Merchant Archive
Thread: Can you ban people from your store?
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DigitalGuardian
Sun Feb 13, 2005 6:48 pm
#1
Hi! Recently I've had a (customer?) buy my entire stock(10+)of paints and about 3 paint texture stlye 4 kits. I realize that this is probably not an accident and this (customer?) was trying to buy out my stock. Now of course, I've been mulling through my mind on how to take care of this. Do I cityban him? No, that would be too extreme and it would be difficult to track him down anyway. So now I am looking for a way to ban him from my store, is there a command to do this or is this a good suggestion for the future?
lboyd1
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:01 pm
#2
You can ban someone from your house .. on the structure terminal thingy ma bob. However, if anyone else's vendors are in your house, they won't get any business either.
DigitalGuardian
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:08 pm
#3
Ah yes, I frogot to mention that part. Yes, I have other peoples vendor's in my store.
lboyd1
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:15 pm
#4
Then ... not really .. at least none that I can think of. You can't ban people from individual vendors.
SOrry
SOrry
DigitalGuardian
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:18 pm
#5
Well I'd post this somewhere else on this forum to help "improve" merchant, but it's not like it's on the devs agenda to listen to us. The publish they gave us recently was probably a fluke.
Elyssa
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:19 pm
#6
I'm curious why you'd want to ban someone who paid the price you were asking for your merchandise?
DigitalGuardian
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:30 pm
#7
The person who bought my items had a motive for buying the items. I believe he was either, A.Buying them so he could resell them at a higher price, B.Buying out my stock to shut down the competition, C.Someone who was being a right a-hole. Whichever you pick it all boils down to samething, he had a malicious intent. My paint kits are priced cheaply for the benefit of the "real" customers.
Elyssa
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:39 pm
#8
Of course he had a motive. It's unlikely that he gave you money because he was tired of having it.
A) Raise your prices. This kind of thing is generally an indication that you're selling too cheaply.
B) Make as many of them as he can possibly buy. You'll make a fortune until he stops.
C) Maybe. You still made the profit that you had anticipated, though.
It has been my experience that people generally don't buy you out with the intention of hurting your business.
They are buying everything because it's cheaper to buy from you than make it themselves.
You have, in essence, allowed yourself to become a wholesaler.
You can either continue forward in this role and make the profit you had expected to make when you put those items up for sale, or you can raise your prices until your ability to provide supply for the consumer's demand falls into a level that is comfortable for you to operate. Once you hit this point of equillibrium, your prices are "right" for your store.
Mystyrys
Sun Feb 13, 2005 7:56 pm
#9
Yeah, there are times I wish there was a vendor specific ban function. But when you are in a mall, you must think of the other merchants too. It's different if they all agree the person needs banned.
I used to have a customer that would hit my Wookiee vendor aboutthree timesa week and clean me out of all of one type of item. Each visit he'd buy all ofthat itemI had on the vendor. And that was a lot of stuff too. I tended to stock about 50 of everything in various color schemes. Can you imagine buying 50 Strapped Gloves all at once? It was obvious what he was doing from the very first purchase.
So I restocked it all. And he'd hit me again the next week. So I restocked it all and raised prices by 10%. He did it again. Rinse and repeat until I finally hit a price line that slowed him down but that other customers would still buy too. He didn't stop buying. He just bought less each visit.
Which was all I wanted. To have something left for the next Wookiee to buy! LOL!
It was a win-win. I sold a ton of stuff. He got to stock and sell it too. I had to collect resources, pay maint on harvs and factories, craft and stock it all. He just skipped that part and bought wholesale to resell. We both succeeded in the Merchant Game! 
Message Edited by Mystyrys on 02-13-2005 08:57 PM
Elyssa
Sun Feb 13, 2005 8:51 pm
#10
And that, after all, is the ultimate goal.
Mystyrys wrote:
It was a win-win. ... We both succeeded in the Merchant Game!
DigitalGuardian
Sun Feb 13, 2005 9:04 pm
#11
I know it's probably not a pressing concern and I don't know exactly what a merchant correspondent does, but I imagine they have a direct line of communication with the devs or similiar higher-ups. Maybe you could talk about adding a vendor ban button?
Elyssa
Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:02 am
#12
My playstyle is no less valid than yours.
I welcome people into my store for the purpose of buying my merchandise at the price I have asked for it.
In fact, the more they buy, the more I am able to offer and the bigger my business grows.
I'm not in business to help other people out or give people a break.
The business of my business is to turn a profit.
I'm very proud of the fact that over the last year and a half I've grown my business from a coke machine vendor way out on the beach 1800m from Coronet into what it has become now.
Much of that time has been spent tweaking my prices to ride that fine line between "so outrageously expensive that you get no sales" and "so cheap that people buy you out constantly."
In all that time I have never once attempted to crush a competitor or conquer a market, nor have I ever sat around spamming at the starport. I simply manage my business and let the market trends set by my customer's purchasing patterns influence my prices.
Yogol
Mon Feb 14, 2005 2:50 am
#13
You got to see the resellingfrom the customers side of view.
There are like200 player cities and probably 300 or so furnishement sellers.
If no-one resells, the costumer has to go through 300 vendors to get the paintings he want, often on remote planets or cities.
That takes alot of time, time which he could spend fingthing or roleplaying or crafting or whatever.
At the other hand if he knows that one particular reselling store has the items, he'll pay more for them. Much more.
Because he saves alot of time with it.
That's the thing with reselling : it works because alot of people rather spend 400k on a painting and buy it in ten minutes, then spending 10k on it and looking four hours to get it.
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