All to save a few pence
I don't sell much, I just have listed all the stuff my late wife used to sell...
What baffles me is why, on an item that is listed for say 3 quid people offer you £2.50 and then when you decline and send a counter offer of say £2.90 then then come back and offer you £2.70....
I mean why do some people spend all that time and energy just to save 30p ??????
Bonkers, it really is
10 comments
maarsy
·1 week agogot an offer once of 1 £ for a 1.49£ item , offered 1.30 back and got declined . just to give an example , i think most of the uk mindset is just broken . i have been moving further away from the lower value items even though i know it can be sold it is mentally draining to have to haggle over pennies , they might think 20 p can make a difference to them but at the same time the time wasted to respond and get turned down would be worth 20 p for me as well . instead on et i got plenty of overseas buyers willing to pay 20 quid postage on 5 - 10 £ items without question where someone in the uk would haggle on .
technthread
·1 week agoI had a buyer the other day over on V who was working me from the start with offer after offer and tall tales. I mentioned it here on this thread briefly.
My gut feeling was he will scam, they are usually terrible at keeping a story straight, but as an experiment to make sure my radar for it wasn’t off I let him buy it at 40% off to see how it would pan out as it was under £10.
He collected it and then went ahead and put droplets of slightly off colour liquid on selected areas of the shirt and then used those photos as grounds to see if I’d refund him. Problem is he forgot to let one dry off properly so I spotted it was freshly applied and called him out on it. Return case closed and he never replied to my message, no doubt he cringed with embarrassment. I hope I gave him a few things to think about with my reply but I suspect he will just put it down as a learning curve do better next time.
I never want to tar everyone with the same brush but if you have a buyer negotiating and mithering excessively so it feels like a problem is coming down the line it’s usually best to block.
sheba-knows-best
·1 week agoYup bonkers -when you could have accepted, got a sale that might have driven extra sales, and lost just 40p...
I'm being a bit tongue in cheek but it is worth considering.
caf_uk
OP1 week ago...I did accept the £2.70 lol
Thing is, I can see that making offers on more expensive items makes sense, but I just don't see the point for such small savings.....but hey ho..that's a enough for a pint in Spoons lol
moonlight-rhapsody
·1 week ago · EditedIf you invite offers, it's not unusual for someone to offer up to 20% off, expecting a counter offer of somewhere in-between, ie 10%. Saving 30p might be important to some people, or maybe it's a matter of principle that they won't buy anything for less than 10% off, who knows? I imagine a lot of people would think that offering 10p off is taking the proverbial.
technthread
·1 week ago · EditedOn V, people have a habit of going straight in at 40% off as that is the maximum allowed. There have been times I’ve counter offered with 10% off and it sells or even just ignore the offer and they buy anyway at full price after a short wait.
Like on here, I think people think it’s worth trying in case the seller would have taken it and it’s better to know that than pay full price and wonder.
I really do not enjoy this type of incremental negotiating though either, I’ve been blocking a lot recently for this type of thing. I take the point that 30p may be important to some buyers but it depends what the item is. I had a back and forth with someone yesterday with a life story I didn’t ask for and in the end I’m thinking to myself why are you even buying this if the finances on it are so tight and it’s not an essential item. I don’t know, I may just be getting a bit jaded and miserable.
sheba-knows-best
·1 week agoWhen people tell me their life stories and why they can't afford my prices - I urge them not to buy. I tell them an item of clothing simply isn't worth bankrupting themselves and I wouldn't dream of tempting them by lowering the price.
I'm not joking.
The ones I hate are the ones who ask loads of questions, want extra photos etc, and then offer, like 30% of the ask price. I once had one guy ask me to double check the measurements. I said I'd do that prior to posting. He then said he wasn't going to buy from me but from someone else cheaper, only that seller didn't provide measurements and wasn't answering his questions. He didn't even seem to think asking me to double check was a tad... off.
Yeah, I may be getting a tad jaded and miserable too.
technthread
·1 week ago · EditedI agree with doing that sometimes, partly for selfish reasons as the risk of a return is high but also empathy has to come into to it when they seem genuine.
There have been occasions when a sale has still happened despite my best efforts to discourage it and so I have sent extra stuff for free. A couple of them have made me laugh because they have put everything straight up for sale which was fine but I didn’t even get any positive feedback 🤣.
I’m glad I’m just about finished with the last rail of clothing. I still get questions asking for measurements when they are already pictured and requests to show things worn on when I would have thought it was obvious that I’m not clearing my own wardrobe with things that are all my own size and not all the same gender.
sheba-knows-best
·1 week agoI checked your items... so you aim to keep selling on ebay but just not clothes? That's interesting. I'm living through my worst year ever - by a long chalk. Fortunately my 'proper job' for 20 years was analysing companies so I've just been analysing 'sheba' over the first 31 weeks of year vs previous 14 years and deciding what to do...
technthread
·1 week agoYeah, no more clothing. I just don’t have enough interest to keep in the loop on brands, a lot of what I have left is older sports stuff and I’m thinking of being very heavy on price drops next week as it isn’t moving, not surprisingly as I left much of it to the end for a reason. Excluding a few things, it’s become the hall of fame of the most uninformed buys.
I have chosen coins to sell for a while at least as it’s a bit easier to source for me and I can move some postage stamps in the process. I am more comfortable looking at a batch of coins at auction and instinctively valuing it in my head than I am looking at a bundle of clothing. I’m not an expert in the slightest but I thought it might be better as it’s something I at least had a bit of existing knowledge in and it deals with one of my eBay problems, processing and listing speed.
The thing that I need to get my head around with eBay long term (I’m sure other coin sellers may look at my listings and say where’s all the good stuff then), is do I want to sell coins over a certain value here and the answer is currently no. It is likely this stays as a basic shop subscription and just pocket money alongside what I hope will be successful elsewhere. If that fails I might just have to go back to the 9-5 and run it part time.