Merchant Archive

I would say remove the entry fee and start to increase your prices until you no longer sell out. Get to know your regular customers, some might be stopping by for specific resources. Search for and harvest specific resources, that means the good resources that armour smiths and weapon smiths look for, that will get you a better CPU, and if you find a good class 4 liquid petrochemical fuel or what ever that doc resources in called get some of that as well.

If you just wand to sell for 1 cpu you can properly unload most of your sales on the bazaar. That means 25 stacks of 6k resources to a total of 150K resources per account. But if you sell for less then market prices you should expect market prices.

You could keep the entry fee, but just add good repeat customers that do not resell to the entry list so they do not have to pay. If I came across a vendor selling good resources a 1 cpu I would properly but as much as I could afford, after all I currently sell my weapons for 20 cpu so that is a healthy profit.

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scarrz wrote:

I have Merchant 0401 so I can have a merchant tent and 3 vendors to sell:

* Resources

* Sliced weapons

* Everything else

My sign simply says "xxxxx's1cpu resources" - no colors, no fancy frills.

On the resource vendor, I simply sell all resources, regardless of quantity at 1cpu. It does well.

I dont intend to redo Master Merchant, I have what I need.

I have an alt account so between my 2 accounts, I have 19 different harvestors. So each day, I can add roughly 100-200k of resources, depending on varying % rates.

Anyhow. Originally, I had no entry fee to the tent and was posting my resources, to have them sell daily. Whatever resource I posted, it sold. Whatever quantity, it sold.

This got me thinking that people were simply buying them to resell - leaving my vendor constantly empty. Not a good image to have.

So I put a $1,000 entry fee. Sales slowed a little bit as I assume I scared some of the casual fly-by-nighters away, but all the 100k resources were still selling.

I went to the entreme and put the largest $50k entrance fee on.

This is where my issue starts.

My sales for all the >100k resources has somewhat stopped. I do sell the odd 100k resource, but I am noticing that I am accumulating more and more of the 100k resources I am posting per day as some people have stopped coming. And thats fine too - lots of stock!

I have now built up a nice respectable surplus of stock resources; all 1cpu and I feel comfortable that the people buying them are buying them from need, not because its the cheapest and good for resell.

But I am constantly getting /tells and emails from people who entered the tent and want their money back. I get told "My macro hit the button to pay you" and "I didnt realise it was so much", and my favourite to the fully stocked vendor "Stop advertising for things that arent true" (I did clarift this. The person wanted steel, but I didnt have any). Having no steel hardly constitutes as an empty vendor in my book but hey! What can you do.

I am no ninny and I sure as hell didnt come down in the last shower, How someone's macro can accept an entrance fee to a tent is beyond my comprehension, but I get the distinct feeling that people are paying based on a 1.5cpu worse cost scenario, not finding THEIR resource and then complaining.

What are other "MERCHANTS" stand on this? If I remove the fee, I will have no resources at the end of each day. And lots of people WILL be viewing an empty vendor until I get home.

And for the 1 star nazi's go ahead, I have turned off the star system so I dont see them anyhow

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Here's my advice. Start checking your emails, see if a few people are mass buying everything when you stock it. If you can, ban them from your tent. I believe in first come, first serve but if they are just buying to resell which results in your vendor being empty that makes your shop look bad. I personally won't revisit a vendor that is empty. I will keep coming back to a nicely stocked vendor. Also add some generic item named "for special orders email me" and price it at 99999999. Then get a stock of backpacks. You can do special orders this way and hopefully somebody won't be a jerk and buy somebody else's order. While I'm almost master merchant again I haven't used a tent or tried to see if you could ban from them, but I would ban somebody for buying special orders because that's just down right rude!!

Seems to me that charging a 50k entrance fee would scare away the people you seem to want to attract as customers (I'd never pay that , even if I had some sort of guarantee that the resource I wanted was actually available!). The only people who will pay this entrance fee are the re-sellers who are making much more than the entrance fee by breaking up your 100k blocks and selling them on!

Also, have you any hope of selling anything from your other two vendors with such a high fee? Seems unlikely to me.

So you sell out daily? Well, that's excellent news as far as I can see. What about putting a note on your tent sign every time you restock, so it says:

XXX'x 1cpu Resources - re-stocked daily
Last Re-stocked: 9 June 2004

This way when people come and find the vendor empty they won't be irritated by yet another empty vendor as they'll know you've just sold out recently, no fault of your own.

Also, what about re-stocking at different times of the day? Perhaps you've only got one or two people buying your resources because they're crafty enough to know when you'll be in stock again!

And finally - you have records, of course, of who's buying all your stuff. Why don't you ask the purchasers to see what they're doing with it? If they're not willing to speak to you, what about getting a friend or guildmate to approach them to buy resources? If what you suspect is true, and they're selling on your resources at 3-4cpu and making a ton of profit, just ban them from the tent.

Just my 0.2cr... to close, I wish I had your problems - people buying everything you're selling every time you re-stock... what a nightmare Just kidding, I do see the problem!

Interesting.

I had a friend who left the game back in Februaryof this year. He left his merchant tent up, but left it unstocked, however on the outside he justposted a bunch of jibberish. It didn't make any sense at all, if u were to read it, and it gave no clear impression that there was any stock inthe tent. He left the entrance fee to his tent up at 5 credits.

Anyways, my friend came back to SWG a few days ago. His entrance fee had made him 77K in credits. I am sure there may have been some unsatisfied customers, but as someone who has no merchant skills whatsoever I am surprised at how much these entrance fees actually generate over time. Also I am surprised at people going into a place regardless of whether they know what is inside or not.

Var NAGANO

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NAGANO1 wrote:

Interesting.

I had a friend who left the game back in Februaryof this year. He left his merchant tent up, but left it unstocked, however on the outside he justposted a bunch of jibberish. It didn't make any sense at all, if u were to read it, and it gave no clear impression that there was any stock inthe tent. He left the entrance fee to his tent up at 5 credits.

Anyways, my friend came back to SWG a few days ago. His entrance fee had made him 77K in credits. I am sure there may have been some unsatisfied customers, but as someone who has no merchant skills whatsoever I am surprised at how much these entrance fees actually generate over time. Also I am surprised at people going into a place regardless of whether they know what is inside or not.

Var NAGANO

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They do it because 5 credits doesn't mean anything in the game.

Did he have his empty vendor on the map the whole time? If so this is the real crime!!