The need for auditing is never clearer than when there is a mistake and you are the one on the short end of the stick and you are worried about things being a scam. Part two of today's adventure left me with a lot of communications and some missing items en-route.
My little contract fiasco wound up with me invited to their freighter channel. These guys appear to be legitimate freighters. He said that he has been out of the game for eight months. He had grabbed my ships and sent one of his corpmates down from Jita to Teon with them. It meant another few hours so I went out again. When I came back I had a convo that the new contract was up and everything should be settled.
I did another audit and I discovered that I was short three Comets. I didn't notice them the first time around. While a Comet is about 17 million ISK I wasn't going to let three of them just slip away into the void. I felt a bit bad. I should have noticed those Comets the first time around. However, I did notice them the second and the entire incident was not exactly my fault.
To look at the contract system again. Courier contracts do not list their contents on the contract. This is frustrating. Now, in an ideal world no one should make mistakes. However, it happens. I've broken courier contracts from corpmates before because the value was to high for me to move the shipment in one go across high sec. Or, the shipment was to large for a jump freighter. I could always throw the contract back in the face of the writer and tell them to get it right. That's not me. I have this thing where I'm happy to work with people when mistakes are made.
Still, I was getting my Comets before I accepted the contract. I wasn't in the mood to wait for the Comets to ship from Jita. The day goes on and TCS needs more items. They could go in the next shipment. The deal was simple. Contract me the Comets and I will then accept the contract with the collateral and everything else. He agreed and a few button clicks later I was set.
I did have one party offer to cover my cost if I would bite into a scam. Because it turned out not to be a scam I gave them their ISK back. I appreciated the gesture. In a way they were paying for me to write through the adventure.
But, I'd have written about it anyway. Eve is full of little adventures for me. It is not just the huge things such as the CSM that draws me. It is the little things. I've been watching my mining systems local chat. They sell Orca boosts to each other. They've also been updating each other on the Crius changes. That was interesting. Some people had no idea industry was going to change. I watch their war decs and the gankers at work as well. I find them interesting, these daily bits of Eve Online.
And so concludes my story for today.
My little contract fiasco wound up with me invited to their freighter channel. These guys appear to be legitimate freighters. He said that he has been out of the game for eight months. He had grabbed my ships and sent one of his corpmates down from Jita to Teon with them. It meant another few hours so I went out again. When I came back I had a convo that the new contract was up and everything should be settled.
I did another audit and I discovered that I was short three Comets. I didn't notice them the first time around. While a Comet is about 17 million ISK I wasn't going to let three of them just slip away into the void. I felt a bit bad. I should have noticed those Comets the first time around. However, I did notice them the second and the entire incident was not exactly my fault.
To look at the contract system again. Courier contracts do not list their contents on the contract. This is frustrating. Now, in an ideal world no one should make mistakes. However, it happens. I've broken courier contracts from corpmates before because the value was to high for me to move the shipment in one go across high sec. Or, the shipment was to large for a jump freighter. I could always throw the contract back in the face of the writer and tell them to get it right. That's not me. I have this thing where I'm happy to work with people when mistakes are made.
Still, I was getting my Comets before I accepted the contract. I wasn't in the mood to wait for the Comets to ship from Jita. The day goes on and TCS needs more items. They could go in the next shipment. The deal was simple. Contract me the Comets and I will then accept the contract with the collateral and everything else. He agreed and a few button clicks later I was set.
I did have one party offer to cover my cost if I would bite into a scam. Because it turned out not to be a scam I gave them their ISK back. I appreciated the gesture. In a way they were paying for me to write through the adventure.
But, I'd have written about it anyway. Eve is full of little adventures for me. It is not just the huge things such as the CSM that draws me. It is the little things. I've been watching my mining systems local chat. They sell Orca boosts to each other. They've also been updating each other on the Crius changes. That was interesting. Some people had no idea industry was going to change. I watch their war decs and the gankers at work as well. I find them interesting, these daily bits of Eve Online.
And so concludes my story for today.
So far I've only ever done a couple of these with an alt. But the one doing the hauling can look in the package and see the items right? But there is no way for the original contract maker to see what was in a particular contract. That's just dumb. If anything you would want it the other way around so that people could not rip people off who put to low a collateral on their contracts. And the ones using the service could keep track of their items across space.
ReplyDelete"But the one doing the hauling can look in the package and see the items right?" Yes
Delete"But there is no way for the original contract maker to see what was in a particular contract." Apparently the game doesn't tell you. You could record what you are placing in a courier contract outside of the game. Seems CCP could respond with either a, “Yah, tracking your courier contract contents for you would be a nice quality of life feature,” or a, “Are you nuts? We’re not secretaries, file your own records.”
"If anything you would want it the other way around so that people could not rip people off who put to low a collateral on their contracts." Huh? I think couriers have a right to know what they are carrying. Demanding proper collateral from the courier already protects the issuer from thievery. Issuers don’t need double protection.
If I follow the narrative correctly, Sugar’s bumbling couriers may have actually stumbled across a possible scam:
1) Claim a courier contract
2) Peek inside
3) Separately acquire most of the courier contract contents (leave out a valuable juicy or two)
4) Haul both the courier contract and most of the matching contents to the destination
4) Deliver the most of the contents portion of the haul via trade claiming you mistakenly unwrapped the package but here’s your stuff at no charge, please just return the collateral
5) If the mark bites and approves the not quite matching trade contract you then suddenly deliver the original courier contract, get your collateral back and profit twice
6) If the mark doesn’t bite you deliver the courier contract, pocket the delivery fee, haul off the unbought sorta matching contents and return home scot-free
Seems like a lot of work for a scam but if Sugar’s couriers are bumbling enough to screw up in the first place they may well be bumbling enough to try this
Its much easier to just make a nearly empty courier package with the same name, tell the issuer that when you press complete you get an error message, but will station trade the courier container for the reward, so you dont have to wait for the petition to be resolved.
DeleteI think there should be a connection to the contract package and the contract itself. When you'd repackage the package you get the contract pop up and you must fail the contract before the repackage is completed. This stops accidental repackaging and remove most of the scams.
ReplyDeleteAbout me: I always overcollateral with 10-20%. If the contract fails or expires, I win more than I'd win with its completion. So if the courier messes it up, or gets ganked, I just let it lapse, claim the money and tell him to do whatever he wants with the items. Of course it means I also overpay 10-20%, but I pay that premium for safety.