Undercutting Prices

[Aletheos]

This drives me absolutely insane. I want to murder people who undercut by gigantic percentages like say the going price is 200k and they throw theirs up for 120k ...

 

If it's one guy throwing one piece up there for super cheap for a quick sale ... fine. He's an idiot and I'll just keep my pricing along with everyone else who is near me. But when people throw up a bunch of crafted materials and destroy the pricing --- what the hell? Sometimes it's barely profitable.

 

I always undercut by a penny or so or by 1k to my nearest competitor and they do it back to me. It's understood, we're trying to make money but not screw each other over.

 

There are times I actually buy up the guy who undercuts by like 40% when I know the price is stable and want my sales to continue.

 

Glad I'm not the only one who gets pissed off by these people. Makes me understand why mom and pop stores hate Walmart. /rant

 

Have fun being pissed off, Einstein.

[Dedd]

You have to realise tho that a market IS a pvp enviroment, only this time it isn't who get's the biggest numbers that wins. It is who can price the lowest and still feel like they got something out of it.

 

For those i see WAAY undercutting i buy their stuff and repost it at the prices i had, they win AND i win.

 

Generally that is what people are doing, putting the price so you will buy it and mark it back up.

[psandak]

You have to realise tho that a market IS a pvp enviroment, only this time it isn't who get's the biggest numbers that wins. It is who can price the lowest and still feel like they got something out of it.

 

For those i see WAAY undercutting i buy their stuff and repost it at the prices i had, they win AND i win.

Generally that is what people are doing, putting the price so you will buy it and mark it back up.

 

I do not think that most deep undercutters are that smart. Don't get me wrong, some are that smart. But the rest in my experience are simply posting at prices that have sold in the past and do not even think to look at what those items are going for now.

 

There is also a lot of laziness involved. All too often I see pricing where someone has added a 1 or modified a single digit in the default pricing (i.e. default price for something is 2813 they price it at 12813 when the current value is 20k; or the default price is 64574 they price it at 54574 when the current value is 100k or more).

[PifferPuff]

OP, undercutting by 1 credit is EXACTLY how to properly undercut, so as to not cause vast swaths of price instability. However unfortunate, the opposite is precisely the behaviour repeatedly seen on the GTN time and time again. *sigh*

 

Also, don't go flooding the GTN with your entire stock, unless you're trying to set a median price point on a fresh market for a particular item. If it's blue-tier leveling armorings, list like 4 to 8 max at the price you want (so you're getting at least a 15% profit on them). If you see some guy selling the same crafted thing for a credit less, that's cool - just switch toons and list 4 or 5 more of yours at a credit lower than his. If it happens again (in a short time span) at one cred, pull your oldest stock and relist a credit lower. I'd cap this rinse/repeat to about 3 times max. Otherwise, it gets unprofitable due to the unrefunded upfront listing costs.

 

Now, look at it the other way: you know, and I know, you will see some nerfed-up 'tard go herpa-derp and list the same thing at 50% less (usually it's like only 1 or 2 items -- and usually it was loot). If you're fast enough, you can snatch them up, and re-list. If you are too slow and other 'tards see that as the normative price point, and list a crap-tonne of their wares at that stupid low price, then you're pretty much screwed. You'll have to wait out the duration of your list time hoping that the stock is bought up fast enough that buyers get to yours, or just re-list and try again in a couple of days. Depending on the quantity listed and the quantity normally demanded over a 1-day period, you may choose to buy up the 50%-or-less-priced stock and re-list.

 

Unfortunately, the GTN does not have the market analytic and historiographical tools to help smart sellers see past trends and follow a trend pattern, or attempt to forecast a future trend, based on event-driven or seasonal fluctuations in buying behaviour. It would be nice if the devs added those kinds of tools in this game, but in all honesty, do you really think that the 80-percentile of players posses the IQ to necessitate the development time and resources for such an endeavor? Unfortunately, the answer is likely, "no;" otherwise, we would've seen this implemented by now (I know, "argumentum e silentio" negatively inferred by "*** hoc ergo propter hoc" -- I'm simply drawing attention to a related, yet unrelated problem).

[eartharioch]

Now, look at it the other way: you know, and I know, you will see some nerfed-up 'tard go herpa-derp and list the same thing at 50% less (usually it's like only 1 or 2 items -- and usually it was loot). If you're fast enough, you can snatch them up, and re-list. If you are too slow and other 'tards see that as the normative price point, and list a crap-tonne of their wares at that stupid low price, then you're pretty much screwed.

 

You are forgetting F2P players, who get two characters with two GTN slots each. Preferred gets a few more character slots with ten (I believe) GTN slots each (some, probably a very small percentage, may have subbed for long enough to have acquired a useful number of characters and GTN slots). Listing items significantly below market cost (but still enough above vendor cost to justify spending the time to use the GTN) is actually a very intelligent thing for these players to do. With few slots between their active chars and GTN mules, TTS (time to sell) is a very significant factor, because if they don't sell items quickly, their [usually smaller than subs] inventories fill up faster, and then they have to take the vendor price.

[earthenx]

Preferred get 5 GTN Slots per character. Just FYI.

[Jazzwind]

I love to hear people scream about competition on MMO auction sites. It's even better when that person is on the server I'm on. Makes me smile all day long.

 

Why?

 

Pure profit - for me.

 

Buy low. Sell High. Undersell the competition. "Fair"? Of course not. Just like life. Who's going hungry? The guy screaming "Not FAIR". Certainly not me.

 

Watch the Market.

Watch when it changes.

Learn WHY it changed.

Make use of that knowledge.

Never be poor again. Ever.

 

Slicing is great money. Like a paper route when you're growing up.

Auctions are adult paper routes. Just exponentially more profitable.

 

I'm a nice guy though. If I find a few items selling at a low price, and I know they are going to be in demand, soon, like barrels, I'll buy them all. See? I'm a nice guy. All those hard working crafters just got paid.

 

The I resell them at a much higher price at the right time and make a killing. Oh, look. I just got paid, too. For what did I get paid, the OP might sneer at me?

 

For having the education and talent to understand money and economics.

Every MMO with a system like this is just another game inside itself.

 

The game of Economics. Wanna play a game? ;-)

Edited December 11, 2014 by Jazzwind
I can't type on an iphone.

[Jazzwind]

This morning I had a new thought on this topic...

 

Those who buy at a higher "more regular/normal" price (i.e. buying at 20,000 when there are 19,999 priced items), could be contributing to lower value of items overall.

 

My reasoning is this:

- buyer sees pricing at 19995 and 19997 and 19999, goes back 3 pages to find the 20000 priced items and buys those 20k items

- new seller sees a page of 19995 and 19997 and decides to post at 19990

 

the lowest value has gone down

 

OTOH...

- buyer sees the lowest price is 19995 and buys at that price

- new seller sees the lowest price is 19997 and posts at 19995

 

the lowest value has remained the same.

 

Granted, with only one "new seller" (who undercuts by small amounts) it's a pittance decrease but throw in three to five sellers all undercutting each other by small amounts (i.e. first seller undercuts down to 19990, second down to 19989, third to 19980, fourth, to 19975) or one or two larger undercut sellers (first to 19900 and the second to 19750) and that buyer who refuses to buy at the lowest price simply because it is not "regular"/"normal" can contribute to significant decreasing value. Not saying that this might not be beneficial to said buyer; as the decreased value may result in a lower "more regular/normal" price. But since I am assuming most buyers who do the searching for "normal" pricing are also sellers...by advocating such practices, they could be hurting themselves.

 

Thoughts?

 

I'll share a thought with this, having read (and agreed with) your posts on this topic.

 

I don't undercut by an incredibly small margin. If I'm undercutting, it's because I want my products to sell. If I undercut a 20,000 item by 5 or 10...a person who is buying a 20,000 item is not MORE likely to buy mine over the other. There's no difference at that value. At that point it's honestly down to laziness. How much time do I want to invest in scrolling through screens? Screw it, I'll just take the top three because this is annoying. ***Bam*** I made no money.

 

I undercut by enough of a margin to get a person to A.) stop scrolling through endless pages and B.) BUY MINE. So for a 20,000 item, if I'm undercutting, it's starting at 19,000. A thousand is a decent save. Even for a money bag guy with a few hundred thousand in the purse - a thousand catches an eye. If that doesn't work, I drop it by another thousand. I'll keep doing that until either I'm even, or at least making something. BTW, I never usually get to that point. My stuff sells.

 

Additionally, I've looked an purchased 20 or 30 items before, only so that the board would be clear of those items and I could resell for 1.5 or 2.0 the purchase price. The item has to be something either in demand, or about to be in demand (think Double XP Weekends) and I don't go this route all the time. I do it when I believe I can reasonably bank the market into a corner with only one way out. ME. MY ITEMS. This makes good money, btw, MOST (not "More") often than not, when I do it.

 

How does any of this affect the "global" market? Simple answer. It doesn't. There just aren't enough Market-sharp people on any given server for it to really spin up - or down. The vast majority of folks using an auction house are "Yeah, I can afford that" or "Please sell Please sell Please sell" type of people. Sometimes it's as bad as watching a guy stand in the middle of a field of oats, casting his line, hoping to catch a fish. In other words - not even enough credits to buy - or rent - a clue. They are just happy to be playing the game (and there's nothing wrong with that, at all).

 

The greatest effects on Global Auction Markets are external influences through changes to events, requirements, or items, themselves. Meaning - the Devs and their patches. Wonder why the Sticky Blue Widget is selling for a bazillion credits, or cannot be found, at all? Because Patch Name-a-Number just made the Sticky Blue Widget the single requirement to getting a date in a Cantina. Yeah. That just happened. And No, now you can't find that Sticky Blue to save your life, but IF you manage to find one and IF you don't need it, you're gonna have speeders for your entire external family, your kids, their kids, and etc. for seven generations to come. All from an external influence, and a lot of times it's from the Law of Unintended Conse********overs.

 

Players - while it seems they WOULD have a dominant effect on the markets - really do not have that dominant effect. They AFFECT it, alright, but it's never by naked choice. It's usually due to cause and effect. The Law of the Sticky Blue Widget. The market is simply too big, there's no restriction on time (it's always moving and in only one direction). It all evens out - IF, which is highly doubtful, there's any actual noticeable effect - in a given amount of time. Servers with reduced populations are fare more likely to see RELATIVELY larger spikes than servers with larger numbers. The larger the population, however, the greater the spread between standard deviations and lesser the impacts of spikes in an economy.

 

Wall of Text 101. TLDR? Do what you want, it's not going to affect the economy one bit.

[JonnyRay]

Kind of like dropping a rock into a fast flowing stream. It may make a big splash, but a minute later you can't even see where you dropped it.

 

I can manipulate the costs on certain items for a brief period (usually only a few hours), but if I log out, my ability to affect long term change is negated.

 

I've moved to a 500 credit "undercut". I'll round down to the next 500 credits under what the "going price" is. As stated above in an earlier post of mine in this thread, there are caveats to that in regards to when I know the going rate for an item and/or when someone has just flooded the market with a page full of listings which are WELL below the next higher seller.

[captpickles]

Even for a money bag guy with a few hundred thousand in the purse

 

^ THIS made me lol...

[Mariojediwookie]

I don't have any issues with people undercutting me. Even if it's by a 1c.....hey you do what you have to do to outsell your competition. BUT, the people I can't understand are the ones that will completely RUIN the value of something for weeks because they are lazy and don't even research what the value of the item they are selling has. For example:

 

Log in on Tuesday when 3.0 hits (last week), build up enough supply and have advanced strength armoring by the end of the night. Go on GTN, of course on a few people have stuff up. It's 400k+ lowest price. Awesome, I put my product out. I sell a few for that amount and then NOTHING. I look back the next day to figure out why, You can literally see how someone without even looking at what its selling for just listed a bunch of their wares for 150k. Then by the end of the day it was already down to 120k. However by that time I have other armoring and they are still selling for over 300k because no one artificially jacked the price down.

 

What happens is people usually log on, look at the lowest price and got 1k less. So the problem with people just cutting 150% off the lowest priced item is the value drops too quickly and no one notices what you did. So pretty soon you have 4 pages of supply at ridiculous prices all started because one yahoo decided to be lazy and not look at the going rate before selling. I've literally purchased low priced wares to get them off the GTN before people start lowering their price below that.

 

Overall, yes it's a game. But lets have some common sense. If you want to give your stuff at a discounted price, fine.....does it have to be 150% below the lowest value on the GTN? Can't you do 10%....I mean come on.

[captpickles]

I don't have any issues with people undercutting me. Even if it's by a 1c.....hey you do what you have to do to outsell your competition. BUT, the people I can't understand are the ones that will completely RUIN the value of something for weeks because they are lazy and don't even research what the value of the item they are selling has. For example:

 

Log in on Tuesday when 3.0 hits (last week), build up enough supply and have advanced strength armoring by the end of the night. Go on GTN, of course on a few people have stuff up. It's 400k+ lowest price. Awesome, I put my product out. I sell a few for that amount and then NOTHING. I look back the next day to figure out why, You can literally see how someone without even looking at what its selling for just listed a bunch of their wares for 150k. Then by the end of the day it was already down to 120k. However by that time I have other armoring and they are still selling for over 300k because no one artificially jacked the price down.

 

What happens is people usually log on, look at the lowest price and got 1k less. So the problem with people just cutting 150% off the lowest priced item is the value drops too quickly and no one notices what you did. So pretty soon you have 4 pages of supply at ridiculous prices all started because one yahoo decided to be lazy and not look at the going rate before selling. I've literally purchased low priced wares to get them off the GTN before people start lowering their price below that.

 

Overall, yes it's a game. But lets have some common sense. If you want to give your stuff at a discounted price, fine.....does it have to be 150% below the lowest value on the GTN? Can't you do 10%....I mean come on.

 

In that example.. it sounds like your fighting credit farmers. no-win possible.

[October]

The undercutting prices is getting completely ridiculous. I get undercutting by one credit but I keep on seeing all of the different things I'm trying to sell get undercut by thousands or even by half, repeatedly, just so people can make their sale. In the end it's only devaluing the items.

[Kaedusz]

I love to hear people scream about competition on MMO auction sites. It's even better when that person is on the server I'm on. Makes me smile all day long.

 

Why?

 

Pure profit - for me.

 

Buy low. Sell High. Undersell the competition. "Fair"? Of course not. Just like life. Who's going hungry? The guy screaming "Not FAIR". Certainly not me.

 

Watch the Market.

Watch when it changes.

Learn WHY it changed.

Make use of that knowledge.

Never be poor again. Ever.

 

Slicing is great money. Like a paper route when you're growing up.

Auctions are adult paper routes. Just exponentially more profitable.

 

I'm a nice guy though. If I find a few items selling at a low price, and I know they are going to be in demand, soon, like barrels, I'll buy them all. See? I'm a nice guy. All those hard working crafters just got paid.

 

The I resell them at a much higher price at the right time and make a killing. Oh, look. I just got paid, too. For what did I get paid, the OP might sneer at me?

 

For having the education and talent to understand money and economics.

Every MMO with a system like this is just another game inside itself.

 

The game of Economics. Wanna play a game? ;-)

this made me giggle

[dlcman]

I don't have any issues with people undercutting me. Even if it's by a 1c.....hey you do what you have to do to outsell your competition. BUT, the people I can't understand are the ones that will completely RUIN the value of something for weeks because they are lazy and don't even research what the value of the item they are selling has. For example:

 

Log in on Tuesday when 3.0 hits (last week), build up enough supply and have advanced strength armoring by the end of the night. Go on GTN, of course on a few people have stuff up. It's 400k+ lowest price. Awesome, I put my product out. I sell a few for that amount and then NOTHING. I look back the next day to figure out why, You can literally see how someone without even looking at what its selling for just listed a bunch of their wares for 150k. Then by the end of the day it was already down to 120k. However by that time I have other armoring and they are still selling for over 300k because no one artificially jacked the price down.

 

What happens is people usually log on, look at the lowest price and got 1k less. So the problem with people just cutting 150% off the lowest priced item is the value drops too quickly and no one notices what you did. So pretty soon you have 4 pages of supply at ridiculous prices all started because one yahoo decided to be lazy and not look at the going rate before selling. I've literally purchased low priced wares to get them off the GTN before people start lowering their price below that.

 

Overall, yes it's a game. But lets have some common sense. If you want to give your stuff at a discounted price, fine.....does it have to be 150% below the lowest value on the GTN? Can't you do 10%....I mean come on.

 

I always sell my stuff much lower. I see something with 6 or 8 items for like 500k i will sell mine for like 150k. Guess what? It sells quick. I don't care if it is one of the other sellers or not. I do this all the time and I sell stuff about as quick as it goes up. And you know what? That is why I have 100s of millions of credits. Flame all you want I got cash which was my goal. Learn to make money and quit caring about a virtual economy that is not going to crash no matter how many a-holes like me there are. Good day.

Edited December 13, 2014 by dlcman

[MeNaCe-NZ]

^^^

 

I like people like you, you make me rich.

 

If you are happy doing it, I'm happy buying then re-listing it for 450K and it will also sell.

 

There's actually so much of it going on now I've stopped buying packs for profit heh ( well until I have space for shadow packs since it's all I need legend rep on now ).

 

If you're happy I'm happy.