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Item Substitution and Look-alike Item Swapping Barrows Set Scams

A variation on swapping valuable items for cheap ones is scamming someone by deceiving them into accepting a trade with a smaller amount of items or gold than they were expecting. For many years this was one of the most common scams in RuneScape, but it is now declining due to improvements in the trade window that make changes easier to catch. Even so, you should always watch out for these sorts of games.

The usual “technique” used by scammers here is to offer the agreed-upon quantity, then quickly reduce the number and hit “Accept”. RuneScape's trade window now makes it easy to notice when item quantities are changed, but you do still have to pay attention.

You may also sometimes see a person who will just offer a lot less money than you were expecting. This is sometimes scamming, but can also just be an honest mistake. For example, suppose you are selling 100 prayer potions for 7k each, and someone trades you. You put up 100 potions, but he only offers 70k. This probably isn't a scam attempt—the buyer probably only wants 10 potions. Another example is if you sell a whip for 1.5 million but the person only puts up 150k; he may have just dropped a “0” in his gold offer, and if you wait for a few seconds, he'll fix his offer.

(Always give people benefit of the doubt in these cases. Don't accuse someone of being a scammer or report them unless you are absolutely sure.)

People most often change quantities of gold, and a common trick is to drop a zero, which victims often don't notice. For example, you might try to sell 10,000 maple logs for 90 each, and the scammer will change the 900k offer to 90k. Of course, item sellers can do the same, especially with noted items—if you are buying 10,000 maple logs, they may change it to 1,000.

One of the trickiest quantity change scams exploits the fact that RuneScape shows gold amounts in thousands using the letter “K”, which looks a bit like the number “4”. Jagex recently changed the way numbers of items are shown, though, which helps to reduce the chances of this working; in particular, numbers with a “K” in them are now shown in white text, and ones with an “M” are shown in green. This, in addition to the “trade modified” warnings, should help you notice if someone tries to pull something on you.

For example, suppose you are selling a dragon woodcutting axe for 3 million gold. Here's what happens (illustrated in the animation in Figure 92):

1. Scammer offers 3,000,000 gold, which shows up in the screen as “3100k”.
   
   
2. You put up the axe.
   
   
3. Before you can hit the “Accept” button, the scammer reduces his gold offer by exactly 2,969,996 coins. He already knows the number and may even have a macro programmed for the scam. His gold offer is now “30004” coins instead of “3000K”. You can see how similar they appear, though the change in color of the numerals and the red warnings on the trade screen should tip you off!
   
   
4. The scammer hits “Accept” and hopes you won't check the second trade screen.
   

   Figure 92: How Quantity Change Scamming Works

   This used to be one of the more common item scams, where a buyer changes the amount of gold offered so the seller doesn’t notice; fortunately, recent changes to the trade interface have made it more difficult for scammers to pull off. In Frame #1, the buyer puts up 3000K of gold (3 million), and in Frame #2, I offer a dragon woodcutting axe that he wants to buy. In Frame #3 he seems to just hit “Accept” on the trade, but actually removed most of the gold; if you look closely, the “3000K” has changed to “30004”, which is now in yellow text instead of white. There is also a flashing exclamation point over the offer (not flashing here, sorry) and the words “Trade modified”. The change is much more obvious on the second trade screen, of course, as shown in Frame #4, and “Trade modified” is there too.

   
   

Preventing these scam, like all other trade window scams, is to check the second trade screen, which shows the amount in both words and numbers. And yes, use the Five Second Rule, and pay attention to those red warnings when they appear!

One final gotcha to beware of: the second window will round down the quantities that it shows in words. So both 1.9 million and 1.2 million will just say “1 million” in words. Always look at the number as well, not just the words!

Item Substitution and Look-alike Item Swapping Barrows Set Scams