Guild Wars 2

Ok, This may be buried somewhere in here but…
About 3/4 of the time, I go to sell something on the TP and I see a lot (and I mean a LOT) of people who either skipped Math or are simply not aware of how the TP works and I am getting very frustrated as an old Auction Hound!
Example: I have an item that Vendors for 20c. I go to see if I can auction it and there’s always someone selling it for 21c !!!

Now, the Listing fee is 1c so… what are you thinking??? You are going to lose money by selling an item for for the vendor amt + the exact listing fee!
Here’s how it works (taken from the wiki):

Fees
There are two Trading Post fees, both paid by the seller; they total up to 15% of the total sales price.

A non-refundable listing fee of 5% (minimum 1 ); this is paid when you post and is not returned if you remove the order.
A 10% tax on successful sales; this is deducted from the amount available to the seller at pickup.

For example, if you offer an item for 1s, you will pay 5 to list and find 90 at pickup after someone purchases it, i.e. net proceeds will total 85c .

Fee notes.
Both fees are shown before you press the submit button, however the total shows the gross total, not net profit.

Losing potential earnings.

Be careful not to list for so little that you would take home less than you would get by selling the item to a vendor!. i.e.never sell for less than ~20% more than the item’s value. For example:
An item of 88c can be sold on the trading post for 89c, but this results in 76c (after deducting 9c for a successful sale and 4c for the listing fee).
If offered for 1s 26c, you would take home 1s 7c, 19 more than the price the vendor offers (after paying a sales tax of 13c, listing fee of 6c).

So, My question is; WHY are people doing this? I can’t find a reason ><

Herc

Many of these were posted very early, before things like tax were displayed on the TP window and when there was no minimum limit on the price you could set on a buy / sell order.

This has been discussed many times on this forum, but there’s quite a few reasons people do this. The most important thing to keep in mind is that there is a very large number of people playing this game. Also, you’re not really going to reach your target audience by posting here – many people here already know this stuff.

Here’s a quick rundown of some reasons:
1) Ignorance – some people don’t realise they’d make more money vendoring some items. As Jestunhi said, in many cases this was before the TP displayed some of this information; back then fewer people knew about the taxes, though many still don’t know about the whole 5%/10% deal.
2) Laziness – some people can’t be bothered going to a vendor to sell items; the TP is generally more convenient.
3) Efficiency – if you’re farming and you end up with a full inventory without being near a vendor, you’re much better off losing a couple of coppers selling on the TP rather than wasting time getting to a vendor.