Monopoly of a market

[Zelas]

It's becoming more and more frequent to see people choosing (usually) one item, and using all of their retainer slots (sometimes even on alts as well) to sell thousands of the same item at a ridiculously low price so that no one can undercut them without losing gil. As a result, they have full monopoly on that market, and it goes on forever (as in, they either never tire, or they're botting.) Also, they will often put up large stacks of said item to make sure people are absolutely forced to buy more than they need no matter what (and then be stuck with it).

My question is, is that even legit? Are people really allowed to do that without repercussions?

If so, is there anything that could be done to remedy to this frustrating situation? With the additions of extra retainers, could there have been a change to the marketboard? Could they show more than 100 hits on a single item? (I've seen items with more than a thousand stacks for sale, most of which were being sold by the same person over several characters/possibly accounts)

Has anyone else seen this before? What's your opinion of it? Smart marketing or dishonest practice?

[rahz]

Yes! There is ONE single person making all the Grade 1 Clothcraft Glamours and posting for a ridiculous low price in large quantities. I counted over 8 different retainers with the same creators name for all the prisms. To make things worse, there are over 1000 listings for the prisms but we can only see the first 100! They are all set the same low price, from the same market area, in the same stack size. The whole page is just the same crafter all the way down.
The issue here isn't having a monopoly, it's that we can only see the first 100 listings. I usually scroll down to find the smaller quantity stacks at the higher price range, but when it shows just the first 100 all we get is the same stack for the same price.
I would like to see the next page of listings or implement filters to view other priced listings. Or a filter for specific market areas like just showing listings selling from Limsa Lominsa or Foundation.

[BeautifulNerf]

Aloha Zelas. Can you provide me with more details please on the items you're specifically thinking of?

Item Type:
Original historic price before 'said' individual flooded the market:
Current price of item:
Rough number of 'said' items being sold:
Frequency of items being restocked (if bought out entirely)- from 'said individual'-

Note: Depending on the item, the individual might be crashing the market on purpose to have people match his price. Why? It's a legit practice in the real world to flood the market over a long period of time to destabilize the market. Allowing the individual to buy in mass quantity of 'said' item (for a years worth of supply). Then to pull out all of his stock, and begin selling it in smaller quantities at the original historic price over an 'x' period of time.

[BeautifulNerf]

Now... I'm not saying with 100% confidence that 'said' individual is doing that. Because it takes a lot of discipline/patients to truly pull that off. Instead, he's probably doing that out of boredom/for the amusement of destroying the price of 'said' item.

[Keramory]

I do it all the time for items that can be bought in stores. Glamor dispellers cost 500 Gil and people try and sell for 2k? Pfft I say it now costs 800 for everyone. If people fight it to sell it only goes cheaper.

I don't really have much sympathy for slashing dumb prices for easy to obtain/create to the point of it just being silly.

[Zelas]

Instead, he's probably doing that out of boredom/for the amusement of destroying the price of 'said' item.

I think it's more that. The most noticeable has been the one rahz mentioned (with G1 Cloth prisms), and they have been doing it since before 3.0 came out, so quite a while. There's constantly thousands of stacks up, and theirs fill up the whole 100 hits pretty much 100% of the time. They used to sell them cheaper (600 gil each) but now they've gone up to 1200, all in stacks of 20 (which forces people to buy stacks of this particular item).

I've seen it done elsewhere, but differently. Someone was putting up several stacks, oddly undercutting themselves several times. All NQ items, but not quite covering all 100 hits. Kind of broke the HQ market for a bit though.

Like rahz said, maybe it's be better if we could load more pages. The 100 hits thing is really just an invitation for this kind of stuff.

[PirateCat]

I'm curious, has anyone attempted to undercut this person recently? How do they respond?
A cloth prism takes 538 gil worth of mats (based on NPC vendor prices) plus the cost of the crystals to make. It's probably lower in practice because the markets are flooded with clear prisms from dungeons. If the board is full of listings for 20@1200 then that sounds like no one else cares to be in that market, unless they're actively repricing people out.

[Zelas]

words

That's a good question.

My guess is, they set them to 600 first to "establish" their game, and then raised the price. I might check the history to see if anyone's been selling other than them.


Edit: Seems they're back to 600, now. Stacks of 3. More reasonable to the buyers than the stacks of 20, at the very least. Of course, at this price, nobody really undercuts except for selling the excess, I suppose.

[konage]

It's a common pratice. People will flood the market and undercut themselves to the point there is no profit. They're their competitors to play by their rules or get out. I see nothing wrong with this. There's thousands of markets out there and this benefits the consumers.

[Iagainsti]

Our FC does this when the CC is maxed on shards/crystals/clusters. 8-9 retainers, all 20 slots on each, buy up the stacks others posted under our price. Fills our cc gol coffers allowing us to have free repairs, pay for raid progression items etc without breaking our personal coffers.

Totally legit economic practice.