[Denied]Ironman Service Refund Ruling

[Vbt]

Ok, so we on PvM Services match worker deposits with the same value as clients bank values. For example, we got a worker that has 4b deposit and then that ironman where he was working on gets yoinked for 4b bank.

What would you do? Go.

You seem like forcing the idea that service providers hire dubious worker on purpose, since you keep repeating yourself with that

I would hope for ironman accounts you would be "X"ing the deposit. If Iron has a 1b bank, your worker should have a 2b deposit at minimum. I would go as far to say the more bank value on the ironman, the higher the X.
This would deter the worker from wiping as they would not be in profit if they scammed(theoretically).

 

[gold4rsps]

How can you lose a pet? Just pay 500k and you can reclaim for 1m anytime.

I would never accept an account from someone who cleaned my bank.

Was a concern of someone so I figured I'd address it. I agree with you though.

 

I would hope for ironman accounts you would be "X"ing the deposit. If Iron has a 1b bank, your worker should have a 2b deposit at minimum. I would go as far to say the more bank value on the ironman, the higher the X.
This would deter the worker from wiping as they would not be in profit if they scammed(theoretically).

Most of service providers don't even use a deposit.

And no1 will steal 1b from an ironman account when they have a 1b deposit. Cause you know there's no such thing as ironman coins, they're the same price.

Also they would lose their job, the value of that job they're doing etc etc.

 

I would hope for ironman accounts you would be "X"ing the deposit. If Iron has a 1b bank, your worker should have a 2b deposit at minimum. I would go as far to say the more bank value on the ironman, the higher the X.
This would deter the worker from wiping as they would not be in profit if they scammed(theoretically).

Just to double down on what Dario has said, ironmen banks are valued higher sure, but they’re worth the same in terms of GP value. There is no benefit for a worker to scam an iron, lose their deposit, their job, and reputation.
There isn’t any extra value off of irons items. If it gets cleaned whomever cleaned it is only receiving face value of the items. So making people deposit more doesn’t change the risk in that scenario.
On top of that, let’s say you have a near maxed iron, with a 2.5b bank. What worker do you think is going to deposit 5b+ for a job at most worth 1b?

 

What worker do you think is going to deposit 5b+ for a job at most worth 1b?

none!

 

I would like to add to the discussion that it's probably impossible to have a set of rules that can be used in every ironman wealth loss report. I believe it should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and here is why:

The issue of having a pre-set multiplier
Some people argue that x4 from the report in question wasn't enough. Others argue that it shouldn't be x4. I won't go into details on what the right multiplier would be for the YH report, but it's generally not a good idea to have a pre-set multiplier.

Items on ironman accounts usually take longer to obtain than on regular accounts. Early game, accumulating wealth takes much longer on ironman accounts. Generally, the more an ironman account advances, the easier it becomes to accumulate wealth. End game specifically is fairly similar to end game on regular accounts. The main difference is the grind for supplies, but besides that a lot of grinds are similar. There are also plenty of end-game ironmen who keep their dupes as trophies or for death's coffer. Grinds like CoX and ToB are quite similar on ironman and on main accounts. These two are one of the best money making methods in game. Adding a x4 multiplier to wealth accumulated with that, makes these more profitable than the minimum wage in most European countries.

Some skills that bring in wealth are also quite similar to regular accounts. 99 Agility will get an account roughly 5000-6000 Marks of Grace, worth roughly 50-60m if you'd exchange them. If you would use a pre-set multiplier of let's say x4, that would instead be 200-240m on an ironman account. That's roughly $90 in GP.

Now imagine the following scenario: I order 99 agility on an ironman account from scratch for $150. A month later the account is nearly 99 agility, so I log in on the account, steal the Marks of Grace (worth $22.50 when sold) and I blame the worker. The Service provider now has to pay me $90, resulting in me spending only $37.50 for 99 agility. Even without the Marks of Grace, this would still be a valuable account.

The issue of using the prices of the service provider in question
There are too many factors to consider to make this a good solution. A few of these factors are:
- A service provider may not offer every service that would be required to re-obtain the items lost. Some don't do PvM, other's don't quest.
- Each service provider has it's unique selling point. You may hire provider A for PvM, provider B for Agility, provider C for NMZ etc etc. If you order agility from provider B and the worker scams you for your bank, it wouldn't make much sense to use their PvM prices to determine how much they owe you.
- You can't obligate a service provider to re-do a service for you. There are lots of arguments for why this would be a bad idea. A service provider could stall the re-make, could not have the time needed to be spent etc.
Now let's say you hire service provider A to get you some skill training. A worker scams, and you lose your DWH. You've paid 200k/kill at provider B, but provider A offers this for 50k/kill. However, they don't want to do the service for you. You're now still out a lot of money due to this hypothetical rule.

The argument of price/risk
This argument implies for most other arguments regarding the price calculation of wealth lost. The higher the value of an account/bank, the higher the risk is to order services.
- Ordering 99 agility from scratch is low risk as the most the account could lose, it membership +whatever is obtained during the service. You'll therefore not need a highly trusted worker/service provider, resulting in the price being lower than average.
- Ordering 99 agility on your 2k total iron with 500m bank has a much higher risk. Because of this, you'll likely be going with a more trusted and therefore more expensive service provider. It's worth it to pay extra for the lower risk. In the event a worker screws up, the service provider is now responsible to repay for the whole bank. Assuming we'll use the prices of the service provider in question or from another service provider, it could end up in the provider having to re-pay much more than the actual cost of the account.

Conclusion
It's incredibly difficult to have a rule that can be used in every situation. These situations are fortunately not very common, but all situations are unique. I think it's better to deal with these on a case-by-case basis. A possible solution could be some general guidelines to calculate how much should be repaid. This could a decreasing multiplier the higher the bank value becomes, or separate multipliers for different categories.

 

[_Hollow_]

I would like to add to the discussion that it's probably impossible to have a set of rules that can be used in every ironman wealth loss report. I believe it should be dealt with on a case-by-case basis, and here is why:

The issue of having a pre-set multiplier
Some people argue that x4 from the report in question wasn't enough. Others argue that it shouldn't be x4. I won't go into details on what the right multiplier would be for the YH report, but it's generally not a good idea to have a pre-set multiplier.

Items on ironman accounts usually take longer to obtain than on regular accounts. Early game, accumulating wealth takes much longer on ironman accounts. Generally, the more an ironman account advances, the easier it becomes to accumulate wealth. End game specifically is fairly similar to end game on regular accounts. The main difference is the grind for supplies, but besides that a lot of grinds are similar. There are also plenty of end-game ironmen who keep their dupes as trophies or for death's coffer. Grinds like CoX and ToB are quite similar on ironman and on main accounts. These two are one of the best money making methods in game. Adding a x4 multiplier to wealth accumulated with that, makes these more profitable than the minimum wage in most European countries.

Some skills that bring in wealth are also quite similar to regular accounts. 99 Agility will get an account roughly 5000-6000 Marks of Grace, worth roughly 50-60m if you'd exchange them. If you would use a pre-set multiplier of let's say x4, that would instead be 200-240m on an ironman account. That's roughly $90 in GP.

Now imagine the following scenario: I order 99 agility on an ironman account from scratch for $150. A month later the account is nearly 99 agility, so I log in on the account, steal the Marks of Grace (worth $22.50 when sold) and I blame the worker. The Service provider now has to pay me $90, resulting in me spending only $37.50 for 99 agility. Even without the Marks of Grace, this would still be a valuable account.

The issue of using the prices of the service provider in question
There are too many factors to consider to make this a good solution. A few of these factors are:
- A service provider may not offer every service that would be required to re-obtain the items lost. Some don't do PvM, other's don't quest.
- Each service provider has it's unique selling point. You may hire provider A for PvM, provider B for Agility, provider C for NMZ etc etc. If you order agility from provider B and the worker scams you for your bank, it wouldn't make much sense to use their PvM prices to determine how much they owe you.
- You can't obligate a service provider to re-do a service for you. There are lots of arguments for why this would be a bad idea. A service provider could stall the re-make, could not have the time needed to be spent etc.
Now let's say you hire service provider A to get you some skill training. A worker scams, and you lose your DWH. You've paid 200k/kill at provider B, but provider A offers this for 50k/kill. However, they don't want to do the service for you. You're now still out a lot of money due to this hypothetical rule.

The argument of price/risk
This argument implies for most other arguments regarding the price calculation of wealth lost. The higher the value of an account/bank, the higher the risk is to order services.
- Ordering 99 agility from scratch is low risk as the most the account could lose, it membership +whatever is obtained during the service. You'll therefore not need a highly trusted worker/service provider, resulting in the price being lower than average.
- Ordering 99 agility on your 2k total iron with 500m bank has a much higher risk. Because of this, you'll likely be going with a more trusted and therefore more expensive service provider. It's worth it to pay extra for the lower risk. In the event a worker screws up, the service provider is now responsible to repay for the whole bank. Assuming we'll use the prices of the service provider in question or from another service provider, it could end up in the provider having to re-pay much more than the actual cost of the account.

Conclusion
It's incredibly difficult to have a rule that can be used in every situation. These situations are fortunately not very common, but all situations are unique. I think it's better to deal with these on a case-by-case basis. A possible solution could be some general guidelines to calculate how much should be repaid. This could a decreasing multiplier the higher the bank value becomes, or separate multipliers for different categories.

If this was a book , it would be a best seller one , god dammit.

 

[gold4rsps]

The issue of using the prices of the service provider in question
There are too many factors to consider to make this a good solution. A few of these factors are:
- A service provider may not offer every service that would be required to re-obtain the items lost. Some don't do PvM, other's don't quest.
- Each service provider has it's unique selling point. You may hire provider A for PvM, provider B for Agility, provider C for NMZ etc etc. If you order agility from provider B and the worker scams you for your bank, it wouldn't make much sense to use their PvM prices to determine how much they owe you.
- You can't obligate a service provider to re-do a service for you. There are lots of arguments for why this would be a bad idea. A service provider could stall the re-make, could not have the time needed to be spent etc.
Now let's say you hire service provider A to get you some skill training. A worker scams, and you lose your DWH. You've paid 200k/kill at provider B, but provider A offers this for 50k/kill. However, they don't want to do the service for you. You're now still out a lot of money due to this hypothetical rule.

The argument of price/risk
This argument implies for most other arguments regarding the price calculation of wealth lost. The higher the value of an account/bank, the higher the risk is to order services.
- Ordering 99 agility from scratch is low risk as the most the account could lose, it membership +whatever is obtained during the service. You'll therefore not need a highly trusted worker/service provider, resulting in the price being lower than average.
- Ordering 99 agility on your 2k total iron with 500m bank has a much higher risk. Because of this, you'll likely be going with a more trusted and therefore more expensive service provider. It's worth it to pay extra for the lower risk. In the event a worker screws up, the service provider is now responsible to repay for the whole bank. Assuming we'll use the prices of the service provider in question or from another service provider, it could end up in the provider having to re-pay much more than the actual cost of the account.

Firstly, thank you for this post - I appreciate the time and effort it took you to write this. After reading this, I have begun to see some loopholes in the suggestion as you stated, particularly the last one where your secondary provider has much cheaper prices. I agree with all of this. Since you said at the start about "case by case", I believe this section would however be irrelevant in the case of the person being a long term customer at the service provider and purchasing a variety of services - skilling, questing and PVM.

Now imagine the following scenario: I order 99 agility on an ironman account from scratch for $150. A month later the account is nearly 99 agility, so I log in on the account, steal the Marks of Grace (worth $22.50 when sold) and I blame the worker. The Service provider now has to pay me $90, resulting in me spending only $37.50 for 99 agility. Even without the Marks of Grace, this would still be a valuable account.

I see a way to avoid this. After placing the order, the provider could get onto work on the account with updates every now and then telling the customer how the account is coming along. However, the customer would not get the final account details until the account is fully finished thus preventing the chance of him cleaning the account and theoretically purchasing it for cheaper, though this would be a service provider TOS and have nothing to do with Sythe's rules and TOS.

Conclusion
It's incredibly difficult to have a rule that can be used in every situation. These situations are fortunately not very common, but all situations are unique. I think it's better to deal with these on a case-by-case basis. A possible solution could be some general guidelines to calculate how much should be repaid. This could a decreasing multiplier the higher the bank value becomes, or separate multipliers for different categories.

I guess I have to say I agree with what you're saying here regarding the fact that each report should be dealt case-by-case, though I would like the suggestion of a quote to be used in the fact that a customer has used the same service provider for a long time for a variety of services.

 

I see a way to avoid this. After placing the order, the provider could get onto work on the account with updates every now and then telling the customer how the account is coming along. However, the customer would not get the final account details until the account is fully finished thus preventing the chance of him cleaning the account and theoretically purchasing it for cheaper, though this would be a service provider TOS and have nothing to do with Sythe's rules and TOS.

I assume you are suggesting to send a password reset link to the worker, so only the worker could know the password?
Or do you mean that the service provider will create the account?

I'm referring to a from scratch build (or close to from scratch) on an account made by the customer.

The reset link is unfortunately not a viable option either as there is a simple loophole to this.

 

[gold4rsps]

I assume you are suggesting to send a password reset link to the worker.

Meant this. What is the loophole?

 

Meant this. What is the loophole?

Ah alright lol.
The loophope is the customer changing the password.

Let's say you're working on my account and I send you the pass reset link. You set the password and you're now the only one with access to the account. I can still ask for updates, check hiscores etc. The moment I want to steal stuff and frame you, I change the password. Once changed, I log in to steal the stuff etc. Now, how will you proof that I was the one who took it? Of course you claim that the password was changed, but how can this be proven?

 

[gold4rsps]

Ah alright lol.
The loophope is the customer changing the password.

Let's say you're working on my account and I send you the pass reset link. You set the password and you're now the only one with access to the account. I can still ask for updates, check hiscores etc. The moment I want to steal stuff and frame you, I change the password. Once changed, I log in to steal the stuff etc. Now, how will you proof that I was the one who took it? Of course you claim that the password was changed, but how can this be proven?

https://i.imgur.com/ilM9bXs.png

This could be a potential option. Although it would require effort to sustain, I believe it would be in the service provider's best interest to do so as they wouldn't get issues of "self-scam" where it's hard to believe who did it.

 

https://i.imgur.com/ilM9bXs.png

This could be a potential option. Although it would require effort to sustain, I believe it would be in the service provider's best interest to do so as they wouldn't get issues of "self-scam" where it's hard to believe who did it.

Oh yeah that's pretty smart. I would go a step further actually and have an unbiased middleman be the one to know the password, but not the authenticatior code.

 

[gold4rsps]

Oh yeah that's pretty smart. I would go a step further actually and have an unbiased middleman be the one to know the password, but not the authenticatior code.

Then again, I’m not sure if any service providers would do this. The argument of “self scam” actually helps them as if a worker did actually scam, they could use this card and actually not pay at all.

 

There's a few "safe" way to prevent this:

Move registered email to trusted person (admin of the server)
Let the owner of the acc setup Authenticator
Send a password reset to the worker

Like this the admin can only acces the account by removing the Authenticator and changing the password, which would be noticed by the worker due to missing Authenticator (osrs Auth shows up even with wrong passwords)

The worker can acces it freely after getting the auth from the customer

The customer can't acces the account in order to "self scam"

It's a inconvenient concept but like this you can make the worker and / or admin of the service completely responsible

 

[gold4rsps]

There's a few "safe" way to prevent this:

Move registered email to trusted person (admin of the server)
Let the owner of the acc setup Authenticator
Send a password reset to the worker

Like this the admin can only acces the account by removing the Authenticator and changing the password, which would be noticed by the worker due to missing Authenticator (osrs Auth shows up even with wrong passwords)

The worker can acces it freely after getting the auth from the customer

The customer can't acces the account in order to "self scam"

It's a inconvenient concept but like this you can make the worker and / or admin of the service completely responsible

Yeah, if this goes forward and revised a bit after some discussion by staff, I’d assume it would have to be a sythe specific rule for a service provider to advertise on Sythe, for the reason I stated above. It would take time to implement but I believe it will save a lot of time in the future regarding situations like these as people won’t be able to point fingers anymore.

 

Regarding repayment and account value:

Personally I'd default to "rebuild to a reasonable point unless agreed upon differently "

Since this mainly concerns endgame irons a few examples what I'd consider "reasonable "

Situation 1: endgame iron with multiple COX, TOB etc.. duplicates

"Reasonable rebuild" : get 1 of each item and pay $ / Gold value for the duplicates
Alternative duplicates could be considered added value to balance out the rest value

Situation 2: a few hard to obtain RNG grinds like dwh are missing

"Reasonable rebuild" : at least the KC needed to be at the drop rate

 

[PvM Services Niki]

There's a few "safe" way to prevent this:

Move registered email to trusted person (admin of the server)
Let the owner of the acc setup Authenticator
Send a password reset to the worker

Like this the admin can only acces the account by removing the Authenticator and changing the password, which would be noticed by the worker due to missing Authenticator (osrs Auth shows up even with wrong passwords)

The worker can acces it freely after getting the auth from the customer

The customer can't acces the account in order to "self scam"

It's a inconvenient concept but like this you can make the worker and / or admin of the service completely responsible

I dont know how many orders you get, but this would be so much administrative work that someone will have to sit there 24/7 just to prevent a 1 in maybe 1000 orders case. If id have to do that id rather just pay the one time it happens and save time/money/work. Sounds harsh, but sadly that is how the world works. You do not even have 100% safety even if you are the only one playing your account. You can always get hacked and lose ur shit.

I think people should accept how it is. Trusted providers have literally 0 interest in any situations like this and are trying their best to prevent it. It is sad, but your life does not depend on a 20 year old point and click game. If your only concern is runescape, you can be happy as you are most likely living in a first world country and dont know how bad it can be.

 

Customer safety can be considered a priority, this wouldn't be needed on all accounts of course, but in extreme value cases, I'd happily do this tbf

 

[PvM Services Niki]

That is true, i'd not apply it for every account. Special cases could use that principe!