Stone Producers Union- SPU

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Guest

Post by Guest » 23.02.2010, 22:56

Felix, no offense, but you are. I refer to this in your opening missive of this thread.
Ok I have noticed recently that Prices have been varying quite a lot on the stone market. And I have tried to up the price to roughly 26.5.... But alas I buy out all the lower offers and put them back for sale at a higher price, which makes me personally lose money on that sale, but in my mind it makes all stone producers gain... Yet I check back today and I've sold less than 1million stones out of my 150million I put on yesterday.
Now how is 26.50 a bargain? hehe :) The NPC charges 27. Azer sells stone at 18 each. Now THAT's what I call a good deal for the seller and buyer. Even if the seller/stone producer had to buy the power and water to mine the stone.

How about aiming for value (let's say 20 for example), rather than monopolizing the pricing on the market? Is 20 per stone too little. If so, why? I'm just asking, not demanding, nor yelling here.

I mean, I can mine my own stone, if I really have to (when market prices are high (25 and up) or lower priced stone producers are booked up). But I would rather buy from another company to help the Kapiland economy out, as long as their prices were reasonable. Do you see where I'm getting at?

Just food for thought here. When I tried to buy stone from Vercon BV (abbr.) in game, and simply asked, "So what kind of deals do we have today for stone? I need 2.4 million." Then I get an answer as if he was a zombie saying, "I cannot give deals, only what the market price is. Sorry." And I left thinking, "WTF?" I was speaking in a jovial tone and happy to buy from a friendly face here on the forum. Instead I got a hand to my face? Dunno what that was about. So I went elsewhere and got my stone. Now I'm not knocking the guy, I guess he thought I was trying to bribe him down to prices below what your union has in mind. Or he doesn't know my humor. :)

I hope you know this reply here is not an attack. Just asking questions that other may not thought of to ask, or were afraid to ask in fear of hurting people's feelings. I figure I had nothing to lose to ask. lol

Guest

Post by Guest » 24.02.2010, 16:20

I don't look at this as an attack. :)
Here's a reply to some of your questions:


I'm the only SPU staff member next to Felixbluindustries in this union.


That's why I only sell stones on the market, because that's where the union operates.
Selling stones through contracts for a price that's completely against the union ideals would be a sort of 'betrayal' to the union in my eyes. ;)
I said something among those lines in the reply as well, if you thought it was something among the lines of a 'zombie reply' then sorry about that. :)
And yes, the 'bribing' thing did kinda come to mind, I had gotten several similar messages from other people around those days as well.
I do also recall sending you to another player outside of the union that did sell stones cheaper, just because I won't sell them doesn't mean that I won't try to help. :P


As for selling around 20: that would be too low for me personally, as even while the market was unstable and before the union was started, I still sold for an average price of 25.50

Guest

Post by Guest » 24.02.2010, 16:50

Though by stabilizing the market at 26.5 you are removing the competition in pricing. For when there was no stabilization there were competing offers reducing the price and better for us customers, now we have 2 prices usually yours or NPC. This is a syndicate so it is supposed to be for the better of the members so we cant complain and this encouraged by Upjers.

Guest

Post by Guest » 24.02.2010, 17:15

Just to clear things up the union is not doing well. :wink:

There are a hundred million stones at least on the market for lower than the union price, and 30 million stones on there for 24.88
caps!


kingrewt is officially winning. :P
Last edited by Guest on 24.02.2010, 17:16, edited 1 time in total.

Guest

Post by Guest » 24.02.2010, 17:16

I do also recall sending you to another player outside of the union that did sell stones cheaper, just because I won't sell them doesn't mean that I won't try to help.
You never did any such thing. Out of frustration, I bought my stones from an unknown company in the market for 25.50

Anyways, even kingrewt understands where I am coming from here.

Why not put your stones up for sale in the Realm 2 Purchase board and sell them for 17.99. Give ol' Azer some competition. hehe Just an idea.

The tone of my email was never contextually towards getting a "deal", I was being goofy but wanted to be a patron to your business since I thought we were cool here on the forum. Although I do ask the buyer if they give a seller an incentive (discount) for larger orders. That's about it and that's just called haggling.

I tend to forget, not everyone is going to understand American humor, no more than I would understand Dutch or Ugandan. :D

Guest

Post by Guest » 24.02.2010, 20:57

Opus wrote:
I do also recall sending you to another player outside of the union that did sell stones cheaper, just because I won't sell them doesn't mean that I won't try to help.
You never did any such thing. Out of frustration, I bought my stones from an unknown company in the market for 25.50
Then I must have done that to a few others, as I said, I got several messages about similar subjects back then. :)

---

also kingrewt:
our direct 'mission' is not to have a single exact price.
I personally hope that the SPU can try to stop people from undercutting by huge amounts, which lowers the price very fast while that's not needed.

Example:
if someone is selling for 26.20, and you want to be cheaper, there's no need to drop all the way to 25.00, because 26.15 will also make you cheaper.

that is a form of stabilization as well, trying to make the price differences vary less than they have been doing by stopping the major undercutters,
and having people undercut by smaller amounts.
that's what the SPU does as well, it's not ONLY trying to get the price to a higher or better average.

And people have always been selling at the 'union price', the only thing we're trying to do is stop it from dropping too fast.
we're not actually raising anything about the price, we're just trying to have it drop slower by trying to stop huge undercutters.

Guest

Post by Guest » 24.02.2010, 21:17

Ok let me clear up some issues here.

Wh yam I saying 26.5? Tehre isn't a reason and it isn't just my pockets. How many unions would you join which said "We want to drop the price of your products!!!!" ?

None really. No-one would join a union trying to make them less money. Therefore I looked at the markets and say 26.5 as an average with a varient.

I assumed that if we got enough members who produced a large amount of stones then we could stabilize the market at this price and everyone would be happy.

Then over time we could move the prices down and slowly increase the market through more people atually BUYING stones from the market. The thing is most players don't appreciate that large players buy from the NPC and via contract if they want the price of that product to be lowered. They assume that the people will just buy their prodcut if it is the lowest price on the market.

It seems that we are fialign to attract an audience because the price is "too high"... I am all for dropping prices of stones down a bit, I just don't want people undercutting each other by 2caps at a time.

If you don't believe I am for the prices to be cut then I shall remind you of when there was the 2 unions before one tryign to raise power prices one trying to lower, on realm 2 at the time i was a power producer and I was all for the price staying the same or lowering, not going up though.

Well I gues that is all I have to say for now.

If you guys were assuming that I was being an arrogant little kid who wanted to raise the price to 26.99 per stone then I am extremely sorry to disappoint you.

-Felix

Guest

Post by Guest » 25.02.2010, 17:21

Stone Producers Union
Germany, 25-02-2010.

Due to client complaints and low union activity I hereby officially resign from my position in the Stone Producers Union.

This means that I am no longer a leader or even a member of the SPU.
The forum shall be held in my name until another leader is able to take it over completely.
I will return to selling stones at the more competitive prices that I used to sell at.
I wish the remaining members of the SPU all the best in their attempts to keep this thing going.

Regards,
VerConMat Industries BV
#316018, R2, Germany.

Guest

Post by Guest » 25.02.2010, 17:24

Alright then this failed. End of. Closed. Vamos.

Guest

Post by Guest » 25.02.2010, 17:29

Wow, Opus and kingrewt really got to you guys... :shock:

Guest

Post by Guest » 25.02.2010, 17:39

I never wanted the end of SPU but a better market for us buyers. Every market should have the right to stabilization of their markets, what i was complaining about was the high price of the stones. Stabilization and lowering are different and thus I think my other syndicate should not have come into conflict which it seems to have arisen, so I am sorry if my syndicate has offended any of yous but I just thought stone prices had been kept at a sustained price for a lengthy period of time.

Guest

Post by Guest » 25.02.2010, 18:34

My personal reasons for quitting the Stone Producers Union are beyond the recent 'protests' against the price that the SPU sold for.

It's a mixture of that, and the fact that the union wasn't able to get an active following,
along with the fact that one of our more active members has recently written some comments which made me doubt his 'loyalty' to the union (don't take that one personal, you know who you are.)

Putting that all together: The Stone Producers Union was going downhill, while it was never very high on that hill to begin with.

For those reasons, I personally quit the Stone Producers Union, leaving behind a single active member, who then decided to close the whole thing down.

Guest

Post by Guest » 25.02.2010, 19:16

The problem with unions nowadays is that TIB takes away most potential loyal members. :wink:
As well as that, TIB covers almost everything so if you make a union 50% of the potential members will be part of TIB.
I think it would be quite exciting if all the very active forum people (e.g VerConMat, Felix, kingrewt and me etc. ) would unite with the NFU and the FTU to make a big union to have a little competition with TIB. Then we would stand a chance. :D

Guest

Post by Guest » 25.02.2010, 20:01

sergiurocks506 wrote:Wow, Opus and kingrewt really got to you guys... :shock:
What's the point?

We had few followers and those who we did have seemed to not apprecate the rules and what can we do... expel them from the union? That would damage us more than them.

I would love a uunion which would stabilize prices fro all products and move as necessary, but in a game such as kapilands where most of the communication is done privatley or via the forums which are under used or via the faxes to which people can only respond privatley, there isn't much hope of uniting all the big players or even the small ones.

Guest

Post by Guest » 25.02.2010, 21:15

Well then a new Union would be making. As Sergiu said TIB is a bring problem and with its 1 union rule. TIB's big advantage is that it is long established and good offers given to small companies.. Though a new would be good. FTU, SPU and NFU merging would be nice but unlikely as each has fatal flaws. Though if some active people were to work together we could get something going and learn from others mistakes. Anyone interested?

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