Auction House TomfooleRMTy

Okay, has this been happening on any other server? http://yfrog.com/1nrmtjj (the image is too large width-wise for me to just [img]tag it, so I had to just use the link, sorry.)

I've been watching this char for a few days now, and s/he has been severely undercutting MANY items, all being sold to most of the same other characters, for WELL below their normal pricetag, such as this. Other items have been Iron Ram Horn, Death Earring, a lot of the items that aren't worth more than a couple hundred thousand gil.

Is this happening elsewhere? How rampant is this kind of RMT going on? Is it even RMT? (Or, rather, how could it NOT be RMT?) Before long, it's going to be these kinds of douchewaffles that ultimately bring down the price of EVERYTHING, leaving crafters and farmers alike bitching about everything not being worth as much as it used to be.

I think they do that for a while to bring the prices on stuff way down, then buy up a lot of stuff at the lower prices and use it to jack the prices back up, so that they earn more gil off it. It's price fixing, I would report it to a gm.

Well, go figure, you can't report RMT/price fixing in game, they just send you a message saying to go to the Support website and do it there, but I definitely reported it, that's for sure.

We have a guy that does this kind of thing all the time on Unicorn. He will work prices down so low that no one will want to craft/farm w/e item it is. Then when no one else is in the market he will jack the prices up. Once competition returns he will crash the market again and then move on to another item.

Prime example. He took composite fishing rods down under 10k to the point where it would be a loss to craft them w/o farming all the mats. Then he raised the price up to 50k over the course of a few days. As soon as competition returned he crashed the price back to 10k and stopped selling them.

EDIT: Unfortunatly sometimes its just part of the game. There really is no way to prove whether this activity is RMT or if its just someone trying to make a quick buck for them selves. Price fixing may be an issue but I still dont SE actually doing anything about it unless they can prove a RMT transaction actually took place on an acct.

Oh, I figured that. Playing the Auction House is a game in and of itself, but I think when you're doing it to like, 30 different items, THAT'S when it becomes more suspicious of being RMT, as opposed to one jackass just undercutting one item to control it's market. But, it can't hurt to report it.

I think, however, if they were trying to just control the prices, they wouldn't be undercutting it so severely, nor would it be the same players doing it in unison.