Merchanting Clans do more harm than good?

[predator1030]

Well, recently I have gotten burned on a couple investments involving merchanting clans, and have paid for this mistake dearly in a loss of about 3m. I am now staying well away from merchanting clans and trusting my own judgement , but I guess my question is, has anyone actually made any money from merchanting clans? Often these clans will have an amazingly unrealistic view of how high an item will rise, and from what I can see 99% of the time the item never actually reaches its targeted price. For example, one merchanting clan was trying to jack up the price of bolt racks to 340gp each, which was absurd seeing how bolt racks have never gone past 250 in the past 6 months. I decided this item would be a terrible investment, and as I predicted, the investment totally failed. From what I have heard, what these clans are about is one person(usually the original creator of the clan) who had jumped in on the price rise early, who gets other people to jump on the bandwagon, and what the leader does is sell out early, leaving everyone else to bite the dust and get stuck with their somewhat hard to sell item, which is exactly what happened to me. Have any of you had any success with these clans / what are your thoughts on them?

[BiJay]

Yeah, you're right. They just scam you. The real profit is earned by the clan leaders, all other clan members are only there to pay for them. Just stay away from them until Jagex finally realizes these clans are breaking the rules.

[Estoc]

Unfortunately, that's the point of them. They only exist to make the owners money. As the saying goes "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is."

 

Edit:

Yeah, you're right. They just scam you. The real profit is earned by the clan leaders, all other clan members are only there to pay for them. Just stay away from them until Jagex finally realizes these clans are breaking the rules.

 

Fairly sure they realize that they're technically breaking the rules, but telling players to stay away from them and to be smart with your money is easier than taking action against a clear form of scamming. So now we have thousands of impatient children, money in hand, who have a choice to make. They can listen to wise ol' Jagex and don't trust those bad bad clans, or they can effortlessly make money. Decisions decisions...

[Grasle]

Hence the reason why many of the items being merched have little to no demand or use. Rune nails and yanill seeds - really?

 

You're buying their crap.

[Assume Nothing]

I think you've got it totally wrong. "Merchanting" clans, or so they call it, work as a Pyramid scheme.

 

Let's group the types of players into the following categories; "Leaders", "Ranks", "Autotypers", "Victims of the scam", "Smarter ones who don't get scammed"

 

Basically, before a clan item is ever chosen, all the leaders and ranks would stock up, buying a little over mid price. Proof on this is easy to find, simply look at the Gold Amulet strung's graph. Smoking Mils leaders were buying 1 or 2 gp above mid, collecting many of them, it rose a bit before the manipulation. After this, the leaders and ranks would tell the clan the new item, and the 'dumped' is unreasonable and it never will be reached. Assuming we're talking about public manipulation clans.

 

The leaders do nothing for a few days, and encourages the clan of unknowing victims to keep buying the item. Why? Because the GE system is exploitable and when artificial demand keeps max offers completing, the price would rise. Then, after the item has risen significantly, the leaders would dump. They do not tell you this. Basically the scam part is where you continue buying your stock, and suddenly your offers complete instantly, leaving no time to cancel the offers. As soon as other players catch on, it's far too late to dump. The supply has well surpassed demand and it's very likely you'll ride the price wave right down under what it was before the manipulation.

 

The autotypers are only there to encourage more idiots to join their little pyramid schemes, and the smarter people usually dump early, within 3 ge updates of the item after stockpiling a commonly manipulated item (such as barrows, karil's leatherskirt, ahrim's staff, etc)

 

My thoughts on them:

 

Well, manipulation clans are a massive, organised scam but there is pretty much nothing we can do about it. Until the day the GE isn't run by 12 year olds, and Jagex sorts out a better, non exploitable system, we will continue to see manipulation. I see them like as like getting spots as a teenager (weird comparison); it's annoying, but you just can't get rid of them.

 

Anyways, feel free to correct whatever I said, kinda tired so probably will have made errors.

 

Edit - To the guy who said it's technically breaking the rules; Until Jagex amends the rules, or finds a way to carefully word the rule 'Item Scamming', there is always a loophole. Besides, what can Jagex do against private Manipulation clan anyways? There will be not enough evidence to mute/ban them.

[Imxset]

I have to agree with the above post.

There are a lot of tricks involved in which the owners are the ones who profit while everyone else falls victim when the items crash.

The rest of RS economy is hurt as well when people can't get items they need.

 

It's a lot of grief caused by this but not much else to do when a lot of GP is floating around, so they decide to do this.

[Assume Nothing]

I have to agree with the above post.

There are a lot of tricks involved in which the owners are the ones who profit while everyone else falls victim when the items crash.

The rest of RS economy is hurt as well when people can't get items they need.

 

It's a lot of grief caused by this but not much else to do when a lot of GP is floating around, so they decide to do this.

 

It's not directly related to lots of GP's in the economy, but it does play as a factor. Manipulation clans have been around since the release of the GE, but now it's just going too far. Until the day Jagex either fixes the GE, with a newer, more robust system that can not be so easily exploited, OR amends the rules, there is nothing much we could do except for spreading the word on how these clans scam.

[Big_Stingman]

I assume from the point of view of the leaders of said clans think they do more good than harm. But for the rest of the people who follow after them usually end up losing big time.

 

If you want to invest, do the research yourself on the G.E., it's not that hard to look at some graphs..

[The_Gabe]

Merchanting Clans do more harm than good

 

Are you [bleep]ing serious? Did you just now figure that out? Where have you been for the last year? :wall:

[Star_Fox]

Merchanting Clans do more harm than good

 

Are you [bleep]ing serious? Did you just now figure that out? Where have you been for the last year? :wall:

 

this is the only thing i will agree with on this topic.

[Dragonlordjl]

It would help if Jagex simply made "advertising a merchant clan" a mutable offense. This would put an end to many of the autotypers. I know many a player mod who would get major jollies from mass-muting those [bleep]ers. It would also help if Jagex were to remove the RSOF marketplace forums. The majority of threads are created by price manipulators who make several fake threads in unison with each other to fool the masses into thinking a certain item or items are being dumped/bought out. There is no way for Jagex to completely eliminate merchant clans so long as the GE remains as broken as it is, but they can certainly take measures to make merch clans' loathsome process more cumbersome.

[Tim]

Merchanting Clans do more harm than good

 

Are you [bleep]ing serious? Did you just now figure that out? Where have you been for the last year? :wall:

 

this is the only thing i will agree with on this topic.

Agreed.

 

Hell, you have almost maxed combat and 1900+ total. Why the hell are you even bothering with these scams? Make money the old fashioned way, by using all those skills you raised, or you could hack Runescape and give my your skills if you wont use them, but I think the first option is best.

[hawkeye770]

Google "Pyramid Scheme"

[Den]

They do more harm then good and it dumb how Jagex dont do anything about it. <_<

I know they most likely dont have enough evidence, but the autotypers on every world at the grand exchange is what annoys me.

[Riemis]

They do more harm then good and it dumb how Jagex dont do anything about it. <_<

I know they most likely dont have enough evidence, but the autotypers on every world at the grand exchange is what annoys me.

Not even the GE, everywhere on themed worlds such as in the F.O.G. lobby on F.O.G. themed worlds >_>

[Youmu]

They do more harm then good and it dumb how Jagex dont do anything about it. <_<

I know they most likely dont have enough evidence, but the autotypers on every world at the grand exchange is what annoys me.

Not even the GE, everywhere on themed worlds such as in the F.O.G. lobby on F.O.G. themed worlds >_>

The autotypers even go there? Dang! :o

Thank goodness for skill total worlds... (even though I've never been there)

 

On Topic: If merchant clans do more harm than good then don't join them. Simple.

 

Now, to get everyone to stop joining those clans... I just hope this happens soon. =P~

[Satenza]

Fairly sure they realize that they're technically breaking the rules, but telling players to stay away from them and to be smart with your money is easier than taking action against a clear form of scamming. So now we have thousands of impatient children, money in hand, who have a choice to make. They can listen to wise ol' Jagex and don't trust those bad bad clans, or they can effortlessly make money. Decisions decisions...

 

Oh, what rule are they technically breaking?

[Romy]

Fairly sure they realize that they're technically breaking the rules, but telling players to stay away from them and to be smart with your money is easier than taking action against a clear form of scamming. So now we have thousands of impatient children, money in hand, who have a choice to make. They can listen to wise ol' Jagex and don't trust those bad bad clans, or they can effortlessly make money. Decisions decisions...

 

Oh, what rule are they technically breaking?

 

Actualy, technically they're not breaking any rules, technically.

 

 

However, if you don't want to go to technicallities, they're breaking the 'Item Scamming' rule.

[SanNo1]

I've been wondering, why do these clans still exist if almost everyone except for the leaders lose money? In the beginning I thought that most of the people involved were ignorant players trying to make some quick cash, but would fail and give up. But now, a long time after the implementation of the GE the merchanting clans still exist. Surely, if almost everyone loses money, then why do they continue losing miney istead of just counting their losses and get far away from these clans?

 

The answer, i think, is because there are in face a lot of people who are capable of making money in these clans, and the people that lose money are not people getting scammed, but people who deliberately joined and know how it works, but didn't sell at the right time. If you lose money by participating in one of these clans it's because you didn't sell on time, and lost.

 

I wouldn't say it's a scam, but rather a risk-game. The longer you wait, the more money tou can make, but the chance of losing money becomes bigger with every ge update. People who sell on time win, people who don't lose.

 

And another thing to the OT: of course the items don't reach the set price. If they would, the item would crash the moment it hit the target price, therefore people dump a bit sooner, but there are people who want to sell before those people dump, so the dump even sooner etc etc... Therefore, nooone really knows beforehand at what price the item is going to peak.

The reason that the leaders make the most money is because they are the first one to be able to buy an item, and therefore make the most money off of it. It's also most likely that they dump the largest quantity the soonest, because they were in from the beginning.

 

I dont bother with merchanting clans because it's near impossible to acquire a large quantity of rising items as soon as they're bought out, and mostly because I don't want to actively watch the market everyday looking for signs of a dump.

[Kaida23]

Once again I feel compelled to point out the difference between a "merchanting clan" (ie: a group of like-minded individuals helping each other to understand buying/selling on the G.E.) and a "maniuplation/buyout clan" (ie: large quantities of people collaborating together to buy the same item and drive up the price). A clan of merchants is not necessarily a clan of manipulators.

 

That being said, I have to agree. The "clans" who use bots to advertise and then screw their own members over when it comes time to sell are a problem. I don't know if it qualifies as item scamming, but it is definitely a scam. Fortunately, there are plenty of effective ways to solo merch on the G.E. (even in F2P).

[Estoc]

Fairly sure they realize that they're technically breaking the rules, but telling players to stay away from them and to be smart with your money is easier than taking action against a clear form of scamming. So now we have thousands of impatient children, money in hand, who have a choice to make. They can listen to wise ol' Jagex and don't trust those bad bad clans, or they can effortlessly make money. Decisions decisions...

 

Oh, what rule are they technically breaking?

 

Actualy, technically they're not breaking any rules, technically.

 

 

However, if you don't want to go to technicallities, they're breaking the 'Item Scamming' rule.

 

Ok then, a bad choice of words. However Jagex likes to throw around that "spirit of the game" phrase, and I'm pretty sure tricking players into losing money isn't in the spirit of the game. Point is if Jagex wanted to take action against them, they have plenty of reasons too, but they just sit there and warn players not to go near them instead of dealing with it directly.

[Assume Nothing]

"Until the day Jagex changes their rules or makes a less exploitable system, Manipulation will always exist."

[Romy]

"Until the day Jagex changes their rules or makes a less exploitable system, Manipulation will always exist."

Exactly what I was about to say, lol.

[dragon246665]

Part of the reason that I think all people who are ranked in merch clans deserve a perm ban is because they encourage botting as a way to get ranks, so thats why whenever I see blatant autotypers I always report them for macroing.

[SanNo1]

Part of the reason that I think all people who are ranked in merch clans deserve a perm ban is because they encourage botting as a way to get ranks, so thats why whenever I see blatant autotypers I always report them for macroing.

That's true, and is in fact a bannable, or at least a mutable, offence.