Well done! I love it :D

Thank you, Blue Screen of Dea†h, for the explanation. It clears everything up and I know where the line is now. I’ll just have to focus on putting the lists outside of the tf2op from now on. I see this as the most efficient solution that’ll solve this problem completely. Just keep in mind that those lists were beneficial for tf2op as well since we were sending our customers there ;-)

Originally posted by tRYSIS3:

what if the big trade doesnt mention the minions or list them ? each trade would have its own items.
that wouldn't be relisting since each item is only listed once! ,minions can put up a link to the big trade tho!!

This is covered by the question Q2c I asked. You can use this way as long as you don’t relist anything in the trade’s heading nor the description, plus as long as it’s not considered as the same purpose of those trades. (I’d avoid generalizing the trade, try to be specific as much as possible.)

Originally posted by DJCaseyD:

Originally posted by Hipster:

TF2OP need more than 8 items in trade

This. If you're trying to sell a lot of weapons, there is no way to do it within the guildelines other than hope that someone will actually go inside your backpack and look around for what it is they're searching for. If I have 40 random weapons to sell, I still don't understand why 5 trades with those 40 items spread out is a problem.

The 8 slots concept keeps it all nice and clean. It has certain limitations, but I like it. It makes tf2op what it is, I doubt this is ever going to change. Although it’s odd that it’s against the rules to sell items like you were doing (same as in the question Q3), the 8 slots concept naturally forces you to do it like this.

Originally posted by DJCaseyD:

On another note, why is it that people get banned for this and yet there are a huge amount of posts with people having a picture of 1 key, 1 ref and then the inside of their post listing 1.5 keys as the price? Clearly false advertising and a waste of time, and against the rules and yet it happens constantly. There isn't enough time in the day to report all of them.

Using 1 key and 1 ref generally means the type of currency the seller is accepting, it’s very common on trades when you’re selling items with different prices. In rare cases, it’s also used on one item trades if seller intends changing the price in future (typically on long-term trades).

No problem c:

There's actually going on a discussion what is considered as the purpose of trade in those cases. If tf2op staff consider the purpose of those trades selling all your weapons at 1 scrap instead of selling each weapon stated in the heading for 1 scrap, then it is excessive relisting. It doesn't make much sense considering the way tf2op works, but will see. I have asked this particular question here, but I haven't got the reply to this yet.

A few items repeat itself there, hope that was the only reason. But don't worry, you ban isn't permament. You'll be back on tomorrow

All right, thank you for all your replies. This clears it up a little bit, but I still have more questions :3

Q1: Is it okay to post a trade with whole offer (repeatedly), if I clearly state the price before the whole list? (I see this alternative quite often.)

Q2: Is it allowed to make small individual trades with 8 items per trade (previously called minions) that'd be also linking to the one big trade with the whole offer (previously and further called mom)? (This is very essential and very commonly used. You can take as an example the way I’m buying cards – do not close it if it’s wrong! I’ll manage it myself.)

Q2b: If it’s okay, what do I do if I ran out of stock of item that’s in the head of the mom’s trade? Is it all right if I leave the item in heading as available? (That’s how it’s commonly done on those kinds of trades since we’re not able to reopen the availability of those items and reopening such trade would mean losing all bookmarks.)

Q2c: If the Q2 way isn’t okay, is it all right if I do it like this, when the items of interest don’t repeat? For example: Minion advertises item A and B and it also mentions the mom. But the mom has the list of items only for item C and D. Is this all right? (It’s way much less efficient and it’s just confusing, but it should be fine according to rules and this discussion.)

Q3: Am I allowed to make trades like “selling all my items from page 2 for 1.00 ref” and then making 3 trades with all 24 different items from my inventory, but with the same description – price is 1.00 ref each, also selling all items from page 2 at this price. Is it allowed? (Basically what’s considered as the purpose of the trade here. Selling all my items from page 2 or selling each item listed above for 1.00 ref?)

Q4: Am I allowed to link to my whole offer that's listed on a third-party site? (Typically Google Docs or Pastebin, it’s very commonly used and essential, esp. if Q2 isn’t allowed. But it conflicts with the rule #1 - Links to third-party websites, apart from relevant YouTube or image hosting websites.)

Q5: If I see a relist, or the so-called relist, am I supposed to report all the relists or only one of them?

Q6: If I see the so-called relist, am I allowed to post in the trade saying this way is considered as conflicting with the rules? Or is it considered as spam and I should just report them? And what if the trader, that I’m giving the heads up to, reports me for spamming in his marvelous trade?

It is not "suddenly so wrong". It has always been wrong. People just don't report them enough.

I still see it that way. I use this way of listing my whole offer in trades (and then marking up the items in the head of the trade) over 6 months and I had never had problem with it. It’s even very commonly used. If it naturally grows on the market and it’s not restricted while growing, this ways should be allowed. We’re just trying to make our offers more efficient since we’re limited by the way the tf2op works.

@l8ter allig8ter: What's wrong with that? If you're going to sell ir piece by piece, you have to create more than one trade anyway. Otherwise nobody would find you're selling those items, only 8 of them. The description management is only up to you.

So could I get any response from someone in charge? Several of my trades are stopped because of this and I don't know what to do now. I need to be back as soon as possible.

Hello everyone,

let me introduce myself. My name is tohico. You might have seen me around already :>. I trade a lot. Like a lot a lot. I depend on Steam trading since I pay my college bills from this. So believe or not, but I know a little bit about trading... I’ve been operating on tf2op over 1.5 year and I always stick to the rules, so this took me off guard quite bad.

Several of my trades have been close for being a relist. I understand a relist as offering the same item in several trades to make a spam when someone is searching for an item. That right, isn’t it? I’ve never done that. I just put my whole offer in the description, which doesn’t cause the spam that’d hurt the competition. Why? Because people don’t use full-text search, the search itself is based on the items advertised in the trade.

There’re two types of trades that has been closed:

Selling sets:

I’m trying to sell sets. I made trades that show I’m selling whole sets only, not just individual trades. That’s why this requires to have opened more than one trade. And honestly, 80% of those customers aren’t buying only the advertised set, they usually buy more sets at once. That’s why there’s my whole list of sets on stock in each of the trade. I don’t see any other way I could be able to sell my sets. Am I supposed to open 50 trades with each of the set? And then close it again when I run out of stock? Or how am I going to redirect people to the whole list of sets when nobody reads descriptions nowadays?

Le example:
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/14132535
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/13940798

Games offers:

This isn’t that essential, but it hurts me a bit. So what’s apparently wrong with it? Since my list of games isn’t that large, I put whole offer into my description. People often want to see my whole list, so they usually pick other games from there as well. This way of description might be a little bit confusing for customers. That’s why that many people aren’t using it. But I have solved it by the yellow marks that show the games that the trade is based on. Win-win situation by my opinion, customer finds it easily and it doesn’t hurt the competition.

Examples again:
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/14281563
http://www.tf2outpost.com/trade/14281624

So could I get any explanation for that, please? Why it’s suddenly so wrong? It sure doesn't hurt anyone. I'm opened for a discussion. And any tips how it should be done then?!? Especially when this way is essential for certain kind of trades. And there’re nice ways for the games, but it’s on the edge in one part as well. The typical mother trade + minion trades that redirect back to mom = the mom is basically a relist then too. So this would be wrong as well? I’d really love to hear that.

One would guess that you’d be thinking twice before doing questionable actions since tf2op has changed to the subscription way of payments. Regular paying customers need better customer service, it's not an one-time deal anymore.

Thanks for making my life a little bit harder. Hopefully it will make stronger …or it'll take me down

Thanks for your reply, although there's one but:

Originally posted by Blue Screen of Dea†h:

Originally posted by tohico:

Feature tips:

Lowering the auto bump gap. Like from the 1 minute to 20 seconds or so. Bringing the 30 minutes auto bumps would just mean that the trades would be bumping the whole time. So there’d be no start and no end to the list of offers. It’s a trifle, but many people care about this. Or am I the only one? :)

Trades will auto bump every 30 mins, not earlier.

Bumping trades every 30 minutes is already way too good. I meant the gaps between the bumps, the gap is currently 1 minute. If we max out the trade slots, then the whole bump process will take 35 minutes. So the list of offers will have no start nor end. That's why I'm suggesting making the wait time between auto bumps smaller. So all 35 trades would finish bumping in 10 minutes, and then they'd wait 20 minutes for the next batch of bumps (just an example).

I like the conversation for those that had already donated. That’s really nice, I appreciate that! The monthly subscription is fine as long as it’s based on time period and not on number of trades or number of bumps. The price itself sounds reasonable to me, eventho it’s a little bit on the edge.

My questions:

Will you be accepting payments from PayPal accounts that are not verified by a credit card? I use an unverified PayPal since I don’t own a credit card (it’s not that necessary here in Europe), I always top up my balance through my bank account. Most of the stores I buy from rarely require the credit card verification, but I just had to ask to be sure :3

How many trade slots will we get in total then? Does it mean just 25 slots as we have now, 5+25 slots, or 25+25 slots? More trade slots would be quite handy since the explosion of trading cards thingy, plus Dota 2 items and hopefully even CSGO items in future. There’s just too many stuff to trade now and the 25 slots has been pretty limiting in the last months. I’ve already figured out the current way of using 25 trade slots, but it’s only because I started focusing on different trading sites to trade my TF2 items (50-70% of my TF2 to TF2 trades goes through different markets now).

Feature tips:

Reopening closed trades. It’d be really handy for the long-term trades with many bookmarks. Keeping them opened when they aren’t currently up to date isn’t good for anyone. It’s just a spam trade, esp. when the trader keeps it bumping (eventho it’s in the tf2op rules now, many traders don’t toggle the auto bump anyway). And for the trader’s side, it just eats one trade slot.

Lowering the auto bump gap. Like from the 1 minute to 20 seconds or so. Bringing the 30 minutes auto bumps would just mean that the trades would be bumping the whole time. So there’d be no start and no end to the list of offers. It’s a trifle, but many people care about this. Or am I the only one? :)