Undercutting by 1 gil?

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Originally Posted by Pondera

I mean....seriously? Is there a more annoying thing to do?

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Undercutting by half?

Seriously I don't get those people who just put stuff up for half the price or even lower than you could sell at npc.
If you wanna be the lowest price on mb lower it by as less as possible.
Personally, if there aren't 20+ posts of a price I just match the lowest, if there are a lot, I do undercut by 1-5.

I never knew that undercutting by 1 gil was a major problem. I understand if someone put something for 500k and someone sells the exact same thing for 100k but..1gil?

Forcing me to check my prices like every 5 min and making me so much more work - i usually just put in the lowest price and let it be... why undercut in the first place? Cause YOU wanna sell first? I'd say wo comes first, get first. And we got Retainers in different districts - make use of that. I hate it so much when ppt actually make prices like 986472174 gil and even if i dont wanna undercut, i sure as well only type the first 2-3 numbers and fill the rest with 0 >_>


And there are these stubborn ppl who actually lower every 10 min or smt, I had stuff for 1,2 mill going down to 340k over three weeks, cause no one bought it...

I always undercut by at least the margin of the foreign tax, there's many smart buyers out there. :)

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

i usually just put in the lowest price and let it be... why undercut in the first place? Cause YOU wanna sell first?

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Or because I can make/get/already have more of the item to sell but am only listing some of my potential stock at any given time. At that point, turnover is far more important than price.

Undercutting by 1g isn't even a bad thing. I'll bet most of the people in this thread complaining over it don't mind when someone posts at the exact same price as them. Cutting by 1g is almost exactly that; the only difference is the 1g cheaper item being higher on the list.

I've never gotten upset with people undercutting me by any amount, because if you just utilize a little patience, more often than not your product will still sell. If the demand for your item is higher than the frequency of supply being listed, eventually the cheaper items will be sold and someone will buy yours. If not, either put it away temporarily or cut your losses. This is why I gather the majority of my mats as I level my crafting jobs instead of buying them off the marketboards; I can match the under-cutters and still make a profit. Heck, I can vendor my items and still technically make a profit.

If you're a hardcore crafter who's hard-pressed to sell as fast as possible to open up space, I would just keep in mind that the markets are used by everyone on the server, not just hardcore crafters. Some people simply toss things onto the marketboard to make some quick gil and don't care how low they undercut to do it. On top of that, these forums represent a minority of the game's playerbase; you'll never effectively shame sellers out of undercutting, and the majority of buyers are simply going to buy the cheapest thing listed either because it's cheaper or because it's near the top of the list. You're just inflicting pointless stress on yourself if you try to rage against this.

Best way to stop undercutting (from people who change price all times) should be to divised selling tax by half.

50% of tax when you put item on MB (directly from your gils)
50% of tax when item is sell (from item price)

So if people want to change the price of item he should always pay the 1st tax (and should cost him a lot with time)

There are many factors to consider when putting an item on the market board.
If they are stack item, stack size always trumps price.
For end recipes I account for level. Below cap items I know who is dedicated to stocking markets. There are select names on Sarg that will show up in signatures and they have dutifully kept certain markets stocked over the years. Undercutting them bu a few Gil won't matter. I will buy based on the dedicated signature. When there is no signature and it's people unloading quest items, it's a cheapest first. Do the market PvP and accept the wait if you can't.

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Originally Posted by Kuroka

And there are these stubborn ppl who actually lower every 10 min or smt, I had stuff for 1,2 mill going down to 340k over three weeks, cause no one bought it...

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and that's why we undercut: to actually sell our stuff.

maybe you have not noticed this yet, but our market is a backwards-auction. we lower the prices until someone buys. sitting on the high price is simply not how the system works. and that the price was able to drop by that amount over 3 weeks in the first place says a lot about supply and demand...

and to be honest: when some people undercut me every 5 mins i will drop the price by a huuuuge amount just to get rid of my stuff and concentrate on other markets. i also will do this when an item doesn't sell after a while, before i throw it away. i have only 40 slots on the market with my 2 retainers. so my space is limited and every item wich doesn't sell takes away a slot for an item wich could earn me some money.

the faster i sell, the faster i can put the next item on the market. simple as that.

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Originally Posted by Bourne_Endeavor

It benefits all crafters to undercut by very low amounts lest you make significantly less.

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Or more generally put:
It benefits all sellers of a good to engage in price collusion, rather than allowing competition to create a socially desirable equilibrium in which the price equals the marginal cost of production (Which equals the value of the time needed to procure and process the materials which, given perfectly competitive i.e. efficient markets, would equal the rate at which a person can generate gil from the system times the time needed, as all goods on the market would have the same price relative to the time needed to create them and time arbitrage therefore impossible), because it increases the producer surplus at the cost of the consumer surplus and creates a deadweight loss.

That leads to an allocatively inefficient market, which even a diehard free market economist like Adam Smith would deem undesirable.

Fact is: If someone can consistently undercut by considerable sums, the price is still higher than their marginal cost of production, otherwise they would have to close business. That means either that the price so far has been set wrongly and competition has failed to produce socially desirable results, i.e. allocative efficiency, or that this competitor has innovated and now is more efficient than the others, therefore has all the rights to crowd the others out of the market if they fail to keep up. Unsustainable undercutting, i.e. selling below your marginal cost of production is only possible for short periods for reasons stated above. And that's no issue at all in this game, because even if the person crowds everyone out of the market with aggressive undercutting to then install monopoly prices, people can just re-enter the market at will. As a result, undercutting cannot cause actual harm in this game, as it cannot have a lasting negative effect.

The only negative effect it has is on the profits of sellers. Note: Profits. Profits are what you have left when you subtract the costs from your revenue. Since profits are going to be very little if the marginal cost of production equals the price and the market is efficient, every seller is going to tell you that this is bad. Bluntly put, that's propaganda. It has nothing to do with allocative efficiency, it has nothing to do with social surplus, it has nothing to do with welfare economics or the benefit of the economy to society, it has nothing to do with economic health, the only tangent to economic theory is the desire of a producer to maximize their own surplus by abusing market failures.