Price gouging and illegal recasting discussion

[Lane]

I've split this topic from the Pre-heresy Thousand Sons topic so we don't drag that thread too far off topic

Mangozac


Too bad you can't contact the bidders and let them know about cheaper auctions.

Looks like Irina -_est has at least five of each set available at this time.

One of my pet peeves is people who lie/ cheat/ misrepresent/ create artificial shortages to make a profit. I've had two direct cases where I caught someone being a dick and was able to out dick them.

Back when the last set of Star wars movies were being released the action figures were in high demand. One morning I was at the local Toys-R-Us and saw a guy with a cart full of SW action figures, in fact he had emptied the entire display rack of new figures released that day. I asked him why so many and he said he had a booth at the local flea market selling collectable figures. I asked him if he needed all of them, what if some kid wanted a couple and could not make it, or know about his booth. He said it was tough luck for them, he was buying all the figures in town so he would be the only source. I had seen his booth and knew he tripled the price on common figures, rares were a lot more. I told him I saw another rack on the other side of the store and he rushed off thanking me, leaving the cart behind. I bent the corners on all the cards. When he came back he freaked out and tried to have the manager kick me out of the store because I had ruined the resale value of the figures. Manager said they were in sell-able condition and, after the guy stormed out threatening to call corporate, thanked my because the guy was costing him secondary sales.

About the same time Hasbro released a Humvee for the 12" GI Joes. Retail was $100 but in most areas they sold out quickly so ebay prices were $200-$250. I went to the local tore looking for one, in fact they had 6-8 of them and miss priced at $35. As I reached for one another customer body checked me into the shelves. I asked him why he did that and he said he was buying all of them but was waiting for his friend to get back with a cart. I asked why he needed so many and he said he would sell them on ebay and make $200 on each. I told him they would probably charge him the correct price and he said it was clearly marked and they had to sell at the price on the shelf or he would report them to the district manager. I walked away after telling him that insisting on the lower price when he knew what it should be was fraud. I went to the manager and told him about the guy and what he said and did. The manager found the price in the system was right but the stocking info was wrong, printed new tags and sent an employee to change it. At the same time the dick was pitching a fit with the cashier, who had been warned, about the price. The manager went over and checked that the item had been scanned properly, said it was $100. The guy argued that it was marked at $35 so the manager walked back with him and said "it says $100 here", then after more ranting and treats to get the manager fired he said "oh, a customer informed us of the mistake and we fixed the problem before you got to the register". The got back to the register and the dick said he was buying three of the, all he had the money for at the regular price. Manager said no, he had a complaint of the guy attacking another customer and it was on video, and was asking the guy (and his friend) to leave the store and not come back. As the dick was walking away I picked up a Humvee and the cashier sad that will be $35 (plus whatever tax was).

In another case, that I was not involved in, the stock manager at Toys-R-Us was purchasing all the short packed (uncommon and rare) action figures at employee discount and selling the at a collectable store he was a partner in. Somebody reported it and the guy was fired.

[Fleafa]

You are my hero for the day!

[mangozac]

Lane: sticking it to the douches of this world one at a time....

[paulson games]

I wish you'd been around at Adepticon near the forge world booth.

Some ass hat that was like the 3rd customer in line at their booth bought their entire stock of the promo boarding marine figure. Rather than the guys at FW being reasonable and limiting the sale they sold him all 1,000 copies they'd brought with. The guy threw it all on his charge card and walked away with the entire stock, then he had the gall to turn around and be selling them in the bits trading section for twice what he paid, never even leaving the building. He of course was opperating solely on the "need it now!" impulse of con goers. They also go for about $50-$70 on ebay nowdays which makes me sick.

FW allowed people to order them, and also order as many as they wanted but it was a giant dick move as there were lots of people waiting in line for 45 minutes before the FW people were like sorry sold out. Granted you could order them but if people knew that before getting in line it would have save a ton of aggrivation as they could have come back when the line wasn't at peak insanity level. They really should have put a limit on them so there'd be enough to last for at least the first day.

There were multiple people at that booth that'd dropped down 4-10k in purchases, nobody spends like that on personal items all of that was headed for rip-off resellers. Those low life people are just like event ticket scalpers and should be beaten.


And while we're on the topic of ripp offs I was looking at stuff on ebay and some tool is recasting some of my old style swords and charging like 3 times the price. He had them listed for $29 and on top of that 3 of the 6 swords were broken!!! The flash was also just horrible, I'd never send out anything that bad. Pirating happens it sucks, but what really made me mad was the shitty quality he was trying to pass off as my work.



I know 100% that these aren't mine because the sprue arrangement is differant than how I make mine.

I reported that prick and will be doing the same if I see him list any more auctions, if he'd been more local and not in another state I would have put in a crazy high bid and not paid just to get his address and gone to his house to give him a foot up the ass.

[Lane]

[mangozac]

[Lane]

[mangozac]

Ahh yeah I forgot about the tiny RFID tags. For some reason I was thinking of larger barcode label size tags - the "grain of rice ones" could certainly be hidden anywhere.

It does make more sense when you describe it further, but like you say policing is still difficult.

[blind pig]

[mangozac]

That's exactly right: what do you do when you find a completed, painted up mini that doesn't scan? Sure, maybe hard core collectors might care but unless the copy that the end customer got was cast really atrociously is he likely to worry about whether it's legit or not?

Also, as robust as those RFID tags are, like any electronic product there is a chance that it could fail...

[paulson games]

I think the chips are an interesting concept and are absolutely amazing in terms of using them to track an entire warehouse of stuff.

I do however fear what could happen if the technology to track miniatures to fell into the wrong hands... if all your minis were catalogged and the Mrs were to steal your scanner she'd know for sure when you'd bought new minis and bust all your white lies with the wave of a sensor wand.

There'd be no hiding new models in your modelling stash and telling her "no seriously, that one I've had around for ever.. yeah that's it". Not that they ever believe it for one second, but with chips they'd have proof and that's a dangerous thing.

Big Brother would be watching your miniatures case.

Unfortunately unless you have a really big wallet or can do techy stuff stuff like holograms or chips it's virtually impossible to stop pirating. I watched a pretty interesting MSNBC program on Nike and New Balance and how they blow tons of money fighting counterfeit items pouring out of China. They spends boatloads of money every year and it doesn't really seem to do much in the long run. You get one guy and five more pop up.

I think that having stuff for reasonable prices might help, if there's not a large profit window to be made then they'll move onto more profitable stuff. People doing knockoffs don't want to put time into their fakes they just want a fast turn over. If they are putting in time and not seeing a large payoff then they won't keep doing it for long and they'll move on to something else with a higher mark up.

I used to deal with a lot of Magic CCG cards and because some of them are worth hundreds of dollars there's lot of fakes in that market, some really good ones too. I also dealt with Legend of the Five Rings cards which are only valued at a fraction of what Magic cards go for (maybe $20-$30 tops) and as a result there's very few if any knock off cards for that game as it's not worth the effort for the counterfeiter.

I recently found a guy on ebay selling recasts of GW Tyrant boneswords and whips, I reported him both to ebay and to GW. It took a few days but the auctions got taken down. I certainly don't have any fond feelings towards GW that'd make me want to defend them, but counterfeiting is just shitty.

[Lane]

I think the advantage of tagging the casts was more for identification and tracking of the problem. If you have no way of proving it is a recast it's a lot harder to enforce.

In the case I mentioned the mentioned the sculptor had plenty of opportunities to see kits before they were sold. He could identify what retailers were receiving recasts and ask where they came from. There is also the chance that a retailer was knowingly purchasing recasts in which case they would probably not cooperate but customers buying them might. I doubt he had any plans to confiscate or destroy the recasts since the retailers or customers had already paid for them. OTOH just identifying the scale of the problem and showing how the originals were better would get most retailers to make an effort to sell only originals.

As a side note the sculptor received an interesting request, a collector in Singapore wanted to buy one of each of his kits (including out of production kits). He refused the sale.

I ca see Forgeworld using a tracking method like this on larger kits. They could send a rep to major conventions to scan kits and ask people where they got any suspected recasts. If they could show that an ebay seller had a history of selling recasts they could probably get that person/ account blocked. They may even be able to take effective legal action.

[blind pig]

[mangozac]

[Lane]

However if a retailer had a large portion of their stock that should be tagged did not have functioning RFID tags then you would be justified in taking further action.

You could request information about where they got the kits.
You could request then not sell any without functioning tags.
You could trade for an identical kit or purchase one of the suspect kits. That could then be destroyed to check for the RFID chip.

If it was at a convention there is a good chance the staff would tell the retailer not to sell the suspect kits or else be kicked out.