Merchant Archive
Thread: Excessively high access fee scams, need some help
Uhh, well.
First of all I'd recomend discussing it with the owner of the house. The max limit entry fee is usually someplace reserved for special customers. They pay the fee, the owner pays it back, and it keeps out the "riff raff." So maybe he's got it on there for a purpose.
Secondly, well, I'd suggest to my citizens they need to read. It's really not this guy's fault. There is a confirmation screen for this reason. I wouldn't automatically call it a scam. It may BE one, but there's nothing indicating that. So what would I do? Read first, click later.
As for what to do...
1) order a street lamp with red light named "scamer do NOT enter" and place it outside.
2) Ask you merchant citizens to not use the 1cr access fee, so that only building that have a reasonable purposefor it have them (Cantina? Hospital? A museum)
3) Get a mall up, that way legitimate merchants who have shown that they run a honest business can be rewarded with a spot in there. It will be a safe place for visitors to get everything they ate looking fore.
Oh, please! They offer access to the building for 50k. If someone pays it, how can they be scammed? They got access, didnt they? Please dont carebear everything because people are lazy and dont read things.
Arrya wrote:
First some quick background. I am the mayor of a merchant/crafting city that has been fairly successful - we get a lot of shopper traffic and that has drawn a lot of people do the city.
Recently, we have become the target for a scam. A person sets up a house under the guise of running a legitimate business - they have a nice sign, etc. Then they set an excessive access fee, say 50,000 credits. Inside of course, they are offering no services at all, and anyone that comes inside is scammed out 50k.
I believe the reason this scam is successful is because of the prevalence of people that charge 1cr for an entrance fee to gain merchant xp. People are used to just clicking ok because they don't mind the 1cr charge, but after they do this many times, they kind of stop reading the message. Next thing they know... they just paid 50k to enter an empty house.
So, what can be done about these scammers? To a certain extent, I can control the ones that make it into the city, we do have zoning on, but they come in under the guise of running a legit business. There are things I can do though, albeit, they arethings I would rather not have to resort to. The other problem is people setting up right outside the city, which at least they do not get as much traffic and as the mayor I am not held responsible for them (but I still do not think we should have to tolerate these scams). I have submitted CSR tickets of course, but I do not think I can rely on them to take action when the game mechanics clearly support this type of scam.
One thing I am considering is to ask everyone in the city to turn off all entry fees. I can then make an announcement to visitors to please not enter any building charging an entry fee. Of course, there are occassionally legit reasons to charge an entry fee, so this is not an ideal solution, but at the moment, it is the only course of action I see to keep this problem from getting worse.
Any ideas?
I'll pay 1 cr, 'cause some people want to finish off the merchant skilltree fast, and I have no problem with 1 cr.
If it's any more, I don't bother.
Do not ever enter a show with a 1cr access fee. It is a sign of a bad shop, and an even worse merchant.
Arrya wrote:
So, what can be done about these scammers?
Any ideas?
Um yeah, you can stop being a moron. Pay attention to what you click. Scamming is part of real life, and as such, it is part of the game.
Take the retard helmet off and go play with some rusty tools.
Did a federal holiday kick in today and everyone decided to say sucks to be you jackass?, Arsenal is a great guy and runs one of the best, if not best city on Shadowfire. This is a problem in general with Player Cities, that the mayor and people are not able to give someone a certain amount of time and they have to leave or anything they own goes poof..but that belongs in the Politician forum.
As for you others that think a Proper vendor would be in a "mall" guess what, I want my own shop, not a "mall" to were I have to run from place to place to place an item on a vendor, and have a chance that the owner of the mall if it isn't me, decides to pick up and move his"mall"one evening. Second off on the access fee, how many of you have ever dropped Master Merchant only to regain some of the skills later on? I for one have and want to be back up to were I was before and 80k exp doesn't get far if you dropped 2lines, and as many people as came into my shop, it would fill back up in a day or two.
Is it a scam? Yes. Sure we are used to 1cr fees for merchant, but we are used to it, not because we are all lazy, someone just wants to make a crapload real fast. How many vendors have you seen that place 3-4 houses around back and say help me get merchant exp? A ton lately, maybe on like that on the outskirts of his town and the guy has 1cr side and middle one in back has 50k fee. That ladies and gentlemen is a scam that would surprise me if it happens all the time.
Only thing I can say is don't grant anymore zoning and add it to the merchant tent title "beware of access fee scams" Your a level 5 city, so no more zoning will do you any good, only add knownmerchants you either dealt with before and/or have heard a great deal about, go see there shop if you must, make sure it appears to be valid.
Kilun wrote:
Did a federal holiday kick in today and everyone decided to say sucks to be you jackass?, Arsenal is a great guy and runs one of the best, if not best city on Shadowfire.
Lol, thanks Kilun. This is par for the course though, the merchant community is probably the most unhelpful group I have ever seen in this game. I think it is because of a rough childhood of repeated dev abuse though so I can't blame them completely 
One quickquestion for everyone: One person told me that his hosue is bugged and that when he resets or turns off his access fee, it always comes back to 50,000 credits. Has anyone ever heard of a bug like this? Sounds like a line of BS to me.
I realize that there are some valid reasons for using an access fee - the biggest one seems to be using it to protect custom orders. I definitely support that. However, the people I am referring to have no valid reason for using these high access fees besides to collect money from people without offering them anything. They are taking advantage of our city's stellar reputation as a high quality shopping area and making customer's lives difficult. When an unsuspecting customers gets ripped off, or evenfeel hassled by unscrupolous merchants,they simply do not return. Customers not returningis bad for all our businesses in the area - and with a huge shopping center of 85+ shops and hundreds of merchants, that is a problem that affects a lot of people. As a mayor, I feel it is my job to protect the businesses in my city - and if scammers are damaging everyone's reputation, then I am not doing my job. It is all well and good to say that people should pay more attention to the access fees, and of course they should, but my god, you people are just heartless 
I don't want to make shopping in my city a miserable experience where people have to suspect everyone they run across as a scammer!
PS. Of course I definitely do try to contact the shop owners, work with them and try to come to a peaceful resolution as a first course of action. I am not just going around accusing everyone of being a scammer Sometimes it is not possible to contact the person though or other people are just uncooperative and ignore me. Still other people squat outside the city borders so they do not have to live with the restrictions of the city, etc.