PSO2 711 card [Archive] - PSO-World.com

gaijin_punch

Mar 23, 2014, 11:24 PM

Careful, there's a bunch of japanese tax laws and crazy stuff to consider. Your friend can get into a lot of trouble.

Please, let me know what these are. After living here for an accumulative 15 years, selling games privately for most of the time, and doing something similar whilst visiting in the years I didn't have legal residence here, I've never encountered such laws.

The US tax laws are far more strict.

Also personal items are legal, but for buying and selling stock, japan requires a "small items business license" that costs $3,000 to get, and japan's tax bureau requires massive amounts of documentation for every little item.

What is a small items business license? Japan Who decides if something is a personal item or not? How does a non-resident get any type of license? Long story short: If you make income off of it, you owe taxes on it. This is no different in most cuntries, and has nothing to do whether you're an individual or a business.

Sorry, but your friend on vacation is safe as a kitten. Otaku have been coming here and selling things in droves since the 90's... both as individuals and businesses. Even a few thousand bucks is small peanuts. The allowance for residence to bring in items from abroad is 200,000 yen. If you shipped a 100 units at once to someone? A red flag might be raised, but likely not.

I have a small business that's actually licensed though, but that's for tax reasons, not regulation. My local 7-11 doesn't carry these cards, that I've seen. Might try another one though, as I figured somebody might want one.

Zipzo

Mar 24, 2014, 03:17 AM

Zipzo/Sharga: If you guys can buy in bulk, we could possibly re-open the Arks-Layer shop. Interested?

Since starting the service on 3/9/2014 and running it for 3 days, we made:

$135 (9 x 1000WM at $15 each)
$621 (23 x 2000WM at $27 each)
$280 (7 x 3000WM at $40 each)
$504 (8 x 5000WM at $63 each)

For a total of $1,540 and 116,000 Webmoney. (Most of the money was eaten back as cost and such.) I think it goes without saying that there is a LOT of interest in this service.

Think you meant GaijinPunch as "Shargan" was simply the OP asking for a source to obtain them.

I'm interested in helping run the shop, I would just need a little bit more information on how the share is distributed for those involved. Sent you a PM.

The Knowing

Mar 24, 2014, 06:33 AM

am i seeing a possibility of cheaper/uncomplicated AC purchases? aw yiss.

Daiyousei

Mar 24, 2014, 06:38 AM

the price differences between sellers, especially in the larger amounts, are negligible so just go with what works for you.

Kion

Mar 24, 2014, 07:11 AM

I looked into it, all i can recommend is try to keep japan out of it if you can.

Ebay: takes 10% of the final selling price of the item. You can bring that number down, but you have to set up a store.

Paypal: A japanese paypal account can only receive money if it's set up as a business account. Getting set up as a business is a process that can take 2-4 weeks.

Bank transfers: The hardest part is getting you money back to Japan to reinvest in buying the next batch. If you put it into a non-japan paypal account or someone outside japan to get the money and send it back.

Annoying Laws: It depends on where the transaction takes place. In Japan you can buy and sell used goods online with out any problems. If you're doing it on an interpersonal level you won't run into any problems. If you do it on any large scale continuously, you're going to need to get a 小物許可書 (permission to sell small items) which can cost up to $3000 to apply for, and pay taxes (adding insult to injury with ebay and the money transfer costs).

Sega's Tos:
お客様は、購入されたACを、第三者に譲渡、貸与、質入、担保提供をすることができません。また、弊社は、それらの行為の実施、申し出、勧誘を禁止します。
There are actually a few loop holes in this.
1) It's Sega's terms of Service, so it's not like it's illegal. Only if Sega tells you to stop which they're probably not going to.
2) Most of the rules in Sega's ToS apply to in-game scenarios. It could be argued that the context of the term above only applies to in game in which Sega is trying to stop bots or fraud occurring from inside their game.
3) The base factor for determining if Sega actually cares is if it affect their intended market or not, which it generally doesn't.

So the problem with selling AC is really mostly selling it to any capacity to make it worth it and somehow get the money back to Japan. If you can do something where you have the sales sent to a paypal account, and then you're able to use the balance or easy transfer the balance to a credit card which you can then use the balance to buy more at 7/11, then all you did in Japan was buy the card which is perfectly legal. You can ignore the bank transfers, taxes, and applying for the license to sell stuff. And SoJ doesn't even know there's an english patch, so they're not going to care.

If you're interested, I'd recommend starting small. Buy like 5 or so, see how it sells, figure out how to get the money back and then use that as a baseline to figure out if it's worth it or not.

Zipzo

Mar 24, 2014, 07:31 AM

I looked into it, all i can recommend is try to keep japan out of it if you can.

Paypal: A japanese paypal account can only receive money if it's set up as a business account. Getting set up as a business is a process that can take 2-4 weeks.

Bank transfers: The hardest part is getting you money back to Japan to reinvest in buying the next batch. If you put it into a non-japan paypal account or someone outside japan to get the money and send it back.

The OP was addressing those interested in purchasing through his buddy, he wasn't asking about how to sell AC.

Also, this whole "issue" is completely circumvented for me because I not only have a non-Japanese Paypal account, but still retain usage of a bank that is from my other country of residence, and that bank allows international withdrawals (for a regular, normal, every day withdrawal fee that you'd pay for any local bank here in Japan), thus I can just inject the money directly in to my bank account and withdraw it normally.

Sega's Tos:
お客様は、購入されたACを、第三者に譲渡、貸与、質入、担保提供をすることができません。また、弊社は、それらの行為の実施、申し出、勧誘を禁止します。
There are actually a few loop holes in this.
1) It's Sega's terms of Service, so it's not like it's illegal. Only if Sega tells you to stop which they're probably not going to.
2) Most of the rules in Sega's ToS apply to in-game scenarios. It could be argued that the context of the term above only applies to in game in which Sega is trying to stop bots or fraud occurring from inside their game.
3) The base factor for determining if Sega actually cares is if it affect their intended market or not, which it generally doesn't.

Well, SEGA still makes money off of that AC, it's not free AC being created out of thin air, so of course they probably don't care all too much.

So the problem with selling AC is really mostly selling it to any capacity to make it worth it and somehow get the money back to Japan. If you can do something where you have the sales sent to a paypal account, and then you're able to use the balance or easy transfer the balance to a credit card which you can then use the balance to buy more at 7/11, then all you did in Japan was buy the card which is perfectly legal. You can ignore the bank transfers, taxes, and applying for the license to sell stuff. And SoJ doesn't even know there's an english patch, so they're not going to care.

If you're interested, I'd recommend starting small. Buy like 5 or so, see how it sells, figure out how to get the money back and then use that as a baseline to figure out if it's worth it or not.

I'm pretty sure they know that there's an English patch, lol.

In any case, I take it you know exactly how to run an operation like this properly because you set up a shop on your very website. Me, you, and AIDA should chat about that soon on Skype.

final_attack

Mar 24, 2014, 10:34 AM

-Watching how it'll turn out-
Hoping to be able to buy one ^^

gaijin_punch

Mar 24, 2014, 12:53 PM

Paypal: A japanese paypal account can only receive money if it's set up as a business account. Getting set up as a business is a process that can take 2-4 weeks.

This one is a little weird. I admit, I've done no research. However,

1) I have a Business & a Personal JP Paypal account
2) Some Euro folks can't send me money to my business account.
3) Absolutely no problem w/ my personal account.

But yeah, it's Paypal, so what the hell, right?

Getting money back to Japan

This is where the huge cost of buying from J-buyers comes from, and there's really no way around it. Shinsei is about the only bank in the country that gives a very competitive rate (as low as .25 yen per $1 USD if you have enough money in your account). Most people can't transfer internationally for less than $30, and it's probably more.

Paypal will run about 4% of the total transaction.

This isn't really news though, so I'm a little surprised to see so much information posted about it. Any auction proxy generally gives an exchange rate of TTS - 4 yen. Mine does, going on 7 years. Cost of doing business, unfortunately.

Out of curiosity, how do most people get AC right now and what does it cost? At my ripe old age, my tenure is finally going to come to a close later this year. Not sure if I'll be playing PSO2 or not, but I might be.

UnLucky

Mar 25, 2014, 12:53 AM

the price differences between sellers, especially in the larger amounts, are negligible so just go with what works for you.

Pretty much this. It's no different from Play-Asia or CN-USA, though SuTo Corp is still the cheapest option.

It'd be something else if Arks-Layer was the cheapest AND easiest, as well as all the mushy Good Feelings™ that may or may not be involved, but ah well.

Still skeptical over the whole tiered markup thing. Is it really any more work or effort to buy a 10k card than a 2k card when you already have the customer's money in your hand? Why should one be a 35% premium when the other is 'only' 20% extra besides greed?

Almost as if you looked at the most expensive alternative and knocked off a dollar from their pricing to at least say you're not the worst place to go for AC.

Sharga

Mar 25, 2014, 02:27 AM

Zipzo

Mar 25, 2014, 02:31 AM

I am sorry , but i do not have the money to buy bulk.
As for the interest ,i thought that having a simpler way than to create a webmoney account then buy a webmoney card to finally buy AC was really good.If i missed something
and there was another way to do it sorry but i did not understand it.

You don't need to make a webmoney account to do anything. In your PSO2 account page you just need the numbers from the card to fill in the line and you get AC.

It's getting the numbers on these cards that is the issue for most foreign players.

gaijin_punch

Mar 25, 2014, 08:58 PM

Still skeptical over the whole tiered markup thing. Is it really any more work or effort to buy a 10k card than a 2k card when you already have the customer's money in your hand?

The fees are tiered. And also, actually doing the work is the shit part, so giving a break to the customer for spending more is always preferable.

Zipzo

Mar 25, 2014, 09:25 PM

Pretty much this. It's no different from Play-Asia or CN-USA, though SuTo Corp is still the cheapest option.

It'd be something else if Arks-Layer was the cheapest AND easiest, as well as all the mushy Good Feelings™ that may or may not be involved, but ah well.

What you find to be easy, others find to be intimidating or bothersome. I find snapping my fingers easy but my wife can't do it for beans. Different people have different levels of enthusiasm for dealing with certain measures, and while currently our prices may not be omg it's a steal in comparison to the competition, for now we're aiming to be the most accessible for folks who'd rather deal with people they can trust and know are catering to them as PSO2 english community players. That really does count for something where I think you are discounting it.

Still skeptical over the whole tiered markup thing. Is it really any more work or effort to buy a 10k card than a 2k card when you already have the customer's money in your hand? Why should one be a 35% premium when the other is 'only' 20% extra besides greed?

What do you mean? It's an a-typical tiered pricing system. This is common in sales anywhere.

Buying a 2k card is cheaper than buying two 1k cards.
Buying a 5k card is cheaper than buying a 2k, and a 3k card.
Buying a 20k card is cheaper than buying two 10k cards.

The idea is to create incentive to buy higher increments. The cards themselves are still individual items, and while it's no less or more effort to purchase a 2k card, or a 10k card, each one still possesses it's own individual value, which does contribute to its price. These cards aren't priced on effort with which they are bought, they are priced for the value they provide to the user of the card.

For now until we get our systems and provisions to be more consistent, I think that answer can be simplified even further, it's a bigger risk on our part to purchase a higher card, and in terms of stocking it's very much a risk VS reward system. Most are happy getting 1-2k for their needs, but if we stock up on 20,000 cards it's not super likely those will be bought immediately or at all, so the total income over time for the purchase of those cards needs to cover the consistent cost management of other amenities in terms of being a consistent sale, otherwise there's no point in providing such high incremental cards, because we're just spending more money than we gain that we can use when it's needed. We'd rather provide the card at that increment, than not provide it at all.

Almost as if you looked at the most expensive alternative and knocked off a dollar from their pricing to at least say you're not the worst place to go for AC.

While I can give input, the final say on the prices depends on both the current competition and the rest of the Arkz Layer financial team.

This statement might be true (at least for now, you never know for the future), but while we're committed to providing these services for a reasonable price, there are certain costs to consider on the side. AIDA does a lot of the leg work for Arkz Layer, and not a lot of that virtual leg work is free (and also consider the work AIDA does for the patch). Kion works separately on his project with the story patch. There are costs to consider on almost every front when it comes to the convenience of everything Arkz Layer has to offer, and as with any set of duties that renders services, we're attempting to reward the effort we've put in to providing that service as well, just like the purpose of any other job.

Hell, many folks would rather purchase with us simply because they know they'll be supporting further production of services that they use each and every day (English patch, story patch, to name two major ones), or supporting the creation of newer services, provided by players like AIDA and Kion for free, that they know and really trust.

Unfortunately not everything (nothing) in life is free, and ultimately while to you maybe we should be doing this under the graces of good heartedness to the community, there are many things to consider where money becomes important, both to the team as a whole running the website, and to each individual participant in this business. We are doing our best to cater to the community with this shop, but it should be obvious that we're also attempting to help keep the team, as a whole and individually, funded for the work we're providing.

Angelo

Mar 26, 2014, 12:38 AM

I really want that Dudu keychain though. I'd be willing to buy that.

Zipzo

Mar 26, 2014, 01:11 AM

I really want that Dudu keychain though. I'd be willing to buy that.

Maybe Arks Layer should sell merchandise too? Hmmm...

aaron_yume

Mar 26, 2014, 02:43 AM

1000WM at $15 each
2000WM at $27 each
3000WM at $40 each
5000WM at $63 each

I have to say that your 5000WM price is quite expensive and must be including around $10USD profit per purchase. 2000WM price seems about the same as pretty much any reseller mind and not easily reduced.

Zipzo

Mar 26, 2014, 02:59 AM

I have to say that your 5000WM price is quite expensive and must be including around $10USD profit per purchase. 2000WM price seems about the same as pretty much any reseller mind and not easily reduced.

Between Suto, which requires a potentially very irritating process for most users, and CN-usa which charges $70...how is $63 unreasonable?

aaron_yume

Mar 26, 2014, 03:18 AM

UnLucky

Mar 26, 2014, 04:28 AM

Different people have different levels of enthusiasm for dealing with certain measures, and while currently our prices may not be omg it's a steal in comparison to the competition, for now we're aiming to be the most accessible for folks who'd rather deal with people they can trust and know are catering to them as PSO2 english community players. That really does count for something where I think you are discounting it.
That's exactly what I mentioned in my own post. Some people would rather buy from "the patch team" regardless of price because they just don't like anywhere else.

I'm talking about beating everywhere in every way so that nobody (here) has any reason to go anywhere else for AC. I'm sure that would play to Arks-Layer's benefit as well.

Anyone who has already purchased from SuTo doesn't have to go through their registration nonsense again every time, so it's cheaper and easier for them to stay there instead of switching. Some will jump ship for their own reasons, of course, but why not give them another?

What do you mean? It's an a-typical tiered pricing system. This is common in sales anywhere.

Buying a 2k card is cheaper than buying two 1k cards.
Buying a 5k card is cheaper than buying a 2k, and a 3k card.
Buying a 20k card is cheaper than buying two 10k cards.
So because everyone is doing it, you should to? Wasn't that exactly what I was criticizing in the first place?

You're telling me that, right now, if you were to walk into a Japanese shop and buy ten 2k cards, it would cost you more than a single 20k one? As in, it would cost you exactly $35 more to do it that way.

For now until we get our systems and provisions to be more consistent, I think that answer can be simplified even further, it's a bigger risk on our part to purchase a higher card, and in terms of stocking it's very much a risk VS reward system. Most are happy getting 1-2k for their needs, but if we stock up on 20,000 cards it's not super likely those will be bought immediately or at all
I wouldn't expect you to keep a stack of unpopular denominations hoping every day that someone will want one. You would only really need to be well stocked in the lower amounts since those have such high throughput. In which case, those would be the cheapest for you to process because they're all but guaranteed to sell so you have next to zero risk for holding onto them.

Though it wouldn't make any sense for the higher value cards to cost more since there'd be little incentive to get one other than convenience of fewer codes to enter and the small amount of bonus AC.

Which is why I would very much urge you to be a 'pioneer in the field' and put the same modest 20% markup on every card type. So $12 for 1k, $24 for 2k, $60 for 5k, $120 for 10k. And hey, the 20k one would be $5 more this way. Or even not use a percentage based markup at all, like a flat $5 extra on every purchase.

If there are transaction fees on top of that, you can make them transparent while at the same time giving further incentive for larger denominations by having the buyer cover it. I'm sure PayPal has flat fees that end up being more expensive on smaller transactions, so all you have to do is select the option that gives the recipient the exact dollar amount after fees.

gaijin_punch

Mar 26, 2014, 06:02 AM

You're telling me that, right now, if you were to walk into a Japanese shop and buy ten 2k cards, it would cost you more than a single 20k one? As in, it would cost you exactly $35 more to do it that way.

There's a certain amount of work that one wants to be compensated for, which is static at 1 card or 100. This is where tiers come in and how sales work in general (at least in the free world). It seems trivial, but I've been doing shit like this for 15 years. Damn, 16 almost. There's a lot of leg work involved, so the price for a single unit is going to be high... sometimes beyond the items value.

Zipzo

Mar 26, 2014, 06:44 AM

$63 is unreasonable as the mark-up is ridiculous, with very little effort on my part I could still make profit and easily cut $5-7 off that price.
Just because Suto & CN-USA charge it does not mean the community has to be dicks about the profit margins as well.

We could also just do it for free, is that what you're expecting? It's not like we're losing anything, right? What's the difference between doing it for free and doing it for a sub-optimal sum of money per sale? You realize that profit gets split between all those involved and, some of even has to get chunked for server/technical/patch related things, so it's not like we're making some kind of full time job's worth of money on this deal, in the end, we are putting forth the effort to make these things accessible to you.

I'm not saying that you should be forced to appreciate or agree with the prices that are currently in place, in fact, I welcome the criticism and I urge you to voice your concerns if you have them so we can be better for everyone, but let's not bring the fact that we're hoping to make money in to this because it's muddying a situation that is just obvious...yes we're trying to make a little bit of money, but at the same time we're also providing a service that is in demand. You can think of the mark-up as a "service charge" if you wish. Do you also make a big deal out of having to pay those?

You think you can do it it? So do it. If the answer is you can't, then you essentially have your own answer.

Those who can do, generally tend to try and get paid for doing, that way they aren't just doing for nothing. Personally I've been up and down Tokyo getting cards for people since business opened up, so it's a personal point of disagreement that we aren't actually earning that service charge. We aren't creating these cards out of thin air, you know, as your words would suggest. We don't have some webmoney card number generator genie that we click a button every time we get an order and it pops out a code. AIDA as another example has massive organizational work tied to the project, as AIDA is essentially solo managing/technical supporting when it comes to orders. This stuff does take serious attention to detail.

UnLucky

Mar 26, 2014, 06:45 AM

There's a certain amount of work that one wants to be compensated for, which is static at 1 card or 100. This is where tiers come in and how sales work in general (at least in the free world). It seems trivial, but I've been doing shit like this for 15 years. Damn, 16 almost. There's a lot of leg work involved, so the price for a single unit is going to be high... sometimes beyond the items value.
So what you're saying is that there should be the same overhead cost on every card type regardless of value, because it's the same service rendered per transaction.

aaron_yume

Mar 26, 2014, 09:09 AM

You think you can do it it? So do it. If the answer is you can't, then you essentially have your own answer.

The thing is for my close friends and for my team mates I already offer Web Money at cost price.

When I mentioned I could offer at £5-7USD lower than the prices AIDA gave and still make a profit, I did not mean to say I would do so. Just that as UnLucky says the effort involved in getting a 2000,5000 or 10,000 WebMoney card is minimal if you know people or have contacts in Japan, all that is really involved is a usually short walk to your nearest convenience store.

Markup wise there is likely to be 1 to 3 unavoidable small transaction fees in the chain that anyone reasonable would expect to have to pay anyway.

I come from a fansubbing background myself and the Ark-Layers site in my honest opinion should be funded by its creators. Not like it costs much to run in the first place and most of the work that allowed any patches to go ahead in the first place was done by the guys over at psumods anyway.

aaron_yume

Mar 26, 2014, 11:14 AM

I come from a fansubbing background too, and any fansubbing group will have donation page - It costs MONEY to do what we do. Not all of us have fancy jobs with lots of money (I'm even in-between jobs at the moment), so saying "They should just fund it themselves!" is really quite rude.

Actually it is not rude at all. If you do something as a hobby you should expect to foot the bill. I've also spent 100's of hours translating, typesetting, timing etc and never asked for a penny even when I am between jobs/unemployed (I tend to be nomadic). Often I do the work uncredited. This even includes hosting costs which I and many old school subtitlers would never ever dream of asking donations for, not like it is super expensive anyway for the sort of scale we have here.

But this is mainly about profiting from WebMoney and my and several other peoples disgust that by offering the community a price a couple of USD cheaper while also retaining tiered pricing as per other resellers, you think you are doing the community any favours. You are not!

Ratazana

Mar 26, 2014, 05:34 PM

Zipzo

Mar 26, 2014, 06:50 PM

Actually it is not rude at all. If you do something as a hobby you should expect to foot the bill. I've also spent 100's of hours translating, typesetting, timing etc and never asked for a penny even when I am between jobs/unemployed (I tend to be nomadic). Often I do the work uncredited. This even includes hosting costs which I and many old school subtitlers would never ever dream of asking donations for, not like it is super expensive anyway for the sort of scale we have here.

But this is mainly about profiting from WebMoney and my and several other peoples disgust that by offering the community a price a couple of USD cheaper while also retaining tiered pricing as per other resellers, you think you are doing the community any favours. You are not!

Right...you could try telling that to the folks making a massive truckload of orders we've been having to handle since opening up. I'm sure many buyers have been people who have purchased from neither site before in their life, because we made it more approachable for them.

The very fact you believe money seems to be some form of fecal secretion from our butts is a bit absurd. We absolutely can't do this for free. We understand the desire to voice disagreement with prices and even put in suggestions to lower them (what customer doesn't want lower prices for a service they have to do nothing for), but to actually sit there and say that we should be doing it for free?

You're off your head.

I agree.

Oh...of course you do.

gaijin_punch

Mar 27, 2014, 12:43 AM

Just that as UnLucky says the effort involved in getting a 2000,5000 or 10,000 WebMoney card is minimal if you know people or have contacts in Japan, all that is really involved is a usually short walk to your nearest convenience store.

If you keep everything on the up & up you have to document each transaction. I do. I also pay a CPA at the end of the year. That's optional, of course (you can do your own taxes) but you have to keep up w/ the PP transactions, throw in some padding for charge backs, etc. etc. There is far more overhead than just walking to the store.

Do you moan to retailers that charge more for a single unit than a group one?

UnLucky

Mar 27, 2014, 12:55 AM

5000 WM:
Arks-Layer - $63 + PayPal fee ($2.76 if using credit/debit, $0.63 if using your balance/bank withdrawal)
Play-Asia - $62.99
SuTo Corp - ¥6100 = $61.24 using PayPal's rates ($59.68 using XE.com)
CN-USA - $69.99

Hey look, you actually are cheaper than somewhere!

UnLucky

Mar 27, 2014, 01:28 AM

There is a PayPal fee, I checked right now doing the motions to send you $63, and even if I had the money in my online account in USD (otherwise I'd have to wait for several days for that to transfer) PayPal still wants their share.

Unless you want customers to pass that onto you, which I don't see on the webpage. It actually makes absolutely no mention of any of this, so it's not there for me to read in the first place!

It's a bold faced lie to say other places aren't cheaper, other places don't have simple or even no registration, other places don't have customer support, or other places aren't possible to buy from(?).

Of course, it's not all true at any one particular site. But it's not even all true here!

It didn't start out as an attack. All I wanted was for Arks-Layer to be the singlemost best place to buy AC (for international players). Not some half-assed "well at least we're sort of better than most places at some things!"

I realize your pretty face has moved quite a bit of AC the past couple days, but do consider a price drop at some point for all the fence sitters, no?

Ratazana

Mar 27, 2014, 04:51 AM

Hey guys , i have a contact who could sell pso2 points cards on ebay
i would just like to know how many of you would be interested ?

By the way, now much is your friend is charging? Can he match the competition's price?

angrysquid

Mar 27, 2014, 06:35 AM

A little off topic buuuut seems like the service for recharging webmonez via codes has been suspended????
[SPOILER-BOX]http://oi57.tinypic.com/rus86s.jpg[/SPOILER-BOX]

EDIT: Nvm, even though you can't add funds to your account you can stil use the codes for instant purchase . Sorreh

final_attack

Mar 27, 2014, 06:50 AM

Zipzo

Mar 27, 2014, 08:12 AM

The one with Strike-through? I think it reads "Internet Banking".
The codes is above it ("Prepaid-something").

Also, Aida, tell me when you started selling .... I wanna see the final pricing o.o And might buy them o.o

Officially the shop opened up on the 9th for 3 days, but was put on hold due to stocking issues. We officially re-opened the Arks Layer shop 3-4 days ago for purchasing. Flocks of people have already received AC through us, and we've been quite busy with the traffic in terms of both stocking and trying to keep things organized while making as little mistakes as possible. Pricing and a tutorial on how to purchase (takes minutes, maybe less) can be found on the Arks Layer website AC section.

final_attack

Mar 27, 2014, 08:17 AM

Oh, ok. Thank you very much ^^ I'll check it again next time (Sunday, maybe. Haven't met my friend yet :< ) Gonna try to get some WM, since my Premium expires after next maintenance ^^;

Alfonquez

Mar 27, 2014, 08:35 AM

I genuinely don't understand.

We're cheaper than 99% of the places to get it online [GOOD!]
We don't require crazy verification or registration [GOOD!]
We're managed by people who are easy to contact and talk to [GOOD!]
We're allowing people to get AC who couldn't before [GOOD!]
We're making a small profit which allows for better servers/faster patches/etc [GOOD!]

...I'm not seeing why you guys are angry. To me, it just looks like haters gonna hate.

If you're able to make a SEGA ID and install pso2 you're already more than capable of making a webmoney account and buying AC.

The only valid arguement to purchase through "Arks-layer" is to support the "patch-team" or however you call these poor players. A valid reason, that indeed does players who use your tweaker a favour. (I'm setting the premise that the more money you get, the more time you can invest into your tweaker)

Pretending like you're doing anyone else a favour is stretching it though. In fact it's even insulting. Those who lack the brain to do a quick "how to make a webmoney account" search and invest 5min into buying AC deserve the insult though.

Alfonquez

Mar 27, 2014, 09:46 AM

As much as I wish this were true, it simply isn't. The majority of players would not be able to do this. (Keep in mind that PSOW is NOT representative of the majority, but the minority.) .

Yet this "service" is going to be mostly accessible through pso-world, isn't it? Or do you claim to have more people visiting your "Arks Layer" site than pso-world?

Let's go this through step by step. Say you are an uninformed/poor player that wants to play pso2. You google "pso2". 3rd link -> pso world. Arks layer-> 2nd half of the 2nd page. You get the information that you need a sega ID.

You google "pso2 Sega ID" or "Sega ID guide":
pso-world is the first site mentioned.

My point is, if you want to play pso2 you won't get around this board unless you know some japanese. You won't have to necessarily sign up on pso-world ( I signed up just recently too, yet I play pso since DC and I played pso2 during the beta), but the majority of the english community goes through one site: PSO-world.

So no, pso world is not the minority. I hope the community on here doesn't represent the smart fraction of the english pso2 community, because that would indicate that the average pso2 player IQ is below my 780gtx (watercooled) idle temperature.

Edit: I'm totally fine if you sell your shit. I mean, poor players that are too dumb to buy AC deserve to pay a higher price. Players who want to support you, are able to support you now additionally through AC. win/win situation, huh?

aaron_yume

Mar 27, 2014, 10:04 AM

Okay, now I know you're not listening. Ours is the cheapest, bar cn-usa, which is ~1 cent cheaper. It's not nice to call people dumb when you refuse to do smart things yourself.

Cheapest bar CN-USA you say:

http://f.cl.ly/items/2B2I2k30251Q3N2t0c3M/Image%202014-03-27%20at%203.02.15%20PM.png

Is all that ever comes out of your mouth BS?

Charging the same if not more than reliable companies without even having their overheads and all the time spouting nonsense how it is all for the benefit of the community. How is everyone not rolling around on the floor laughing uncontrollably?

Alfonquez

Mar 27, 2014, 10:52 AM

Ignore this unless you are AIDA
[SPOILER-BOX]Just that the first site on the list is your thread on pso-world when you search for "pso2 tweaker"

Google suggestions have a minor role in this anyway. Say you search for "news" and google suggestions suggest you "news crimea". Do you click their suggestion if your primary goal is news and not news about crimea? No, you don't. Especially if you have no clue how a tweaker is supposed to be linked to pso2 ( subsumption to my analogy if you can't keep track).

"pso2 english" has also pso-world further on top than arks-layer.[/SPOILER-BOX]

I see, you guys managed to keep the price low enough to equal CN prices.
Next time I want to use a more dependent system and have 24-48h to spare ill purchase through you guys to support you :)
Otherwise ill keep using the fully working automated system.

gigawuts

Mar 27, 2014, 10:54 AM

Automation is indeed preferable. If you can beat CN's prices by a few bucks (maybe a 35% markup instead of 50%) you may get my attention, but if you're practically matching their prices I and a number of people who aren't speaking up won't bother. CN is already well established and has more to lose if they fuck everything up.

gigawuts

Mar 27, 2014, 12:22 PM

I understand that. I'm just saying that cheaper prices will get a lot of our attention, resulting in a fair amount of additional sales.

Alfonquez

Mar 27, 2014, 01:24 PM

Which I can completely understand - Perhaps it isn't clear, we're not trying to "steal" customers, we're just looking to fill a void for people who don't trust websites with personal information, would rather use paypal only, or want an extremely easy way to get WM.

Stealing customers is perfectly reasonable. In fact, you don't steal them, customers will just chose the better product. So if you manage to do better than CN, it's obviously preferable to use your system.

Zipzo

Mar 27, 2014, 07:17 PM

I understand that. I'm just saying that cheaper prices will get a lot of our attention, resulting in a fair amount of additional sales.

I'm not sure I completely understand though...

In one hand folks like Unlucky say that we are being like "SEGA" and that we're demanding unnecessary prices, and together you would be inferring that a good solution would be to lower prices on the basis of *raising* our profit margin...?

Are we scummy for wanting money or that people have to pay at all?

I'm frightened of becoming huge anyhow, the kind of traffic we have now is scary and I deathly need an assistant or co-manager to take part if were to be making sales at a way higher scale.

gigawuts

Mar 27, 2014, 08:08 PM

Lower prices

More sales

???

profit

(But yes, more sales are a deterrent from this if you want to stay small)

gaijin_punch

Mar 27, 2014, 09:49 PM

Zipzo

Mar 28, 2014, 12:55 AM

Looking at the prices offered and all the steam being blown, it's a bit off-putting. If I used my auction-proxy pricing (which I've used for 7 years) these cards are more expensive by $1 (and in my auction proxy business I never leave my house). Am I the only one that grew up paying 2x for anything that came from Japan?

I think the explosion is over the fact that we're "competing" with other businesses that essentially are seen as attempting to only go for profit by "overpricing" things, despite the fact that the value of the mark up itself is utterly a subjective topic.

UnLucky

Mar 28, 2014, 03:03 AM

I'm not sure I completely understand though...

In one hand folks like UnLucky say that we are being like "SEGA" and that we're demanding unnecessary prices, and together you would be inferring that a good solution would be to lower prices on the basis of *raising* our profit margin...?

Are we scummy for wanting money or that people have to pay at all?

I'm frightened of becoming huge anyhow, the kind of traffic we have now is scary and I deathly need an assistant or co-manager to take part if were to be making sales at a way higher scale.
That remark was based on the whole "don't like it, don't use it" retort that I often see more from Sega fanboys than Sega themselves (though I'm pretty sure Edward did use that exact sentiment).

The complaint here is that there really isn't a suitable replacement. All other competition is just as good or worse. Anyone who took issue with the preexisting methods and were looking at Arks-Layer to be their first and only avenue for AC will be disappointed.

Well, unless their only issue with everywhere else was that they didn't want to give a Chinaman a dime. In that case AIDA could charge $50 for 2k AC and they'd still gladly pay.

The pricing is entirely up to you guys. If you set them exactly the same as what you pay to obtain them, then it's the best possible scenario for consumers, yet the worst possible for Arks-Layer. You may even lose money on every sale if you don't pass all the transaction/conversion fees over to your customers, not to mention the time lost to provide the service in the first place, though that part is nothing new.

Is it a smart business decision? Absolutely not.
Could you do it, though? Absolutely.

But as it is now, simply matching competitor pricing while attempting to maximize profit, is the worst possible price point for consumers.

Is it a smart business decision? Absolutely.
Should you do it, though?

My argument is that you shouldn't. Not only from the perspective of the end consumer, but as a financial advisor of sorts. Obviously, pricing the exact same product higher than the competition is (usually) shooting yourself in the foot. Without some other incentive that clearly trumps the monetary cost, you will see very few sales. Pricing it exactly the same as the competition is the safe bet, so long as you have at least one other aspect that sets you apart from the rest. As a startup company, that would also be suicide because there is no perceivable reason for a consumer to put their trust in a brand new face when established companies not only claim to provide a comparable product/service, but are well known to actually deliver on those promises. It doesn't matter if the new guys are really amazing and end up being way better than anyone else, nobody will know unless they take a risk they have no logical reason to take.

Clearly that isn't the case here, as Arks-Layer is pretty well known. If not in the AC trade, but from other ventures. So that's reassurance that you made a good and practical choice with your pricing strategy. It's not the only good choice, however, and not even the best one purely for maximizing profits.

It's a simple fact that the cheaper your product is, the more desirable it becomes, and the more sales you make. It's especially true for a digital item or one whose quality is assured no matter the price, as it is in this case.

All I have to do as proof is point to Valve and their regular sales. Titles that are reduced down to as low as 25% or even 10% of their original price make more total profit (not just sales, pure dollar amount profit) than those for only 10-25% off. Doing the same to your markup would see such a huge influx of purchases that would more than likely collectively add up to a lot more total cold hard cash. Plus the side effect of happier customers.

tl;dr: I would strongly advise that once initial sales die down, once you get enough to support your web services as well as yourselves, and once you have enough capital to build up a sizable stockpile of AC codes for faster turnaround, to consider lowering your prices as much as possible/reasonable.