End of Season Rent Cancellation - The Bane of Splinterlands and possible solutions to the problem
You've rented cards for the whole season grinding it out to get higher and higher in ranks.
You did it! You've gotten out of Bronze.
It's such a sweet feeling that you've achieved something in Splinterlands before the end of the season. And Splinterlands will reward you for it.
End of season rewards is like Christmas coming early for a lot of Splinterlands players. It's time to unwrap the presents!
You open up Splinterlands expecting Champion / Diamond / Silver rewards yet as you open up the account, it shows that your power has gone back down to Bronze.
What happened?
You my friend have been RENT CANCELLED!
Why does this happen?
End of the season is when demand far outweighs the supply and some card owners see this as opportunity to make a quick buck by price gouging. To be able to take advantage of the peasants who can't afford their own cards, they cancel the rental contracts with existing renters (no permission necessary) and that is how it happens.
Possible solutions to the problem
- Implement multiple day contracts / seasonal contracts where both parties must sign off before it can be dissolved.
- Allow card owners to set max rental duration during the listing to set expectations for the renter.
- Add a cancellation rating system where everyone can see which card owners have the tendency to cancel their card rental contracts.
Although these solutions may not fully eradicate this problem, it can help reduce this unscrupulous practice in the Splinterlands community. What other solutions do you have in mind?
Have you experienced having your rented cards cancelled before the end of the season? Let us know in the comments section below.
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I do understand the frustration but what the card owners are doing is maximizing their ROI for the cards they aquired. Some specifically purcahsed cards for the purpose of renting them out. Makes sense they would want to get max ROI in return to pay for the card they purchased.
Currently contracts are for 24 hours only and nothing over that is gntd. When the renter selects multi day renting its not gntd that card will be available for those days. The gntd time frame is 24 hours. That being said, I'd like to see 24 hour / 3 day and 7 day rental contracts. While 3 & 7 day contracts might not give the best ROI it will likely garner the card owners a loyal customers. I'd happily choose the three or even seven day option to lock in my rented cards.
Explanation on how card rentals currently work.
Agreed. Hopefully, longer term guaranteed contracts will be implemented. This guarantees income for the card owner (since the renter cannot cancel just because he found a better deal) and prevents the frustration that the renters are having when the card owner pulls the card before the end of season.
Added bonus: It would help minimize the mania of refreshing peakmonsters / splinterlands during end of season.
As someone who both rents cards to use and rents cards out to others, I completely understand the issue - but its a two way street. I've often rented out cards before only to have them cancelled the day after the new season starts and the people collect their rewards. While having the flexibility to cancel on any day has potential value to both those who rent and those who are renting, in many cases people seek more certainty. There are many potential fixes, but the simplest might be to simply split rentals up into two catagories - daily and weekly. Daily rentals would continue to work in the same fashion where either party could cancel at any time, while weekly rentals would have both parties locked in for the full 7 days at the agreed upon price.
Yes. Adding the option for longer term guaranteed contracts would greatly ease this problem. Then for those willing to take a higher degree of risk, the daily option would be available.
Thank you for your insight.
If I remember right, @yabapmatt spoke about a possibility of a longer term rental option that can't be cancelled. It's definitely a possibility but not before CL is released.
Although I do like the Rental Rating System haha Sounds like a Yelp review but for Splinterlands Cards.
Glad to know that the Splinterlands devs have acknowledged this concern. Would love to see the day it's implemented.
if it moves to 7 day rentals instead of 24hr then expect high costs for all 7 days instead of just 1 day.
Anyway the concept or concern with rent cancelations may perhaps become a thing of the past with some features peakmonsters is developing right as we speak.
Higher costs for all 7 days isn't really a problem since that's market driven. The problem exists since there's currently no way to have guaranteed multiple day rentals. Guaranteed multiple day rentals means that renters cannot cancel their rents when they see a cheaper card in the market. (Happens a lot after end of season)
Thank you for your work.
Why wouldn't people just structure every contract to end before the last day of the season. I mean it sucks because it's happened to be several times. But if you have 100 people trying to get 8 slices of a pizza it only makes sense for the price to go up. Instead there should be a rewards average based on highest level achieved and the final level at season end with time factored in. This way if you were diamond until the last day of the season but fall to bronze you get the average of the rewards. However, if you got to diamond the first week then quit renting and fell to bronze the whole last week there should be a subtraction per day from season end. I think this averages the good around for everyone.
Averaging rewards sounds like a good alternative idea as well. Thank you for your thoughts.
In regards to what I do with renting, once I reach a certain league with my account then I stop playing ranked and cancel all gold card rentals. Keep in mind this is usually with 2+ days left in the season. Then I post them back up for rent. I would never cancel a rental contract within 24 hours of the season ending. I want people to get as high a league reward as they can. I'm all for giving the person who owns the cards the option to choose a fixed rental period to help prevent what you describe in the article.
I never cancel, rent from me.