Two things that look the same

Pairs people confuse on Nexus Market, and the one test between them

Home ›Money ›A saving on quantity, or a saving on protection

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nexusma2iegzo7atzwbrwxhcdopyri3vare2twibldnlc3txqjdeb5yd.onion
nexusabcdpvtnivv6owtqjkvd22k5x3hlpofkgjqjmgzltlde6mwe2qd.onion

Published as supplied. Nothing here is monitored, so none of this is a claim that any address opens right now.

Money / Pair 19 of 41

A saving on quantity, or a saving on protection

Two offers, both cheaper than the listed price, both perfectly friendly in tone. One of them is a volume calculation. The other is asking you to give something up, and it will not say what.

Two prices that both look like a saving

The number is lower. That is all a reader sees at first, and a lower number is genuinely attractive. Both offers arrive in the same register, both sound reasonable, and neither announces itself as the one carrying a hidden price.

Size is no guide either. A small discount can be the dangerous one and a large discount can be entirely ordinary.

A discount for ordering moreA

A price that falls with quantity

The listing carries tiers, or a rate is applied that anybody ordering the same amount would get. It survives the ordinary order flow, it shows up in the order total, and the record afterwards looks exactly like any other order on the account.

A discount for paying differentlyB

A price that falls if you change the route

The saving exists only where payment goes somewhere other than the ordinary flow. Direct to an address, outside escrow, in a different coin at a preferred rate. What is being sold to you is the removal of a protection.

Put plainly, one discount is priced in goods and the other is priced in recourse. The second takes away the ability to dispute, the record of what was agreed, and any route back if nothing arrives.

Who is offering this and what for

It is fair to assume a vendor wants a larger order and a faster settlement. Both are ordinary commerce and neither is sinister on its own. The question is which of the two the discount is actually buying, since only one of them takes something away from you.

Put the discounted price through the ordinary flow

Ask whether the same price still applies if the order goes through the market exactly as any other order would. A saving that survives that is a quantity discount.

  1. Take the offered price and put the order together in the normal way.
  2. Change nothing about the payment route, the escrow arrangement or the destination.
  3. See whether the discount is still there when the total is calculated for you.
  4. A saving that evaporates once the route is ordinary was a price for the route.

Running that costs nothing and it does not require anybody to be honest with you. It only requires the site to do its own arithmetic, which it will do whatever anybody has promised.

Two variants deserve naming, since both dress up as quantity. The first is a discount for splitting one large order into several smaller ones paid separately. The arithmetic sounds like volume and the effect is a set of payments that are harder to tie together and harder to dispute as a whole. The second is a discount for ordering more where the extra is only available outside the listing. That is a route change wearing a quantity label, and the test above catches it in the same way.

Neither variant needs anybody to be lying. A vendor genuinely short of time may prefer a settlement that saves them work, and the saving offered can be real. It still costs you the same protection it would cost you if the intent were worse, and you cannot tell the two intentions apart from where you are standing.

One of these mistakes is much dearer

If you treat a payment discount as a bulk one
You pay outside the arrangement that would have protected you. If nothing arrives there is no order to point at, no held funds to argue over and nobody obliged to look. The saving was a fraction. The exposure is the total.
If you treat a bulk discount as a payment discount
You turn down a real saving and order in smaller lots than you meant to. That costs a little more per unit and adds movements, each carrying its own fee. Mildly annoying and entirely recoverable.

This pair is about as lopsided as any on the site. One error is a rounding difference. The other can take the whole order with it. Where you are unsure, being wrong in the cautious direction is close to free, which is not true of most of the pairs collected on the full list.

What each one is worth doing about

If it is a quantity discount
Take it, provided the quantity is what you wanted anyway. Do not let a tier talk you into an order size you would not otherwise have placed, since a saving is only real against an order you meant to make.
If it is a payment discount
Decline it and place the order the ordinary way at the ordinary price. There is no version of this where the discount is worth the protection, and the offer itself tells you something useful about whoever made it.

Questions readers send about this pair

Is a vendor asking for direct payment always a bad sign?

It is always a request to remove the arrangement that protects the order, whatever reason is given for it. The reasons can sound perfectly sensible and some of them may even be true. The effect on your position is identical either way.

What if the discount is offered for paying in a different coin?

Judge it by the same question. A coin change that keeps the order inside the ordinary flow with the ordinary protections is a pricing preference. A coin change that moves payment outside that flow means the coin was never the point.

Can a bulk discount be faked?

A tier that appears only in conversation and never in the order total is not a tier. Anything that will not survive the site calculating a total for you is worth treating as the other kind until it does.

Every page here

AddressesGetting inMoneyOrdersPeopleWordsDown for now, or finished for goodOld address, or one built to be misreadSame page at two addresses, and only one is theirsThe redirect and the string it stands in forYour path through Tor, or the far endDid the set move, or did your copy slipLoading proves a server answered, and nothing moreRate limiting against a password that no longer matchesWhen the puzzle is broken and when the reader isA door you shut yourself against a lock somebody changedLogged out by a clock against logged out by a decisionA code that does not match against a clock that does notAn absence against a single character out of placeA wait somebody planned against a wait nobody didA deposit that is slow, or a deposit that is goneThe address expired, or it was never issued to youA rule about release, or a decision about youWho took the difference, the operator or the networkA saving on quantity, or a saving on protectionMoney back, or the end of the argumentStill moving, or already refusedStill settling, or short by a fractionA date with something behind it, and a date withoutOne request moves a clock, the other moves the moneyAsking for a ruling, or handing over informationA word in a database, and an event in a recordNothing new to report is not the same as bad newsA rule that runs by itself, and a date somebody prefersSilence and being ignored look identicalQuiet is not the same as goneFeedback tells you a mood, evidence tells you a factWhat a signature actually provesThe market only speaks in one placeAn empty history and a claimed historyThe result is good. Whose key was it?The same clean result, months apartYou cannot check an image, however clear it isOne of these strings was chosen by somebodyPosted where, and written by whomWho granted it, and what were they promisingTwo lists of addresses, two different guaranteesHow to read a pairEvery pairThe testsThe costsMirrorsQuestions