My Shitty, Horrible Experience Trying to Purchase an NFT with Ethereum- Don’t be an Idiot Like Me

I'm at my wit's end and I don't know how else to take out my frustration other than this post. I will go ahead and say that I've been completely soured on ETH, and whatever the tech is behind it I hate it. I'll never forget the feeling of this drawn out experience. And I know the amounts I'm stating are nothing to some, but this was hard-earned money for me.

With that said – Kings of Leon had announced the drop of their newest album with a special NFT version that includes a special press vinyl. As a vinyl collector and fan of the band, I was super excited to pick up the drop on Friday when it came out. The vinyl was set to sell for 0.035 ETH, about $53.00 on Friday. Pricier than typical vinyls, but well within range for a special edition. I made plans to set the money aside with time to accommodate my bills and tapped into about $150 in Bitcoin I had left.

Welp, that's where my idiocy kicked in, apparently.

I swap my BTC for ETH and pay a fee for the swap, and then another after withdrawing it. The first was okay, the second was hefty. By this point I'm down to nearly half of the BTC I had. Ok – well, still within the range I need for the vinyl. No problem, right? WRONG.

I link my Metamask Wallet and try to purchase the album, and.. $80 gas fee. Down to about $70, I try to modify the gas fee to try to get it through. It goes through and immediately gets lost in the Ether-space because the fees are too low. I try to cancel it and pay more fees, and nothing happens. The transaction is lost in space.

Come Saturday I try to see what's happened with the block, and nothing. I give up and try to send the remaining ETH to a Trust Wallet I just made to try again. Maybe the MetaMask thing isn't working right with my browser.

I access OpenSea and track the vinyl down again, try to purchase it – and bam, again, fees. Okay; well, let me see if I can scrap by enough ETH to pay for the fee.

I go to Blockchain and squeeze my last $50 into it, and I can't withdraw the money. Great.

Sunday comes and I go to GateHub and convert some XRP I had bought in 2017 to ETH. I can't withdraw it because I don't meet the minimum. Sigh.

Monday I monitor the gas prices and see they haven't dropped, and try again to negotiate some ETH to my Trust Wallet to no avail.

Today, with the price now nearing $63 for the album, I finally bite the bullet and take to my Nano wallet – transferred the amount I needed to Mercatox to exchange to ETH, pay ANOTHER fee (0.02 ETH gawdang), send to my trust wallet, and finally! I'm able to purchase the damned thing.

…or so I thought. The transaction runs out of gas, I don't get my purchase, and I lose all the money I had just gotten from selling my Nanos.

Nearly $150 dollars lost in transfer, withdrawal, and gas fees for NOTHING.

I'm so saddened, frustrated, angry – I feel like a bumbling idiot.

I know this is a pro-Crypto space and I'm a huge proponent of it, but damn. I feel so burned by all of this, I can only hope getting this off my chest saves someone these heart and financial pains.

Edito:

Here is my wallet and here is the Etherscan.

I'll add that I'm aware this is my fault, just hoping to save someone the same frustrations. I didn't expect that many fees at every step of the way draining what I had set aside. I probably fucked up somewhere along the line, just be more studied before jumping into something like this

Número dos: i'm a fucking idiot, but to spare anyone reading this some future woes. Credit to u/mcgillby (cheers for the lesson)

It appears that you have tried to manually lower the gas limit in an attempt to lower fees. This will cause the tx to fail as if it hits this limit and the transaction is not completed it will use the rest of the gas to revert the tx. You should never try to lower the gas limit, only the gwei amount should be lowered. Lowering the gas only lowers the estimated fees, not the actual fees. You will only be charged for the gas you used. The gas limit is there in case off a bug in a smart contract like an infinite loop that would never finish executing and use all your eth.

Be smart fellow cryptonauts, unlike yours truly.