Ok call me crazy but I was just reading in a earlier thread here. Now that got me thinking, whenever I'm in Tir (sorry I'm not advertising clans or OT here) I'm spammed by people on the shopping channel. I'd love to turn it off, but every once in a while theres a truly unique item that pops up. What i'd propose is instead make a buy terminal in every shop that players can "sell" items to. instead of actually selling it to the machine though they can put it in and put a price for every item (they could possibly set a range of money that they are willing to sell it for, or maybe players could just make offers kind of like a mini ebay, i dont know). Then at a terminal next to it players can search through all the posted items for the ones they want. Not in the way the terminals work now, showing about 15 items at a time... instead it could open up kind of like when you open up your skills, items categorized by type and shown from best to worst or whatever. When you buy someone's item, the money is transfered to the person who sold it, either realtime or the next time they log on (optional idea is that they can see who bought it so maybe they just picked something up in a mission and think that person can use it too).
Then I wouldn't be "lucky" to find the item i want, simply a person willing to browse. If you have any comments or suggestions feel free to post them. I just think it'd be a better way.