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All of this ranting has made me realize that the warehouse fees are incredibly dumb. Yes, they're a pure goldsink, but they're also nothing more than a penalty for not doing perfect math and just trying to play the game. GUH.

Edit: Also, do we really need to be able to do something about another player/character undercutting everyone else? They're either not making gold or will eventually lose steam to maintain the level that allows them to undercut. As long as you aren't overcharging, you're still going to see sales. It's one thing to be annoyed OOC about it, and I can even understand talking to them about it IC, but it's a completely different and completely unnecessary thing to come at someone sideways over OOC. "Oh no, they're making less gold than I am per sale and doing more work to maintain it!"

Edit2: And if you all really feel the need to enforce that IC, then make trade coalitions/marketeering alliances/whatever and get that RP rolling. Until you do, though, don't expect anyone to just play ball with you, and if you're getting increasingly aggressive/naggy about it IC, they have every right to slap that ignore button and call it a day. You are not entitled to someone else's time, RP, or efforts.

Not in reference to the Bloodloch and Spinesreach stuff listed above, but one of my pet peeves so far has been my own experience of people immediately taking economic decisions and policies and what people price their goods at immediately out of character. I've been cursed at by people out of character and verbally assaulted over what I used to do with my Herbalism prices. My recommendation to them at the time was to deal with it in character and suggested maybe some sort of treaty about pricing policy on Spirit side or a law for the two cities to set.  In the end neither thing happened and I just got tired of being cursed at and called names and dropped Herbalism and picked up Toxicology instead.

Moral of the story, I agree entirely with Xaspher.

Didn't this happen months ago? And tbh, people are free to set their prices whatever they feel like. But any shopkeeper should be fully prepared to receive any backlash for majorly undercutting their competitors, especially if the city has shop policy in place that lets people price stuff however they like. So yeah, while this should have probably been handled ICly, do you think it would've made you felt any better if this person was jumping down your throat in-game versus in OOC tells or web or whatever? This brings into question what sort of things players can do to hold others accountable, because in this instance if Sryaen had a problem with Aeryx regarding shop pricing stuff, there's very little he could do legally and essentially, if you got tired of hearing about it ICly, you could just smack that ignore function and go about your merry day.

While... I suppose in your example a person could frivolously ignore you, mechanically or otherwise, but there's still some recourse in game at your disposal if it's something your character is really passionate about. The rest of the game doesn't stop existing.

You could form a coalition among other shopkeepers to apply political pressure. Laws could be changed. Treaties formed. Secret pacts and so on to tax those outside the "Merchant Code/Guild". You could even maybe bribe the person to make it worth their while if it hasn't reached ignoring each other yet. There's a lot of RP potential here to find IG solutions without ever needing to interact with the person or bypass ignore. There's even more strategies that could be utilized if you're just trying to bring the offending party to the table to talk. There's really no situation where berating someone OOC for an IC action is called for unless you're like friends that understand you're just venting at each other or something. If they're breaking game rules, there's steps to take there as well to get it resolved without resorting to berating someone OOC.

If that's too much effort for you (general you here) for what is a viable IG action then... I'm afraid with competition, not everyone can be winners.

Disclaimer: This isn't to say people can't gripe/vent/complain. But people aren't quite as powerless as they think. It might take shaking up the status quo and norms of your org but options are available.