How to Undercut

[Seig345]

[...] once I mark your item back up. [...]

I find this back and forth banter of who’s getting one over on who very entertaining, but just wanted to point out that once you buy the item, it is now your item. Until SE adds a system that gives you play by play updates on each transaction of every item you ever sold after you sold it, no one is really incentivized to care beyond “hurray, the item I listed sold”.

[Iscah]

Unless the going price is clearly a lot higher or lower, I just use the rule that a fair price is 100 x the vendor sale price for HQ items.

I also really don't understand people who put items on at the vendor price - or under it, in at least one case I came across. Why would you even bother?

[Anarnee]

I don't undercut at all, I put it up for the same price as the last person and it puts the newest item first so the market doesn't take a hit.

[Tsurayu]

There is inherently nothing wrong with under-cutting.

Driving down the market prices may not be great for the seller, but it is good for the consumer, at least on the short-term.

I mean I get what people are saying, it's nice to make the most potential profit off of a sale as possible, and when someone drives down the price it either forces you do to the same or gamble buying their sales and selling back at your original price. However, people get too upset about it. Like I said, driving down the price of goods isn't necessarily a bad thing either.

[AlyssaWildheart]

Lets find more things to complain about everyday!

On a serious note, I usually just put my stuff low price to sell quickly. If people undercut me thats their profit loss, and maybe someone with not a lot of gil can afford a nice item they want if that happens

[Vhailor]

It seems like a lot of people need a lesson on this.


1. Evaluate the prices.

2. Go 200-500 Gil lower first. Do not just drop it by 10,000 Gil. You do want to make money right?

3. Your thing gets overshadowed by lower prices. No big deal! If everyone priced at lower increments, instead of being desperate, we’d all get similar profits from that item. Unless it becomes more common however. Items demoted to being common will naturally fall in price.

That’s it. It’s simple. Please don’t undercut obnoxiously.

Not my personal system. I do the following:
(a) Evaluate the price of items listed
(b) Evaluate the price of items sold over the past couple of weeks
(c) Determine a price relative to both that seems fair

Also, a bonus step: if anyone undercuts me by a small amount repeatedly, I'll drop the price to the floor. Because I don't care about individual items, and it pisses me off when I get undercut. I also refuse to price my goods at weird increments; below 10K gil I'll generally go in increments of 500, and above 10k it's increments of 5000. This occasionally causes me to undercut people who have reasonable prices, because 50,796 is just an annoying number to me.

Edit: As an aside, I really despise that SE moved away from FFXI's price-blind system. It's contributed to tremendously erratic markets, ones that are prone to wild price swings in the space of hours or days. I'd welcome a bit more stability.

[Jamyl_Sarum]

proper pricing would be twice what vendors sell to the masses for. undercutting is no longer a problem then. to do otherwise would indicate low moral integrity and weak character.

[DeaconMoore]

proper pricing would be twice what vendors sell to the masses for. undercutting is no longer a problem then. to do otherwise would indicate low moral integrity and weak character.

Wait, so it's proper to get undercut 50% by the vendors?

What business school did you go to?

[Kewitt]

No no no you sell on market board for what ever npc pay for it. How else would npc get by when your not logged on.

[Jxnibbles]

No I will continue to undercut by whatever amount I want. I love the tears of my enemy. "You killed my market omg."