Scamming customers.

[GamingBuddy Shane]

I have raised things to ridiculous price, like orange juice and apple juice to $10 and then do a discount to market price and I'm getting a lot more customers. I done that to half my products and I have noticed I'm making a lot more money, possibly double to what I usually make. Is this some kind of exploit?

[Spazmatism]

this is how actual discounts in actual markets work

[GamingBuddy Shane]

I just found that when you raise the price to stupid levels, the wholesale event will buy at that price. So up the prices and wait for the wholesale event to buy at full outrageous prices :)

[Bunky]

Originally posted by Spazmatism:

this is how actual discounts in actual markets work :sothappy:

I know, if the devs patched that up it would clearly solidify how they don't want players to make meaningful profits.

[Stonehammers]

The Kohl's strategy.

[ImHelping]

I don't have problems with others using scam prices by itself.

My only problem is this sort of thing always leads to begging to nerf it, patting themselves on the back for "Getting the mean exploit removed" then ignoring everyone playing "fair" having their gains thrown in the dumpster.

I'm still selling out 8 boxes of yogurt a day for still at or slightly below market values (10% off fair price veal, nobody gives a ♥♥♥♥. 30%-50% yogurt, nonstop madness). The profits are not that big because of that even if everyone is buying it. Even if everyone is buying it instead of RNG having days they crave it or days they ignore it.

[PnzrNorm]

This exact thing happened at a local IRL grocery store by me when they closed down. "Everything must go" "Up to 90% off" but a lot of the actual prices didn't change, they just slapped a colorful sticker on them and tons more people shopped there.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by PnzrNorm:

This exact thing happened at a local IRL grocery store by me when they closed down. "Everything must go" "Up to 90% off" but a lot of the actual prices didn't change, they just slapped a colorful sticker on them and tons more people shopped there.

I would not be surprised if in this game base price has a huge skewing for customer willingness to buy.

I can't get people to buy discount veal at "price gouge" (a sensible seeming goal because it is high volume per shelf space, and one of the few items with a 5-6 dollar profit at market value)

My end result sale price is a dollar under market, the "scam" base price is $10 over the market. Still a real deal because customers are still paying a full dollar under the market value.

So where is my "So EZ so OP" sales? Nowhere. Why? Probably because even at a very real bargain, that is still a $15 product (instead of 16.40ish if I charged exactly marker normally). Didn't even quite sell a single shelf/box worth (32 per shelf/box) at 40% off

Meanwhile, cheap products sold on sale will have people rabid for them even at just 30% off without it being much cheaper than market value. with of course, tiny profit per item because it is a tiny value item.

EDIT: Just to rub it in. Even when taking the sale off of yogurt to more easily compare. People still buy more thirty cents under average yogurt, than they buy discount "still a dollar under average" veal.

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by ImHelping:

I can't get people to buy discount veal at "price gouge" where the end result sale price is a dollar under market, but the base price is $10 over the market. Because even a for real dollar under the market value is still a $15 product (instead of 16.40 if I charged exactly marker normally). Didn't even quite sell a single shelf/box worth (32 per shelf/box).

Meanwhile, cheap products sold on sale will have people rabid for them.

I haven't price gouged before sale as per the OP. (I briefly considered it but chose not to) But I can concur with what you're saying. In my first 3 days of sales, a different item each day, they sold like mad. Mayo, Ketchup, and then salt. Had those marked down by 50% and sold a large volume. I decided to try dishwasher tablets at a 25% discount and they sold typical to a day they're not on sale. I have an overstock now and will probably try 50% off the next day. It does seem that lower priced items sell better than higher priced items while running a sale.

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by Knottypine:

Originally posted by ImHelping:

I can't get people to buy discount veal at "price gouge" where the end result sale price is a dollar under market, but the base price is $10 over the market. Because even a for real dollar under the market value is still a $15 product (instead of 16.40 if I charged exactly marker normally). Didn't even quite sell a single shelf/box worth (32 per shelf/box).

Meanwhile, cheap products sold on sale will have people rabid for them.

I haven't price gouged before sale as per the OP. (I briefly considered it but chose not to) But I can concur with what you're saying. In my first 3 days of sales, a different item each day, they sold like mad. Mayo, Ketchup, and then salt. Had those marked down by 50% and sold a large volume. I decided to try dishwasher tablets at a 25% discount and they sold typical to a day they're not on sale. I have an overstock now and will probably try 50% off the next day. It does seem that lower priced items sell better than higher priced items while running a sale.

Yeah I just tried ninety percent off veal, while making the wild as hell price adjustments to maintain a dollar under market value for a "real deal" (which means the base price is over 140 jesus), and also dumps the profits to multiple dollars worse than just selling it normally at or slightly under market average.

Nobody cares. While another box worth of steak is sold across the day (probably because it is under $11 market, shame the profits are barely over a dollar default so sales ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ won't really improve profits if it even attracts anyone if I bother).

As a side effect of all this. It seems I have lost about ten customers a day because of how I am testing things on sale that nobody gives a ♥♥♥♥ about even when it is a great deal. compared to "8 boxes of low discount yogurt sold a day at still terrible profits each" acting as bait, at least.

[Knottypine]

I did run another day and marked my dishwasher tablets at 50% off my regular price, and they did indeed sell quite a bit. I actually went through my entire overstock. I was making less than $5 per unit, maybe closer to $4.50, but sold around 240 units or so. Profited over $1000 on those alone. (91 customers)

[Bunky]

Interesting. Customers not caring about discounts on pricier items, would explain the experience I had. It might be fun to play around with this, just to figure it out. Shame that changing prices on a large scale, is still such a pain (even now, after a price altering update).

Based on what's come before, I suspect this feature's potential is severely hampered in some way. But there's also a fairly strong possibility that it's just kinda random as well.

[appbbjohn4]

I have a max store and doubled all my prices and attached a 50% discount to them (to bring them back to the same price). I had 5 less customers than I usually average and did about $600 less in sales. Don't think there is an easy exploit here.

I have done a few (5 or 6) high margin items (3 were produce) at 20% off my normal prices and had 25 more customers and about $3000 more in sales in a day. Of course it takes longer to close out the day and restock your store so I don't know what you are gaining there.

TLDR: haven't found a true exploit yet with discounting

[ImHelping]

Originally posted by appbbjohn4:

I have a max store and doubled all my prices and attached a 50% discount to them (to bring them back to the same price). I had 5 less customers than I usually average and did about $600 less in sales. Don't think there is an easy exploit here.

I have done a few (5 or 6) high margin items (3 were produce) at 20% off my normal prices and had 25 more customers and about $3000 more in sales in a day. Of course it takes longer to close out the day and restock your store so I don't know what you are gaining there.

TLDR: haven't found a true exploit yet with discounting

Plus all the wild differences in value per item does not help matters either.

I was figuring I would try a non scam x4 eggs because you can cram a lot of those on a shelf (and I do meat wholesale because it is nearby). 50% off at exactly market value set as the base price... loses money. Negative $0.49 at the time.

Back to yogurt! 50% off base price makes... 0.10 profit.
(and as I have already found, 30% off of yogurt is more than enough to attract people to crave yogurt faster than it goes on the shelf even at a little over market value to at least earn 0.60 each).

So yeah. you need it to be an item people will bother with buying more at any price, an item that won't dumpster your profits on discount compared to other items skewing your math even more, etc.

[Grace1957]

Doubt the devs will see it, they don't pay attention to anything we say in here.

[Bunky]

Well I've tried a discount on a "high" profit item because it was affordable, and it didn't sell. Then to see what item sales spark attention, I tried bumping up all my base prices so I could afford a 50% reduction across the board -- this resulted in less customers than usual for me as well.

First of all, this player feedback is terrible. I don't know what the game is trying to communicate by making lower prices on goods generally have no, to detrimental effects on sales. I appreciate that if we could run real world scams in store, this would make the sales feature less interesting. Essentially just a sign we slap on any price for a customer bump. But to have it cause the opposite effect is broken.

It strongly seems that for a sales price to be effective, it will need to be lower than market price. Which is a relatively interesting decision for players to make. That much is only slightly frustrating, because the game is so starved of ways to progress at an enjoyable pace.

What's genuinely bad though, is that the sale sign drives away customers from prices they are otherwise okay with. If anything that should have no, to a very small positive effect; that can grow much larger, the lower the price goes. It's not that charging the same prices with sales signs attached is a run away victory or anything, you still would need to stock for the extra demand.

In short, the sales mechanic seems really shallow. When it didn't need to be. I won't be individually changes all those prices again to get anything out of it.