Sunday, March 17, 2013

So that's Competition?

A character who was sending me transmog hate mail, has now committed themselves to being my competitor.  It's been an interesting chain of events, and a story I thought would be worth telling, this is a blog after all.  I hope you enjoy it and consider contributing to the discussion.

Alli Side
First a little background.  I play mainly on the Horde side of my server.  I have a 25 guild and all my crafting characters Horde side, but I wanted to dabble in the Alliance auction house, and have made over 100k there  by flipping items in two markets - Twink and Transmog.

The Letters
So being that I flip transmog, I of course get the occasional hate mail.  My general policy is this: If you take the time and ask me for a deal on the piece of gear, and do it in a polite way, I'll be more than happy to cut you some sort of deal.  On the other hand if you're rude and/or condescending, I just won't respond to the mail.  So the first mail went something like this, I really wish I kept them so I could just Screenshot them.

"Hi, the cloth gloves you have on the AH are way overpriced, only an idiot would sell them for that much.  I'll give you 50g for them, you should be happy to get that."

As is my policy (above) I just ignored it, but this person really wanted the gloves.  A few days later I got the following:

"I see those gloves haven't sold yet.  50g is a great offer and the most you'll ever get"

Well at the very least he is persistent.  Again, I ignored it and went about my business.  Wouldn't you know it, 3 days later:

"I don't know why you won't sell me those gloves, they're not worth that much.  You probably don't make any gold with your ridiculously overpriced auctions."

I considered putting him on ignore, but I decided to respond.  I sent him a mail with the following:  "Since you want them so badly, I've decided to reevaluate my pricing model."  I then proceeded to list the item at gold cap.  I got a few other mails followed, but I put his toon on ignore, and kept listing my auctions as per usual.

Out of the Blue
Randomly, about 2 weeks later I get a mail from a character with (phonetically) the same name as this guy.  The title was "Hurry Up" and read something as follows:

"Hurry up and finish posting so I can undercut you!"

Okay, you caught my attention now.  Did he just figure out the transmog market and is trying to beat me at my own game?  Naturally I looked up this toon on The Undermine Journal and had a good laugh at the results.  He was selling a decent amount of gear, but maybe only 1/50 items I actually recognized as transmog gear.  So what he thought I was doing is just buying up all the greens and relisting at absurd prices for my own entertainment and profit.  This struck me as a bit of culture shock, but it provided some keen insight into why transmog toons are particularly infamous on servers, because they are assumed to be big jerks by those not "in the know" of the market.  Heck, even people "in the know" might just dislike them as well.  Hope you enjoyed this, and if you have any stories you'd like to share please do so in the comments!

Cheers,

Phat Lewts

If you like my blog follow me on twitter, @PhatLewtsGold!!

7 comments:

  1. Had a similar thing happen when I was trying to sell Teebu's sword before 5.2 patch, I had it listed at 100k figuring heck if it sold money in my pocket and if not I could always fall back on it as being my own transmog item later.

    I had been listing it for about 2 weeks and gotten about 5-6 mails a week ranging from "damn that is overpriced I'll give you 20k" to "lol 100k sword who would pay that" type. Ignored the hate mail and kept to my price. About a week before they listed the patch date, bam it sold 100k (85k profit after picking it up as a cheap investment in I think wotlk).

    ReplyDelete
  2. That's actually how I started, too: I looked up the transmog gear on wowhead and thought, that everything on that list must have a descent value.

    Well... it doesn't. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. People send hate mail over AH prices!?! I had no idea this happened! Garhh it's your item and you can sell it (or atleast attempt to) for whatever you want.
    I know I've seen items on the AH that I've thought 'they aren't worth that' but I'd never send abusive mail like that. I'm also guilty of listing items slightly over-prices to 'test the water'.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Kinda similar to how I got in the 77-79 cata market. I started on a new server wanting to level a warrior, not really messing with the markets on that server except the herbs and ore that I picked up while leveling, the occasional x-mog item that I happened to loot and maybe 2 or 3 times scanning that AH for deals.

    Then when I hit 77 I started checking the AH for those uber powerful cata greens and saw them all listed for 400ish gold. At first I was a bit confused and ticked off, then I saw the genius of it and started doing it on my main server and new server.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I find it funny that so many people seem to know exactly what's the price of each item, according to their opinion.
    I was once approached by a guy who said he would never pay more that 15g for a lvl 40ish green (wich I posted for around 600g). I told him it wasn't because of its ilevel, but because of its trasmog value. He couldn't understand that simple premise.

    ReplyDelete
  6. I used to get hate mail for xmog items I posted (some with almost the exact message you posted, and some that were much much worse and gave me a good laugh) It they were polite I tried to find something they needed, usually mistaking xmog gear for lvling gear, so I'd point them to a crafted item or a quest/dungeon they could do, etc. But people on my server have mostly just learned to accept it. Now, I get more mails asking for special requests than I get hate mail.

    Haven't noticed any competitors sending me hate mail though. I've had people getting out of the market try to sell me their stock for 50g an item or something... but I have enough of my own stock and I usually pay way less than that per item so I've always passed on the offers.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Hmm, Ive not had hate mail but I did have a very nice RP letter from a warrior that wanted a rare black smithing recipie I had up.

    He asked in a RP letter, if the servers where not down I would post it, but I was just taken back that I had a nice letter from some one.

    And yes I gave it to him cheaper...

    ReplyDelete

Don't Call it a Comeback

Okay. You can probably call it a comeback in this case. I've been gone a long time. So if you follow my Twitter you'll know I recent...