Why Do Merchants Make You Join a Group to Find a Shopping Guide?

[Prokofy Neva]

I find this the most idiotic thing every weekend when I hit the sales.

There are a number of merchants or merchants' groups associated with events or recurring sales who force you to join the group to get the Shopping Guide. It isn't on SeraphimSL or any other site -- you are forced to join the group. If you are out of groups, you put them on alts, forcing you to log in other accounts, then pass the cards to your main to do the shopping. Annoying!

What possible use is there in forcing me to join a group? I leave it as soon as the sale is over or as soon as I've bought whatever I want from it because the chat in it is so annoying and relentless. Who could bear that all day?! So what value accrues to the merchants? They can keep monitoring the group numbers, I suppose (are there scripts for this?) and say, wow, we hit 1000 today or oh no, we only had 500 today but what does it matter? Sales are what matter. They could retain people by having a subscription service instead of a group (and some of them have that).

The other super annoying thing is the HUDs. They never load especially on laggy sims. They take forever to page through. Thank God some merchants have an additional card to use, with even a thoughtful SLURL instead of landmarks that often aren't clickable inside a notecard. But some make you join a group to get this precious card (which is a lot of work to make up, I realize, since I make them myself).

WHY???