Trading etiquette

I've been on this forum for a while now, but it seems like trading etiquette has changed, especially with people with few trades.

Recently I offered what someone was asking for on a WTS, and they accepted. Before we could make the trade, someone else swoops in and offers more than the asking price, and more than my offer was accepted for. Before I knew it, the sale was closed!

I totally get if he hadn't accepted my offer and was looking for more, but the offer had been accepted. Am I wrong to feel cheated here? Is this commonplace these days? I don't see it all the time, but it seems to be more prevalent lately.

//end rant//

jrlafrance wrote: 2 hours ago

I've been on this forum for a while now, but it seems like trading etiquette has changed, especially with people with few trades.

Recently I offered what someone was asking for on a WTS, and they accepted. Before we could make the trade, someone else swoops in and offers more than the asking price, and more than my offer was accepted for. Before I knew it, the sale was closed!

I totally get if he hadn't accepted my offer and was looking for more, but the offer had been accepted. Am I wrong to feel cheated here? Is this commonplace these days? I don't see it all the time, but it seems to be more prevalent lately.

//end rant//

It's a good point to bring up. Let me offer a different perspective from my own experience. I put something up for sale, someone makes an offer, I accept it. Then days pass and the buyer cannot find time to actually make the transaction. During this delay, folks offer equal or higher to the accepted offer. That puts me in a bind, I can either wait for an unmeasurable length of time for the accepted offer to transact, or just take the equal (or better to) new offer immediately.

In fact, the way I typically trade is to 'offload' items of no use that in effect 'clutter' my inventory. So I like to transact fast. Maybe there could be some time-bound mechanism on accepted offers that then ultimately expire. But, probably over-engineering a system that for the most part works just fine .

ghostpos wrote: 1 hour ago

jrlafrance wrote: 2 hours ago

I've been on this forum for a while now, but it seems like trading etiquette has changed, especially with people with few trades.

Recently I offered what someone was asking for on a WTS, and they accepted. Before we could make the trade, someone else swoops in and offers more than the asking price, and more than my offer was accepted for. Before I knew it, the sale was closed!

I totally get if he hadn't accepted my offer and was looking for more, but the offer had been accepted. Am I wrong to feel cheated here? Is this commonplace these days? I don't see it all the time, but it seems to be more prevalent lately.

//end rant//

It's a good point to bring up. Let me offer a different perspective from my own experience. I put something up for sale, someone makes an offer, I accept it. Then days pass and the buyer cannot find time to actually make the transaction. During this delay, folks offer equal or higher to the accepted offer. That puts me in a bind, I can either wait for an unmeasurable length of time for the accepted offer to transact, or just take the equal (or better to) new offer immediately.

In fact, the way I typically trade is to 'offload' items of no use that in effect 'clutter' my inventory. So I like to transact fast. Maybe there could be some time-bound mechanism on accepted offers that then ultimately expire. But, probably over-engineering a system that for the most part works just fine .

I've been a victim of this myself. I live in Hawaii (and I work 10 hour days with a 1.5 hour commute each way, so my availability on the daily is extremely limited) so sometimes trading with people in other time zones is been problematic, and I've lost sales this way too. In my example though, the total time from my offer being accepted to the sale to the other person was only 1 day.

To me it kind of depends. If you were offline when the trade was accepted, someone came along with a better offer, and was available to trade immediately. I'm taking the immediate trade every time.

Often trades fall through so it's prudent to complete a trade as soon as possible.

Now if you were in game about to make the trade and the seller decided to trade to someone else that's pretty low.

To me it's first available to trade wins, not first to make an offer.

From an ethical standpoint, if that's what you're asking, personally, in the event of multiple offers, I typically give the first offer 36-48hrs after accepting and replying with "Add request sent". This pretty much allows for time zone/work obligations to settle out. If there is no attempt to reciprocate contact within that time frame, I move to the next highest bidder.

As a buyer, I have to accept that I could be subjected to the "Wild Wild West" mentality lol. That's not how I operate but I have to be ok with that

if the seller has a buy-it-now (BIN) price and u meet it , it should be yours. otherwise... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

jrlafrance wrote: 2 hours ago

Am I wrong to feel cheated here?

Yea probably. I think you're mostly just miffed that you didn't get the better deal you thought you were going to get. When your expectation of the future isn't met, you feel cheated, regardless of whether that expectation was based on solid assumptions.

In other words, don't count your chickens before they hatch...

But...

While what I just wrote seems likely to be the source of your bad feelings about this, there is ethical analysis. The ethical question seems focused on whether the agreement to sell at that price could be considered a promise or contract that you relied upon. In US courts (back when we actually paid attention to such a thing), you'd probably have to prove that you suffered damages as a result of relying upon the promise or contract. What would be analyzed would be exactly how clear the contract was, and how reasonable you were in relying upon it. I'm guessing you had no damages and that the contract was not all that clear. So under US law it's highly unlikely that this would be considered a contract you could rely on.

In purely ethical terms, I'd say that the agreement was not actually "binding". You had reached an agreement for a sale, but the parameters of the agreement were likely not clear enough to be considered unmodifiable or unrevokable. To best understand this point, consider an alternative...


Imagine it had been YOU who changed your mind


I've seen these way more often. Someone offers a price, doesn't actually go through with it, revokes their price, changes their price, etc. And generally speaking people don't call this practice into question. "Hey, you told me

Ist, I don't care that you changed your mind, you have to buy it for that". This is an asymmetrical view of what you were considering a binding contract, and it's completely unwarranted in this situation. I would imagine that this hypothetical makes its point. It's not actually a binding contract.

However, I do think that good practice in a circumstance such as this is to give you an opportunity to modify your bid. Why is this good practice? Because your sale price was accepted, and maybe you had started relying on that (whether that's reasonable or not), and consideration of your circumstance and desire for the item is courteous in this circumstance. I'd have definitely asked you if you wanted to raise your offer to get the item in this case. It's not strictly required (again, consider the problem of ethical symmetry), but it would have certainly made you feel a lot better about not getting the item - because the bid would be back in your hands. Or it would have given you a chance to pay more to get it.

[tl:dr] Bottom line, you're probably butthurt because you thought you were getting a deal. The seller wasn't obliged to give you that deal, but it would have been nice to let you bid higher.

There have been many times that either buyers or sellers just haven't shown up. Separately from whether I need to offload inventory, it's waste of limited (ladder) time.

I think the scenario described is /rude/ but as with most of d2, there are rarely guarantees