More artificial inflation:H. Nox badge/Magenta Neopets mug

[Morningstar]

I had one sitting in my main account's shop and one in my secondary shop for 80K since last November. Couldn't sell them to save my soul.

Until last night, when this one person bought both and when all others disappeared from the shop wiz--ones that earlier that day had been priced way lower than mine. And, I just talked with someone who had one bought from her shop yesterday. Same person bought hers, as well.

Now this scammer has one on the TP for 7 million. And obviously created a bogus account saying that it is wanting to buy more hubrid nox badges for 4.5 million. Both accounts were created on the exact same day.

It is a totally useless item. It isn't retired. It is a toy. It's rarity means that it will never be asked for a faerie quest. It is really only useful to people who collect badges/toys/chias/hubrid nox stuff. Not too many of those people around.

Most likely, this person will be offering it on trades for good stuff--MPs, PBs, BD items. The unsuspecting seller will look it up on the TP and see, gee, worth 7 million. And, accept the trade. And, then get stuck with a worthless piece of junk.

Grrr, I hate scammers.

EDIT: Now he's doing it with magenta Neopets mugs. Check out the TP. Different account names but same mode of operation. Rarity 101 item. One account saying worth X million. Other account willing to pay X million for it for its gallery. Too bad I don't have one around.

Last edited by Morningstar on Sun May 08, 2005 3:07 pm, edited 5 times in total.

[stampsyne]

Wow. Scamming like that explains how the person got all those paint brushes to put in trades.

[Johnnydontgo]

You know, I realize it's a bit cliche to say, "it's just a game" at this point, but hey. I've never been a stickler for originality. What is it with these kids? Great! Now they've got 20million Neopoints! And tomorrow they go back to flipping burgers. In the time it takes for them to set up this scam, putting their main account in jeopardy of being frozen, they could invest all that np in the stock market and make three times as much legitamately.

[Adam loves Hilary Duff]

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Show how much you love Hubrid Nox by proudly wearing this shiny badge. Hubrid Nox Badge [Special - r101]

The Wishlist of Morningstar: Don't believe everything you read. This isn't worth anything close to a million. I just sold one yesterday in my shop for 80K. This one is reserved for Bill's chia gallery.

I love people warning others.
Why do people take from others? It's just a game!
Nothing less. Nothing more.

[Morningstar]

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Show how much you love Hubrid Nox by proudly wearing this shiny badge. Hubrid Nox Badge [Special - r101]

The Wishlist of Morningstar: Don't believe everything you read. This isn't worth anything close to a million. I just sold one yesterday in my shop for 80K. This one is reserved for Bill's chia gallery.

I love people warning others.
Why do people take from others? It's just a game!
Nothing less. Nothing more.

*blushes* That's my main account. I happened to remember that my hubby had one in his lupe/chia gallery. So, I am "borrowing" it for a while.

I love outsmarting scammers.

[ahoteinrun]

Lot 170671449: | Owned by Morningstar | Report this lot

Show how much you love Hubrid Nox by proudly wearing this shiny badge. Hubrid Nox Badge [Special - r101]

The Wishlist of Morningstar: Don't believe everything you read. This isn't worth anything close to a million. I just sold one yesterday in my shop for 80K. This one is reserved for Bill's chia gallery.

I love people warning others.
Why do people take from others? It's just a game!
Nothing less. Nothing more.

*blushes* That's my main account. I happened to remember that my hubby had one in his lupe/chia gallery. So, I am "borrowing" it for a while.

I love outsmarting scammers.

*pats* You're so nice.
*gives you a cookie*

Last edited by ahoteinrun on Sat Jan 06, 2007 7:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

[Blue_Shoyru]

There's now 4 selling, and 2 trades buying for 4.5 million...(the scammer is the 2,and it seems 1 of the others)
Two are selling for 7 million one for 4 million and one doesn't have a wishlist
It's spreading but Morningstar's one should help
One of the sellers is 27 months and has a Baby Jetysam and Werelupe,another is 46 months and even has Darigan Krawk and Techon a MSP Poogle (!) and Halloween Kacheek. It's sad that these experienced players have been taken in...

Last edited by Blue_Shoyru on Mon May 09, 2005 4:16 pm, edited 1 time in total.

[Morningstar]

Lot 170671449: | Owned by Morningstar | Report this lot

Show how much you love Hubrid Nox by proudly wearing this shiny badge. Hubrid Nox Badge [Special - r101]

The Wishlist of Morningstar: Don't believe everything you read. This isn't worth anything close to a million. I just sold one yesterday in my shop for 80K. This one is reserved for Bill's chia gallery.

I love people warning others.
Why do people take from others? It's just a game!
Nothing less. Nothing more.

*blushes* That's my main account. I happened to remember that my hubby had one in his lupe/chia gallery. So, I am "borrowing" it for a while.

I love outsmarting scammers.

*pats* You're so nice.
*gives you a cookie*

*munch* *munch* Inrun, you make the best cookies!

I have been thinking about this. It is possible that Neo could program something to prevent this from happening. Make it so that only one account per IP address is allowed to create a trade of a certain item. So, if I put a hubrid nox badge up for trade on one account, I can't put another one up for trade on another account.

They already have something similar to this in place in the auctions to prevent over-inflation of an item. If one person bids on an item, a second person on the same IP is prevented from placing a on that same item. Instead, that second person will get an error message.

Perhaps I will write to Neopets about this to see if this could be implemented. It wouldn't get all of the scammers, but might make a bit of a dent in the numbers.

[Phlameseeker]

*blushes* That's my main account. I happened to remember that my hubby had one in his lupe/chia gallery. So, I am "borrowing" it for a while.

I love outsmarting scammers.

Morningstar, you are the best *Steals ahoteinrun's cookie making machine and adds random secret ingredient*

[o_0]

I like your idea, but sometimes I am selling two of a certain book, like Computing the Kreludan Way or something. :S I like to sell them quickly, so I have them up at the same time.

[Morningstar]

I like your idea, but sometimes I am selling two of a certain book, like Computing the Kreludan Way or something. :S I like to sell them quickly, so I have them up at the same time.

Oh, I should clarify. With my idea, a person would be able to put more than one of the same item up for trade--but those items would have to be on the same account. However, that person would not be able to put ITEM X up for trade on one account, then go to a different account (with the same IP address) to put another ITEM X up for trade. Because then to the unsuspecting buyer, it looks like two different people selling the same item.

And, the way this scammer did it was too slick. He was asking 7 million on one account. Then went to the other account, put one up for trade and said he was buying them for a new gallery, willing to pay 4.5 million for them, and that interested parties should neomail or aim him about it. So, the unsuspecting player would think there was a great interest in this item when, in reality, it was lies.

By the way, he took his trades off the TP. Both accounts. He kept offering on my trade from various accounts. Looking at what was written on his user lookup page, I could easily tell it was the same person. And, I let him know it.

I also wrote Neopets about it. Not that it is an obvious scam, mind you--since, technically, people can ask whatever price they want. However, it is still extremely underhanded and I felt that Neopets should know that this type of dealing was occurring on the site.

I just feel really bad for anyone who fell for this jerk's claims. People need to be really careful when trading anything of value. Never just take a person's word as to the value of something. I mean, if they had checked out both trades on the TP, they would have seen that both accounts had been created on the very same day. Smells fishy to me right there.

Personally, I never, ever take HTS's of any kind in trade and never, ever take anything with which I am unfamiliar. Its pure or well-known ETS's only.

You cannot imagine the number of people who have written my plushie gallery asking me how much I paid for a certain rarity 90+ plushie because they had either gotten a plushie as an offer on one of their trades or (*sob*) had already completed the trade. One poor guy traded a really rare morphing potion for a rarity 98 plushie because he had been told that the plushie was worth 5 million. I have paid about 400K for that same plushie sitting in my gallery.

[everconfused]

Morningstar, first of all good job! If you talked to someone else and the same person or persons are the ones who bought from your shops and you didn't clear your shop history, it sounds to me like these fools could be reported for artificial inflation. That is against the rules and for good reason.

I almost wish I had one of those badges, I too would put it on the tp with a nice little message. This stuff has got to stop. Seems every week there's a new false inflation item anymore!

[Morningstar]

Morningstar, first of all good job! If you talked to someone else and the same person or persons are the ones who bought from your shops and you didn't clear your shop history, it sounds to me like these fools could be reported for artificial inflation. That is against the rules and for good reason.

I almost wish I had one of those badges, I too would put it on the tp with a nice little message. This stuff has got to stop. Seems every week there's a new false inflation item anymore!

I kept my history but I don't know if the other person did. I did report it, however, along with my suggestion.

It was my curiousity that got me into this. I couldn't figure out why anyone would buy both of them from me when my price was so much higher than others on the shop wiz and when both had been sitting in my shops for over 6 months.

So, I checked out the guy who bought it and saw that he had put one on the TP for almost 100 times what I sold it for. At first, I thought he just must be a fool, then I thought possible avatar?. Then this morning I checked the TP again. And, the person from whom he also bought one had dug another out of her SDB and posted a big warning about the inflated price and how its true value was 99,999. I wrote her about my experiences, one thing led to another, and we figured out what the guy was attempting to do. She was going to keep hers on the TP, but I told her about my idea to use my hubby's for awhile instead.

I only wish that I was able to do this with all of the price inflaters. Honestly, Neo should hire some of us loyal users as spies.

Nothing gets me more ticked off than cheaters who dupe innocent people. I hate the glitches, I hate the pant devil and the tax beast, but I really, really hate the scammers and cheaters. Because it is just a game. What kind of sick jollies does this guy get from duping someone out of months and months of work? Making some little kid or new person cry their eyes out? And, how does he sleep at night? One would think that, sooner or later, his conscience would get the best of him.

[Trick]

Sort of off at a tangent or maybe not, but is artificial inflation the reason behind the Chezzoom price jump?

Mine sold last week for around 41k and I know that there were more than a few for only 30-something k. Now they're all at about 70k or more with many in trades. It seems a bit iffy to me when there's no sign of any chezzoom day or anything and the petpet is already retired

I get really fed up with people who artificially inflate stuff. It's only an annoyance to me on the rare occasions I trade something when I have to look up items and see that they're apparently worth so many millions. But for inexperienced players/traders or even many of the younger players it's a terrible scam. It's fake money anyway for goodness sake, if they put the same time and effort into making the NP in a legit manner they'd probably make just the same amount without ripping other people off.

Not so long ago I remember when one of the korbat MPs was hugely inflated and someone on a board I was reading had been taken in by it and lost all their hard earned neopoints. It's just really not nice and I hope neopets will be able to do something about it at least. It would also be nice to see the unbuyable limit raised from 100k to something like 400/500k and then there would be less items to falsely inflate too.

Good for you for putting up your trade with that message It's nice to see someone able to warn people like that.

[everconfused]

Morningstar, we could be a kind of "secret shopper"!

The things I have seen, from people trying to sell food as a "rare" petpet worth hundreds of thousands to all this artificial inflation. It's sad. I agree with everyone as far as it being fake money and fake items and it is a game. I just don't undertand why people feel the need to cheat, be it a TP item inflation scam, the same person with different names/emails (I'm guessing on proxies? I don't use one so I don't know) buying/selling/competing as different people for the sole reason of greed.

Actually Trick, I think it would be a good idea to raise the UB price in usershops. Yes, of course there would be people trying to take advantage of that, but it would actually help unclog the TP with things that are over 100k but less than, say, 500k. No haggling, no waiting for someone to make a real offer, no waiting for the person you're trying to buy from to either accept or even log in. Could be a huge help for people doing Illusen/Jhudora quests!

The chezoom I honestly don't know about. I had one awhile ago and sold it for I think around 40k. Prices on everything can and do go up and down sometimes several times even within a 24 hour period. Maybe someone's trying to set up another inflation thing, or could be a few people are honestly just collecting them?