Mr angry ebay seller

John_A

Saw a used guitar on ebay for 799 euro that I quite liked the look of, the new ones are currently on sale at a few places so it was only about £90 less than a new one so thought I'd ask if he was open to offers:

I sent:

Hi, Are you open to offers? I thought 699 euro was a fair price as these are on sale at a lot of places at the moment Cheers, John

The response

Hi,
If you have some better offers why asking me??? Just take a cheaper one !!!! Please don't send your stupid arguments no more.


A polite "sorry I'm not open to offers on this one" would have probably got him a sale

steer

Yes, it seems some precious flowers are easily offended. Yours was a sensible offer. It's not like you were offering to take it off him for 10p plus a used piece of fluffy toffee from out of your coat pocket. 

Funkfingers

I have been on the receiving end of similar enquiries.

Short version of my exchange:
Him: I can get what you are listing at trade price. Sell me yours cheaply.
Me: If you really can get brand new at trade price, why are you even enquiring about pre-owned?

I remained polite and the phisher did not bother me again.

Corporeal_bodies

@John_A I agree with you a simple "no thank you" would of been enough, no need for rudeness at all.

Adi

I've been on both sides of it and I always think it's worth asking , at the end of the day it's your hard-earned money, however I've been on the receiving end of some stupid offers (yours wasn't) and you don't know, maybe you're the third person that day who tried to lowball him and the guy lost it

John_A

Adi said:

I've been on both sides of it and I always think it's worth asking , at the end of the day it's your hard-earned money, however I've been on the receiving end of some stupid offers (yours wasn't) and you don't know, maybe you're the third person that day who tried to lowball him and the guy lost it

Maybe  

Bennyboy-UK

Annoying I suppose, but you have no idea what that chap may have going on at his end - so its pretty tricky to judge a response fairly 

You could be number 5 that morning, of people chipping him at his price, or he might have just lost his job, cat died, wife left him etc...

Obviously you can offer him a price at the time, but why not just leave it at asking if he's open to offers and then see what he said after that?

One persons view (and thats all it is) of what a sensible offer is, isn't necessarily what someone else's is - and I could understand why someone might think you were being presumptuous.

Eye of the beholder and all that.

Its not life or death either way though, so yeah...

merlin

He may be scared of a £250,000 fine for selling cheaper.     

octatonic

I made a (fair) offer on some Eurorack modules sold locally and politely asked for some photos.
I got a snarky reply saying I was being an asshole and they didn't have time to 'pander' to me.

Over the next few weeks I've seen that most of their studio is up for sale- I guess some people are really struggling right now and they need every penny.
I try not to take any of this personally.

imalrightjack

Never any harm in asking. As long as people are polite, all good. Somebody on here blocked me as a ‘time waster’ (I have no idea why) and, judging my his correspondence, could see the veins near-bursting in his forehead. Quite peculiar and a bit sad but then anger is an odd beast. 

skullfunkerry

Definitely never any harm in asking... my brother has bought two guitars from eBay for stupidly low prices after making cheeky offers that he was sure would be refused.

It's always worth staying polite... a guy messaged me on eBay and asked for a load more pictures of the Performance, and told me that he was bidding on something else but if he missed out then he'd definitely be interested. Got a message from him today saying that he won the other auction but wishing me luck with the sale... that's how it should all be, as far as I'm concerned

Redlester

Tell him you'll do it for 699 euros, plus a couple of free English lessons. 

TonyR

steer said:

It's not like you were offering to take it off him for 10p plus a used piece of fluffy toffee from out of your coat pocket. 

No, that was me!

skullfunkerry

TonyR said:

steer said:

It's not like you were offering to take it off him for 10p plus a used piece of fluffy toffee from out of your coat pocket. 

No, that was me!

Well you haven't got a hope of getting it, I've offered him a Playstation with a broken controller and the power lead for a DS-1...

ICBM

It was a sensible offer - possibly even a generous one if they're on sale new for around €899 - but never try to justify your offer with a reference to another price. Just make the offer - if you try to explain why you just open yourself up to this kind of response.

Johnw84

I don't mind making and receiving offer . That's part of selling . It's when you sell something at a reasonable price and someone makes you a low ball offer which you refuse (naturally) and they get all bitchy about it.

"good luck getting that price for it" 
"I saw one on ebay /gumtree for....." 
"it's only worth...., so my offer was fair" 

A lot of the time though offers are not remotely reasonable . This can be irritating after a while. Totally agree that keeping polite and respectful (hard as it can be with some people ) is the way to go. Even if the reality is you'd never get tired of teabagging them. 

skullfunkerry

Johnw84 said:

I don't mind making and receiving offer . That's part of selling . It's when you sell something at a reasonable price and someone makes you a low ball offer which you refuse (naturally) and they get all bitchy about it.

"good luck getting that price for it" 
"I saw one on ebay /gumtree for....." 
"it's only worth...., so my offer was fair" 

A lot of the time though offers are not remotely reasonable . This can be irritating after a while. Totally agree that keeping polite and respectful (hard as it can be with some people ) is the way to go. Even if the reality is you'd never get tired of teabagging them. 

There's a subreddit with loads of this one, /r/choosingbeggars. Loads of "Good luck selling it at that price, loser", with a reply of "thanks, it's just gone". I find reading through it is equally annoying and satisfying

soma1975

I was selling some specialist filmmaker gear on ebay once  - £5k new, was selling for £3k in as-new condition. 


Bloke kept coming back to me with obscenely low offers for daring to offer it for £3k, even going so far as to say my parents hadn't raised me properly to understand business.

I told him I would not sell it to him if he was the last buyer on Earth. 

mbe

Philanthropy is in short supply (sigh) 

Moleman

That’s unforgivable. There’s never a call for rudeness.

Jetfire

I always find when I do knock back an offer and they sau "ok, good luck with the sale", they are really saying "fine, fuck you"