People would be more willing to repair if their was a real reason to spend gil (besides acquiring gimmicks like the Templar armor set), I think. Personally I have never had a problem with getting my gear repaired, but I also try to time my repairs around peak Japanese gaming hours

This is one of those issues that really wouldn't be a problem if more people played the game (the game still has ok amounts of players still playing on some servers, but for alot of servers the game world is pretty dead). I try to remedy the issue somewhat by playing during peak hours (if possible), pricing competitively, and carrying left-over lower rank weapons just in case.

Also, I will say that the Repair NPCs are the only real gil sink in the game right now. XD