When someone's shouting for a crafter and offers a tip..Follow

When I craft something, I don't bother asking for a tip. People can pay me whatever they want.

If I have someone craft an item for me, I generally ignore the price of the item and think about how much I would be willing to pay, how much effort the crafter has to give. I think 20k-30k is what I'd typically tip if it was just some common, low tier piece of gear (like your turban). I'd probably give 50k if the crafter has to do extra work (craft an ingot, for example) and 100k+ if the item is a high demand piece of lv99 gear. If the person got a HQ, I usually give double what I intended originally.

The problem is that even though the piece of gear might only be worth 10k, that 10k is nothing, hardly an amount to make me (as a crafter) go through the hassle of finding you to craft the item. So I'd only tip an amount that would interest me if I were to pay me to craft the item for myself.

Cost of materials plus 15% is how I operated.

I forgot about this for a minute. I'd have FFXIAH open pretty much all times. If all items were provided, I'd just calculate how much the materials cost together, then multiply by 15% and charge that. So if something cost 150,000 in materials, I'd charge 22,500. If the person was missing an item, if I had it I'd charge for the cost of that item as well as the 15%. So with our 150,000 item, they're missing an item that was 7,500. So I'd want to get 30,000.

It's probably a bit complicated, but I came up with it in a fit of boredom and kind of stuck with it.

That makes sense.

If you were actually charging for the cost of materials even when they were provided, I thought maybe you had come up with the policy just to discourage requests. However, I could also see it being about covering high value Tier 1 HQ synths. For example, if we went with your hypothetical synth above, and you charged 172,500 per attempt, it would still come out to being a fair arrangement if the HQ was worth 1.8 mil and you expected to pop out an HQ roughly 10% of the time.

Janesah; that's not only rude, but dishonest. If that guy had asked me to make something, I wouldn't of made something for him again imo.

In my mind, honesty is the best policy.

I agree with most of what has been said here. I think 10k is a reasonable minimum tip to offer (if you're going to offer one) for anything that requires a veteran rank (or close) crafter, with a 15% tip being a good rule of thumb for higher-valued items. I would also say that the fair market price of materials is far more relevant than the AH price of the finished item as a basis for the tip, even if the materials are all supplied by the person making the request. I also agree with the sentiment that the disposition of any highly-valued HQ results (or expensive breaks) needs to be settled before starting the craft.

As a crafter, however, I don't typically ask for a fee in advance for 1-off, low-demand items where the buy provides the materials. All I really insist upon is that people have everything ready to go when they shout instead of making me sit around while they go try to round up materials, play the AH, etc. On the other hand, if you want me to sit and synth a dozen tier1 HQ attempts, that will cost something up front. But overall, I've found people to be fairly generous with tips, sometimes for in excess of what I would ever ask for, so I'm happy to usually leave that up to the buyer.

I cook, so if someone gets all the mats (because I don't have over stock, it is either they farm/buy or go with out) I never charge. If they wish to give me gil for my time, I never say no. Just like I tip a Tele-er. Some do/wont accept the trade, others take the 5-10+k.