Merchant Archive
Thread: Merchant Poll: Have Poachers hurt your business?
I wrote: Your stupidity amazes me. This does directly hurt me. Every poached sale from a poached vendor is a credit that should have been in my pocket or the pocket of a real merchants.If it didn't hurt me directly, I wouldn't be as angered by it.
Balkstar wrote:
This poll is inspired by Balkstar's post.
Do you feel/know that vendor poachers have stolen your business? Are you losing sales/credits to these THEIVES?
Please respond with your yes/no answer (real merchants only---poachers can comment but by definition cannot participate)
Please also include the estimated credit value of your lost business to date.
oooh, i get to post the first reply.
YES DAMMIT. I HAVE LOST SALES DUE TO THESE THEIVES!
estimated lost sales due to poachers for my business exceed 400 Million credits since launch. But according to Dragonscout, that's really not directly affecting me. (and no i'm not kidding about the amount. epc is a billion credit corporation)
Impact of these losses: Going from employing up to 26 real players harvesting for me to 7. POACHERS ARE SCUM!
Yes
It is difficult to place a credit figure on it but let me give you a history of my operations.
Months ago before it was common knowledge that you could just take the Merchant Skills and set up everything and then drop them a WeaponSmith who I had bought items from while she was grinding to master was trying to run her store front with her one bulky vendor. The costs were high (as the maintenance was higher for those vendors back then) and she wanted multiple vendors for different stock. She hired me. I made nearly 7 million credits in just a couple of months running vendors for her and that was off of a 10% charge for each sale. That relationship ended because she got out of the business and went on to other things.
How many of those relationships have I lost the opportunity at since then? Several I am sure. The potential revenue is certainly in the area of 20-30 million credits for me over the past 6 months or so. I tried for a while to replace that relationship, even working on a deal with another Weaponsmith who didn't have operations on Tatooine that would have imported his weapons. That didn't work out, basically becasuse he could run everything himself without any real cost.
Poachers are those who exploit the merchant profession by obtaining vendors, then dropping all merchant skills, but still keep and use the vendors. They do not keep the skill points invested in merchant to keep the benefits the profession enables.
BaronZemm wrote:
What is a merchant poacher?
As it is now, with resellers, I could easily have no merchant skills what so ever, no vendors at all, and lay down the same power corporation dingoboi has going, and could probably sell it even better because I could undercut him by selling it on the boards in bulk. He could buy me out, but big deal because it would be easy enough to match him in production, and then he would have excess stock which would force HIM to sell lower, which in the long run would help the consumer by lowering overall prices. lol. (see.. this stuff would be fun to play with, just unfortunately, you don't need merchant at all to do it.)
You cannot directly prove that money is being 'stolen' or 'taken' from YOU(general YOU towards merchants overall), because you cannot prove without a doubt, that the money would have gone to YOU. You can guesstimate it. You can say, well... in a perfect world that people were forced to rely upon merchants to sell things, then yes maybe that money would have gone to you, but it doesnt work that way, at all. There are plenty of other ways to sell things, and I know a lot of people that use those other ways... in shadowfire at least. Hell, as it is now, I know people who refuse to use merchant, poached vendors or no, because of the crappy tools you have for even the SINGLE benefit you do have -- vendors.
So, a challenge, since you used me as part of your inspiration for this poll, show me, in facts, exactly how you are losing money DIRECTLY because of poachers.
DocSavag's post came close, but it would have worked better if the person had stopped working with him because she/he decided to master merchant themselves and then dropped it. THAT would have been a direct loss of money. Her getting out of the crafting business has nothing to do with vendor poachers. Also, you can't prove that because there are more vendor poachers out there now, that that is the reason he can't set up clients like that as easily now... it might be because if said client uses your vendor, they still have to do twice as much work... get the items together, then give them to the merchant, make sure he knows the correct prices, wait for the merchant to stock it, and then finally recheck the vendor to make sure it is all done right. That is a pain in the butt. And then on top of that the merchant wants a cut of the profits? lol. I don't think so.
So anyways, if you are going to have your poll, fine. But show some facts other than.. "we think it is this way, so it is this way, and no one else has a clue cause they just want our skills for free." lol
Easy, it's logic. Imagine that there are 10 vendors selling a product, and 2 of them belong to players who don't have the skills anymore. Imagine that those 2 vendors never existed in the first place... Where would the customers have gone? To the other 8 who have the skills of course!
See, that was easy. Your argument could have worked, but as only 10% of the player community reads the forum, there is really no need to prove that the 90% others just shop at vendors, even if a minority of them use 'other ways' of buying what they need... It's obvious.Do you have to prove that the sky is blue?
I grow weary of this. I KNOW i have lost sales to poachers. I KNOW some of my larger competitors don't have merchant and probably most of the smaller ones. I keep good tabs on the competition.
I really doubt you have the dedication to do what I've done as a businessperson. Nobody elsein all the galaxies has that I'm aware of. You could, but managing that many employees is not small task and took up most of my gameplay time. We aren't talking cross server lots trades here. This requires daily work and alot of it. I did enjoy it. That's the 'game' for me, playing the economic one. Exploiters take away some of my fun.
While debatable, I would think most would not pick up merchant (by merchant I mean a skill that enables any vendor, even business 3). Those free credits aren't so free when you have to finally invest the skillpoints.
And yes, estimates are estimates only. However, I didn't just pick 400M out of the air. My estimates are based upon data i've collected since the launch of the game. Even if I was 200M off on my estimate, that would still be 200M in sales lost and I don't consider that peanuts. (and i know of several merchants who are my direct competitors who don't have the skills and know of several as well who would drop the business because they WON'T invest the skillpoints and don't wish to go through elaborate 'deals' with real merchants.)
I also know of several customers who no longer buy from me because they can get it cheaper from a poacher' who likely wouldn't even be selling because they can't afford the skillpoints. To me, that is pretty direct proof this hurts me.
I would hope the one thing we can agree on is that 'poachers' do hurt other merchants through lost sales. If it weren't so easy to do, people wouldn't do it. If it required the skillpoint investment, people would be forced to make decisions where they allocate those precious skillpoints, as the game was designed. While there certainly are other ways to sell, the vendors are still the most efficient for in game transactions and are are open 24/7.
I know you do disagree with me on many points and you are entitled to your opinion even if it is wrong.
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We won't positively know till the vendors do require skillpoints, but I'm betting it will improve the merchant profession and my business. How will you bet?
If you focus on an individual, it breaks down because one person cannot blame any imaginary loss of money upon vendor poaching because there is no proof of it. They could be losing money to other merchants, artisans with business 3, the bazaar, the forums, direct sales, or the dreaded vendor poachers.
That being said, I still think it is a fairly minor issue, especially considering all the other ways to sell items, and the more important lack of tools/abilities that merchants have. But, for now, if you want to just focus on vendors and merchants as a group, you win.
hehe. What IS the sky? as you go up into the 'sky', and you look 'around' you, is it blue? If you cup a portion of the 'sky' in your hand, does it still apear blue? as you get closer to the atmosphere, does it stay blue? or, does it slowly change to black? lol. Anyways, the sky is actually supposed to be more of a violet than a blue, but because of the way our eyes work, the blue is more visible to us. And, yes, a lot of people felt the need to 'prove' what color the sky was and/or why it appears blue. I don't, mainly because it has already been done.