Low $250 Auction Price Cap puts 3rd Party Gold/Item Selling Sites out of business?

[PearlOrion]

Some posters have pointed $250 Auction Price Cap is used albeit underhandedly by Blizzard to force everyone to convert $ to gold and to slow down the rate where gold is being converted into $ (hence raising the value of gold).

But another effect is that it actually lowers the profit cap of 3rd Party Gold/Item Selling Sites which
- uses Middlemen who marks up prices
- employs bots or manual sweat-shop farmers
because they have to price their goods to be lower than the Auction House pricing

The middlemen usually guts the seller down to as low as 5% of the actual price that they intend to sell to the next/final buyer in the chain (does sound like an underground pawnshop where you have desperate sellers). I seriously don't think the players are going to take a undercut greater than Blizzard-Paypal's combined tax rate.

As for those businesses which employs bots or manual sweat-shop farmers, their revenue has been reduced more than 2/3 assuming that pricy items like Windforce used to cost like $800 in Diablo 2 before duping began.

However, sites which offers Player-to-Player trading will still continue to function as per normal.

[SEOLJL]

It's not the selling cap , its just the highest price you can start the auction at.So nothing changes.

[Koreos]

I have read all the FAQs and that $250 cap seems to be the cap for your Battle.net balance, not a RMAH transactions.

[Enlil]

It's not the selling cap , its just the highest price you can start the auction at.So nothing changes.

eu.battle.net/support/en/article/diablo-iii-auction-house-functionality

What’s the minimum and maximum bid I can set for an item?
In the gold-based auction house, the minimum you can list an item for is 100 gold, and the maximum is 100,000,000,000 gold.
In the real-money auction house, the minimum you can list an item for is €1.25 EUR (or equivalent local currency). The maximum you can set is €250 EUR.

Which means $250 is the most an item an sell for.
You could put your buyout price at $250 and starting price at $50 but the bidding can't go past $250

[Koreos]

OH, I must have missed it!

It might mean the highest starting bid. As if it was the buyout it would be called so?

[beingmused]

If players end up doing transactions for very expensive items in gold instead of real money, then that helps the value of gold, but means blizzard gets none of the profits for that transaction. So even if that IS the motivation for the cap (which I doubt), calling it underhanded would not make a great deal of sense.

[glasspinne]

OH, I must have missed it!

It might mean the highest starting bid. As if it was the buyout it would be called so?

Maximum ending price is $250, sadface

[Enlil]

OH, I must have missed it!

It might mean the highest starting bid. As if it was the buyout it would be called so?

I agree the FAQ is not very clear in what its trying to say.
Only way to be certain is stick $400 in the buyout box once the rmah is live. It will either accept it or tell you to gtfo.

Its the only way we will know for certain if $250 if the max buyout/sale price.

[Blackstream]

Bashiok has stated that $250 is also the highest any bid or buyout can go.

https://twitter.com/#!/Bashiok/statu...47112462958592

[Bloomberg]

So far, all available official info about the so-called "cap" is, that from the sellers perspective, neither start price nor buyout can be SET any higher than 250$ (source: RMAH FAQ), and a scarce message on twitter.com comming from a semi-confused(?) community manager (Bashiok), that 250$ is the "be all, end all" limit on ANY RMAH sale/transaction.

So until I have missed something important, the true nature of the magical 250$ value has still to be officially confirmed/clarified before a final conclusion can be made.