Plea to all fellow AH users. Please set up your auction addons properly.

[Brett Skullcrack]

It has nothing to do with dishonest, it's the smart thing to do to make your items show up first.

Until someone else comes around 5 minutes later and undercuts you by 1c. If you undercut by a more significant amount the next person that comes might see the price as too low and decides to not list.

[Doylez]

Better to undercut for 1c then like some idiots undercuttin a gem that sells for 160g by 150g ...

Why? I like those guys, that's a free 150g for me.

[Taraxacum]

One good reason to undercut yourself is to manipulate the AH prices.

Lets say I have 60 items at a market value of 300g.
If I list 40 of these at 600g and buy out ones cheaper than this, the new market price is my 600g. I can now list my remaining 20 (and any I bought) for 450g and they are MUCH more likely to sell at this new price as it's seen as well under the new market price of 600g. Of course really they were worth 300g so it's actualy a 150g mark up on each thats sells.
I achived this by undercutting myself and I've made some good profit (possibly 3,000g or more than I would of had I done normal undercutting)!

[Lord Kristivas]

The people on my server learn a valuable lesson when undercutting me on gems or belt buckles. When I get undercut by 1cp, I take the item out of the AH and undercut them by 50g. Unless they want to see their items drop further in price, they stop. Most people take the hint, I'm happy to say.

[wilzax]

What's the problem with undercutting yourself? I do it all the time, companies in real life do it all the time. It just means you're willing to sell at multiple different price levels. What should he have done then? Unlisted all his previous sales, lost the listing fee, and relisted, when he could just dump another load onto the market?

His tactic is perfectly logical. If he's the largest supplier in the market he can do first listing at a very high price to drive Auctioneer average prices up, then when someone tries to get into his market (or when the market isn't willing to pay the price he set) he can respond aggressively by posting a big load of product at a significant undercut.

Companies milk as much money out of their products as possible, undercutting yourself wouldn't provide the best profit and profit is all that matters in the end of the day.

[Sars6588]

Until someone else comes around 5 minutes later and undercuts you by 1c. If you undercut by a more significant amount the next person that comes might see the price as too low and decides to not list.

All you really need to do is form a union of sorts with enough people in your profession on your server, once you have enough people with you your "union" can easily control the market for whatever it is you're trying to sell. Of course this is extremely difficult to do since a large majority of wow's playerbase is 16 or younger and not very market savoy.

"The people on my server learn a valuable lesson when undercutting me on gems or belt buckles. When I get undercut by 1cp, I take the item out of the AH and undercut them by 50g. Unless they want to see their items drop further in price, they stop. Most people take the hint, I'm happy to say. " That's a horrible idea as your hurting the entire market...again goes back to wow's playerbase not being market savoy.

[Deleted]

Companies milk as much money out of their products as possible, undercutting yourself wouldn't provide the best profit and profit is all that matters in the end of the day.

That's where you're wrong. The free market isn't as simple as a supply line and a demand line and where they meet is the price of the product. Economy is, before anything else, a human construct, and it's filled up to the brim with psychological bullshit and headgames. Undercutting yourself can produce profits, as has been explained a couple times in this very thread, by people who aren't even at the cutting edge of business. Just imagine what someone who's very good at business could do.

[Zanathos]

Maybey a few users have mis-understood what my post was about, I have no quims about competition, this was just pointing out that poorly set up addons can cause you to undercut YOURSELF, + also undercutting huge % of the market for no good reason, taking 100g off the price of a gem that sells comfortable for 800-1000k just because you are too lazy to manually type in a decent amount is what annoyed me.

I was not moaning about 1c undercuts, I was monaing about HUGE undercuts for no reason + undercutting himself like an idiot.

I do believe you mean QUALMS, not quims. A quim is a whole different thing

[Lord Kristivas]

All you really need to do is form a union of sorts with enough people in your profession on your server, once you have enough people with you your "union" can easily control the market for whatever it is you're trying to sell. Of course this is extremely difficult to do since a large majority of wow's playerbase is 16 or younger and not very market savoy.

"The people on my server learn a valuable lesson when undercutting me on gems or belt buckles. When I get undercut by 1cp, I take the item out of the AH and undercut them by 50g. Unless they want to see their items drop further in price, they stop. Most people take the hint, I'm happy to say. " That's a horrible idea as your hurting the entire market...again goes back to wow's playerbase not being market savoy.

When Walmart sells everything so cheap, driving out small businesses, they're not market savvy? I'm not playing with my real life savings, putting my portfolio on the line. I'm making imaginary currency. At that point, all I care about is moving product. Getting it out the door. Could I have made more if I'd listed each item at it's highest possible? Yeah. Could I make more if I was more patient? Sure. Do I care? Not really. I'm like walmart. I just want to see people come get their cheap goods from me, asap.

Since, after all, it's just imaginary money and literally nothing important rides on it. Plus, people know me for selling at 'reasonable' prices.

[Oberoth]

Yeah, pure textbook... except in WoW the resources are virtually infinite while in the real world (that one outside the textbooks) the resources are finite.
Just a little taunt, if economy is driven by textbook rules how comes "nobody" could anticipate (and therefore, avoid) this last economic crisis?

Just a small note.... Actually the housing market crisis was predicted (though not to this scale) by analysts that did an analysis of Fann/Freddie, but was completely ignored by congress(who told them to do it).....

[Deleted]

All you really need to do is form a union of sorts with enough people in your profession on your server, once you have enough people with you your "union" can easily control the market for whatever it is you're trying to sell. Of course this is extremely difficult to do since a large majority of wow's playerbase is 16 or younger and not very market savoy.

That's called a cartel. It's a dick move, it's illegal IRL and I think bans have been issued for extreme offenders in WoW as well. Plus it's hard to pull off in WoW where startup costs are pretty low and there's nothing stopping people from starting up for themselves and making a killing with a slight undercut. Could work for very rare recipes I suppose.

[Brett Skullcrack]

Companies milk as much money out of their products as possible, undercutting yourself wouldn't provide the best profit and profit is all that matters in the end of the day.

Price skimming or more generally Price discrimination

---------- Post added 2010-12-17 at 11:40 AM ----------

All you really need to do is form a union of sorts with enough people in your profession on your server, once you have enough people with you your "union" can easily control the market for whatever it is you're trying to sell. Of course this is extremely difficult to do since a large majority of wow's playerbase is 16 or younger and not very market savoy.

This is called price fixing and it's impossible to do when you don't have a small number of players that completely control the market. I would love people to try price fixing on my server because I would destroy them in the AH

[DrNemesis]

|I have no quims about competition,

I hope you meant qualms, but thanks, that gave me a real chuckle.

[Brett Skullcrack]

Just a small note.... Actually the housing market crisis was predicted (though not to this scale) by analysts that did an analysis of Fann/Freddie, but was completely ignored by congress(who told them to do it).....

Another small note... In a world filled with "experts" making largely arbitrary "predictions", whatever happens, you can always find some "expert" who "predicted" it before hand.

If you had an infinite number of monkeys typing on infinite number of typewriters, eventually one of them would produce the entire works of Shakespeare. Would you buy the publishing rights to that monkey's next product?

[Splenda]

Slightly offtopic, but what I do is I undercut by 2-3g if I'm looking for a fast sale.

Otherwise, if its an item that sells well, I actually post it for 2-3g more than the lowest price, because people buy that item faster than people undercut. So, eventually my item is now the cheapest listed, and it gets bought. Works for me.

I also don't list more than 5 items at a time, so I can easily keep up with changing prices without having to cancel a bunch of auctions. I don't want to control the price of an item, I just want to sell stuff.

[v2prwsmb45yhuq3wj23vpjk]

It's a hoary old retail tactic, where you hope enough customers just see the "9" in "$9.99", and mentally think it's only $9, while your competitors list at $10.00 even. So they psychologically feel that they're saving 10%, when they're really only saving 0.1%

It's relying on your customers not paying attention to pull in sales. It's treading the line of dishonesty in marketing.

When I see stuff listed for 12g99s, I buy the stuff that's listed at 13g00s instead, just to spite the guy who thinks he's outsmarting me. I kill one extra mob every 3 months to make up for my losses for doing so.

Actually, I don't think it has anything to do with the 9.99 thing, I think it has to do with it being at the top of the list.

[Mammoth]

If someone undercuts by a large amount, simply buy them and resell them. If its not worth the risk to do so, then the undercut price was obviously a good price afterall.

[TheOne]

People whining about other people undercutting are the highlight of my day. You guys put things up for god-awful ridiculous prices that most people with sense will absolutely not pay. Then you get mad when someone undercuts your god-awful ridiculous prices. When I put something up like crafting materials (ores, herbs, etc.), if there is anything over 200g, I will absolutely, without hesitation, undercut that stuff by at least a good 75-100g. Every time. I don't care about peoples greediness. I'm just trying to look out for the ones that are trying to level their professions without having to grind 500 herbs, ores, or what have you. Greed is bad, and it makes people stupid.

[Serissa]

Why do you think someone undercutting yourself?

Don't you think it might be like...

stage1: person A puts something on AH for 200g
stage2: person B puts same stuff for 190g
stage3: person A do not cancel his auctions and puts more stuff for 180g
stage4: person B cancel his lots (for 190g) and puts it for 160g

when I play AH I do exactly this, I have lots and lots of stuff so I have no reasons to bother about my own overpriced stuff :P

how's it looks when you check AH at "stage5"?
seriously, think before QQ

[AetherMcLoud]

Better to undercut for 1c then like some idiots undercuttin a gem that sells for 160g by 150g ...

Indeed. Or what happened to truegold this week. Sunday prices = 3k gold. Then some asshole starts to put up truegold for 2,5k, the next one goes 2k, then 1,5k. Now the price of the raw mats for truegold is worth more than the truegold itself (1k on my server). Damn.