Why GOM over IGE??

Why do people trumpet GOM over IGE so much? I really do not understand - for the most part, to me they are relative - or at least were - but today after selling Linden to GOM for the first time, I must say I prefer IGE and for one reason only:
--
Withdraw Cash

Your request for withdrawal has been submitted and should be processed within 2 business days.
--- GOM message when I went to withdraw my cash to my paypal account.

IGE sends the money to my paypal account in minutes, literally - the longest I have waited in 15 minutes. TWO DAYS is just unacceptable, especially if the only reason for using GOM is to save pennies on the dollar.

If there are other substantive reasons, I truly am open to suggestion - however if the need for money is urgent then GOM is never the choice to make unless it is the only choice.

Briana Dawson

You mean from responses in Live Help? When somebody in Live Help asks the common question "Where do I buy L$?", I "try" to alternate between mentioning GOM and IGE.

I also try to refrain from trumpeting my own L$ to US$ service there

When in Live Help - I always mention all know currency exchanges and SL auction sites to be inclusive as possible.

I agree IGE's withdrawal features are faster.

IGE is ran alot like a large biz.
no personality. slower responce.
I used them till I got sick of them an started with GOM.
GOM is ran by some nice people.
*edit, I dont withdraw enough to care about that. I am not here to make money*

I recommend GOM over IGE for several reasons.

One, it's a liquid market; Zeppi only holds the money while it's up for sale, and then it gets transferred immediately to the player. IGE on the other hand hoards the money (they currently hold over 10% of the ENTIRE linden dollar money supply) and then sells it as they see fit at a price THEY decide.

Second, zeppi is an actual member of our community, he cares enough about the game to be sensitive about the issues. IGE, on the other hand, has an account that's used by one of maybe 50 different people, who log on only when people buy/sell money. There have been numerous reports of actual GRIEFING by IGE folks while not on duty.

Thirdly, Zeppi is the underdog. IGE is notorious for pretty much ruining several games (camping rare spawn points in ultima online and everquest and then selling the loot at ridiculous prices, gaming exploits, etc.), and employing digital sweatshop tactics. They don't need to do the same thing in SL, thanks very much.

IGE is a fully-fledged corporation manifested within SL. They have hundreds of employees, they play dozens of games, and they rake in thousands of dollars in profits a year. For all the folks decrying about commercialism in SL, they sure don't train their sights on IGE much. GOM, on the other hand, as far as I can tell, is run by two guys with wives and kids. I'd rather support the families than the corporation (ooooh, personal angle )

Finally, IGE's "courier" system of delivering money is simply not scalable. Sure, it's quick and easy to get/sell money when your'e the only one requesting it... but what about 4 people? 10? 20? I've seen several people have to wait several HOURS before a courier showed up to process their payments. I dunno about you, but I have better things to do in-world then wait for a corporate runner for a couple hours.

GOM's process is fully automatic in-world; you go to the ATMS, voice activate it, and either deposit or withdrawl. The website is instant, as well. The only delay comes in transferring to your Paypal account; they say 2 days for processing, but in the 2 dozen times I've used GOM, I've waited maybe 2 hours tops. And that was without me waiting in-world for Zeppi to come by and send me my cash... he just processed it and bam, there it is.



LF

Those are the exact reasons I use GOM over IGE.

And although it says it will take up to 48 hrs. to deposit your money in PayPal, I don't think I have ever waited more than 24 hrs; it's usually less than a day before I see the money.

The GOM account never showed up naked on my land in a PG sim and griefed me by repeatedly shooting me with a gun.

I guess it's the little things for me.

That was one of my major factors in no longer using IGE.
They recently did a peice on places like that on the news.
Hire people in china and russia to work full time raising money.
They would get paid by the amound of money they made in the games.
Not just SL.
Allot of them cant speak english.
So theres no social aspect.

I prefer GOM.. why? dunno.. deposit at an atm.... seems easier.
Set at a price I think is fair and forget about it...

Seeing how I never buy money - and the money I get is for things I was doing anyway - it's all essentially money for nothing, so who has the highest price is irrelevant for me.

Siggy.

We've placed the "2 business days" bit in there simply as a disclaimer in case things ever get super-busy, so people don't worry that they've been forgotten (or, god forbid, scammed).

I'm the guy who does the PayPal payouts, and I can tell you that they're done *every* evening. That means if you request a withdrawal before, say, 1am or so, you'll get your cash today (sometimes within a few minutes if I happen to be doing withdrawals at that time). If the request is made later than that (i.e. after I go to bed for the night), your withdrawal will be sent to you tomorrow (typically when I get home from work -- 7pm or so).

I hope that clears things up.


Tom

I once asked Zeppi how my order was doing (that was before the automated ATM's) and didn't realize he just got in from vacation and was catching up. He must have had tons of requests but responded quickly, and not much later my order was done. GOM has great customer service and I will keep my business with them.

GOM is a broker, gom never interferes with prices, doesn actually OWN game cash, just holds it.

IGE on the other hand is a hoarder with a terrible business design... it works on other games but it simply can't compete with GOM.

Their basic tactic would be buy low, sell high... but theres a problem... they're competing with an open market now. They generally bught lindens at a low, but reliable rate, so people would SELL to them

but their prices to *BUY* lindens from were laughable... always much higher than GOM.

and at the moment they're in a real bad place

They have over $30,000 invested in lindens... and they have no way of selling them without loosing money.

They were also the main reason the linden to dollar went way up.. cause they were 'sucking' linden sellers away from GOM, making gom buyers pay more to get a share.. aka a sellers market.

now that they're not doing that anymore, GOM has swiched through buyers market to roughly stabilize.

aka basically IGE was raising the price as they were buying, and now that they want to sell, they can do nothing but lower the price... they're screwed

Exactly, eltee.

GOM is a true transparent market, no artificial premiums, just a small transaction cost. This is the way a currency market truly works in RL.

IGE is the outdated way to run a business, hold on to inflated premiums for profit, don't allow true market forces to determine fair value. The fact that they painted themselves into a corner where they stand to lose a lot of money only shows how flawed their business model truly is, in the face of efficient competition.

Long live GOM, IGE is destined for the dumpster.

I realize not everyone is going to care about this, although I think that everyone should. <grin> But when starting VERTU, we approached both GOM and IGE. IGE didn't respond. GOM jumped right in and has done an amazing job of helping us grow.

Again, some folks might be just fine choosing whomever gives them the best deal at the moment, with no thought to the community at large. For them, I can only say - I'm sorry you experience life that way. For everyone else, I think GOM is the obvious choice.

Sell your L$ on GOM now because its the only place to go, and the price is only bound to go lower.

(silently sitting here with US$ waiting for the price to fall...
well almost "silently" until this post)

- Ace

P.S. Markets work, hoarding doesn't.

GOM is what I use, hands down. Though I have an interesting perspective.

My line of RL work will sometimes involve dealing with internals of the REAL markets (and won't/can't talk about it either, sorry LordFly ). I see every day how that system works, and overall it works well.

One of the more interesting effects of GOM's format today is that you should not be able to effectively 'day trade' on the L$ market there (at least from my experience watching the buy/sell columns). That makes it more dependable as a source.

I have no issues with the limits they impose on Paypal transactions. Given the recent problem they had - which was fixed very well - I'm actually happier with the limits (as well as the status emails, that was an unexpected and pleasant surprise).

Moral reason for GOM:

o Once IGE controls a market they rip you off. I once checked and they were buying Star Wars Currency for 10 US$ and selling it for 100 US$

o Once some partner site of IGE had L$ for sale cheaper than GOM. So I bought many L$ there (actually not even knowing that site was part of IGE). Some time later I had IGE boss trying to strongarm me into returning the L$.

Practical reason for GOM:

o When buying huge orders of L$ then GOM is often faster than IGE. I had IGE ask me come to life chat, then phone me, then phone me again asking all my credit card details and my address etc, taking 12 hours from charging my PayPal account to actually paying me the L$. And they don't keep records, so you buy huge number of L$ at once they will do it again, no matter how often they dealt with you in the past.

o At GOM I don't need to wait for a customer service person. It is all automated. Except when I withdraw US$, but I am not that broke on my RL bank account that I can't wait a day for the US$ payment.

o Since saturday IGE is only buying L$ at quantities of 5k L$ or 10k L$ - if at all.

Practical reasons for IGE:

o IGE is much slower reacting to change of L$ value than GOM. This mean, sometimes IGE is too cheap and sometimes too expensive. It is worth taking a look at rates on both sites before deciding to use one.

o At GOM you get better rates when you can place an order and have time to wait a day or two for it being filled. When you need to sell hundreds of thousands of L$ instantly, IGE often worked better the past two months. But this was also in part because IGE paid too much. However, now they stopped buying huge L$ quantities.

Day trading GOM pays my land tier. Buy low, sell high over and over again with at least a US$0.04 spread. The market "wiggles" enough that this is VERY possible.

- Ace

The first time I used GOM to cash out my L$ I was an idiot and put the wrong email address for my paypal account. It was an old account that actualy ent to my bosses bank account! Even though they have a disclaimer saying they are not responisibe for such mistakes, I sent them an email and they credited my GOM account with the USD in a matter of a couple hours. GOM offers great customer service and Zeppi is a very cool person to come across in world.

Interesting. I must be mis-reading the lists (and badly no less, I thought it was 4-6 cents the other direction), will have to look again, thanks.

My hat's off to you. I've met people who do that for a living, and I know I ain't up to it. I also cannot trade IRL either, due to ethical and contractual constraints. These systems give me a chance to understand market structures better, so it's useful nonetheless.

Wow, amazing what SL is turning out to be a learning tool for, eh?

I still understand GOM's model enough that I trust it more than IGE. They both have their place admittedly, and in both cases you always need to be careful in what you do.

It ain't a living... I still need a job for that.

But as I said, there's enough to be made on GOM to pay my land-tier.

- Ace

Bhodi,

I am not disputing the contributions GOM has made to VERTU, or the importance of your organization. However, to stand in judgement of someone who may choose to sell to IGE because they need as high of a payout as they can get for their money is wrong. You do not know the circumstances where someone may be using that money - and often times, there is a vast difference between the two - at the same time that IGE was paying $52 for 10,000L, GOM was averaging around $40. Shopping around for the best price when you are selling something is not unreasonable, or uncharitable, regardless of how much GOM has helped VERTU. The last time I checked, charity is supposed to be voluntary. I have used GOM and IGE both, and my moral compass and charitable donations are just fine, thank you.

Thank you very much for the very informative facts and opinions.

Special thanks to Anshe, Lordfly, and eltee for the substantive and community based insight.

I guess will go with GOM more in the future as a matter of supporting the mom & pop community based interest as opposed to the quick and dirty alternative.

Briana Dawson

I feel that both have their place too. IGE offers a lot of convenience to people, and until recently often offered the better price to sellers as well.

IGE has apparently gotten out of the "buying L$" business for a while because they are way over-stocked. I know that I wouldn't want to be sitting on as many L$ as they own right now.

But if you want to buy via credit card, they're still the only place to go.

Free markets have a tendancy to correct themselves and, at the end of the day, do definitively define what a fair price is.

- Ace

I have to second what Cristinano just posted. Also need take into consideration that there are people who trade between IGE and GOM. If GOM is very low and you sell there for moral reasons, you still have no guarantee that your L$ won't end up at IGE.



This however only works as long as there is no monopoly. IGE has kept their margin for Linden$ very low, actually working for free or even taking a loss. They have been doing this because they want to drive GOM out of business, after which you would see them raise their margin a lot. Just compare their buy/sell margins in other games.