Problem: I am having such trouble with auctions - I have paid for 2 and not gotten the goods on auctions that I have won (one guy is really trying but his access signs don't work), and I sold one auction and the winner has not paid nor acknowledged me since he won. How long should I wait and should I put it up for auction again? It's like the money was promised to me and now the buyer has changed his mind or something. Suggestion: a public auction house where the goods have to be entered into chests by the person entering the auction, and the winners have to pay within a certain amount of time to get access to the chests. Probably impossible to code but there must be something that can be done to improve the system.
Awesome concept! To add to the idea, if a sign command could be written which would allow a password lock, IE 1st line "Password" (in place of "access") 2nd line "Banana" ( or whatever be the password) 3rd line Chest ID(automatic randomly assigned chest number displayed upon locking) Then, when a player clicks on the chest, a password cmd prompts in the chat area. I would think this may afford mods the opportunity to pull the password from the sign code, should a seller fall delinquent on their sale and not produce the pass code to the auction winner. In the event that a purchaser goes AWOL, assuming the "won" inventory is in a passworded chest, SS could debit the funds from the delinquent purchaser, with an additional "transaction fee" to the payer of course, and forward the auction amount to the seller. When posting an auction on the forum, the seller would be able to provide the "Chest ID" of the auction materials, or point of delivery in reference to reverse auctions. I feel this would add validity to an auction posting, and would allow the bidders the comfort of knowing the transaction is somewhat guaranteed. Granted this seems like a bit of work, the weight that the EMC community puts on the Economy aspect of the server, I think it be a sound investment of time to figure something out. Also, a large portion of the supporter community are very active in auctions and P2P sales. Lastly, to avoid Krysyy and all SS being bombarded with these issues, possibly a "Treasurer" mod be appointed to work through said concerns. This should mitigate any addition burden to the current staff and their duties. n' stuff...
I'm just going to try to solve your problem, as I think it's mostly miscommunication and stupid (not specifically yours) things. Your auction: I see the player still being active, but not having responded to your post. This most likely means he doesn't even know he has won! Sometimes you can easily miss an alert for a thread, and once you've not viewed that thread after a received alert, it won't give you another one. For this reason I always quote people when I want to make sure they get another alert about it. I've quoted the person in that thread for you, and suppose he'll reply soon. Wom auction 1: it has only been a little over a day since you've won that auction, so I think this will still continue without "problems", you said the sings were wrong, this often happens. Just say they were wrong, and usually they'll get replaced fairly soon, unless stated otherwise. Won auction 2: that's my auction . There are many reasons that went "wrong". I've not been able to setup the chest, because I was on a schooltrip, with no computer access. Also, I probably forgot to check that thread, so I didn't get more alerts from it. Also, would you have quoted me there, I still only would've seen it today, because you would have quoted my alt I'll solve this one today, as I'm back home again.
Well, the solution is easy: get staff involved. I did spot a possible issue with the rules just now, that's for another place, but the auction winner needs to pay within 48 hours so I think it's also not unreasonable to expect the same with delivery. When someone doesn't comply: get staff involved. Heck: feel free to start a conversation with the guy who can't get the access signs setup and myself and I'll try my best to help you guys out with this. Also feel free to poke me in-game (I'm usually on SMP2). But the solution is to get staff involved if things don't work out. Repeat offenders will be caught this way and banned from the whole EMC marketplace. On a side note: this is why many players, myself included, use preview chests. If you have bad experiences then apart from reporting the players you might want to restrict your auction participations only to those players who provide you with a way to see the items before bidding. That way you'll know there won't be too much problems: if they can set up a preview sign then surely they'll be able to do an access sign too. But do yourself and the community a favor and report those players. Get staff involved. It doesn't even have to be like that you're out to "get them", sometimes staff has better ways to help someone out with problems (like access signs) than regular players do. Now... As to your suggestion. It could be a good one. I once tried to set something like this up after asking the community about it, then trying to come up with something. That project stalled a bit, part of it had to do with working out the details with organizing it. The problem is that this is easier said than done. My only gripe with the suggestion is that I don't think it should be mandatory. Some players run auction after auction, they also build up quite the reputation of being reliable and trustworthy, and they set up their entire residence around auctions. I've seen auction pick up rooms which were huge. Easily capable to host 5+ auctions. I don't think there's a good way in which an auction house could be used with all that. Especially if players have already build their own infrastructures (like one player who has an auction chest directly linked with his storage. A few lever pulls and the stuff gets drained, and he's ready to start yet another auction, redstone ftw!). But as long as players can chose whether to use this or not then I think it could definitely be a good idea.
Yup, that is the first step you should always take if a player has not responded to an auction in an appropriate time. If they still do not respond to the pm, invite a staff member to the conversation, and we can then ask why they haven't responded as well. You can always report the person on the thread as well just to make sure it will be handled in a timely fashion. Now on to your suggestion, I give it +1, although there should still be forum auctions too.(however, coding this would probably be time consuming)-ET
Yes, always try to contact the person first. Be mindful that an hour of refreshing the forum can feel like a days worth of waiting and before losing it, contact staff. Even if your curious about how long to wait before you should do something, contact staff. Conversely, I would like to add that if you are running an auction you need to be available to manage it. If you know your going out of town, don't hold an auction. If you cant get ingame to take care of game business, don't set others up for failure. Someone might be auctioning off their favorite stuff to make a purchase and "you" won the auction because you just had to have it sitting on your moss covered, three handled, family gredinza but wont be able to pay for three more days because you are at a donut eating convention. So now the seller is out of luck with no pay off and the potential purchase that was lined up might slip away. Yes this is a scenario but in an economy server, issues dealing with economy matter. People need to take responsibility for their actions to make it go smooth. Just like bumping only 3 hours apart and the criteria for listing the items is specific and some people are watchdogs for that. That aspect of pick-up and payment is having trouble and it is not getting the attention that perhaps it needs.
If we did have an auction house, my suggestion would be to have it on its own smp like the event. To make it easier to get items there and back to your res, vault access would be free. It could be decorated like a fancy auction house, and have pickup rooms listed in like alphabetical order by auction holder. it could be made so that when you start an auction, a special staff team would be in charge of setting up a drop off chest for you and when the auction is over, making it so that the winner can pick up their items.
As many said, if your bidder hasn't responded in a timely fashion get a staff member involved. A auction house is quite an extraordinary task to add. Where are you going to have it? How are items going to be transferred? What kind of special flags are needed to add access signs? How can you prevent stealing? In my opinion, auction houses aren't needed and adds more complexity than the traditional system. If you do it right, it is a fair, and clean process for both auctioneer and winner. But that doesn't mean you can't create a auction house yourself. As stated in the banking system, you could store items for others without staff involvement. It would be a cool build but for EMC sake there shouldn't be a OFFICIAL Auction house.
My idea was to have a special staff team in charge of taking care of an official EMC auction house. They would put access signs on chests when someone starts an auction for them to put their items in and then put another sign on it for the winner to pick up the items
hmm... why not make it so whenever an auction is completed info is sended to EMC staff which know where is the player that won and they shall know where the auctionist is located, if in the next 10days nothing happens then the winner and the auctionist get asked by the staff what is the problem with the auction. they will make sure the money is paid and the auction is given.
