I have placed a few items in the Trade Depot to sell at very low prices, they have been there for about 12 hours, in the past they have always sold at the same prices within a few minutes.
Is anyone else experiencing this?
Also, if i have too many items and my storage is almost full and i can't sell them because my Trade Depot does not work, how do i get rid of items that i no longer have a use for?
Thanks for any input.
I'm also having this problem. Currently at about 36 hours with no movement in my Trade Depot. (Ten slots, all advertised, best value is ten iron for §10.) This happened once before and I cleared it out by purchasing an additional slot and advertising something really cheap, but that didn't work this time and I don't have enough SimCash to make another such purchase right now.
I opened a trouble ticket but all they did was make excuses. I'm really tempted to make a video of my frustrating experience and post it on YouTube or elsewhere-- perhaps that would get their attention. (Something about the squeaky wheel...)
I don't believe in complaining about an issue without offering some kind of solution to the problem. Here is what could be done to make the entire trading system more user-friendly:
First, combine the buying and selling into one center, and do not waste players' time and data downloading the entire cities of other players. When a player clicks on that center, it will open with two tabs: one for selling and one for buying. Within each tab there would be an icon for each commodity that can be bought or sold. The player would click the desired commodity. The player could place an order or bid at the current best price, or at any price desired from one Simoleon up to any top-limit EA chooses to place for that item type.
Here are some examples: I want to sell 10 logs. I click the trading center and click on the "sell" tab. I can then click "sell now" in which case they would be sold to the current top bidders whose bids are pending, or I can set my minimum price. If the current top bidders are buying at §9 per log but I want §10 for each, I would place the sale at §10 and it would take up one of my slots. When someone comes along and bids §10, they would get logs that are selling for that amount (assuming no logs were posted at a lower price -- if logs were posted at a lower price, they would get those first).
Second example: I need to buy 25 iron. I click on the trading center and choose the "buy" option. I select iron. I see that iron is selling for §9 each, but I really don't want to pay more than §5 each. I post three bids at §5 -- two for ten iron each, and one for five iron. If/when the price comes down to §5 for iron, my order will start getting fulfilled and once enough people have sold enough iron at that price, I will have my 25 iron. If, however, I am willing to pay the current price, I would just click "buy now" and I would receive the requested iron at the best-available price.
When selling or buying, the transactions would use slots in the trading center, and EA could still charge SimCash to increase the number of slots the player has. When making purchases, the items bought would appear in the trading center slot and the player would have to click them to claim them. If the City Storage was too full, the items would have to stay in the trading center until the player made enough room in storage. When selling, the player would click the slot to retrieve the Simoleons. Orders that are pending could be cancelled at no charge, and the player would click the slot in the trading center to retrieve the item that was to be sold or the Simoleons that would have paid for the bid. There would be no reason to "advertise" sales since they would effectively all be advertised. Our devices would only download pricing for the commodity we are looking at, and only while we are in the trading center.
I believe this system would use less data than the current practice of continuously loading other players' cities as fast as possible in order to hopefully find that someone still has the item in stock that we are looking for. The trading center would continue to be available only during online play. It would not be necessary for the AI neighbor to make purchases of unsold items. A different mechanism could be set up for those who want to visit random cities of other players.
Regards,
--Etamni
Je Suis Charlie
Edit: Related issue at http://answers.ea.com/t5/SimCity-BuildIt-Support/My-market-items-don-t-get-sold/td-p/4136598
would you mind sharing what their lame excuses were?
edit : hm, seems this forum doesn't display replies underneath the replied topic. I was refering to etamni103's post
For past 1 day i have been trying to buy storage tray at the global trade HQ and for purchasing I have visited countless other cities. Every time I get reply "there is nothing to sell" or "sorry, the item is no more available for sale". It is extremely frustrating as I cannot get the item naturally in the game by reading citizen messages (the game occasionally stops giving one type of item for couple of days) nor I can buy it. The game is stuck. The only way out is to buy each tray for 18 simcash but I think this is very crude way.
EA can charge a one time fee like whatsapp but asking money to pay for trade HQ bugs is very bad.
@gppande wrote:EA can charge a one time fee like whatsapp but asking money to pay for trade HQ bugs is very bad.
it's not bad for EA is it? They make this utter trash market in every of their games so you are frustrated enough to pay real money for items you need. Sorry to say but that something is bugged or not working at all was never a reason to fix it or even care. That's how it is. Ever was. And ever will be. Posting on support forum won't change anything. You want the item, you pay money.
And yes. It's very frustrating trying to get one item for 6h of useless clicking and waiting for "not available" message.
destiny284 wrote:would you mind sharing what their lame excuses were?
edit : hm, seems this forum doesn't display replies underneath the replied topic. I was refering to etamni103's post
Sorry I didn't see your inquiry sooner.....
They gave me a form-letter response to my complaints about my own items being stuck in my trade depot, and in being unable to purchase other players' items in the Global Trade HQ. The form-response implied that my pricing was the cause of my own items being stuck, and the issue with items being sold out would improve as more players started playing the game. I don't agree with their assessment. Other players have posted the same word-for-word response in other threads, so that is why I can say it is a form-letter response.
Update: Items that were previously stuck at about 36 hours did clear at approximately the 48-hour mark when Daniel's City purchased them. This is EA's band-aid on the problem, however, as there were undoubtedly some players that would have liked to purchase these items, but they never rotated into the Global Trade HQ when those players were looking for those items.
Edit: The following is copied from their e-mail replies:
Hello Mayor, thanks for contacting us!
I am sorry that you are facing this issue the trade can be very quick and at other times, it can be dead slow. It depends on the traffic or demand and supply of items. I would request you to try posting your trades at peak times with competent prices and see if the issue is still persisting.
Ensure that your trades are advertised regularly. Don't worry, if your items don't sell as quickly as you'd like in the Trade Depot, then expect a visit from Mayor Daniel every now and then too - if there are any issues with slow sales he will show up regularly to help out. \
Regarding Global HQ, I'm sorry you've been having a frustrating time trading and purchasing. The Global Market moves extremely fast and the most desirable items go very quickly, so it's important to grab an item as soon as you see it!
If our servers refreshed your Market every couple of seconds it would cause a huge strain on the game, your device, your data and your battery - so to show the Market in real time would not be a great playing experience either. It's not all bad news though - as more and more players join the game there will be more and more items available for sale in the Global Market, so supply and demand will get better every day.
We are working hard on an alternate method that would meet both ends for the future!
Thank you for taking the time to send in your feedback regarding Global Market Listing. As SimCity BuildIt is a brand new title, we're very interested in suggestions, ideas and feedback from our players to make it the best game around, so I'll be sure to pass your feedback to the team.
--[Partha, 17 Jan 2015]
I did not find this to be a satisfactory response, and the issue was escalated to a higher support level. Here is the reply:
Hey Mayor, thanks for getting back to us.
I'm really sorry you're not having a great experience playing and trading.
The way the Global Market works is that newly-advertised items Mayors have recently put on their shelves in the Trade Depot are now visible to other Mayors for purchase, similar to putting an advert in a newspaper. The reason you might be seeing slower sales can depend on the time of day you advertise. It's possible that when items are put up for sale during an extremely busy time, the sheer amount of items available for sale (and advertised) means that each of these items are fighting for visibility. As further advertised items are then put up for sale, it could be that your items are then getting neglected by others purchasing Mayors for the more recently advertised items.
Although I understand your reservations, I'd still recommend that you try to stagger the times and advertisements of your items, to ensure your city stays visible in the Global Market for as long as possible. I hope this has helped explain things a little better. The team knows that some of our Mayors aren't having a great time trading right now, so are looking at ways to improve the experience for you as we want all our players to be happy! Your experiences will definitely be passed on to the game team. Thanks again!
--[Jacqueline 19 Jan 2015]
Regards,
--Etamni
Je Suis Charlie
