Gumtree - does nobody pay a fair price any more?

motorguy

Slight vent...

I've two Dell laptops for sale on gumtree, that i no longer have any particular use for.

I've priced them at slightly less than they are selling for on ebay, and they are full refurb'd - brand new keyboards, new batteries, new power supplies, fully cleaned casing, full windows 10 upgrade and all security patches applied.

One has a further memory upgrade to 4GB and has a new 120GB SSD fitted and is priced at £40 more than the other.

Both are great little machines, fast and reliable.

Priced at £70 and £110 respectively. I'd take £60 and £100 respectively for them and than definitely makes them cheaper than an ebay purchase of the same machine which wont have a new battery, will be grotty and scruffy and is probably running Win7, etc.

The other thing is, I'm in Northern Ireland.

Got a text on the more expensive one "Laptop still for sale? Does it have HDMI?" No, it doesnt but i have an adaptor cable for HDMI and i'll throw that in (cost me £10). "Will give you £80 cash pal, will pick it up in morning". Sorry, no. will take £100 including the £10 cable. They never replied

Cheaper one from another mobile number "Laptop still for sale?" Yes. "£50 cash today?". Sorry no, will take £60 though and its got loads of new bits. They never replied.

Now bearing in mind there are no other laptops in NI on gumtree of the spec of these at these prices (any at £50 are scrap) where are these people going to go to buy a better laptop "today" or "tomorrow" for the same money or less?

Why not spend the extra tenner?

It seems people would rather not have the item at all rather pay anything other than a "bargain" price?

theonlywayisup

I have no idea if your prices are good/bad, but why don't you price them at £100 and £150 and then see what offers you get!

Flyonthewall

Some people like to haggle, same as they would at a carboot. Which is fair enough and why I'd start the price a little above what I actually want.

However, I imagine the issue is more with what you're trying to sell. Not everyone will trust a refurb or wish to pay much for one. Not everyone wants Windows 10 either so if they wish to change that it might be an added cost to them. At 4GB RAM some people may want to upgrade that. 120GB SSD is a better HDD than a standard one but a lot of people will see 120GB and then glance at the spec of a new laptop and see it has 1TB or 750GB and SSD is meaningless to them so straight away they'll think it's not worth the price and try and knock it down.

As for the cable adapter, if I were looking to buy that I wouldn't care what you paid for it. It's secondhand and I can pick up adapters new for a couple of quid or less on ebay. May be brandless usually but never had issues with quality. So telling me that wouldn't make me think "oh what a good deal, I'll pay what you ask then", I'd decide whether the price you're willing to sell for is worth it based on my valuations. So I'd be considering it as "is this laptop worth £100, the cable has no real value." £80 is a cheeky offer though!

motorguy

Flyonthewall wrote: »

Some people like to haggle, same as they would at a carboot. Which is fair enough and why I'd start the price a little above what I actually want.

Yes, totally. However their low ball pitches didnt come back with any counter offer after i countered. Surely someone bidding £50 on a £70 item expects a counter offer of £60?

Haggling involves negotiation. Neither did.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

However, I imagine the issue is more with what you're trying to sell. Not everyone will trust a refurb or wish to pay much for one. Not everyone wants Windows 10 either so if they wish to change that it might be an added cost to them. At 4GB RAM some people may want to upgrade that. 120GB SSD is a better HDD than a standard one but a lot of people will see 120GB and then glance at the spec of a new laptop and see it has 1TB or 750GB and SSD is meaningless to them so straight away they'll think it's not worth the price and try and knock it down.

True. I'm probably happy to sell one or the other as i have a use for one. I thought the cheapie one would sell, bearing in mind the dross that people are asking £50-70 for in laptops.

Flyonthewall wrote: »

As for the cable adapter, if I were looking to buy that I wouldn't care what you paid for it. It's secondhand and I can pick up adapters new for a couple of quid or less on ebay. May be brandless usually but never had issues with quality. So telling me that wouldn't make me think "oh what a good deal, I'll pay what you ask then", I'd decide whether the price you're willing to sell for is worth it based on my valuations. So I'd be considering it as "is this laptop worth £100, the cable has no real value." £80 is a cheeky offer though!

Throwing in the cable adapter was just really to counter his requirement that he was looking for a HDMI connector on it, thus why i said i'd throw it in for free. My end price was £100 to him including the adapter (its now £6.99 on ebay), but again other than his "I'll give you £80 pal cash and pick it up tomorrow", he never came back with a counter offer.

I guess in fairness i've sold other stuff on gumtree recently and got what i was looking for it (having priced it a bit higher in the first place), but a good, working usable laptop with a fresh install and a new battery and psu for £60 doesnt seem unreasonable to me.

I'll see what happens over the next few days. I'm not that gutted if neither sells and i might just stick them on ebay, but then you're into fees, packaging, posting and potential complaints.

Thanks for replying

motorguy

theonlywayisup wrote: »

I have no idea if your prices are good/bad, but why don't you price them at £100 and £150 and then see what offers you get!

Thats probably not a bad idea.

Flyonthewall

motorguy wrote: »

Yes, totally. However their low ball pitches didnt come back with any counter offer after i countered. Surely someone bidding £50 on a £70 item expects a counter offer of £60?

Haggling involves negotiation. Neither did.

True. Some people negotiate, some give their best offer, others are really cheeky and offer way below in hope that you don't know the items true value and will jump at their offer. Just depends who you're dealing with.

True. I'm probably happy to sell one or the other as i have a use for one. I thought the cheapie one would sell, bearing in mind the dross that people are asking £50-70 for in laptops.

Yeah but you don't know who's viewing them, nor what is actually being sold. People may be asking £50+ for scrap laptops, doesn't mean they're selling at that (or at all even).

Not everyone will understand what is meant by refurb either, although people view it differently anyway. They can be just briefly checked over returns, secondhand parts used to make it all work, new parts and old casing or new parts to make the item as new etc. Some people may see refurb as scrap, others may assume it's an as new product and it could be anywhere inbetween really because people use the word refurb to make it sound better rather the item actually truly being refurbished.

Throwing in the cable adapter was just really to counter his requirement that he was looking for a HDMI connector on it, thus why i said i'd throw it in for free. My end price was £100 to him including the adapter (its now £6.99 on ebay), but again other than his "I'll give you £80 pal cash and pick it up tomorrow", he never came back with a counter offer.

Of course, but it's a common sales technique. With many people saying that would get their interest and you'd have a sale. Personally I know what price I'm willing to pay and the value of each thing so that sales technique doesn't work with me lol.

Considering the low offer though I'd say he was just throwing you a cheeky low offer and you stood your ground so he's not interested. He's probably sent messages to others too in the hopes of getting one for a bargain.

I guess in fairness i've sold other stuff on gumtree recently and got what i was looking for it (having priced it a bit higher in the first place), but a good, working usable laptop with a fresh install and a new battery and psu for £60 doesnt seem unreasonable to me.

Laptops are a tricky one. Well, computers in general are. You pay hundreds for them new, but soon as they're used their value drops way down (aside from one or two exceptions).

Even with new parts it's hard to say if £60 is reasonable. Depends on how old it is, the brand, overall condition, features etc. Best way of knowing is look at the sold items on ebay for that exact model. Some laptops would be worth at least £60, others would struggle to get £30.

I'll see what happens over the next few days. I'm not that gutted if neither sells and i might just stick them on ebay, but then you're into fees, packaging, posting and potential complaints.

Thanks for replying

Yeah, you've got to be careful with posting laptops. They're generally not covered if damaged.

Sometimes with Gumtree it's just a case of waiting and not giving into offers you don't really want to accept. There will always be those who take a chance and offer low, those who value items lower than their true worth and a few idiots lol.

You could always try Facebook.

Brooker_Dave

motorguy wrote: »

It seems people would rather not have the item at all rather pay anything other than a "bargain" price?

Gumtree buyers are scum on a budget, "what is best price", "is that your last price" and emails consisting of just a number (a fraction of the advertised price) are par for the course.

Try a local FB selling page, FB buyers are scum fr33loaders too, but at least they're local.

Ting-Tang

I get this sort of thing quite a lot as well when selling on Gumtree.


Maybe I'm old fashioned but I do find it very annoying when people try and haggle via texts. If they could actually be bothered to ring and have a chat about it then that's fair enough.


A lot of these texts seem to me quite rude and terse, and these days if anyone texts me a lowball offer with no please or thank you then they just get ignored.


I do always find though that as long as you're asking a fair price then stuff will sell eventually, so hang in there!

sportsarb

In fairness, I like starting off with unrealistically low offers in the hope of a good deal, but I would proceed to fairer prices thereafter.

For items like you're selling it really is the buyers market. Very few will believe that your item is worth what you are selling it for even if you are selling on the cheap.

Someone above used some choice words for people trying to get cheap or free stuff but it's fair game.

emmbrook

I'm not sure it's a lot better on eBay. I was offered £10 for an item listed at close to £30 a few days ago. I really must set up auto declines for the more ridiculous offers -but like sportsarb says, nothing ventured, nothing gained so it's fair enough I guess.

Kernow666

I don't use gumtree but use the facebook selling pages , its getting annoying now as I used to list at a price I wanted and always had offer of around half what I wanted so I decided to add£5 or £10 onto the price of things but now I don't get many offers as price seems high even though I put offers