Unique gear and equipping retainers

[True-to-Caesar]

how do you propose they determine if you are getting the gear for yourself.. or a retainer?

typically those types of systems are going to be in place to MAKE it inconvenient to buy gear accidentally that you already have. I am not sure how they could make it to preserve that functionality while allowing gear to be bought for retainers.

If it’s there just because a few people can’t be bothered to be careful on what they purchase (which is strange because you can still buy multiple pieces of the same gear), why not just had a small timer where you can return the item and get the currency used back ? WoW had this and it worked fine.