Even the best of LFS will have fish that carry bacteria and parasites. It comes in with the fish they receive. And unless the store wants to Q/T their own stock with every new delivery, they're going to end up selling those fish to their customers.
Some stores make the diseases worse with poor handling of the new fish. But even the best of stores can't control what the breeders send them in terms of sick vs. healthy fish.
And then there's the stress factor of being shipped and all, as I mentioned above.
When I'm in a trusted LFS, I try to find out how long they've had the fish before I buy them. If it's been a day or two, I pass. If it's been 10-14 days, then I'm all for it. I especially like getting the very last fish left and fish in display tanks because they've had a chance to recuperate in the LFS before I uproot them once again to put them in my tank.
When a store has too many of any kind of fish, it usually means they just received a new shipment of that fish. So, in general, you're usually looking at newly arrived fish. The stores will put these on sale because they know many of the fish will die so they want to unload them fast. They'd rather get a dollar for the fish than lose all their money to the ones that die in their tanks. The odds of people bringing back the dead fish for a refund are very low so the store still comes out ahead. Once the first round of fish are culled out, by dying or sale priced purchases, they raise the price back up. Those are the healthy fish the stores knows won't be dying before they can get sold so there's no need to rush the fish out the door.
Another incentive is that when people's fish die, they usually want more fish. So the store gets its dollar for the newly arrived fish that may have died in their tanks, AND they get to sell more fish when the customer returns to replace their dead ones. You've illustrated that very well by already indicating you want to buy more to replace the dead fish. AND then add in the sales made from medications people use to try to save their dying fish. More profit.
When you put it all together, selling sick fish can be more profitable than selling healthy ones as long as it's not so bad that the customers refuse to come back for their meds and replacement fish.
Even a very good LFS still has to make a profit, and in today's economical climate, worldwide mass fish production, and huge chain stores like Petsmart and Petco who can sell for less due to economies of scale discounts, it's not easy for the regular LFS to make that profit. So sometimes they have to do what they have to do.
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