Declined Report: 76561197987062074 - ([TF2] Team Fortress 2 Items)

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Thank you I saw his message too just now. Am at work and wasn't able to do it myself. Thank you for the help. Thought I censored it out before guess not.

wow! what an investigation, should i break things down for y'all?

Well, glad that's sorted out. Enough bullshit, he broke the rules.

Throwing my hat in to let everyone know that I am following this closely as I want to see if traders have a right to arbitrage.

Please commence....

I do like both of you, Apollo and Tien, but i have to stay and cover Tien this time. There are 4 provided screenshots of chat, showing "sharking" attempts.

To deffend Tiensto:

1st link: Nothing special, just shows his interests and asks for B/O.
2nd link: Confirming what he wanted and what he paid, just nothing special.
3rd link: Unboxer asks for proofs that he is legit, so he gives him his SR and shows his admin tag.
4th link: Apollo seems to be standing behind the unboxer (caps text), cannot give proofs, Tien only confirming he can wait and will respond to it.

What you complain about here.
Sharking = overpricing someone's stuff / manipulating the price / underpaying the price extremely.

"The deal" part.
This right here was totally legit in my eyes. He just added someone, asked for his b/o (which seems to be normal, backpack.tf is a well-known site for pricechecking (and this is the first site that shows up if you type "TF2 unusual price" into google) and has a set price of a burning crone's at 160 buds pure. He did have some idea of unusual prices, not many experiences with it, but had some idea (only a few unusual cost over 100). Back to the topic though, Tiensto added him, asked for the price, showed his interests, proved he is legit and paid his buyout.

"The price" part.
Even tho Tiensto did pay the unboxer's buyout, you still said that this is really low and he should have told the unboxer about the actual price. Well, i cannot disagree here, this was kinda dickmove on Tiensto's part, but this is only a break of moral rule, there is no rule of "telling the seller the actual value of the hat" (meaning, if someone QSs a burning TC, you don't have to tell him it's 140). Now let's go back to Crone's. Why is this hat so high? Why? Well, the reason is simple. Do you know the guy named "Gorror"? Maybe not, well, this is one of the most famous collectors in TF2. He bought around of 600 earbuds on paypal, contacted these god-tier hat owners and bought their hats for a price that they cannot reject (why? because he wanted.). This is an example why Burning KE went up by 150 buds in a few days (but scorching is still around 100, doesn't that seem strange? 200 bud difference between burning and scorching when there is almost no difference in number of them in existance?).

"The real price" part.
As i explained above, Gorror is the one who made a few hats go up by extremely lot. But what is the real price of the Crone's? Well, there have been only few sales. One, around of 94 pure, made by RandomBrother (he did keep this hat for very, very long time and he probably still has it). Many people do think Scorching and Burning effect is the same value, some people do prefer burning over scorching, same do think the opposite. However, the values are not that far away from each other. A Scorching one has been sold for 125+- a few weeks ago by the way, so pricing the burning one at 200 because of a few months collecting private offer is not really legit.

"The after trade" part.
As we were told by Apollo, after a few hours, the unboxer has been told by many people that do believe the Crone's is over 160 buds pure and decided to contact Tiensto again, asking him to trade it back. On this part, we would need to have more proofs to judge. I have been told that some of the buds involved in the trade have been sold already, so there was no option of trading back the same exact amount, and again, this is only a break of a moral rule, there is no rule of agreeing on canceling the trade. As steam says: We do ask you twice in trading, first at clicking the "ready" button, the second time at clicking "make trade" button, all trades are final and non-refundable.

"The chat between A & T" part.
Not everything from the chat is public so we can check it and make up our mind, only this one http://i.imgur.com/QBSvpw8.png, Apollo only shows how upset he is about the trade Tiensto did, complaining about breaking the moral rules of trading (telling the value..), but with no exact proofs of breaking the rules (says he will add them later).

Overall.
There are only breaks of moral rules of TF2 trading, none of the TF2OP or Steam rules has been broken though. The price of Burning Crone cannot be confirmed because of low number of recent sales (94 on Random's part = low, 160 on Gorror's part = high, collector).
What you are saying that he did break and is in the rules is "sharking", but again, Sharking = overpricing someone's stuff / manipulating the price / underpaying the price extremely, and he did not do any of this stuff. He just came, asked for his price (which is not extremely low or extremely high) and paid it. I see no problem right there.
This right here is a normal sale, this buyout was kinda low according to the last sale (which was high because he wanted it, no mater how much for), but the past few sales show that it really cannot be over 160 (offers look nice but mean nothing, offer can get retracted at any time. You need sales to have proof, not offers. Btw, i personally have quickbought hats like TC with high effects at 30% of their price and sold for 110% of their price (45 buds), but nobody asked me to tell the seller that his hat can fetch more, it was just a QS, so this was.).

Fun fact:
I have gotten into troubles with an OP admin, i have had all the proofs collected to get me unbanned (i basically did not do anything wrong, the admin just did not do enough checks), but it took me 1 month to get a nice admin to talk to (thanks Zemnez.) and it took 1 more month to zemnez decide to unban me (because an agreement of the banning-admin is needed) and he was ignoring me. What my point is is that some of the TF2 OP staff members are really stubborn. I do understand that you have hard times, there is a lot work to do, but if you realize you did something wrong, ignoring the person and not checking the proofs is only a dickmove, nothing more. You are admins, high-stated people, so you should even know how to admit you did something wrong.

Facts:
None of written TF2OP / Steam rules have been broken.
Breaking moral means nothing.
Rejecting to do trade-back means nothing.
He was probably unable to do the trade-back because the seller has sold one of the items that should be traded back.
Paying low buyout means nothing.
He did have some idea about the price of his hat.
He only wanted to do the trade-back due to many people telling him he did a bad trade, he personally liked it.
Admin should always keep that "proffesional perspective", in the one and the only chat shown (between A&T), you can only see Apollo feeling things for the unboxer, nothing proffesional and no proofs (show them, please, name the rule he broke, please).

If you are that far, you are either drunk, bored, interested or dumb. Thanks tho!

Final verdict for me: Tiensto is innocent, he did not break any written rules.

Did he use deception? No. Just a normal trade. Asked for B/O, traded for it.
Did he use thievery? No.
Did he lie about something? No.
Did he steal? No.

It was his buyout, learn this. I don't know why you scream so much about someone new selling a godtier for low. There have been tons of newbies unboxing god-tier hats and quickselling them for price below the standard, and did somebody scream about it? No.
For example, a newbie unboxed a Burning KE. Worth 300 according to last sale. So what, he sold it for almost half of that, and did somebody care? no. He wanted pure, so he got it.
Aces High TC, price was 42 when i had it, no problems with selling it at that much, a newbie unboxed it, quicksold it at 20. So what, nobody cared about this, nobody banned the buyer because of "sharking attempt".
These cases are all the same. I know, Apollo did a good job letting us know about this, but this is not a scam and nor a shark. Tiensto came, showed his interests, ashed for his price, paid it, answered the question "how do i know you are not a scammer" and legitimately traded for the hat.

To be honest, i see tons of newbies that do not even know how to trade but use this #SharkWeek tag. Seriously.. get some facts done, show them, and make us change our mind about this. Posting your sentence about what scamming is means nothing. I'll say it again, hoping for a simple and inteligent answer: Show me what rule he broke. Show me the proofs, if you do not have any and you are only judging because of him rejecting to do the trade back, then you should quit this debate right here and only discuss it with your friends. Breaking moral rules means nothing. You cannot ban someone because he rejected doing something that is not expected to be accepted.

Also, stop being so toady. Get some facts and talk like you know something. If you do not, keep your thoughts private. Thanks.

Those who defend Tien, paying a fair price for this hat.
Would YOU sell it for 100 buds? Tien used an admin tag to prove he was a trusted trader, and not a scammer... to scam somebody.

If you're going to reply to me, answer my question. If you were selling said hat, would you take the sold price? No? Why not?
Because it's a scam?

I would. Why? Because it is pure.
God tiers take a lot of time to sell for money / pure, quickselling them for understandable price (200 buds etc - you gotta wait many months for that, you need a collector) will get you a fast amount of pure.
Again, he used his admin tag to prove he is not a scammer. And again, how did he scam somebody by paying his buyout?

You guys, you have no idea what trading is. You are just new, you have no idea what trading, nobody of you has ever had more than 2 buds in backpack, you have no idea what it takes to sell / have a god-tier unusual hat. Stop being so toady, learn something about trading first, then complain about what happened here.
If you would have some experiences with god-tiers, you would know that these things can fall at any time. You would know that it takes a LOT of time to sell one hat. You would know that it is risky to have too many buds storen in this game that can crash at any time. This was just a legit quicksale. He unboxed a lot, knew that he does not have much time, took mixed offer from someone trustworthy and that's it.

If you had no experiences at all in this game and you unboxed 150 bud unusual 4000$ unusual, would you stay in the game where it is risky, because you can get phished, scammed, lose everything just in a few seconds without even noticing, or would you rather get lower amount (2800$) but from a trustworthy admin that can secure the trade and you can cash out easily? This is about your personal point of view again, but i would rather take less but secured than a lot with a huge risc of losing everything.

You know nothing about trading, you know nothing about god-tier hats. Stop being toady, learn something and then judge people that have experiences that you'll probably never have.

This wasn't a quicksale, and he didn't unbox a lot. I talk to this guy every day because he's my friend. He got this in about 20 crates I believe it was?
My thought that it wasn't a quicksale - his first offer he got was 70 pure, so he set a buyout to something he thought was Highballing. Instead of telling someone the proper price, Tien took advantage of him not knowing the price.

Don't tell me I don't know about trading. I haven't gotten to the point where I've owned a god tier unusual, but it doesn't mean it won't happen. Irrelevant, but don't be so smug.

I would like to address these "facts", which at most are ill-conceived opinions.

Firstly, i would like to define fact for the less literate readers out there. The oxford dictionary defines fact as "A thing that is indisputably the case." Now, children, what that means is that something is so concrete that is can not be disputed in any way. Now, all of my following statements i will dispute said "facts" disproving them as facts which put them in the opinion category.

"None of written TF2OP / Steam rules have been broken."
I would like to direct you to the steam online conduct page.
http://store.steampowered.com/online_conduct/
Now I would like you to look at the last rule. It is a VERY broad now you can tell me "Out of all 40K+ laws (USA alone) he didn't break a single one!" I mean you can look at the laws and check it out if you want, but I'm just going to throw one right now, fraud. Now you can argue that he did not commit fraud, and that just fine, go ahead and do it, I don't care, but I have successfully disputed this "fact", now onto the next one.

"Breaking moral means nothing."
Now I'm not sure what you actually meant here and I sure hope that you actually didn't mean literally that "breaking moral means nothing" because moral is the thing that made us a society, its the only thing preventing chaos, without it we would still be a bunch of cave men beating each other to death with clubs. And without myself ranting on more about the subject, it is successfully disputed.

"Rejecting to do trade-back means nothing."
"He was probably unable to do the trade-back because the seller has sold one of the items that should be traded back."
I'm going to do these two together because i assume you wrote them in tandem. Now, rejecting a trade back is not necessarily "ban worthy" but it certainly is a horrible thing to do especially if you have the means to do it (as T did). Now on for the second part of this "fact" is that the only reason he wouldn't trade back is because the seller couldn't provide a full set of items to trade back as he had already sold an item. This is false, i have contacted the unboxer and he had informed me that the refund would have been in full, thus disputing this fact.

"Paying low buyout means nothing."
In other situations I would strongly agree with you, but definitely not in this one, the unboxer didn't have a clue of the actual price, thus not actually knowing that this was indeed a low buyout, he actually thought that T was being kind and overpaying for it, he thought it was a high buyout, and again disputed. Are you starting to catch on?

"He did have some idea about the price of his hat."
Where did you get this great gold nugget of information? Did you ask the unboxer himself? Well I did, and he had gotten offers just a short while after he unboxed it ranging from 7-70 buds mixed so he had not a clue of the actual price he just assumed that its value was around 70 buds mixed and he was horribly incorrect. Also, like i said before, his offer of 100 buds mixed, he though he was highballing. Now that this fact is disputed, its time to move on.

"He only wanted to do the trade-back due to many people telling him he did a bad trade, he personally liked it."
Again with the great nugget of information, I asked him and he said that he was glad that he got away with such an extra 30 buds, then he realized that he had lost anywhere from $2,000-$4,000, all because a trusted admin refused to tell him the actual price, well there's goes that kids collage money. And again with the disputed part.

Lastly,
I'm not going to even touch on the last "fact" mostly because that would take a much longer time, involve another interview and some more screenshots, and frankly I'm tired. Feel free to dispute my findings to your hearts content, but remember the point to this passage was ONLY to disprove these "facts" by disapproving them. But it disgusts me how an admin, someone who is suppose to help new traders would straight up take this kids collage money, rob him blind so to speak, then resell it for a $3,500 profit, feeling no remorse, no regret, it deeply sickens me just thinking about it. the least he could of done when the unboxer asked for a refund would of been give him something extra for him to cope so it wouldn't become national news, but he did not, and frankly didn't care, or he would of done something other then roll in his new found wealth, and there I rest my case.

Well, I can relate to the guy getting sharked. When i started unboxing a few years ago I got a scout unusual, a pruple energy flipped trilby and I was so happy with it, after a few hours a bunch of people started trading me, and 1 guy said to me he would pay a "great price for that unusual", at that time i thought that the most expensive item in the game where buds, he showed me in trade a bud, bills hat and a killers kabuto. I was freaking out, i couldn't believe it was worth that much! I knew unusuals where worth a bunch of keys but was unusure of how much, and this guy had a few so I trusted him and accepted the offer. Then a few days later a guy and I became friends and I told him the great deal I did. And then he explained to me that I could have gotten 4+ times that... That guy probably saw i had low hours and just saw a nice chance to make some profit out of me.... So I can say from a presonal experience that knowing that someone you trusted just screwed you up, sucks...

Ofcourse my story is nothing compared to the loss this guy had. Tiensto, you and everyone else know that a freshly unboxed God tier hat with God tier effect can get huge offers, even better ones that the ones in kyrans trade. Sure, 60 buds and 50 in unusuals may sound good for a noob, but it doesn't matter to me how many times you deny it, you know its worth more, you know there's someone willing to give you a huge ammount for it and thats why you bought the hat. But what makes me more sad, is that the rest of the admins tried to cover it up and kicked Apollo for going against you. If you where sure it wasn't a scam, why did you guys try to cover it up banning apollo? why did tiensto close the trade on outpost? why did he INSTANTLY got the hat on outpost? (we all know that when you get a new hat that you really like you keep it atleast a while, not try to sell it right after you get it)

Even your fellow admin Monkey wanted to buy kyrans crones for like 200 buds but retracted. But he had the intenton of buying it, he would have paid 200 buds for the hat but changed his mind after a while. And something that made me laugh, you put in your profile that the reason you left the tf2-T community is cuz of the thing with Cereal? you're not fooling anyone, most likely the server what getting so much crap for this that they had to kick you out to calm things down.

You don't deserve being called a trusted person, Iv made some horrible deals in this game, like paying a 4 buds 1st gen unusual for a 2.8 buds unusual cuz i promised i would give him that hat, or when i paid almost 2 buds PURE for a pro KS RL to a noob that was about to close a deal for like 1 bud in items for it (even tho i had no intention of buying one but i felt bad for him) when the other guy knew that was some easy profit. (I endedn up loosing profit, but I just couldn't let that other trade happen)

THAT is how a trusted person should act, helping people out, not trying to finish the trade before someone notices it too and outbids you (cuz imo alot of people would pay more than what you paid for that hat IF YOU GAVE HIM A CHANCE to put in on the freaking market)

I didn't want to make such a long comment, but I take this thing seriously cuz iv been there, and I feel really sorry for the kid that lost all that money. And I also know that it doesn't really matter if this goes through or not, you'll still own that crones, the other guy still lost a huge chance to get lots of buds/IRL money. But atleast this will make it harder for you to sell the hat.

Y'know what's funny? Monkey defends Tien for paying a fair price, yet offered 200 buds on a Burning Crone's. I feel like something isn't right here. That's why Monkey retracted the offer, is my guess?
Why DID you retract that offer, Monkey? To back up your friend who paid half your offer?

Granted, my calling out of Monkey about retracting the offer may have been irrelevant.
I do again have questions. If Tien were now to sell this hat for 200 buds, wouldn't that seem a bit... not right?
It's not like buying keys for 8 Refined and selling them for 9. If you were in this situation, Tio, how would you feel? You're one of the people I want to ask.
Would you sell this hat for 100 Buds, or would you try to get more? Don't give me that "I'd rather get 100 from a trusted user" crap, because the offers on kyrannnn's have gone well over that, and they are trusted (based on repuation).
Examples? VeRSuS, *Private 250 buds offer*, and even Monkey with 200 (retracted or not it was offered). So telling me that you would take the 100 because it's from a trusted user and guaranteed is a load and a half, and you know it.