demanding opportunist buyer

FFHillbilly

PocketWatchMan said:

There's no shortage of lowballers or just plain idiots around, I just block now. If someone wants 60-70% immediate discount for nothing then they are not the sort of person I will be dealing with. simples.

Having said that, in comparison to years ago - I'm talking 15-20 years ago, buyers are nowhere near as abusive. Back in the day I came across a few buyers who simply hurled insults across ebay messages, if you had the nerve to decline their 'offer' of £5 inc. postage, for a £80, £90 item. One guy I remember particularly kept up the vicious abuse for a couple of weeks after I had declined his generous request for a discount which worked out some way in excess of 95% on something that I only wanted around £20-ish for. He wanted to pay only a few pence. I remember searching with the 'in description' box ticked with this guy's username, and there were a few listings with results. Reason being, he clearly made himself known to many other sellers. One woman (presumably, I recall a female-named username) had put a note on her listings with this guy's username, and she seemed honestly, literally terrified in the way she had been obviously threatened; poor thing. I remember thinking about that for quite a while afterwards.

I remember that period, it's basically where people assumed they were completely anonymous online and therefore behaved completely different to they would do if they were dealing with someone face to face, because they were unlikely to ever be held accountable for such behaviour. Nowadays however it's quite different, you just can't carry on like that and not expect repercussions, the current govt. have been putting plenty of keyboard warriors into jail for doing such things. thats progress for you, I guess

GadgetGuru

I just hate the "whats the lowest price you will take" question on any listings - be it eBay/FaceBook/Gumtree etc. I mean, if I was to just lower the price on a whim I would have listed it at that price in the first place!
I always just respond stating it is counterintuitive of me to lower my own price just like that, and am happy to consider a reasonable offer......

FFHillbilly

GadgetGuru said:

I just hate the "whats the lowest price you will take" question on any listings - be it eBay/FaceBook/Gumtree etc. I mean, if I was to just lower the price on a whim I would have listed it at that price in the first place!
I always just respond stating it is counterintuitive of me to lower my own price just like that, and am happy to consider a reasonable offer......

you could respond with "whats the most you'll pay?". but realistically thats unlikely to lead to a sale, so probably best just ignoring them

dinosaur66

i always put potential buyers like this on my blocked buyers list

when you read there feedback left for others in my experience they are some of the unluckiest people in the uk with lost post / items damaged in transit / broken items/ ordered saturday 2 pm on a bank holiday weekend wed morning you have an item not received case

rollingmoon

GadgetGuru said:

I just hate the "whats the lowest price you will take" question on any listings - be it eBay/FaceBook/Gumtree etc. I mean, if I was to just lower the price on a whim I would have listed it at that price in the first place!
I always just respond stating it is counterintuitive of me to lower my own price just like that, and am happy to consider a reasonable offer......

I always block potless chancers like these as there is invariably little chance that any interaction will lead to a sale.

sonearandyetsofa

The best responses to "what's the lowest price" are either "what do you want to pay?" or "If you collect it in person before x date we could do it for Y".. As the seller, you've already made your offer - it's the Buy It Now price. If they want to pay less, they have to put a bit of effort in.

I've made a few sales to people who've asked that question, people seem to ask it out of fear they might pay a little more than the absolute lowest price you would possibly ever accept. Usually if I tell them I can do X price if they collect, and they'll write back to say actually they need eight months storage followed by a two person white glove delivery service to a fifth floor flat on the Isle of Wight. At least at that point you know whether it's worth continuing the conversation.

This is high value items though, where it's worth spending the odd ten minutes here and there talking to people who aren't ever going to buy anything. When we're talking about stuff for sale that's under a few hundred pounds I will always tell them to go ahead and make an offer, that's what the button is for, and we'll see what we can do.

red_boots2

I have had a spate of people purchasing 'collection only' items recently then sending their own Courier to collect it.

One was so blatant she lied about doing it saying, "my son will collect it tomorrow and will have the QR code" only for UPS to turn up and tell me they're here for a parcel I wanted collected. Cancelled both sales, reported to eBay & blocked.

Crazy person expected me just to handover an unwrapped Antique Mirror to UPS   

hermante

On the other hand there are sellers who list their relatively worthless items for 10-20x the price they could realistically achieve on ebay.

I wish there was a way to exclude sellers because they pollute my search results for years, nobody will ever buy those items at even 50% off, but they keep relisting over and over.

The difficulty is with sellers who list just a bit too high. For example if an item is worth £50, they list it for £75, I am tempted to offer £40. Sometimes this offer is accepted, other times they respond abusively (but why didn't they just set it to auto-reject if they were never going to accept my offer) but the item remains unsold for 6 months.

Then once in a while you get an idiot buyer who pays the £75 even though other sellers have listed the same item for £55, which vindicates the seller's inflated price... 

forgotmyname

Free listings just cluttered ebay with junk, who wants a empty box for a generic keyboard?  Nobody it seems
because it's been listed and relisted for a very long time.

red_boots2

hermante said:

On the other hand there are sellers who list their relatively worthless items for 10-20x the price they could realistically achieve on ebay.

I wish there was a way to exclude sellers because they pollute my search results for years, nobody will ever buy those items at even 50% off, but they keep relisting over and over.

The difficulty is with sellers who list just a bit too high. For example if an item is worth £50, they list it for £75, I am tempted to offer £40. Sometimes this offer is accepted, other times they respond abusively (but why didn't they just set it to auto-reject if they were never going to accept my offer) but the item remains unsold for 6 months.

Then once in a while you get an idiot buyer who pays the £75 even though other sellers have listed the same item for £55, which vindicates the seller's inflated price... 

Yeah I see this a lot too. Quite often if I am selling something I will check the price on Amazon and eBay. It's not on uncommon for most listings for the same product to be about 30% cheaper than Amazon, but there's always an outlier who is selling for more.

I actually found one Manufacturer who sells their items for more on eBay and wants postage paid by the buyer than they do on Amazon. I'm sure there are others too.