6 ms·

In Australia where I live, selling goods online outside the likes of eBay and normal ecommerce has become a generally painful experience. Facebook marketplace

In Australia where I live, selling goods online outside the likes of eBay and normal ecommerce has become a generally painful experience. Facebook marketplace (and Gumtree to a lesser degree) have given the buyer this weird desire to lowball on pricing to the point of insult. It's almost like as soon as people open Facebook, they become this extreme version of themselves, and this extends to "haggling".

whtrbt 7y ago
Definitely a lot of tyre kickers. Every time I've marked something I'm selling as e.g. '$500 negotiable' I get tons of messages saying "what's your best price" or "what's your lowest offer?" That's not how haggling works. My lowest offer is $500 until I hear yours. Aside from that, I've had good experiences selling old video game consoles on Gumtree.
- droidno9 7y ago
  "Negotiable" is the magic word that invites bargaining. Just list the price alone and people will assume it's negotiable, unless the term "firm" is included somewhere near the price. Even then, some people don't read, so that crowd just comes with the territory of selling things online. I have a simple rule. If the offer is less than 80% of the asking price, then I assume it's a lowball and simply ignore it and the offeror.
  - saiya-jin 7y ago
    This is my experience in Switzerland with generally polite population - set an exact price (without that 'firm' wording though), and we got like 10 generic questions what is our lowest price, or people offering 50% or below. Suffice to say the one reasonable person got that product. This seems like inexperience on our side and naive expectation for more reasonable approach, but it really felt borderline rude.
    - dazc 7y ago
      The people asking what's the lowest price and such and most likely to be time-wasters. This applies to all transactions, I find. Of course, there are cultures where haggling is the norm so, in these cases, it's best to start with an artificially high price which enables you to keep making concessions until you reach the price you wanted anyways.
  - grogenaut 7y ago
    And yet I've bought many items with patience at those prices. There was a bike I wanted originally listed at $1800. I offered 1000 as that's what it was worth. Every week it was relisted $50 lower, every week I dropped my offer by like $25. Ended selling buying for $700 (I emailed the seller so much they were chatting with me). Took 7 months but the demand was just not there. At the end guy was like sigh should have sold for $1k. Some people list at a fair price. If that's what it is I'll not even haggle. like bought a fully CNC taig mini Mill with computer software and 4th axis for $900. Hand cash walk out. Fair price. Other shit is obviously over priced and so you negotiate. Sold a lathe recently for $1400. I had firm on the price. Took a year to sell. Sold firm. It also depends on the product here. Consumer popular shit like games and cars have a lot of negotiation. Some tools. Other shit is less negotiated. Some shit is high demand and lots of haggling like motorcycles. I just enjoy the hell out of telling people no. "That offer is offensive and I've setup a block list for you"
    - whtrbt 7y ago
      > And yet I've bought many items with patience at those prices. There was a bike I wanted originally listed at $1800. I offered 1000 as that's what it was worth. Every week it was relisted $50 lower, every week I dropped my offer by like $25. Ended selling buying for $700 (I emailed the seller so much they were chatting with me). Took 7 months but the demand was just not there. At the end guy was like sigh should have sold for $1k. I like this strategy.
- cerberusss 7y ago
  Sometimes I do this when I don't want to haggle; I just want a price on which I can decide a simple go/no-go.
  - Slartie 7y ago
    When I don't want to haggle (which is often, as I hate it) I simply take the posted price and pay that or ignore the offer. I will never ask for a cheaper price if not interested in haggling. People with deliberately overblown prices which never expect anyone to actually pay that will simply not get my business at all in that case.
  - moftz 7y ago
    I would always mark up my prices for things on forums a little bit so I had room to haggle it down but I never entertained people asking what my lowest price was. If you can't afford sticker price, you can afford to haggle. It was a pretty niche marketplace so there was pretty much never going to be anything like those crazy thrift store finds where someone buys something worth $5000 for $5, all the sellers usually had a good idea what their stuff was worth and priced appropriately. There were always the morons who priced their junk 5x it's market value but those people were too stupid to haggle with, they would get insulted when you offered a good market price.
  - whtrbt 7y ago
    If you don't want to haggle, then you get the listed price.
- exclusiv 7y ago
  What's your best price is a good tactic with a poor negotiator or someone who isn't attached to the item. Maybe they play the numbers and it works. Just like you though, I hate that tactic when tried on me and it will never work.
  - wincy 7y ago
    I once sold an iPhone to a 16 year old. I said "I want $300 but I'm willing to negotiate" and he said "okay, how about $350?" That was a good day.
- olyjohn 7y ago
  I usually respond to that by asking "What's the most you will pay?" Then I get their lowball answer and tell them that it looks like we can't agree on a price.
skocznymroczny 7y ago
I thought it's only a Polish phenomenon. It's bit of a meme in Poland, about services such as Olx. People try to haggle for every product. Let's say the price for a product is $300, you will have people messaging you with messages like "$50 and I'm there in few hours", often being aggressive if you refuse them. Also a common method is try to get emotional and lie to get a better offer, for example claiming to be a single mother who wants to bring joy to her child.
- iamspoilt 7y ago
  This used to be the case in Dubai when I used to live there. The defacto classifieds website in UAE is called dubizzle (dubizzle.com) which is a subsidiary of OLX. People used to use similar (in fact, worse) haggling tactics to get things for cheap. Couple this with spam and selling an item becomes a nightmare. On the contrary, I have had a far better experience on Kijiji and Facebook in Canada.
- moftz 7y ago
  I've only ever had one person try to haggle with me on US Ebay but he was trying to buy all of my stock so it made sense that he wanted some volume discount. I've sold stuff on forums before and that is always a haggling experience. It's pretty much expected to have someone haggle with you even if you don't say OBO (or best offer). It's mostly good, sometimes people will throw in some goods to bring the cash price down or you might waive the paypal fees if they have a good reputation. You still get a lot of "PM me ur lowest price", like if you don't want to pay sticker price, you have to play the haggle game a little bit. I would always mark things up a bit more than what I actually wanted to get for it just so I had room to haggle the price down a bit. People really love when they think they are getting a deal or somehow taking advantage of the seller so it's better to entertain them a little bit if it's going to get the sale.
  - grawprog 7y ago
    >I would always mark things up a bit more than what I actually wanted to get for it just so I had room to haggle the price down a bit. I always thought that was kind of the standard way of selling things in an informal situation. I just assume everyone's going to haggle or barter so might as well just do it that way. I get the price I wanted, they feel like they got a deal and everyone's happy. On an aside, my grandma came from travellers. She was probably the best haggler i've seen. She managed to haggle in Sears and places like that successfully. She had this story about being a poor old Scottish pensioner. They also drove across Canada years and years ago with some of her relatives and would set up a fortune telling booth where they stopped. Her sister would case the people waiting asking about their lives, then my grandma would 'tell their fortune'.
mrfusion 7y ago
My fb marketplace has the opposite problem. Everyone seems to list their stuff at retail price (or higher!) I sent one lady an amazon link to show her she was overcharging. Didn’t help.
lordgrenville 7y ago
I personally hate haggling, but I do appreciate the raw efficiency as opposed to arbitrarily set prices. Maybe the ideal would be some built-in automated haggling: you set a desired starting price, and a private "red line", and the prospective buyers do the same. Then the bots can haggle and maybe dynamically update the prices as they discover more information about the market.
- qmmmur 7y ago
  So ebay?
- jfoster 7y ago
  eBay has (or had?) this in the "Best Offer" feature. Not available on all listings though.
draugadrotten 7y ago
The UX is poor. Haggling should be automatic. Make it an auction - allow everyone to post their offers and then the seller can take the offer they accept based on price, location or whatever. To make it work, the offer has to be committed as long as it is posted. Hey, come to think of it, isn't this a description of how stock markets work? The ultimate haggling.
- patentatt 7y ago
  And you just invented eBay?
dsfyu404ed 7y ago
I don't think anyone replying to you understands how much the selling experience varies by what you're selling. If you're selling used tires or consumer electronics you are gonna wind up dealing with idiots 24/7 no matter which platform you choose because everyone is a potential buyer for those things. If you're selling things that are only of use to a few people cost more than a grand, weigh more than a couple tons and don't move on their own you'll generally only deal with people who are serious about buying.
moltar 7y ago
And even worse, Facebook has the suggested message to send to seller. So many people click “is it still available?” And after my prompt response never write back. I’d estimate over half of people don’t respond at all. It’s so weird.
jamil7 7y ago
We have the other issue in Germany on ebay kleinanzeigen (Germany's version of Gumtree / Craigslist) where sellers will expect prices on used goods comparable to buying them new.
blaser-waffle 7y ago
Sounds like craigslist in the US. Someone once offered me football tickets in lieu of the asking price on the car I was selling. Took about 3 months but eventually got the price I was asking for. Had to wade through a lot of BS though.
- naravara 7y ago
  My wife's friend used to make a habit of offering to pay people on CraigsList cash for things, and then showing up with 10%-15% less cash than she committed to. Usually people were annoyed but eager enough to get rid of the thing that they sold to her anyway to avoid the hassle of posting it again. But it was scummy.
  - savingGrace 7y ago
    I've had people do this to me. It irritates me so much that I tell them 'your loss'. Someone offered to go get the rest and I called them out on this scummy practice and moved on with my life.
  - jimmyvalmer 7y ago
    Yup, the complainers on the sell-side should accede that roughly half the value derived from a sold item is out-of-sight-out-of-mind.
  - zucked 7y ago
    I've had tons of people do this to me, too - in fact, I am guilty of having done it (like when people ask for a $50 multiple knowing full well that ATMS only dispense $20 bills and I'm short on time to be able to break a $20). As the seller, though, you should know that they value their time enough to at least be present, so they obviously want the item enough. You've got enough leverage to be able to tell the buyer who does that 'No'. I've said and had that said to me in those occasions.

whtrbt 7y ago

Definitely a lot of tyre kickers. Every time I've marked something I'm selling as e.g. '$500 negotiable' I get tons of messages saying "what's your best price" or "what's your lowest offer?" That's not how haggling works. My lowest offer is $500 until I hear yours. Aside from that, I've had good experiences selling old video game consoles on Gumtree.

droidno9 7y ago
"Negotiable" is the magic word that invites bargaining. Just list the price alone and people will assume it's negotiable, unless the term "firm" is included somewhere near the price. Even then, some people don't read, so that crowd just comes with the territory of selling things online. I have a simple rule. If the offer is less than 80% of the asking price, then I assume it's a lowball and simply ignore it and the offeror.
- saiya-jin 7y ago
  This is my experience in Switzerland with generally polite population - set an exact price (without that 'firm' wording though), and we got like 10 generic questions what is our lowest price, or people offering 50% or below. Suffice to say the one reasonable person got that product. This seems like inexperience on our side and naive expectation for more reasonable approach, but it really felt borderline rude.
  - dazc 7y ago
    The people asking what's the lowest price and such and most likely to be time-wasters. This applies to all transactions, I find. Of course, there are cultures where haggling is the norm so, in these cases, it's best to start with an artificially high price which enables you to keep making concessions until you reach the price you wanted anyways.
- grogenaut 7y ago
  And yet I've bought many items with patience at those prices. There was a bike I wanted originally listed at $1800. I offered 1000 as that's what it was worth. Every week it was relisted $50 lower, every week I dropped my offer by like $25. Ended selling buying for $700 (I emailed the seller so much they were chatting with me). Took 7 months but the demand was just not there. At the end guy was like sigh should have sold for $1k. Some people list at a fair price. If that's what it is I'll not even haggle. like bought a fully CNC taig mini Mill with computer software and 4th axis for $900. Hand cash walk out. Fair price. Other shit is obviously over priced and so you negotiate. Sold a lathe recently for $1400. I had firm on the price. Took a year to sell. Sold firm. It also depends on the product here. Consumer popular shit like games and cars have a lot of negotiation. Some tools. Other shit is less negotiated. Some shit is high demand and lots of haggling like motorcycles. I just enjoy the hell out of telling people no. "That offer is offensive and I've setup a block list for you"
  - whtrbt 7y ago
    > And yet I've bought many items with patience at those prices. There was a bike I wanted originally listed at $1800. I offered 1000 as that's what it was worth. Every week it was relisted $50 lower, every week I dropped my offer by like $25. Ended selling buying for $700 (I emailed the seller so much they were chatting with me). Took 7 months but the demand was just not there. At the end guy was like sigh should have sold for $1k. I like this strategy.
cerberusss 7y ago
Sometimes I do this when I don't want to haggle; I just want a price on which I can decide a simple go/no-go.
- Slartie 7y ago
  When I don't want to haggle (which is often, as I hate it) I simply take the posted price and pay that or ignore the offer. I will never ask for a cheaper price if not interested in haggling. People with deliberately overblown prices which never expect anyone to actually pay that will simply not get my business at all in that case.
- moftz 7y ago
  I would always mark up my prices for things on forums a little bit so I had room to haggle it down but I never entertained people asking what my lowest price was. If you can't afford sticker price, you can afford to haggle. It was a pretty niche marketplace so there was pretty much never going to be anything like those crazy thrift store finds where someone buys something worth $5000 for $5, all the sellers usually had a good idea what their stuff was worth and priced appropriately. There were always the morons who priced their junk 5x it's market value but those people were too stupid to haggle with, they would get insulted when you offered a good market price.
- whtrbt 7y ago
  If you don't want to haggle, then you get the listed price.
exclusiv 7y ago
What's your best price is a good tactic with a poor negotiator or someone who isn't attached to the item. Maybe they play the numbers and it works. Just like you though, I hate that tactic when tried on me and it will never work.
- wincy 7y ago
  I once sold an iPhone to a 16 year old. I said "I want $300 but I'm willing to negotiate" and he said "okay, how about $350?" That was a good day.
olyjohn 7y ago
I usually respond to that by asking "What's the most you will pay?" Then I get their lowball answer and tell them that it looks like we can't agree on a price.

skocznymroczny 7y ago

I thought it's only a Polish phenomenon. It's bit of a meme in Poland, about services such as Olx. People try to haggle for every product. Let's say the price for a product is $300, you will have people messaging you with messages like "$50 and I'm there in few hours", often being aggressive if you refuse them. Also a common method is try to get emotional and lie to get a better offer, for example claiming to be a single mother who wants to bring joy to her child.

iamspoilt 7y ago
This used to be the case in Dubai when I used to live there. The defacto classifieds website in UAE is called dubizzle (dubizzle.com) which is a subsidiary of OLX. People used to use similar (in fact, worse) haggling tactics to get things for cheap. Couple this with spam and selling an item becomes a nightmare. On the contrary, I have had a far better experience on Kijiji and Facebook in Canada.
moftz 7y ago
I've only ever had one person try to haggle with me on US Ebay but he was trying to buy all of my stock so it made sense that he wanted some volume discount. I've sold stuff on forums before and that is always a haggling experience. It's pretty much expected to have someone haggle with you even if you don't say OBO (or best offer). It's mostly good, sometimes people will throw in some goods to bring the cash price down or you might waive the paypal fees if they have a good reputation. You still get a lot of "PM me ur lowest price", like if you don't want to pay sticker price, you have to play the haggle game a little bit. I would always mark things up a bit more than what I actually wanted to get for it just so I had room to haggle the price down a bit. People really love when they think they are getting a deal or somehow taking advantage of the seller so it's better to entertain them a little bit if it's going to get the sale.
- grawprog 7y ago
  >I would always mark things up a bit more than what I actually wanted to get for it just so I had room to haggle the price down a bit. I always thought that was kind of the standard way of selling things in an informal situation. I just assume everyone's going to haggle or barter so might as well just do it that way. I get the price I wanted, they feel like they got a deal and everyone's happy. On an aside, my grandma came from travellers. She was probably the best haggler i've seen. She managed to haggle in Sears and places like that successfully. She had this story about being a poor old Scottish pensioner. They also drove across Canada years and years ago with some of her relatives and would set up a fortune telling booth where they stopped. Her sister would case the people waiting asking about their lives, then my grandma would 'tell their fortune'.

mrfusion 7y ago

My fb marketplace has the opposite problem. Everyone seems to list their stuff at retail price (or higher!) I sent one lady an amazon link to show her she was overcharging. Didn’t help.

lordgrenville 7y ago

I personally hate haggling, but I do appreciate the raw efficiency as opposed to arbitrarily set prices. Maybe the ideal would be some built-in automated haggling: you set a desired starting price, and a private "red line", and the prospective buyers do the same. Then the bots can haggle and maybe dynamically update the prices as they discover more information about the market.

qmmmur 7y ago
So ebay?
jfoster 7y ago
eBay has (or had?) this in the "Best Offer" feature. Not available on all listings though.

draugadrotten 7y ago

The UX is poor. Haggling should be automatic. Make it an auction - allow everyone to post their offers and then the seller can take the offer they accept based on price, location or whatever. To make it work, the offer has to be committed as long as it is posted. Hey, come to think of it, isn't this a description of how stock markets work? The ultimate haggling.

patentatt 7y ago
And you just invented eBay?

dsfyu404ed 7y ago

I don't think anyone replying to you understands how much the selling experience varies by what you're selling. If you're selling used tires or consumer electronics you are gonna wind up dealing with idiots 24/7 no matter which platform you choose because everyone is a potential buyer for those things. If you're selling things that are only of use to a few people cost more than a grand, weigh more than a couple tons and don't move on their own you'll generally only deal with people who are serious about buying.

moltar 7y ago

And even worse, Facebook has the suggested message to send to seller. So many people click “is it still available?” And after my prompt response never write back. I’d estimate over half of people don’t respond at all. It’s so weird.

jamil7 7y ago

We have the other issue in Germany on ebay kleinanzeigen (Germany's version of Gumtree / Craigslist) where sellers will expect prices on used goods comparable to buying them new.

blaser-waffle 7y ago

Sounds like craigslist in the US. Someone once offered me football tickets in lieu of the asking price on the car I was selling. Took about 3 months but eventually got the price I was asking for. Had to wade through a lot of BS though.

naravara 7y ago
My wife's friend used to make a habit of offering to pay people on CraigsList cash for things, and then showing up with 10%-15% less cash than she committed to. Usually people were annoyed but eager enough to get rid of the thing that they sold to her anyway to avoid the hassle of posting it again. But it was scummy.
- savingGrace 7y ago
  I've had people do this to me. It irritates me so much that I tell them 'your loss'. Someone offered to go get the rest and I called them out on this scummy practice and moved on with my life.
- jimmyvalmer 7y ago
  Yup, the complainers on the sell-side should accede that roughly half the value derived from a sold item is out-of-sight-out-of-mind.
- zucked 7y ago
  I've had tons of people do this to me, too - in fact, I am guilty of having done it (like when people ask for a $50 multiple knowing full well that ATMS only dispense $20 bills and I'm short on time to be able to break a $20). As the seller, though, you should know that they value their time enough to at least be present, so they obviously want the item enough. You've got enough leverage to be able to tell the buyer who does that 'No'. I've said and had that said to me in those occasions.