Refunds For Shops

Discussion in 'Community Discussion' started by azoundria, Feb 28, 2012.

  1. A lot of the time, many players will misclick a shop sign. For example, they misread the item or quantity, or they just bump the mouse when they didn't mean to.

    This is good for both the customer, who can get their rupees back if the shop owner is offline or mysteriously disconnects when they ask for a refund, or decides they don't want to give refunds at all. It's also good for the shop owner, who doesn't have to drop whatever they're doing, go with the player into a private room, and then make a reverse chest or do a drop trade. Refunds by drop have the potential that one party may not live up to their side of the bargain. Refunds by chests mean the player could potentially sell a larger quantity of the item back to the shop. (eg hey refund me this sugar cane, when you have a huge stock and you really want to sell it to the shop)

    Another problem which happens are various scams that players will perform to deceive players into clicking a sign. I was in one shop where the owner pretended to sell me cheap iron, and once I was buying, they flipped a switch, a piston pulled the iron sign back, to expose dirt for sale for 10,000 rupees. Luckily, they tried to sell 10,000 dirt for one rupee, but otherwise I would have been out 10,000 rupees with no recourse except pestering our busy moderation team, and even then, I don't know if I would get my rupees back.

    So my suggestion is adding a simple /refund command, which will refund ONE transaction if you type it within 5-10 MINUTES of the sale. I'm open to the idea of refunding more transactions, but I think it would be frustrating for shop owners if a large number of transactions got refunded when they could easily have sold those items to another customer.
  2. i would imagine it would be a huge strain on the servers having to store the shop info if some one want a refund and it would only work with larger stacks like for 1 diamond it seems pointless refunding 1 item
    Squizzel_Boy likes this.
  3. Why 5-10 minutes of a sale? You should be able to recognize the mistake immediately. I would give it up to 1 minute. Anything after that would be a refund of something you bought purposely and just decided you didn't want anymore. 1 minute is what I'd suggest if something like this were implemented. Also, cheating is bannable, and so the next time something like that happens, slap your finger against the F2 key and let a moderator know with a screenshot. Otherwise, you need to be careful before you buy something. It's always better to buy from a shop thats set up than buy from someone that you're taking their word for. There are a lot of scammers that could get into the Empire undetected. Its our job as players to keep the Empire safe.

    As for the /refund command, It's not a bad idea... but 1 minute would be my suggested length of time.
  4. The only requirement would be to store:
    - The item bought.
    - The price bought for.
    - When it was bought.
    - Location of chest bought from (in integer form).

    This is about 16 bytes worth of data (about the same as the player's username), and would only need to be stored once for each player. All items above are known at the time of the sale to complete the sale, so it's just a matter of storing them in an ArrayList and building the refund command itself.

    You may think that it is useless for one item, but if the player only has 120 rupees and they bought a diamond for 120 rupees (not realizing that the /shop sells them for 100r), then it would be a big deal to that player.

    1 minute would be fine as well, I thought I was being too strict with that thinking. The only reason I allowed 5 minutes was in case they are new and don't know how to refund.

    Also, the point is not that I am doomed because of the scam, and there's no justice. The point is that it's a whole lot easier for me to type /refund, then F2, open a web browser, visit the site, type a report, find the file, upload the file, send it to the moderator, have the moderator open it, have the moderator look at the picture, have the moderator decide what to do, punish the player, give me back my rupees (not guaranteed). Not everyone knows how to do this, and I'm sure there are enough problems moderators have to deal with, without this one.
  5. Would also imagine that if you bought a pick could use it for 10 minutes then refund this could be an issue but if it was bug free then yeh would be a good idea but agreeing theenigmaparado that it should be 1 minute
  6. I agree. 1 minute is fine, as long as new players are told when they make their first purchase.

    Also, I don't think Justin would release bugged code.
  7. Alternatively, shop at a Trade store which has Buy and Sell options.

    If you shop at the right store, the Sell is only marginally less than the buy meaning yes, you're still out of pocket, but you've learned your lesson to be careful.

    I've done it in the past at Leowaste on SMP2 and just sold it right back to him, took the few Rupees hit and been careful not to do it agian.
  8. A trade shop will always be more expensive than purchasing directly from the source store or supplier.

    My shop (/v 4116) has buy and sell on all items. I'd gladly refund the difference, but most people don't bother asking. The problem with thin margins is it's very easy to get yourself doomed if prices fluctuate as they often do. There isn't any room to lower prices later.

    For example, Leo buys nether stalk at 13r (or so my sources tell me), while I SELL it at 14r... Thus, the only way he can undercut me is to give up all his profit. I also make most of the glass, so it's cheaper than his. (Glass is really easy to make once you have a decent setup.)