Welcome to Terek’s Turbulent Treasure Tub or T4, the shop stocked by a lowly Re-Re who bottom feeds off of meat scraps from Trolls, oils and fats from Camwhore lipstick chunks, cheddar cheese cracker crumbs from the lips of Hackers and regurgitated digest from the bellies of Permanoobs. We’re so successful, we even have our own Forumwarz notification service called Tubmail. Log in to see images!

The shop is called “turbulent” because the prices are going to be vary depending on my needs. There’s going to be three services I offer; Stock, Orders, and Commissions. “Stock” refers to any items I find that seem worth telling people about. Such items will only be rare, powerful, or in-demand .moar files – they’ll tend to edge toward the cheap and fair side of the cost spectrum so hopefully players who need the items can afford them.

Special stock can be “ordered” or “commissioned”. These items are don’t have to be rare/powerful/in-demand, or even a .moar file since I’ll make good on Delivery goods as well. If you (the reader) have a certain item you’re looking for but are too preoccupied with using your visits for Domination, you can put in an “order”. If I come across the item you ask for I’ll put up an auction with a pre-agreed BUY IT NOW price and a reserve of my choice, allowing the person who put in the order to purchase the item at a heavily discounted price. I will notify the person by Tubmail that I’ve found the item and put it up for bid at a time of convenience.

The only disadvantage to orders is that I’ll only notify the person once per order, so if the item that customer wants was bought by someone else, they’re out of luck. I give them the advantage of advanced notice, there’s no way I can guarantee they’ll have the fastest fingers in the West.

Commissions work slightly differently. The user puts in a commission and I will hunt for the requested item they want. The commission can be placed here, but I’ll Tubmail a receipt form and keep a copy of the original post myself. The commissioned item will have a BUY IT NOW significantly higher than the normal selling price, allowing the person who put in the commission to purchase the item at a time of convenience.

What’s the difference? Cost! Why the fudge should I do anything other than place in orders? It’s almost like slave labour! The reason is one has to earn orders. I have a conversion rate of 3 Commissions = 1 Order, so if the same person has ordered 3 commissions I will allow them to make an order.

This can of course be to a financial advantage, as the item discounted by an order can be worth far more than the items offered for commission. Even if I’m commissioned to grind for 3 items and then ordered to get 1 more of the same item, I’ll make it worth the while of the customer. The exact numbers are really dependent on what item I’m asked to look out for.

I don’t have to accept all commissions, but I do have to accept all orders. The only exception is if the order is something I’m technically incapable of, like I’m too low level or can’t pwn a certain forum. In this case, the order is shelved but considered active contingent upon my achievement of the appropriate level. I won’t accept commissions I can’t fulfill.

As far as commissions go, I keep adequate dogreat timesentation of the transactions to prove that they actually took place. When I’m on an order or a commission, that’s all I’m going to focus on, so I expect the person who commissioned me to make good on the deal. If they fail to do that, not only will they be banned from my service, there will be other consequences as well. Log in to see images!

I don’t really think I’ll be taking commissions immediately unless I happen to already have most of the pieces, but I’m still open to suggestions. I won’t accept the commissions publicly, the Tubmail details will signify I accept the contract. I will ask questions or post items I’m selling for stock here, though.

T4 is now open for business!

I need these files:

Optimized Virtual Machine.prog
Soothing Sounds CD - Children Playing in the Park.tune
goatse.gawk

man-man Posted:

So… if I wanted to be a bit of a male reproductive organ about it, I could commission a bunch of marbles then order the stuff I want? Oh wait, commissions are the ones you aren’t promising to always accept, I suppose that defeats my cunning exploit.

If you wanted to buy the Marbles for a million Flezz apiece, I’d be happy to oblige. Log in to see images!

man-man Posted:

Even so… the system here seems backward – orders seem like the premium service that have to be earned, but you say you’ll just notify if and when you come across the item, whereas commissions you’ll hunt it down. Sounds like commissions are quicker but orders are cheaper… what if I’m an excellent customer and I want something in a rush, but for cheap?

When you make a commission, what you’re effectively buying is my time and my forum visits. Those forum visits could have been used to make myself money, so naturally if I can make more dough pwning the forums I want I wouldn’t be taking commissions at all.

When you make an order, what you’re effectively buying is the discount. My time/forum visits are my own again, so the net charge for that service becomes 0.

As far as rush jobs go, that’s what the commissions are for. If you really need something that badly, you’d be willing to pay more money to get it ASAP. It doesn’t make sense to need something stat but not be willing to pay list price when it’s available. That means it wasn’t really all that essential in the first place. If you don’t want to spend a ton of money, or can’t spend a ton of money, and yet need the item quickly, then that’s when you’d pwn the forums yourself.

man-man Posted:

If I was making such a system then I’d have a low-priority “If I happen across it” level of order, where I then notify the person, and put up an auction, then the high-priority “I will go and get you one of these” level of order where they pay more, but get more bumurances.

IMO that system can be a rip for either seller or customer. If we go with my current pricing, there’s no pressure on me to get your file in any reasonable amount of time, and it would be both faster and cheaper to just go to Kyoubai! and bid in a generic auction. If I instead discount the orders, then I won’t make any money at all, and people will only place orders and never make a commission. There’s also no balance of favours that would incline them to be repeat customers. I wouldn’t have to take all orders, but people could still abuse my system.

man-man Posted:

A further problem: expensive moars have low buyout-limits on Kyoubai. With Pink Floyds as the example I know well, the maximum allowed buyout is about 15-20% of normal selling price. In my hypothetical system this could be solved either by letting the market decide the price (but that’s not so good for those high priority orders) or by asking for alternate forms of payment in exchange for setting a low buyout price.

For those orders, I’d simply set the maximum BO and that would be the whole of the discount. As you can imagine, I want to avoid a bunch of people using orders to request nothing but Floyds or make surprise requests for Floyds (say, make 3 commissions of good value but then request a Floyd which actually results in a net loss for me). There might be another rule I’ll add to the order list to curb such abuse. I haven’t thought of one fair to both high and low level characters yet.

For commissions it’s not a problem. I’ll just set a high reserve. If the item was already over-priced and wasn’t bought by the person who requested the commission, they still get commission credit and I earned more money than I was supposed to.

man-man Posted:

Also can we ask for quotes? I want the Incredible Hulk video file but there’s no point you hunting it down if it’s going to be priced beyond what I’m prepared to pay for it.

The quote system is worked into the commission negotiations. Once a price has been agreed upon, I make give you a receipt then go off to work.

I’ve put up one of my IOU’s for the Corset of Quantum Uncertainty for a 72 hour run. The base cost is enormous, so I can safely say the final version is going to be a ridiculously powerful item. I put up a high reserve I won’t immediately disclose, partly because of the high cost of putting it up for auction and partly because I want to see how high this’ll sell for.

T-Minus 9 hours and counting.

It was 2,500,000. I’ve uploaded it again with the same reserve, and also added the IOU for Gore-Lieberman ‘00.

I probably shouldn’t sell this (as I only have one) but I’ve put up Troll Eggs and Spam for auction. The reserve is twice as much for the monocle, as this item is completely clbum unrestricted.

Bump for the 8 hour mark.

4 hours left on the Oversized Monocle. Seriously guys, this is the only IOU of its type available. swine didn’t even get one because of the itembuildr bugs. Given Episode 3’s improved items its going to have killer stats. Re-Re’s like myself can’t use them though. ._.

2.5M for the tattoo and lingerie.