LF advice from 3-star Crafters: How to properly commission a set of i220 gear?

[Eorzean_username]

If anyone has insight to contribute, I think I may need some more ignorance cleared up on my part.

I am providing:

• All Clusters needed
• Full HQ materials (zero NQ items for any stage of the crafts)
• Any HQ Food requested

I thought I would be saving millions of gil this way (which is a lot for me), because even buying full HQ mats and all Clusters it was 50-70% cheaper than MB per item when I ran all the numbers.

However, all the Specialists that respond to my PF listings are charging a crafting fee so high that it makes the total cost (Clusters + HQ Mats + Fee) almost the same — or sometimes more expensive — as buying the item directly off MB.

Because I'm inexperienced with top-end crafting, I assume the problem is on my part (ie, lack of understanding), so I'm trying to learn.

I'm coming from the (perhaps very ignorant) perspective of leveling crafting (my crafters are level 54-55 so far), where recipes are tedious and slow with NQ mats, but full HQ mats makes a recipe fairly quick and efficient.

Is 3-star Crafting, even with full HQ mats, so unpleasant / time-consuming that basically no one will do it without significant compensation?