definitely add your 'vote' to the list for that. Please be aware though that you're in effect asking for us to decrease the price for lower-end accounts, and not increase the price for high-end accounts. Where will the financial gap be filled from?

Duration: As many have said before, the 36 hours is a bit ridiculous, but there really isn't much I can think of to remedy this problem other than to just hire a few more MMs, or to maybe offer volunteer work to proven trustworthy members that would be willing to help complete some MM transactions. Users like Jaime would be good candidates for this, imo.

I had been thinking the same thing since feedback started coming back in. Will definitely look into hiring more middlemen, along with altering the way they operate to see if we can make it more streamlined and less time-consuming.

Random thoughts: I think you should add a program similar to Markeedragon's Trustwho program. A program that logs IPs and has the City/State of the user posted with each and every one of their posts. That way it would put a stop to scammers/potential scammers.

We already encourage all sellers/providers of services to get trustwho verified, and encourage them to display those credibilities proudly.

We already log IPs, and are actually developing a system as we speak that will display scammer reports etc. and may include that information. I'd like more views on whether everybody would be happy with such information being shared about them? Also bear in mind that IP Geolocation is very inaccurate for many places. The USA is about the only place it can truly be relied upon. For instance, my own IP resolves to somewhere I've never even been..

Thank you for your feedback!

Originally Posted by uberleet

As for Duration, I feel as though there should be a rotational service. One person cant be awake 24 hours, so why not have another MM member help out while the other is not available. I think it could help with productivity. and cut down on the 36 hour wait.

Due to previous feedback, I'm already going to actively be looking to take on more middlemen to make things a bit smoother. I'll also look into ways of streamlining the ordering process to speed it up a bit more.

Thanks for your feedback!

[optimo twist]

Quote:
heres another idea, for guild wars account sellers and traders, make it mandatory to post ur in game title/xp screen (they can edit out their ingame names if they are worried about anet trolling egs to ban them), that way buyers can compare the numbers to known scammer accounts, many of these titles involve MANY hours of grinding and many scammers wont want to put in a huge amount of hours grinding titles or xp, to get the account to where its not recognized any more, and even then this would be pretty obvious because all title or xp points will always be higher than before, making it real easy to tell.

Sounds interesting, but would scammers not be able to just copy images from other trading sites and repost them as their own?


actually this is the only site ive been able to find where people sell guild wars accounts on this scale, and since ive been here ive personaly found 5 or 6 scammers (think 2 got banned) and the only reason i caught them was because i did my homework looking for screenshots of similar accounts that have been sold here in the past and then checking the buyer/seller beware section for the usernames or contact info of the seller, as far as them stealing screenshots from other websites, just ask to meet them ingame so you can see they own the character in the screenshot, before you send any payments.

[Emph]

Honestly, I don't think the price scale is appropriate. If a middleman charges $30 for to verify an account now, any account, then there is a set price. However, if an account is only worth $50, and he only charges 5$, its the SAME amount of work for the middleman.

If the middleman were an insurance policy of some sort, I'd agree with the scale... But whether your account is valued at $10 or $10,000, the middleman still has to verify and secure the account, and then complete the transaction.

Much like a mechanic changing a set of tires. If he gets some little Honda Civic, it's alot less valued than say a BMW M3. However, its the same amount of work to actually perform the service, so the price would be the same. (Excluding the change in the price of the replacement tires)

I think the Middleman service is good as-is. If the price gets cheaper, scammers may very well think "Well, I can pay $5, 10, 15 and get this fool to do the trade... I walk away with a $50, 100, 150 account for $15. Why the hell not use a middleman?" Unfortunately, I think price is a factor in scammer deterrent.

[kendrah1]

Cost wise, everyone needs to ask themself if they would be willing to provide service for $5-$15 per transaction for your own payment. If you would, I suggest volunteering to become a middleman. The fee is split among a few different areas in which the middleman provider themself actually makes a "just" barely tolerable amount to take on the position. I'm actually looking to retire from the middleman position after Xstealth6 gets back, and I assure you, the fee we receive has no impact on my decision to keep volunteering or not.

I think the fee if $30 is adequate for some reasons mentioned. It pays the middleman a tolerable amount, help funds the sites overhead cost, it's relatively affordable, yet it helps deter scammers as mentioned.


Timewise, IF has a great idea which is going to help reduce the times needed for service. Currently it takes too long. ALL middlemen work, which means if you catch us on an offtime, you don't get service for many hours later. If you don't have all the information we need when we log in, that delays it even more. On top of this, Plimus eats up a day, sometimes two. On top of that, summer's coming. We go out with family, events, vacations, we work, etc, etc. Like everyone else, we have lives as well. That also adds to delay times.


For security, middleman service guarantees ONE thing. It ensures that the seller puts the account in the hands of the buyer, and the buyer puts the money into the hands of the seller. As a buyer if you send money, and the seller refuses to send the account, your out of luck. Middleman service eliminates this possibility.

However, middleman service does NOT eliminate the verification process both traders are required to do before using the service. Once the money and account has changed hands, if the money is recalled, or the account is recalled, that's on the trade partners. We ensure that BOTH end up in the hands they are meant to be, you ensure that you verify your partner correctly, and that they are not a scammer. If your trade partner is a scammer, your going to get scammed with, or without the middleman service anyways.

The major point of using middleman service is to ensure that when the buyer sends money, the seller sends an account to a 3rd party provider. Again, without a middleman, if you send money to buy an account, and the seller refuses to send you the account, your out of luck. It's easier to protect an account once it's in your hands, than one that never reaches you in the first place. That's what middleman service does, verification is your responsibility.

[Infamous Flame]

Just to update everyone: I'm currently pushing through a streamlining measure which should cut middleman times a bit. Will give more info in the next few days.

I'm still looking for more feedback from the community on middleman pricing. As both I and the staff/middlemen have expressed, I think we'll struggle to find people willing to do it for much less than we're charging now. However, I get the feeling it'll be okay once we speed it up a bit.

Thoughts?

Thanks for the feedback guys.

[XStealth6]

Figured I'd put my own thoughts.




Cost:

Completely reasonable. With the current updates done to POL, verifying accounts making sure the levels are correct, crafts, items are in place then changing information which is time consuming. I would probably not bother for anything less that what is offered now. You're using me, my time, and the security that i will not scam you, or betray you. I've sometimes spent 1-2 hours DAILY here at egs just securing accounts and exchanging information in a secure manner. As we all know, time is money therfore completely justifying the cost of the service. I have a busy life as it is yet i still manage to come through for the community and spare my time for the members here at EGS. So in short, the cost is completely justifiable.


Duration:

Most of my trades, about 90% of them are done within 24 hours of placing the order. That other 10% that don't are caused by delays that i can't help. Such as: Not putting in a correct PLIMUS ID, People not online to send me the information i need, People putting up a PLIMUS ID and then not even putting up what they're trading... Seriously the list goes on and on. The point is, that other 10% is caused by the poster or the parties involved that forget things and delay the trades themselves. If you forgot to put something in the first time i get around, and things don't match... then guess what, you'll have to wait the next time i'm online, because i'm not going to wait around for hours waiting for someone to fix their mistake. I haven't delayed them, they've delayed themselves. I think that is fair to do in my position, and im sure many of you would agree you would do the same.

As to my availability, i work evenings, so if you try to catch me past 2:30 PM EST, you'll have to wait into the next morning. So far it's been working for me and the ffxi forum i manage.

Security:


As of late i've already been implementing changing basic acct info for accounts in high value and other miscellanous things. Using our MM service is by far one of the most secure ways of getting the account in your hands safely. Just put in the info, and let me take care of the trade for you. Verifying that you get what you paid for. As always, i also take special requests if the situation calls for it.



My $0.02

[kepogata]

IMO, i'd appreciate if there were more middleman available so people would not have to wait for service. I myself have a request in for the service and I am still waiting for one to assist me, so it would be nice if we could have some more that could maybe stretch the service availability better.

[Infamous Flame]

Originally Posted by kepogata

IMO, i'd appreciate if there were more middleman available so people would not have to wait for service. I myself have a request in for the service and I am still waiting for one to assist me, so it would be nice if we could have some more that could maybe stretch the service availability better.

Thanks for the input. I'm still working on the streamlining fix I mentioned earlier, and with sellers' co-operation it should reduce wait times dramatically.

We're also looking to take on additional middlemen to backup the existing leaders (XS and Shawn). However we have to be extremely careful about who we take on incase they turn out to be scammers.

[Floridasmb]

The cost DEFINATELY should scale, period

I have a few accounts to sell for like $50.00, obviously I wont use the service. So it is up to YOU wether or not you want that type of business.