Undercutters

[ChloeGrace]

Well, I got a drop last week, a fairly rare orchestrion roll. It sells infrequently, about one per month. The going rate is ~5 million.

Currently 3 up on my server. No problem.
I list it at 4.999M, undercutting by 1k. Check back. Someone has undercut to 4.7.
I undercut by 1 gil.
Same person undercuts me by another 200k. This continues until the price drops to 3M in the space of 8 hours.

Why do people feel the need to undercut by so much?
If the item moved any faster, I would buy it up and gain control of the market.

[Dzian]

If it ain't selling it's because the price is too high. So maybe taking the big drops until they find a price someone is willing to pay.

If something sells less than once a month and there's 3 on the market. You know the price is too steep. Incredibly rare you'll find anyone willing to cough up that Uchida which is why the sales are so slow

[Canadane]

Why did you undercut at all?
List in a different city for the same price. Smart buyers save taxes.

[ManuelBravo]

Yep I do that as well depending how fast I want to move my inventory. Buy low sell high, basic business 101.

[Myrhn]

An undercutter complaining about an undercutter...

[HaelseMikiro]

One person undercuts like a cheapskate, the other person undercuts like they're the boss of the market. Sometimes seeing someone's feathers get ruffled is MORE than worth losing a half million gil on something that isn't going to sell anyways. Once you two finish slap-fighting each other down to 3 million gil, just raise yours back up to 5 mil.

[Masekase_Hurricane]

See things like rare drops/slow items I will quite happily go into a price war, as the item is 100% profit regardless of what it sells for. Now if I had crafted an item then I will make sure I don't make a loss. I would rather clear a slot fast and replace with another item to sell.

[LunaFaye]

See things like rare drops/slow items I will quite happily go into a price war, as the item is 100% profit regardless of what it sells for. Now if I had crafted an item then I will make sure I don't make a loss. I would rather clear a slot fast and replace with another item to sell.

That. Or the fact if you are looking at the history and the item sold at way cheaper than it's offered currently. I do the same thing, while it's nice to get the "full profit" some players overcharge by millions of gil for no reason. Some items are not rare but people think they are and that makes it even worse. Also you can only hold so much gil at the end of the day. If I run couple duties and get so called "rare" items over and over, that's something I do not declare as rare and therefore I just undercut by 2-10 mil depending on the item. This way I clear a slot and make someone that doesn't have let's say 5 million happy, or someone that rather buys it at lower price and flips it. At the end it's a win win for every body, and lets face it, there's so much gil flying around the game, difficult to find anything to spend it on.

[TogekissBough]

I specifically make my mission to not buy items that have been dropped by 1 gil. If both items were the cheapest I'll buy the more ''expensive' one.' In reality one gil isn't much. If your going to discount make it meaningful in comparison to the product. I don't like undercutting but to be honest I do it. Ideally my product sells before it becomes a pissing storm, but its pretty frustrating seeing on the history your product sold for one less gil.

[Rinari]

I specifically make my mission to not buy items that have been dropped by 1 gil. If both items were the cheapest I'll buy the more ''expensive' one.'

I do this to as a way to spite the 1 gil undercutters. While my little spites most likely go unnoticed, there are a bunch of us around acting as an invisible force to make 1 gil undercutting less worthwhile. If someone undercuts me by 1 gil, I either ignore it on high volume items, or give a bigger cut on low volume items.

If something isn't moving, I need to get rid of it to open up that AH spot. Sometimes I'll severely undercut to get rid of an item taking up space. Having it take up an AH spot IS a cost. I can see where someone with a 'one per month' 5M item would want to slash the price way down to get rid of it. It's entirely possible that they could move other items in that spot to make more over the month instead of waiting around. Opportunity costs! What is the cost of tying up your AH spot for a month? It would be the most profit you could have made selling other items in that spot.

Chloe's market contender was probably okay taking a month to make 5M.. but not 2 months assuming that 1 gil undercut sold first. They could have fired back with another 1 gil undercut, but would have led to a lot of effort keeping up the 1 gil undercut war. I expect they reasoned to just give up on the 5M / 2 month deal, and the ~5M / 1 month deal with constant 1 gil undercut babysitting, opting instead to take a 3M deal hopefully baiting in a quicker buy from some holdout that was watching for that particular music item. Seems reasonable!