Ethics of undercutting

[Elementium]

I never price anything higher than what I would pay myself. I made a saronite shield yesterday an put it in for 75g taking into account the mats are not hard to find, it's level and considering how much gold i've made just from questing in one day (which was almost 200g i think)

[Remesh]

Is it right or wrong to undercut friends or guildies in the AH? If not then what are some ways to make it fair for everyone?

I'm pretty confident that if you do this you will burn in hell for all eternity. On a more temporal level you will be ostracisized from society and shunned. Very little chance of redemption. If caught you should probably just /wrist to save yourself the years of guilt.

Okay, honestly not a big deal. You have just as much right to make money in this game as anyone else does. I don't really think its an ethical question.

[Kantey]

I think the real question should be "The ethics of overpricing". Undercutting would only matter if someone could gain a true monopoly, which they can't.

[b37x]

I have a friend that watches the ore prices religiously. Instead of competing against him, I just mail him my ore and he mails me back money. That way I don't undercut him or end up selling when the market is devalued. I get to keep questing, he gets to play the WoW commodities trading game.

[luciano]

Or...

just a get a bank alt that no one knows is you...and then it doesn't matter what you charge or who you undercut.

[kirbyrules]

I'll undercut guildies or friends online but i'll never undercut RL friends brothers, or my mom. I usually know what types of items the people in my RL sell so if i'm selling something that they could i just look at names. I have undercut them before without knowing though when they sell new things .

[loder]

undercutting is part and parcel of the biz. supply and demand. economics 101

Supply and demand theory does not work in WoW because the goods dont actually exist.
Supply and demand does not work in an anonymous online enviroment.

[Shadovv]

none of you have addressed the most common form of undercutting. Undercutting by 1copper


this does NOT lower the price of goods, this has NOTHING to do with your item being too expensive


if you are selling 50x items for 50g ea...and someone lists 50x for 49g99s99c....the 'price' of the item has NOT gone down (relatively)

it is still 50g. the only difference is now YOURS will not sell. YOURS are not overpriced, or if they are, so are theirs.



So new question; ethics of undercutting by 1c?

[Metaslave]

do you want to make the sale or not?

besides if you put up a popular item on AH theres no need to undercut most of the time. someone will buy it eventually

[Deleted]

I usually put things to AH for 1-2g cheaper and sell very fast. Since I dont farm the mats for them myself, it doest really matter, as long as it sells fast. I'm not saying I'm the only one who does it, others do too but I have no problem with it. Making more money in a game means Ill never have to farm or do dailies. Of course the market will eventually crash like this when others follow but then I'll just swap to other proffession on my alt till it recovers.

Is it unethical? I dont think it is. Im not cheating, buying gold or anything, just selling cheaper than others.

[velourea]

I don't undercut friends, I don't even put up my crap when I see they're selling first
if they do it to me, I'll do it to them though, if I don't like them I'll put it up on an alt they don't know

[Karsh]

I undercut all the time so things just get sold and i dont waste a diposit

[frankster]

Supply and demand theory does not work in WoW because the goods dont actually exist.
Supply and demand does not work in an anonymous online enviroment.

so the goods don't exist, but the supply and demand certainly exists...

no actually I see your point - there is no scarcity of supply because all you have to do is go out and mine some ore for ever then you have infinite ore and no need to buy any ever.

actually I don't see your point.

[Nizjub]

Since there is no blizzard agency to deter undercutting on the ah, then not only is it acceptable, it doesnt fall under the juristriction of ethics. In order for ethics to be taken into account there needs to be a consensus of the majority in a ordered faction that can determine whats wrong and whats right. Without that all opinions on ethics are relative to small distributions or personal morals, which in a free market dont matter.

Besides, if you undercut you have to work harder for less money. You end up making more because u needed to sell twice as much, or three times as much, etc

[Aknot]

Does anyone actually read the original thread?

"Is it right or wrong to undercut friends or guildies in the AH?"

[cubby]

Bank alt + ruthless selling tactics = win

rinse/repeat/profit

Couldn't agree more

And as far as OP - undercutting friends/guildies is probably not a good idea - unless they were stupid about their listings. And in that case I would tell them (nicely of course) that they might want to rethink their listing strategies. I have plenty of friends in guild that are great players, but don't get AH strategy.

[Jashin]

Auctioneer is FTL
those who use it are FTL

unless:
1. you don't care about the market
2. you don't care about making more gold

I hustle the AH like it's the stock market.
/fun

[Remesh]

I'll undercut guildies or friends online but i'll never undercut RL friends brothers, or my mom. I usually know what types of items the people in my RL sell so if i'm selling something that they could i just look at names. I have undercut them before without knowing though when they sell new things .

Undercutting mom would be terrabad.

[Nezoia]

Ethics and Money don't go along in a mmorpg.

Only rule is not to cheat (ie. buy it online). Everything beyond that is allowed.

[Canopus]

If someone doesn't want to be your friend because you undercut them, then they are not a friend anyway. No ones owns the right to set a price, nor should anyone expect their friends and guildmates not to undercut them.

I undercut everyone and get people mad at me all the time. Someone whispered me today and called me a "greedy bitch" because they priced a glyth at 50g and I priced it at 20g. They told me they charge what people are willing to pay and that I don't know anything about making money on the AH. I told them I charge what I think even more people are willing to pay, and I wasn't the one being the greedy bitch.

I asked this person how much they had made selling glyths and they said 10k. I told them I had made over 50k, so my plan of undercutting was smarter. They called me a liar, so I went to Org to show them I was not lying. We compared achievements (it's under the Statistics tab, Char, wealth). It turns out they had made 5k total and I had made over 60k, they were the liar.

Just because 10 people will pay you 50g for a glyth or whatever, doesn't mean 100's wouldn't have paid you 20 for it. No one has the right to set a price for anything so high that tons of people simply won't buy it. If you want to undercut someone, go ahead. If they don't like it they can undercut you again or go sell something else!

I have sold nothing but glyths on the AH, all around 20g or under. I started charging more for a few of them when WotLK came out becuase I wanted to go level and got tired of ppl buying out my glyths and then putting them back up for double what I had charged, while I wasn't looking. There are only a handful of them that I had to do that with though, the rest are still 20 or less.

Wow... You need to loot more gold LOL