What to Charge for Combines?

[Tillinghast]

Oh, I understand negotiation. I just put a premium on manners.

Haggling is work, manners and doing favors are fun.

Tillinghast
Vendor Mule
Captain in the Manners Police
Have Nightstick, Will Travel!

[Silverfish]

You're Going to Hate Me...

Oh, my. You're all going to hate me. See, I'm living on Morden Rasp, and our server is light on tradeskillers, especially grandmasters. I see a lot of people shouting for grandmasters, and so...

I never charge anything for anyone to do combines.

That said, I've never done a combine for free, either, since every time I do it the recipient gives me something when I return the item(s). I find I'm a bit unusual in that it doesn't bother me that someone would give me the parts for a combine and then sell the results in the Bazaar. Given that, unless it's inconvenient or a blatant situation of taking advantage ("can you do 100 combines of MTPs for me?" got ignored) I just do it, given the components.

I agree that the donation model makes for unusual profit models, but I'm playing the game for fun, and I get great satisfaction in building stuff, even if it's just to hand back to someone else. If I'm undercutting other GM potters I'd be concerned, but so many people shout for combines that when I see the same person requesting the same combine for three days running, I figure the profiteers had their chance. Besides, when I find myself in posession of the components for a high end bow or in need of demi-sec champagne, people remember my name and help me out in return.

Silverfish

[Kieroth_whiteleaf]

I do combines for donations if I'm feeling friendly (ie., someone is /ooc'ing and I happen to have the skills they want). Combines for free if it's something outside of my skillup range (and always letting the client know my success odds so there's no hard feelings).

Guild and close friends are free combines no matter what *as long as* it's not something like huge runs of stuff. Huge Run prices for guildies are somewhat dependant on my mood at the time, but are still way cheap.

If someone is saying "I want this made, I have all the components, and I'm paying xxxPP" I usually go for it if the PP is worth my time. "Paying well for x combine" just annoys me and those people don't replies. Don't recall who said it, but someone on this board said once "if you have enough faith in your price to think you're paying well, you should have enough faith to state your price" or something along those lines.

Other than that -

No combines. I try to sell finished products only.

SFG

[Madrel]

For friends: free.
For guildmates: free, unless they've a history of taking advantage of me.
For fellow tradeskillers: free, especially if I can work an exchange ("I'll make your tempers for you if you'll imbue gems for me.")
Absolute strangers: I don't do 'em unless we strike a fair price first, whether it be in terms of plat or gear or something else.

[Kahmon]

For friends and guildies I never charge or take donations, will go out of my way, and sometimes help supply materials. I'll even do stacks of high trivial stuff like Misty Picnics, but not subcombines like Celestial Essence.

For people I don't know I still don't charge, but I do accept donations if successful. I rarely go out of my way to meet people though. The main exceptions being if they have been extremely polite, or perhaps did a lot of running around gathering materials. They also must supply everything thats not returned like hammers, files, etc.

My trader is for making me money, so taking 30 seconds to click combine on a forge when I am not rushing someplace doesn't bother me. That said, I have received lots of very generous donations for various combines.

[YurienStonebow]

for guildies and friends i don't charge. for strangers i'll ask them what they think is fair and then haggle wiht them. i LOVE to haggle. makes the game more fun for a tradeskiller, imho anyways.

however, when i ask a friend or a guildie to make somehting i ALWAYS ask what i owe them. usually they say some buffs or some MHB/QAT/HMP/MTP only because i sell truckloads of them. sometimes they ask me to mak them something.

i personally think the donation is good and bad. thats why i ask the buyer what they think is fair and then work with them. if it is too low i'll try to be reasonable and aks them to come up some even if it means something minor to get the sale

[Zolina]

If you only charge for successful combines, 10% is fair. If you charge for failures too, go with 5%.

[Voltai Ausra]

My Price Guide

-Guildmates: Free minus my costs (See Rosin, gold ingots etc)
-Friends: See above
-Friend of a Friend: Reasonable Donations Required. Fail to do so and the friend that told you about me doesn't get free combines anymore
-People asking for Expert's: The total cost of learning my trade, yes I kept track. Minus how much I've made toward that total divided by the difficulty of the combine IMO!= How much I charge, never less than 2K

[GrimwoodCT]

Cutting augs has become my forte with JCM3, Salvage3, 250 skill and trophy.

I cut augs for free for friends, guildies and allied guilds.
If I don't know you its 1k to attempt the cut and and additonal 1k if I cut thaug successfully.

[Saleani]

Ever see a car commercial offering "Zero precent financing" ?? Wonder how come they are taking a few thousand dollar LOSS by droping the 5% finance rate?

Car companies are doing that finance game because it moves profits from the manufacturing division to the financing division. They are not losing money at all. The manufacturing division writes a check to the financing division for the interest that was forgone. If you read the fine print, you will notice that the low interest rate loans are ALL financed out of the captive financing division of the car manufacturer.

All the blue collar workers (at the car companies) get profit sharing on manufacturing profits. The majority of white collar workers also get profit sharing on the manufacturing profits. Only the folks very high up on the pyramid get profits based on corporate wide profits. It has been that way at GM, Ford and Chrysler for the last 20 years. The same sort of shenanigans were done at Texas Air to strip the profits out of Eastern Airlines and give them to Continental (such as Eastern orders and pays for multi million $ jet engines which are then installed on Continental aircraft: omg! the unions are bankrupting Eastern!).

As for combines, I don't find strangers asking for combines to be the problem, or abuse. It is the guildies who take advantage of me. I don't know about your guild, but I had to pay for half of the aid grimel earring parts from the guild bank. Oooh 30% discount off of 15k parts I helped farm, I feel special.

If I could remove my tradeskills from my characters, I would do it the minute they finish that earring.