Vendor Fees proposal

[Goodmann]

I propose that vendor fees only be taken when a item is "sold" -just like a sales tax. This would vastly improve dead shards lack of vendors/items. No one keeps high end items stocked on dead shards bc of they don't want to pay 100k+ in vendor fees a day for 30 days until a item sells. Do something like this combined with the new vendor search and you have a good start. What good is a vendor search on 75% of the shards that don't have any kind of vendor activity... it's useless

 

[Riyana]

Well...

That could possibly deal a serious blow to auctions for one thing.

But let's face it: many would just abuse it as extra storage. Instead of (or in addition to) the scores of empty gold-holding vendors we have now, we'd have vendors maxed out with holiday junk for whatever the max price is that you can set.

 

[Goodmann]

Well...

That could possibly deal a serious blow to auctions for one thing.

But let's face it: many would just abuse it as extra storage. Instead of (or in addition to) the scores of empty gold-holding vendors we have now, we'd have vendors maxed out with holiday junk for whatever the max price is that you can set.

Yeah i guess your right. Sucks that a new vendor search has finally arrived and only about 25% of the shards have active vendors

 

[cazador]

Well they could charge when the item is taken off the vendor or sold as well..I don't put a lot of things on vendors worth over 3-5m for this simple fact..if it doesn't sell in a week or two I feel obliged to lower the price and or take it off completely and just lose the fee I've paid..I'd use vendor more if it were free..and or had a 1 time charge per item based on value..say anything less that 500k is free and 500k-5m 1% 5m-10m 3% 10m-100m 4% 100m+ 6%...I mean you have already taken away any "shopping mall" type areas as 90% of people will just place vendors at their homes..at least try to get EVERYONE to use them so the search is populated


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[Captn Norrington]

I really don't understand how people with rares vendors, keep like 2 billion worth of rares on their vendor for weeks and weeks without much of it selling, their probably losing a few hundred million in vendor fee's that's completely wasted.

 

[kRUXCg7]

Tried some Magincia stall vendors in the past for resources. Lost more gold than I earned. No fun involved.

 

[old gypsy]

Tried some Magincia stall vendors in the past for resources. Lost more gold than I earned. No fun involved.

Sadly, New Magincia stalls seem to be a fail overall, at least on regular shards.

 

[MissEcho]

Having had people twice 'spite' my pet vendors in magincia by bidding like 2 mil or something to 'take' it over and then not even bothering to place a stall/vendor themselves, and my stable unable to accommodate the pets forcing me to lose time and money I have given up on them. I also lost a good 5- 10 mil twice as I didn't log into that account for a week and for some reason on both times this was the week when the account was taken over.

I recently put up house vendors back on my home shard on Oceania, selling stuff like rune books, spell books, stolen goods, marties and crafted gear etc. The vendor fees are KILLING ME and although I ran vendor successfully for 5 or more years before on probably the most productive shop on my shard, I just cannot see my vendors lasting much longer than another month or so. I placed a million gold on each for their 'bank' and have watched daily as the vendor fees just chew into what few items I sell so that it seems I may just have to not bother any more. No item on any of my vendors is more than around 800k and even then that is the few things not the majority of things. Most items are less than 30k averaging around 5-20k.

I don't know when the fees went up, but I do know the population is so small it is not really viable with the fees as they are. I would be much happier to pay a one times 'sales tax' of 5% whenever an item is sold or 'removed' from a vendor. At least then I could stock stuff and it wouldn't matter if it sat there for months without selling and only cost me when it did or when I removed it.

I am giving it til the million I put on them runs out and then removing the vendor when it does. I don't feel like just throwing my money into the abyss just to ensure there is a full mage spellbook available for sale for the odd time when a new char needs one or someone who is decorating and doesn't have a glass worker there to make em a lamp.

 

[Tomarke]

Same here. I have many things I wish to sell. When I started playing the game again a couple of years ago it was with the full intention of putting up vendors, I even designed my house to have vendors in it. But once I calculated my potential vendor fees in a slow moving economy it just wasn't worth it.

With vendor search coming online I'm kicking around the idea again but in all reality it will probably not happen. Normally by the time you end up selling one or two items it usually only covers the vendor fees. Just really doesn't seem worth the effort.

I just recently started selling things on the trade forums here at stratics. I like doing this much more because I can advertise and if nobody is interested I'm not out any money. I do use a vendor as a mechanism to complete the trade tho. Once a price is agreed upon I place the item on a private vendor for that price and then take the buyer to it. It saves me having to count many 1mil checks in the trade window and the buyer gets to view the item in a vendor before purchase rather than a trade window. Win/win.

 

[4gregu]

I think anything under a certain price on a vendor should be exempt from vendor fees, like 100k. But I understand such a system could still be exploited to gain free storage. (who would buy that 16th anniversary serving tray for 100k?) So maybe a better system would be anything a certain percentage over VDP (vendor determined price) would be free? Perhaps 200% over? I don't know, but the current vendor fee system DOES need some attention. The days of being able to keep a well stocked "basic needs" vendor on most shards has gone away... and that's sad.

 

[Doubleplay]

I am in total agreement with the OP before he waffled. Using vendors as storage could be averted if vendor items for sale were counted as part of the house inventory. I know this would be a fiery issue, but really, the existing situation of fees preventing more vending activity should be addressed.

 

[kRUXCg7]

I agree with Doubleplay

 

[Riyana]

I am in total agreement with the OP before he waffled. Using vendors as storage could be averted if vendor items for sale were counted as part of the house inventory. I know this would be a fiery issue, but really, the existing situation of fees preventing more vending activity should be addressed.

Hmm... that might work, though it will still hurt people who like or want to keep large sales inventories. People still won't want to stock basics like they used to if it's going to suck up all their lockdowns. Vendor malls will be a thing of the past too.

I agree that the vendor fee is problematic. I gave up trying to have vendors myself for the same reason other posters are stating: it costs too much in upkeep to be worthwhile for most things. I'm just not sure what a good solution is. I think we should see how the vendor search ends up affecting vendors before jumping into any other changes.

 

[Prose Edda]

Magincia failed because the fees are absolutely outlandish. After one day I opted out. I remember saying to myself "Are you $%^^ing kidding me!". High vendor fees in Magincnia and regular vendor have a had prolonged negative effect on UO and yet still this goes ignored and the has fallen on deaf ears.

It might be worthwhile for a Dev to login on some of the shards and see what's going on with regards to vendors. This is especially detrimental to returning players.

If vendors and stalls are essentially non-existent on 90% of the shards something is not working. "Oh no your charging too much then!" Yeah right! I have no intention of giving away hard drops on the cheap because I can't afford the fees involved.

This problem with high fees has been compounded by the fact that over the last year or two (especially with the introduction of shard shields) the vast majority of players move their goods for sale to Atlantic because that is the only chance liquidate your inventory. The result is more and more shards end up looking empty and returning players login to their shard and go "Wtf happened!? This shard is dead. Man....UO used to be thriving. I guess I'll go try (Enter name of game here)"

I no longer spend time on my home shard and very rarely login to that shard because it's deserted and I have no chance of farming items and selling them there. So in order to adapt I've been "forced" to migrate to a shards where my connection is far worse in order to sell any goods I receive when the RNG happens to smile upon me.

Some good suggestion in this thread.

1. Flat fee at the time an item sells
2. Attach Vendor storage to house storage.
3. Change BOD Books to 1 item count storage

It also worth noting that all of the good suggestions in this thread to remedy this issue above have been put forth in 2-3 years ago and still here we are 2-3 years later talking about the same thing.

 

[Goldberg-Chessy]

If you want to vendor items without having to do any work at all you should be paying large vendor fees.
If you don't like the fees on your dead shard you can always just work a bit and spam your items ingame and then not worry about paying huge fees.
It's your choice