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I just hate trying to build up my nest egg and seeing profit going *poof* because the game needs a money sink 
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I've literally never noticed the listing fee.
Ok wait, not quite true- one time I accidentally listed something for 150 million instead of 1.5, and growled at it.
But when I'm selling stuff or flipping stuff, it's not enough of a bite to pay any attention to.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
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I don't know that much about economics and markets. It's nearly impossible to lose money in CoH. . . if I was that smart I might be rich f'real.
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To be rich f'real you need to be smart and extremely driven. I'm far too lazy for that, unfortunately. I'm great at dropping buy/sell orders overnight and profiting when I'm not looking though! 
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I just hate trying to build up my nest egg and seeing profit going *poof* because the game needs a money sink
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I just hate bad English.
Fees - Plural
Fee's - Possessive
Come on, this is 2nd grade stuff
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Also, I don't really get your point. Pretty much any market system that only lets you drive the price UP from the original asking price will favor the seller. This includes more conventional auction houses as well. This system incents sellers to price low so they sell fast, which lets buyers bid-creep to essentially get a lower price than the apparent "going rate". In addition, the listing fees disincent sellers from relisting if the going rate is rising. It's actually more buyer friendly than a regular auction if you ask me.
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I remember a dev post or a phrasing in an early feature list that they chose the system they did because it was the fairest to both buyer and seller, or words to that effect. Unfortunately, I can't track it down.
I can track down this, from the "Consignment Houses and the Black Market" entry at http://help.ncsoft.com:
"Buyers can not see what price sellers are selling their items for. Sellers can not see what buyers are willing to pay. This ensures that sellers get what they deserve, and buyers pay what they feel is appropriate."
This implies that the Consignment House's designers intended for a seller to be able to ask for less than an item usually sells for but get full market value anyway. (EDIT: Positron implies the same thing here, when he says, "This means that sellers who don't know the value of what they have have a greater chance of getting what they deserve for the item, no matter how low they personally value it.") The second half of the last sentence, about helping buyers, does not require a double-blind bid system to be true. Any system that allows typing in an arbitrary value or making an immediate purchase at a known price would allow "buyers [to] pay what they feel is appropriate". (I'm hard-pressed to envision a non-braindamaged system that actually prevents buyers from paying appropriate prices, to be honest. Something like a market where players can only bid in increments of 100k, on anything, would achieve that, but it would also be dumb.)
For an outside perspective, there is also this blog entry from a dev team member on another MMORPG, Pirates of the Burning Sea. PotBS has a market similar to CoH's. It (currently) lacks standing buy orders, but its bidding works like ours, including the blind pricing. The blog entry goes into great detail about why their dev team chose the blind bid system. In particular, the author enumerates seven key benefits of it, and while the logic behind them is muddled and mutually contradictory at times, and some benefits listed are questionable as to whether they're actually benefits, most of the factors listed involved insuring higher prices for sellers. This makes sense given that one of their main design goals was avoiding the kind of irrational, runaway undercutting they observed in other MMOs with open pricing markets. (The benefits for buyers? To paraphrase: "You can offer less than the going amount and maybe get something", which is true, but pitiful compared to open price markets where it happens in 100% of all opportunities; "You can bid-creep or offer a large amount up front, depending on whether your time or money is more valuable," which I have a hard time swallowing as a "benefit", and "There are fewer transaction collisions", which actually benefits both sides.)
I wish I could point to something similar from CoH's dev team on what they primarily were trying to achieve with the Consignment Houses, or why they chose the system they did.
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I just hate trying to build up my nest egg and seeing profit going *poof* because the game needs a money sink
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I just hate bad English.
Fees - Plural
Fee's - Possessive
Come on, this is 2nd grade stuff
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Fee's - Contraction of "Fee is". Not that that makes it make any more sense than your definition did...
@Roderick
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It's not "more" seller-friendly.
It's just plain seller-friendly. Sellers in CoX can often expect to get far more currency than they list their items for. Sure, regular auctions can work that way too, but in an auction you know what the floor is as the buyer. In EVE you know exactly what you need to pay. In CoX, it's a guess. It's often an educated guess, but it's still a shot in the dark. As the buyer you can always overpay, because you don't know the list price.
That's not friendly to buyers, in my book anyway. It's friendly to sellers.
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Buyers can also Underpay. It's their choice to overpay if they want it "Now", as opposed to waiting for someone to sell it at the price they have set.
Buyers can bid low, and creep up at no cost. Sellers pay each time when they post an item, so they have to set it and forget it, or lose even more. If they fail to post a reasonable price, their item(s) could sit for a long time. That forces the seller to either do a little work, and find out what is 'reasonable', or to pick a number of their own and just put it up for that.
My memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
"The tip of a shoelace is called an aglet, its true purpose is sinister." The Question
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I just hate trying to build up my nest egg and seeing profit going *poof* because the game needs a money sink
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I just hate bad English.
Fees - Plural
Fee's - Possessive
Come on, this is 2nd grade stuff
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Fee's - Contraction of "Fee is". Not that that makes it make any more sense than your definition did...
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Ahh, our Tricky friend the Apostrophe.
My memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
"The tip of a shoelace is called an aglet, its true purpose is sinister." The Question
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I don't know that much about economics and markets. It's nearly impossible to lose money in CoH. . . if I was that smart I might be rich f'real.
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To be rich f'real you need to be smart and extremely driven. I'm far too lazy for that, unfortunately. I'm great at dropping buy/sell orders overnight and profiting when I'm not looking though!
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Well, glad I'm not alone in that boat.
My memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
Also, my memory's not as sharp as it used to be.
"The tip of a shoelace is called an aglet, its true purpose is sinister." The Question
I find it amusing to see cracks about my grammer/spelling on a video game internet forum 
My wife is a writer and enjoys giving me crap about it lol .... no biggie though since I know I take much greater care in it when I am writing a paper for school or something.
Now for something ironic ... the day after I make my post complaining about listing fees (Happy Obsidius? 
) .... I made my first billion red side 
I am very happy despite that I will probably not use it for IO'ing out a character ... I will more then likely just keep using it to make more lol.
My elite Ebil'z
So I guess I should stop complaining about those fees eh?
Peace,
Amrat
(P.S. Oh mogura thanks for the compliment on my avatar ... I am quite a Hunter fan myself so kudos on yours )
Grey Ghost Music
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I find it amusing to see cracks about my grammer/spelling on a video game internet forum
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Something I occasionally PM people who are particularly incomprehensible:
"You're right. I'm not your English teacher. Nobody's PAYING me to read your stuff."
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Congrats Amrat
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I don't play EVE. But... what with, for instance, people blowing up Dreadnaughts and whatnot, as reported in this thread, I'm not sure I follow the analogy with Purples.
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Thanks for that link, that thread is [censored] fascinating. I read 30 pages of it yesterday and it seriously messed with my work output.
I'm gonna keep reading today.
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Woah.
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/em Keanu "Whoa..."
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I just hate trying to build up my nest egg and seeing profit going *poof* because the game needs a money sink
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I just hate bad English.
Fees - Plural
Fee's - Possessive
Come on, this is 2nd grade stuff
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You ding this but not the misspelled "whoa" above it?!!? GAR!
Gotta agree with Nethergoat, don't really notice fee's myself. Then again 9 outta 10 I just list for 1 inf and smile at whatever I get, lowball or not.
I don't know that much about economics and markets. It's nearly impossible to lose money in CoH. . . if I was that smart I might be rich f'real.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.