It does, but it's not the main focus. You have to actually sacrifice stuff to the altar of favor, bartering, to get substantial discounts.
???
You have to gift to any merchant the equivalent of 150-200 coins at most. Either in gold or more frequently in items.
That's less than what you are going to save on the purchase of a single +1 item in some cases.
How insanely profitable this little trick is even on the short term, for virtually no upfront cost, is precisely its most glaring flaw.
Even when reselling crap, there are transactions where you are going to make up to 500-600 more on a single trade only because you did this first.
How can anyone argue with a straight face that this isn't something trivially easy to exploit, I have no idea.
