Common scams/Item scams

This article is part of GuildWiki's Common scams information.

Bait and Switch
Scammers offer a valued item in chat, while substituting a less-valued item in the trade window:

Similarity Scams
Scammers offer a common item in place of a rarer item with an identical name. Here are some examples of this variety of scam:

Unreasonable Offers
Scammers offer items for horribly low or ridiculously high prices. The only true way of avoiding this type of scam is by checking out prices on auction sites, with players in your guild, or by asking for a Price Check in the trade window.

Customized Items
Customized items can never be equipped by another player. There are no exceptions or reversals.

Unidentified Items
It's not a scam to sell unidentified items, but there are several things worth knowing before you agree to spend your hard-earned cash:


 * The most important reason to buy unidentified items is to pursue the Wisdom title.
 * Purchasing an identified does not unlock weapon upgrades.
 * Sellers can determine mods on weapons before they sell to you (they will equip the items and look for special effects); you are unlikely to get valuable mods through Un-ID trades.
 * The rarity of the item does not correspond to its power: purples aren't always stronger than blue nor always weaker than golds. (Rarer items simply have much better odds of also being desirable.)
 * If you are looking for valued runes or insignias, it is almost always cheaper, faster, and more effective to trade for identified items rather than gamble on buying unidentified salvage armor.

Help transfer loot scam
Players sometimes say that they are selling their old account and trying to transfer items and cash to a new one. They offer to sell you the old account, but typically insist on cash transactions. Often, they also give a variety of plausible reasons that they need your account credentials (email, password, etc.)
 * 1) If caught participating, you will get banned from the game; account selling is against ArenaNet's EULA.
 * 2) All such deals are almost certainly attempting to scam you into giving away the keys to your account so it can be looted at some point.

Remember:
 * Deals that look too-good-to-be-true usually are.
 * Never give out your password or email to anyone (in-game or otherwise); ArenaNet staff will never ask and anyone else has no legitimate reason for requesting it.

The "I don't want to be scammed" scam (fear of duplicate items)
In this scam, the con-artist implies that you might be in possession of a so-called duplicate item. They suggest moving to an explorable area where you would drop the item from a great distance so the scammer can see if it glows (as, they suggest, all illegal items will do). Naturally, they have a skill that allows them to Shadow Step to you and grab the item before you can pick it back up.
 * Always use the trade window; it offers a number of protections against potential scams.
 * There is never any reason to visit an explorable area in order to make a trade.
 * It is nearly impossible for anyone to still be in possession of a duplicated item, so the entire premise of the scam is false.