Buyer wants discount *after* buying, also query re: GSP costs

[sentimental_jamboree]

Hi, so I listed a photography book for sale.  It seems quite rare to the point that I couldn't find a copy listed for sale anyway online or a record of a previous sale either, so for wont of any other guide I listed it for £100 but also allowed buyers to make offers.   Not long after listing it, someone offered me £70 for it, but then fifteen minutes later they bought it for the full £100 anyway but with this note added:

"Good morning, I have completed the purchase process directly and I hope to get a discount from you on the final price, as additional fees of more than 50 pounds appeared on me when completing the purchase process. With many thanks and appreciation"

Firstly, not sure how to respond to the idea of giving a discount after a sale, presumably they would like a discount of £30 since that's what they offered before then going ahead and buying anyway.  But I certainly wouldn't have accepted the offer of £70 as I already had an offer of £80 from someone else that I hadn't yet responded to (and that I would most likely have declined anyway.)  But not sure now if I should a) ignore the message and just send the item anyway;  b) cancel the order altogether, or c) maybe just contact them and explain that I can't offer a discount but am willing to cancel if that's what they prefer?

Also maybe this would be better asked in the shipping section, but I'm confused about these additional fees of £50 they refer to.  Buyer is in the UAE so obviously the GSP will be calculating its own shipping cost for them, but I can't see anything in the orders section that shows me how much eBay actually charged them.  In one place it says "your buyer paid" but then it gives the item cost plus UK shipping price so can't be what eBay actually charged them.  So no help, basically.  

I only ask this because I'm trying to make sense of where this additional fee came from.  If it's just the GSP shipping cost then they will have seen that before confirming purchase surely?  So the idea that it's something that was sprung on them only after buying sounds suspicious  and makes me think that they may not being entirely straight with me.  Which is another reason to cancel the order possibly?

[moldosgifts]

If it was me i would cancel the sale and block, get it relisted and message the seller that offered £80.

I have a simple rule make me an offer  10% off ill accept it immefietly if you make an offer of 75 % off you get blocked for taking the you know what. I have overheads!

The absolute max i can give as 20% if you buy more than 1 but may not be able to feed my kids that evening.

[moldosgifts]

The fee were know to them before they purchased they are dispalyed on the listing.

[*vyolla*]

Your buyer clearly hasn't grasped that this is an international sale, so shipping fees will be higher and they'll pay any additional import tax up front at eBay checkout.

Before they made their payment, the item price, shipping cost and import fees would all have been shown.

Personally, I'd risk the neg and cancel the sale, only because if you refuse that rather large discount that they're requesting, they could receive the item and then find some fault with it that isn't there. There's a possibility that they'll end up with the book and a refund.

If you do cancel, do make sure that they're blocked from buying from you again though, else this could end up on repeat.

[hudsonsclothes · Accepted solution]

I'd cancel the order a) for the cheek of essentially reserving the item and expecting a discount because they didn't read the costs correctly and b) because there's clearly a market to get more money.

[jckl1957]

I would refuse the discount and offer to cancel the sale.

Remember, even with 'no fees', you will still pay fees on intenational sales.

You can check postage and other costs of your own and other items by going to 'postage' on the listing and changing the country.  Your buyer would have to pay a hefty additional amount.  These are the costs for UAE:

 

International Priority Shipping

Estimated between Thu, 24 Oct and Mon, 28 Oct

Postage: £54.41

This item will be sent through eBay's Global Shipping Programme. Includes international tracking, simplified customs clearance, and no extra charges at delivery. Learn more

Import charges

Est. £11.88 (approx. £11.88)

Amount confirmed at checkout. Learn more

[danieledwardsmall]

It's an international sale so the risk of return is the same whomever you sell to.  The fact that the seller paid full price shortly after asking for a discount raises two points:

1. The buyer is privy to information about the books value you're not aware of due to the absence of sale history and didn't want to risk losing to another buyer - i.e a dealer?

2. Your buyer didn't know for certain he wasnt going to get a discount quick enough and bought at full price almost immediately deferring your decision in his favour as they think you would want to avoid a neg.

Is the buyer a bad egg?  Not necessarily so; you can still use careful arbitrage and elicit a good outcome.

Have you scoured values for your item on other selling venues and not just "sold prices", as many seem to do then price the item nonsensically.

[ett1954]

"Before they made their payment, the item price, shipping cost and import fees would all have been shown." - not necessarily.  Most of my buyers from the UAE use a forwarding agent, usually based around Heathrow, and this results in only a UK address shown for shipping therefore no taxes, duties or shipping costs would be shown on the invoice at purchase.

I would however agree that the actions of the buyer are cheeky and cancel the transaction as 'buyer asking for something which wasn't in the listing'.  Block the buyer and then relist.

[plpmr]

"Remember, even with 'no fees', "

If you mean no fees as a private seller then there's a problem as OP is a business seller trading as a private seller in violation of eBay rules and the law.

[m25jet]

Personally I would agree with the advice already given about cancelling the sale on the grounds that the buyer was asking for something not included in the listing - ie:  a £30.00 discount on the asking price - and then adding the buyer's User ID to your Blocked Bidders List.  However, if you do decide to relist the item again I would advise you to wait until at least two days have passed since you added the buyer's User ID to your Blocked Bidders List.  The reason I say this is because you have recently been invovled in a transaction with this buyer, so the blocks will take around forty-eight hours to kick in from the point at which you add his/her User ID to your Blocked Bidders List.

If you don't already have it set up, go back to your Selling Preferences and activate the option that says "Don't Allow Blocked Buyers To Contact Me."  Once you have done that the buyer will not be able to harass you with unwanted messages after the blocks kick in.

Finally, should you decide to relist the item a second time it may be worth including something in the item description along the lines of "Relisted due to timewaster" so that if somebody sees the ad again, having either put the item on their Watch List the first time or made you an offer previously and then seeing the item marked as ended, they'll know why you're offering the same item for sale again, despite the fact that the item appeared to have been sold previously.

[sentimental_jamboree]

I tried searching for sold values but when that failed I tried asking prices but couldn't find copies either.  This was on both eBay and abebooks (which usually has just about everything.)  Just doing a google search comes up with three links, all to do with past sales that don't record a sale price.  So I gave up at that point.

(The book is "Abu Dhabi 1965-1976" by John Cowan FRPS, if you're curious.)

[moldosgifts]

Just to add you are a business operating on a private account, this has many implictaion to buyer rights and tax and vat.

Update is easy possibly like many of us opened for yourself but using ltd in you buyer name is not good imperession for potential customers.

[sentimental_jamboree]

Nope, i'm not a business I'm a private seller.  I've had this eBay account twenty-odd years I think; at the time I started it I had to come up with a user name, as I had an IT consultancy business at the time I decided to use that as the account name.  I'm pretty sure I was only buying back then and not selling, I think my thinking was that back in those days there was this notion about whether people on eBay could really be trusted ("don't bid if your feedback is less than five" was a big thing back then as I recall) and I figured if I used that name it might make me seem a bit more "professional".  In fact now I think about it I seem to remember that the company was already closed down even at that point, so it was perhaps a bit cheeky on my part to even use it back then.   But anyway that's why it's there. 

I'm sure Companies House could confirm to you the date that that company ceased to exist.  I do agree that I should possibly change it since when I'm selling someone could infer - as you seem to have done - that somehow that name is related to the act of selling in some way.  If your advice is to change it to something else to make this clearer then I'm happy to do so, like I said the original reasoning for it is ancient history now. 

[sentimental_jamboree]

Ah thanks, that makes sense.  I just assumed that as I was offering shipping via the GSP, and because they were buying internationally, that one must have facilitated the other.  I wasn't aware that there were other possibilities here.

[sentimental_jamboree]

Thanks everyone, I've decided that as most have suggested the best course of action is to cancel the order altogether and then block.  Only one slight complication; I only have three possible reasons for cancelling available:

- out of stock or damaged

- buyer asked to cancel

- issue with buyer's delivery address

None of these seems to fit (and the second one is definitely wrong), so I'm not sure what to pick?  If I put "out of stock or damaged" then might that cause further issues when I subsesequently relist the item? 

[plpmr]

everything else aside if you pick 'out of stock or damaged' you get a damaging defect on your account.

Perhaps contact eBay and explain and they might cancel the transaction on the grounds the buyer is asking for something not in the listing - a lower price.

[sentimental_jamboree]

Oh I didn't know that about the defect, I actually used that reason for a cancelled order the other week because someone bought something that I know I still have but couldn't manage to locate despite a lot of effort (I have a lot of stuff stored.)  Still maybe I deserve the defect for not being able to keep track of where I've put things.  Hopefully there's no permanent harm though.

[eastern-lights]

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@sentimental_jamboree wrote:

Ah thanks, that makes sense.  I just assumed that as I was offering shipping via the GSP, and because they were buying internationally, that one must have facilitated the other.  I wasn't aware that there were other possibilities here.

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If you offer shipping through GSP then the potential buyer can see the price of shipping. Overseas buyers choosing to use a shipping agent are a completely different kettle of fish but will almost certainly be able to work out their approximate shipping costs beforehand.

[sentimental_jamboree]

Looking at it again it definitely *is* via GSP on this occasion as I see that Fradley Park is the shipping address I've been given.  I only know they're in the UAE because the last two digits of the code in the reference part of the address is "AE".  But I'll bear in mind that there are other ways of doing things as it may be something I need to take into account on some other sale in the future 🙂

[eastern-lights]

Different countries have different cultures. Some countries have a culture of negotiate first, then shake hands and the deal is done. Other countries have a culture of this is only the start, and will continue to try to chip away at the price and renegotiate for ever. You have made a sale to one of the latter.

Personally, following a few incidents like yours, I have blocked all countries that I reckon have that culture. One or two still buy using a shipping agent address, that's fine as once I have delivered to the shipping agent I can virtually wash my hands of the item. If it gets lost in transit, not my problem. Any attempts to get a partial refund on grounds of "not as desctibed" can be met with a hard ball approach,fine, return it, here's your free shipping label. From the shipping agent in the UK to me.