djt got a similar mail. These guys never learn:
And the winner of the week is the genius who came to Trebonius with a really profitable proposal:
Translation:
- Hi, could you give me 5100g, and I give you 476g, I really need them, I'm so poor!!
- Well, you want 5100g if you give me 476g ??, I'll lose money, won't I?
- Yeah, but I'm sorry for you money
- Will you repay me?
- Later, ok? I'll add you to my friend list, and if you agree, you are so nice, and so kind, and i'll do everything you want
- Thus you'll give me 10 000g if I give you 1g?
- No, you give me 5100g and I give you 476g, but when you give me them, I'll earn 4g a quest ... in fact now it's 469g ... I need the 5100g for the epic flying mount (5000g+100g)
PS: I'm sure there is M&S on your server. Please send me the products of their brains to let them fulfill their purpose: to entertain us.
42 comments:
And I thought the québécois here were dumb!
That last screenshot has to be fake, or what? I mean, nobody really could ever be THAT stupid?! Seriously? : (
Oh, you want french M&S ? That I've got. Let me crop the screenshots and I'll send them.
Hi !
no it's not a fake, this guy is really that stupid ! He is still whispering me to know whether i can give him 5100g
the server is eu-garona, a french server
The first letter is actually quite nice.
Are you never tempted to collaborate with competitors like Darraxus does?
Price collusion is one of the most powerful market tactics available. It is also quite illegal in traditional commerce, for good reason, as it can truly do damage to markets.
Colluding with your competitors is very smart. Keep undercutting, but for goodness sake, undercut by 1s, not 10%.
actually undercutting by 30 gold is dumb. Because if you are the lowest price by 1 gold or by 30 gold people will still buy off you. If you undercut by 30 gold you are screwing yourself out of 29 gold.
That is dumb.
I've dealt with people like the last guy. Not quite that stupid, but pretty damn stupid. I love the guys who ask you to run them through something or help on an easy noob quest and then having the gall to give you a hard time when you say no. Lucky I'm not bashful and don't mind responding "That only a total idiot wouldn't be able to finish that quest on his own".
@Doable...Price collusion in a commodities market with very few or zero barriers to entry--Look it up.
@Anonymous "actually undercutting by 30 gold is dumb"... you can also benefit from understanding what a commodities market is like in a free market. Might also want to check out "Supply and Demand" as well as the concept of profit as incentive.
hmm one glyph costs not more than 5 g to produce. So selling them for 20g is a lot of profit. Why not to undercut others who want 50 g for this glyph?
@Anonymous "actually undercutting by 30 gold is dumb"...
You sir are the reason Goblins can exists. Thank you for the 6k/week inscription market. I am not as big as Gelvon's was BUT, it is growing and I spend far less time in game.
@Philipp
Keep up the good work!
At one point in time I colluded with a few others and drove the price of eternal belt buckles to over 100g each on my server. The result? People bought their own mats and went looking for blacksmiths. Now I have dropped the price to 40g (only about an 8g profit each) Since I have done that I have made more money at 40g than I ever made at 100g, because people will drop the 40g five times to get one for each character, or buy for their whole guild and I now sell 15-20 a day.
Sell at the price where product moves, and is easier to buy than to buy the materials and find a craft, there is more money in it.
About what last Anonymous said - so true. When I was trying to get the titansteel guardian, it was going on the AH 800g-900g, when the mats cost 400g (bought from the AH, nevertheless). So I just /2 for a blacksmith, tipped the BS good (none of this silly 20g tip) and got my weapon much cheaper.
So -> SERIOUS overpricing just means that people will find a crafter either from guild or on trade or just go buy the item from somewhere (talking about cooking recipes - 50g for smth bought from booty bay? I thought 'HELL!' and went there myself and bought a little surplus to sell for cheaper on the AH ;)
''actually undercutting by 30 gold is dumb. Because if you are the lowest price by 1 gold or by 30 gold people will still buy off you. If you undercut by 30 gold you are screwing yourself out of 29 gold.
That is dumb.''
its also a great way to get rid of the competition for good, and when you got the monopol- your the king of the hill and can make more profit then ever.
that is smart.
What do you post glyphs at then? I am having issue with 1 person thats hangs in IF 90% of his time basicly, and i seen he post glyphs down to like 6-7g. But his start price is around 55g.
Point is that i really cba to undercut him 24/7 and even if post glyphs around 6g, he prolly undercut me quite fast.
I have worked at a grocery store for 19 years. About 15 years ago, there was some sort of lawsuit I read about where Brillo scrubbing pads and S.O.S. scrubbing pads were found to be guilty of price fixing. Basically they did what you are seeing on these screenshots; they agreed to charge similar prices for their similar products. In the United States, this is expressly ILLEGAL. These companies had to pay very large amounts of money. To me, their products seemed fairly low price and I wondered why they didn't agree to price their products higher since they were "in cahootz". Collusion between businessmen to fix prices is wrong, wrong, WRONG! I applaud all your efforts to expose them and to undercut them. If you believe in a free market, then price-fixing is a clever way of stealing from the purchaser.
Undercutting by a lot is not "dumb", it's good business depending on your goals. In this case, the seller wants to maximize his ratio of income to time spent generating that income (yes, time is a resource). It's not possible to to make good sales on the AH with only one hour of time per week by undercutting my just a little. You will always be undercut by those who spend more time online and your AH postings will come back.
To be honest if you were selling glyphs on my server I would be pissed off at you too. On my server they sell just fine at a certain level but there is someone who always feels the need to undercut by some stupid amount thinking they will sell more which isn't the case.
Maybe your server is different but I made as much or more than you every week just selling glyphs by undercutting by 2%.
@ Mark
If I was on your server, You would be "pissed off" at me and I would still be making my bank roll and my business would be growing. Soon enough you would leave the market. Why should I care about what others "think" the glyphs are worth. It cost me nothing for ink (that's right nothing) so my glyph cost is the paper alone. At that price I am making 100's X's my investment. I don't farm, and I craft every other day. Once I figured out exactly how Gelvon was doing things, I duplicated it on a smaller scale. As the number of glyphs I can craft grow, so does my business.
Gevlon, do you ever have customers messaging you to thank you for your lower prices?
@ Kauzmo said...
"@Anonymous "actually undercutting by 30 gold is dumb"...
You sir are the reason Goblins can exists. Thank you for the 6k/week inscription market. I am not as big as Gelvon's was BUT, it is growing and I spend far less time in game."
I'm pulling in 5k a week on blacksmithing and JC. I have no gathering profs. And my professions are "harder" (according to most idiots) to make money on then inscription (but I am a raid tank and they are great for raid tanking so I keep them). I am NOT the reason you are making money. Rather you are the reason you are not making as much money as you could.
The nature of the game, and the simplicity of crafting and of the AH means that even if you undercut by 30 gold you aren't going to get a monopoly or anything even approaching that. All you are doing it shooting yourself in the foot, and raking in less gold then you could be.
@vlad said...
its also a great way to get rid of the competition for good, and when you got the monopoly- your the king of the hill and can make more profit then ever.
that is smart."
No, it is dumb, because you won't shut down your competition. Read my above comment on the simplicity of the game and monopolies. I'll still undercut you by 1 gold. :-)
In my opinion, the people who undercut by 1 silver and also tell others to undercut by 1 silver are the greedy nolifers who spend all their time on the ah and still don't make much money. They are the only ones who check and recheck listings every few minutes and pull then repost their stuff undercutting the lowest by 1 silver (or even 1 copper).
Both people who just drop by and want to sell their stuff quick as well as intelligent businessmen who know time is money will undercut by a large amount, to a price that actually makes sense.
These people are IMO the true M&S of the auction house, they make way less money than goblins (who just laugh at them), and if you look at time/money ratio, they even make less money than the driveby casuals. And at the same time, they will make themselves a bad name on the server. Gratz to being stupid I guess. ;)
Undercutting is part of the AH mini-game. Either undercutting by a silver or 30g depending on what you are selling is just how to get sales. If you are truly interested in just the sales aspect then sales is where you make your money. People who run by and post or people leveling up a profession and posting their leveling materials is temporary. To be goblinish you continue to undercut and move items. That is the point of what Gevlon has been saying. Sell in very large quantity and you will make a profit. Pay attention to the surroundings of the AH and keep an eye on what is selling at what prices and you will be successful. Why argue semantics other then for the sake of arguments of course. :) Good luck to you all on your ventures.
"In my opinion, the people who undercut by 1 silver and also tell others to undercut by 1 silver are the greedy nolifers who spend all their time on the ah and still don't make much money. They are the only ones who check and recheck listings every few minutes and pull then repost their stuff undercutting the lowest by 1 silver (or even 1 copper).
Both people who just drop by and want to sell their stuff quick as well as intelligent businessmen who know time is money will undercut by a large amount, to a price that actually makes sense.
These people are IMO the true M&S of the auction house, they make way less money than goblins (who just laugh at them), and if you look at time/money ratio, they even make less money than the driveby casuals. And at the same time, they will make themselves a bad name on the server. Gratz to being stupid I guess. ;)"
Dumbest comment I've read so far. If someone reposts their AH every few minutes, it's guaranteed to be a Chinese gold farmer. Their GOAL in the game is to make as much money as they can and if they weren't making much, they'd just go off farming herbs/ore instead.
http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=14910371595&sid=1
muhahaha
hey any one know of a mod that can check to see if your being undercuT? this is getting hard with this many auctions...
Many who have posted on the issue of undercutting by 30g are forgetting to include most of the factors in determining whether or not you should do it.
Among the factors to be looked at are:
Competition
Your raw material supply
Demand
Market saturation
production costs
Information presentation
Can you produce more goods at a profit faster than you can sell them? If yes, you should sell as low as you would like. If not then you should price on the higher end and take more time selling your goods. In my practice this means that in my infinite dust market I can always afford to undercut to sell more quickly since I have huge stores of the raw materials. This also means in my frozen orb resale side business that I am more likely to undercut by a low amount since I can only get someone to sell me significantly underpriced orbs occasionally.
Is the market already saturated? If so then undercutting significantly could very well be costing you money if your goods are no more likely to be bought at a lower price. But if not then a lower price could mean more sales even if the profit per sale is less.
Competition is much harder to figure out how they will affect the market ahead of time. But their reaction should always be considered. I won't go into too much detail here since there is a lot of divere reactions.
Information presentaton might sound strange but not everyone has an AH addon and not all who have one have it set well. For the basic AH UI a lower bid shows up before a lower buyout. So for the basic UI you can often move more product by having a lower starting bid price, even if you don't have the cheapest buyout! A similar phenomena is selling singles over stacks. Besides fooling the basic UI, many without properly formatted AH Addons will see the lower buyout singles first over the cheaper per unit stacks.
I'm sure there's a lot I've forgotten but these factors should be considered before you condemn an AH poster's actions.
The only dumb people are those who undercut under material cost. If you do that, you're wasting your own time and money. People who know the AH won't be driven out, but will wait until you have lost enough money to drive yourself out of the market. Then they'll relist their items for a proper price above material cost including AH cut.
I've dealt with people trying to sell manufactured product for under material cost. I usually switch up and start selling materials or I stay away from the market until the prices rise. There is currently an alchemist on our server that sells Frostwyrm Flasks for under the market value of the mats on a consistent basis. He has to farm to sell that low because I've checked mats all throughout the week, they are never lower than the flask cost and often higher meaning he loses money selling flasks. Even with the occasional extra proc from Elixir mastery, he isn't making a profit.
If a person is dumb enough to farm their own materials and sell completed items for less than they could sell the materials for, they can have that market. No way they're buying their mats off the AH, completing items, and selling them. There's no profit. There's no use in entering an industry where you have to farm, it defeats the purpose of the tips on this blog.
I don't mind undercutting to take market share. That's expected. But constantly undercutting material cost is ignorant. And I'll continue to keep an eye on the market and come in again once the price rises above the material cost.
@ Kauzmo
You can do as you like, I was just merely pointing out that it's silly to cost yourself gold just because the ink is so cheap. Why sell for less for no reason is how I looked at it and I was making 6k gold a day from glyphs for a long time.
Also many many people tried to take my market, at the end I was the last one standing.
Price collusion sucks if you are on the bitter end of it. His methord is to drive out his competitors out of the market. Nothing can be more demoralizing than to make it not worth you time or gold to put up your goods.
One of the problems I see is idiots trying to copy cat the goblin, but they don't have the bank to stick to it. You sell your gear for cost and the cost of doing so will not make you a goblin because you are a jackass.
People that apply real life economic principles to this game is silly. You cannot grab market share because the supply of goods in WoW is UNLIMITED.
People will only buy your product when they need it and not because it's 50%, 30 gold or whatever lower than your competitors. This is not real life where people buy things when they are on sale. I see idiots undercutting by huge margins all the time trying to grab market share. I just laugh at them and repost my glyphs ensuring that they make jack shit.
These are examples of M&S. not the bg or the raid or the dungeon examples you've put up.
please keep the blog to this.
That being said I get a lot of these. It seems like other glyph makers don't like it when we go for volume rather than rarity.
What really makes me chuckle is the price people will pay for glyphs when you are the only one providing it.
Or the complaints when you sell something at a little bit above cost.
How easy is it to dump Auctioneer data to MS Excel? That's my analytical comfort zone, and would love to take fresh scan data of glyphs to quickly identify where I've been undercut.
@annonymous,(a different annoymous):
"You cannot grab market share because the supply of goods in WoW is UNLIMITED."
This is true in a theoretica sense. But it is not true in terms of whats available now.
For instance its rare that there are more than 10 stacks of frostweave for sale on horde side at any given time. While I could by from the alliance via x-fering between accounts at a premium(booty bay goblins are greedy) or I could farm it that doesn't make the amount of frostweave available at that time unlimited. There is still scarcity.
Which makes the only stupid people selling on the AH are those that sell for less than it cost them. This is both in time and money. Most people don't factor in their time.
And they don't factor in that if something might sell at 50g for 1, they might be missing out on selling 4 in the same time period for 20 each. The higher the price the fewer the bidders.
"actually undercutting by 30 gold is dumb. Because if you are the lowest price by 1 gold or by 30 gold people will still buy off you. If you undercut by 30 gold you are screwing yourself out of 29 gold.
That is dumb."
Been addressed a couple times by people who hold an opinions on both sides of the fence, but thought I would throw in WHY you see smart players doing this seemingly silly thing.
There are two ways a smart player in the glyph market can post there glyphs. You can find a price for each Glyph that you know they will sell at, see what glyphs are overpriced, and only post those glyphs using Batch Post. Total time spent works out to about 30-45 minutes every other day including making glyphs. This is how I typically do it, and as a result I will end up undercutting some people by 20+ gold without ever having known it (I only know that a particular glyph is overpriced, not by how much and my price was already pre-set long ago).
Option two is using appraiser, finding the min price, and undercutting each glyp. Total time spent, an hour and change every day... maybe twice a day if you want to ensure you aren't getting badly undercut after posting 5 at 20 gold.
I tried option #2 for three weeks recently and found that my overall profit remained the same. I actually think it decreased a bit, but to be fair I think they were close enough that I'll call them eqqual. What I found, was that if I wanted to grossly overprice my glyphs, I needed to spend a ton more time watching the AH to ensure I had glyphs that were going to sell. It seemed people were much more willing to cancel their auction and relist when the pofit was 20 gold than they were when the profit was 2-3 gold.
So, I'm back to batch posting glyphs which saves me a tremendous amount of time and nets a similar profit. I can post all my glyphs via 1 set of button presses instead of posting glyph by glyph and having to adjust my prices. For people like me, who value spending less time at the AH and more in other aspects, worrying about squeezing out extra gold on the occaissional market manipulation is NOT worth the extra time required at the AH. That is sometimes why you will see someone undercut you 20 gold and not care... "Batch Posting".
Another small comment on why batch posting appears so much more time effective. Mind you, this means posting glyphs every other day at a set price every time, which is about 45 minutes total work every other day.
If I was to do that manually ever other day, setting prices for 48 hours, undercutting my competition, and posting at very high prices for those with no listing I assume two things.
1) Selling fewer at higher profit margin will outweigh selling more at lower profit margin.
2) I will not get undercut so quickly that I lose a significant amount of sales.
The glyph business is lively enough that it is unusuall to have only a handful of sellers on a server. Posting at a high value, and leaving it for two days virtually guarantees having multiple people undercut you over the next 48 hours that you will be unlikely to sell any glyphs at all unless they are sold shortly after posting. This has been my experience having tried both methods on both a busy realm... and on a realm much slower. If someone undercuts you by one silver, or by 20 gold...the results are the same... no sale.
What I mean by the last line, is someone doesn't screw me if I am selling a glyph at 30 gold anymore by selling there's at 5 gold than they do by selling it at 29 gold. Either way I must undercut them to get a sale. Getting mad at the person posting it at 25 gold less is really just stating "Now when I undercut you in an hour I'll make less gold"! From my experience as a seller, it's just sour grapes from someone having trouble selling overpriced glyphs. If they sell better at a given price which results in greater overall profits... that's the price to sell them at.
All of the above is presuming batch posting, which really is a remarkable tool for conserving time spent at the AH. Spending an average of 22 minutes a day in the glyph market leaves much time to invest in other markets. Currently playing in Glyphs and Enchanting and getting ready to level Jewelcrafting for more batch posting fun.
There's more than one way to make your 1k per trip to the AH, and the above is just intended to explain some of the logic behind why THIS investor undercuts you 20 gold. To paraphrase... because he does not know, nor care, that the price that hour is 20 gold higher than it typically is.
What amazes me is that there is still that much of a market for glyphs. On my 2 80's I bought glyphs for each of their two specs, and haven't touched the glyphs in months.
that said..
I'd challenge all the goblins to show how the mass undercutting will work in markets other than glyphs. I think the unique nature of glyphs (stacking, low mat cost, low AH deposits) allow for it to work well. You couldn't use the same techniques for cut gems for example. (Non-stacking, high AH deposits, high mat costs).
I'd like to see some tips on the best ways to manage some other professions to make the gold.
I'd also like to see some notes on what to look for in the AH as signs that it is ripe for the picking to do the goblin glyph business...
@Kauzomo
"It cost me nothing for ink (that's right nothing) so my glyph cost is the paper alone. ."
No, its not, LOL, ya silly goblin. I make ~4k a day selling glyphs on my server. People buy at 50g, easy, and its morons like yourself who ruin it (along with people who camp the AH all day long).
The cost of glyphs isnt parchment, its TIME. If I dont make 4k an hour, the market isnt worth for me. If you are happy with a pathetic 1k/hour/day, then, well, you are just another baddie hungry for gold. Sorry to say, but its true.
Lupius said...
And I thought the québécois here were dumb!
18 July, 2009 07:07
@Lupius
You sir are a moron and a dumbass. First of all it is clearly stated that this is a EU server hence the beggar is french.
second: WTF man?? where did that come from?
Anonymous said : "First of all it is clearly stated that this is a EU server hence the beggar is french. "
For your information, people living in Quebec play on French servers, not on US servers. And it could be a Belgian too. Not only French people speak French. And seeing his grammar, he may even not be a native French speaker. It's monkey talking... "I Tarzan, you Jane ?"
That said, so many people write like 'tards on any channel that you will never know... Using words looking like English ones to look more ... cool maybe... Their English class marks must be dreadful...
That screenshot is quite epic...
I agree. I was just pissed at Lupius for the free shot he took at the Québécois. I mean come on... Also... Not sure about Them playing on EU servers... The time difference would maike raiding quite hard no?
Finally... anyone who begs is to be considered a Tard, very much thank you. I mean.. for me, they are automatic guild-kick, or --> straight to ignore list...
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