Help with online purchase from a popular knife maker that sells out in seconds!!!

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drsmp

drsmp

KKF Supporting Member
Joined
Nov 25, 2016
Messages
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Location
Marietta Ga
Hi all, I have been trying in vain for over a year to purchase a knife from a popular knife maker (Yanick) who lists knives weekly at a set time. I get a knife in the cart but even with auto fill of the purchase info, I never manage to make the purchase. Two hang ups are the scrolly thing for my state and the transfer to PayPal (which is set for auto purchase on my devises) I have an iPad and iPhone. Any ideas ?
If there are any computer whiz’s that would like to help out with a purchase, I’d appreciate the help and would be glad to pay a commission for your time. If so please pm me
Thanks ! Steve
 
If I manage to snag a Yanick tomorrow I’ll let you know if my strategy was successful
 
if they're really selling out in seconds, people are probably automating it. that's what i'd do.
you can't really compete manually.

yanick should have a lottery or something instead. jeez lol
 
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i thought better of encouraging automation, but honestly people are probably doing it already, so whatever.
"botting" is nothing new. sounds like this is completely broken, and these shops should move to a new system of sales (lottery? auction?).

i'd probably automate it myself in selenium.

however, i'm sure there is already existing software to check out in bigcartel (the ecommerce crap that yanick uses). may or may not be free. i'm guessing these knife snipers are using off the shelf solutions.
 
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I just had a correspondence with Yanick and he stated that he would be doing quite a bit of filtering and sorting on this list. He mentioned he would remove those who didn’t follow the rules or policies he has in place or that they would get out at the bottom of the list. I’m not sure exactly what the rules are, but maybe if you have multiple submissions or try to be too specific with the knife request. My impression is that he is just trying to get his work to as many people as possible and wants to control for those hoarding his knives which I think is admirable
 
sansho said:
i thought better of encouraging automation, but honestly people are probably doing it already, so whatever.
"botting" is nothing new. sounds like this is completely broken, and these shops should move to a new system of sales (lottery? auction?).

i'd probably automate it myself in selenium.

however, i'm sure there is already existing software to check out in bigcartel (the ecommerce crap that yanick uses). may or may not be free. i'm guessing these knife snipers are using off the shelf solutions.
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I could easily write something myself but I dont feel comfortable doing so 🤷‍♂️

I have myself been one of the biggest critics of the first come first serve IG style of selling during the pandemic's overhot arbitrage situation and like @Hz_zzzzzz said Id rather just go without than stoop the level of botting up so I can compete for a damn knife.

furthermore I think the people doing it know they arent being totally kosher, as evidenced by the fact that with these knives/other stuff people always claim they are just "lucky" and fast but somehow they're beating the bots with their double digit MS time to complete an order? lmao they must think we're stupid or something.

so at least credit to the OP to doing it out in the open.

btw look at how much better the slot/random draw situation is. everyone has plenty of time to sign up, think about it, get their name on the list, and then it's chosen randomly. infinity times better.
 
tcmx3 said:
Id rather just go without than stoop the level of botting up so I can compete for a damn knife.
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I recently asked someone who snagged a Yanick if he used a bot (and after missing out time after time I was wondering if I had to do the same to compete). His response was that “bots destroy the community” and that he tried for a very long time and was finally successful. He as well as others, convinced me not to drop to that level. There are other knives out there, it’s not worth adding to a growing problem.
 
Bico Doce said:
I recently asked someone who snagged a Yanick if he used a bot (and after missing out time after time I was wondering if I had to do the same to compete). His response was that “bots destroy the community” and that he tried for a very long time and was finally successful. He as well as others, convinced me not to drop to that level. There are other knives out there, it’s not worth adding to a growing problem.
Click to expand...

this isnt to throw shade at your acquaintance specifically, but I find it more or less unbelievable that no one who is getting a knife is using a bot, when we all know that bot usage is happening. it just doesnt check out, but yet, every single person is claiming they didnt use one.

that said, IMO anyway, you have made the right choice. in the end, we can only judge for ourselves what we think is right and take action to match. for me, it means missing out on some cool makers. that said, there are still tons of opportunities for cool stuff.
 
tcmx3 said:
but I find it more or less unbelievable that no one who is getting a knife is using a bot,
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I understand cynicism but for what it is worth I do believe him. I recently bought a Raquin and a Jiro using just the web browsers autofill functionality so I have a little more faith that if I can do it then others can as well (but maybe those makers aren’t as hyped as Yanick, it’s really hard to tell how many people were trying to purchase the same knife). Regardless, I have hope that a person can still build a pretty amazing collection without the PEDs (purchase enhancing developers..?.. ok im not sure if that worked but you get the idea). Granted, you could think I’m full of crap as well and I don’t think I could do much to dissuade you from that, except tell you I’m not smart enough to execute a script/bot for instant checkout 🤷‍♂️
 
Bico Doce said:
I understand cynicism but for what it is worth I do believe him. I recently bought a Raquin and a Jiro using just the web browsers autofill functionality so I have a little more faith that if I can do it then others can as well (but maybe those makers aren’t as hyped as Yanick, it’s really hard to tell how many people were trying to purchase the same knife). Regardless, I have hope that a person can still build a pretty amazing collection without the PEDs (purchase enhancing developers..?.. ok im not sure if that worked but you get the idea). Granted, you could think I’m full of crap as well and I don’t think I could do much to dissuade you from that, except tell you I’m not smart enough to execute a script/bot for instant checkout 🤷‍♂️
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again I wasnt trying to say that person in particular told the truth or not. and dont take the following to suggest I dont believe you either.

Im just musing that Ive yet to see a single person admit to using a bot, but the truth of the matter is a pretty decent number of people actually getting hard to get items right now, whether it's a fancy knife or a 3090, have to be using them.

I guess I just believe that if youre not willing to admit you did something, you probably shouldnt have done it.
 
tcmx3 said:
again I wasnt trying to say that person in particular told the truth or not. and dont take the following to suggest I dont believe you either.

Im just musing that Ive yet to see a single person admit to using a bot, but the truth of the matter is a pretty decent number of people actually getting hard to get items right now, whether it's a fancy knife or a 3090, have to be using them.

I guess I just believe that if youre not willing to admit you did something, you probably shouldnt have done it.
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I get it and no offense was taken. I will admit I was seriously tempted once I learned that it is pretty easy to purchase an off the shelf product or copy something off of YouTube. Once I realized I could, I had to pause and consider whether I should. I’m grateful for KKF members like yourself who call attention to issues like this and helped me decide that’s not what I want
 
Bico Doce said:
I understand cynicism but for what it is worth I do believe him.
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people can't compete against well-made scripts. my conclusion is at least one of the following is true:
  • no one was botting that time
  • few people were botting (maybe just one person), and grabbing ALL of the knives wasn't the goal. maybe they didn't want to be greedy. maybe they didn't have enough friends in diverse locations to ship the packages to. maybe they didn't want to arouse suspicion. but as a result of this, there were knives left over for mere mortals to manually grab
  • the bots used were slow/crappy enough to not get everything in time. or not enough threads running from different hosts. you get the idea.
    • this could very well be true if the botters are not sophisticated. think script kiddies running off the shelf solutions. (google and you will see "bigcartel bots" for sale, lol)
  • this person is lying
 
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also, there was a claim in JML's thread (linked above) that a maker claimed that he knew via analytics that no one was botting. i kind of doubt that whatever ecommerce platform was used gives enough analytics and tools to come to that conclusion definitively. and even if they do, it's really hard to know for sure. botting can be pretty sophisticated.
 
sansho said:
few people were botting (maybe just one person), and grabbing ALL of the knives wasn't the goal. maybe they didn't want to be greedy. maybe they didn't have enough friends in diverse locations to ship the packages to. maybe they didn't want to arouse suspicion. but as a result of this, there were knives left over for mere mortals to manually grab
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I had asked if he had a specific strategy and he had mentioned he would go for the second to smallest or second to largest - try to pick the least desirable size (so maybe you end up with a 234 instead of the 230 or 250), seemed plausible enough but I absolutely agree with your assessment, one of those conditions has to be true.
 
sansho said:
also, there was a claim in JML's thread (linked above) that a maker claimed that he knew via analytics that no one was botting. i kind of doubt that whatever ecommerce platform was used gives enough analytics and tools to come to that conclusion definitively. and even if they do, it's really hard to know for sure. botting can be pretty sophisticated.
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if there is a knifemaker who is an expert in the quantitative side of online fraud detection, botting, cybersecurity or similar that would actually know what they were looking at, I would like to know.

firstly, it would be interesting to me how they got into knifemaking. secondly, they would have to be seriously passionate because right now you can throw a rock and find a 200k/year job in any of those areas and as I understand it most custom knifemakers arent making huge money.

more likely, it's just the maker believing something they dont actually have much knowledge about 🤷‍♂️
 
tcmx3 said:
if there is a knifemaker who is an expert in the quantitative side of online fraud detection, botting, cybersecurity or similar that would actually know what they were looking at, I would like to know.

firstly, it would be interesting to me how they got into knifemaking. secondly, they would have to be seriously passionate because right now you can throw a rock and find a 200k/year job in any of those areas and as I understand it most custom knifemakers arent making huge money.

more likely, it's just the maker believing something they dont actually have much knowledge about 🤷‍♂️
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maybe he sold his ML startup, retired early, and went into knife making? 😂
i'm jk but such things aren't unheard of.
 
sansho said:
maybe he sold his ML startup, retired early, and went into knife making? 😂
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now's a great time, my company acquired two other companies just this year lol

except when would you have had time to learn how to make knives well? must be an impressive individual.
 
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