eBay: Question to seller: Can we do a deal?

Jen and I are clearing out the attic at the flat. Obviously this requires that I get rid of a whole bunch of computer-related paraphenalia.

So, I'm sticking it up on eBay. I'm not doing too badly so far -- I've now got enough money to pay my mobile phone bill from when Hugo and I were in Whistler .

Anyway, I keep getting emails (using the "Ask the Seller a Question" link) from people asking if I want to do a deal.

I just got the fourth a few minutes ago.

Aaargh! What's wrong with these people? The item is on eBay because I don't want to go through the hassle of figuring out a fair price and haggling with all and sundry. If you want to buy the damn thing, just bid, already!

Does this happen to other people?

Tell me about it. Its usually stupidly small amounts like "I will give you £100 now for your 2 Xeon 3.06gz CPUs".

They bank on you taking their offer by planting doubt in your mind that it'll go higher than their offer.

Still a PITA though.

I've had this a few times. Once I even got an offer considerably *less* than the current bid price!

It's been getting much worse over the last 6 months or so, almost puts me off using ebay, but there are no decent alternatives.

So um... you selling anything of interest to Empeggers?

One of the emails (for something else) was "What's the reserve price for this item?" So I told him: "£40". He comes back with an email: "I'll give you £40 for it right now"

Er, no. The reserve price is the absolute minimum that I'm prepared to accept for the item. I'd like to get more (they're £130 new). I can wait -- the item's not particularly big, and I'm not in a hurry for the cash.

Probably not.

A TV, a KVM, an old iPod, etc.. The complete list is here on eBay.

Greetings!

I get at least one of these every time I sell stuff on ebay. I always answer with the following:

<quote>
Greetings!

Thanks for you offer concerning this item. While I do appreciate the offer, I do not like ending auctions early, in that I do not think it is fair to other bidders. If the auction completes without a winner, I will then consider your offer. Thank you.

Paul.
</quote>

Hey Roger! I'll make you an offer for that old iPod, how does £2.50 sound

Sorry couldn't resist it

Cris.

I'm glad to see that I'm not the only ebay seller who experienced this.

I always responded with a polite version of "shyeah, right, get bent" like Paul does, but in the future I will consider such messages NWMT and simply delete them.

Thanks for the heads-up.

I see a lot of people with text in their auctions saying "Please do not ask me to sell outside of eBay"... etc. If you have that kind of message and somebody *still* asks you, I would recommend putting them on your blocked bidders list because they are certain to be trouble-makers.

Gareth

and there I was going to offer you £200 for the iPod. Oh well...

Aaargh! What's wrong with these people?

I put a Sony 200cd changer on e-bay, stating the model number and providing a link to the same item on Sony's site.
The successful buyer said he was passing on the A1, so he would save on courier, when he arrived, he looked at it and exclaimed:"It's got a mains plug", followed by "It's going to take up the whole boot". so I had to plug it in and demonstrate it, although he wanted a car changer, he bought it anyway - strange!
What annoys me is the people that contact you after an unsuccessful auction, with stern notes from e-bay asking you to report if they're breaking the terms, it puts you in an awkward position.
Generally, however, my auctionds go smoothly.

Yes. I did it once, sort of. I pulled something off auction early. Feeling nervous about sending the item, I went through a bunch of work to make sure the buyer was legit - that is just to make sure he even existed, had a good phone number, a good mailing address, etc. Turns out he did not, and to be honest I think it was a scam from the start.

I relisted the item of course, and ulitmately got more than I originally pulled it down for.

Only takes once to learn that lesson...

I don't even want to tell you how many requests you'd get if you put up something like a laptop, or a car. Scams by the dozen, it's incredible.

I don't even want to tell you how many requests you'd get if you put up something like a laptop, or a car. Scams by the dozen, it's incredible.

Yep, and the scams don't stop with the seller, either. I bid on a road bike, where the auction got up to $1700 by the time I dropped out, and the entire time the auction was listed, I kept getting email titled "Question for seller:" (I wasn't selling the bike), filled with "hi, I have the exact same item, <insert auction title here>, for sale. I'll sell it to you for <half current bid>."

Ninnies.

Depending upon the message content (afaik) from the potential buyer, the seller always gets a warning about taking trade away from the eBay environment. Whenever I see these emails I always reply and leave the machine-generated warning in place - you seldom get bothered by the same buyer again after that

Yeah, I miss the good old days of EBay where you could just contact buyers, sellers, and bidders directly. It sounds very spammy now, but I used to connect with a bunch of buyers and sellers that way and completed some good transactions. Only once did I get an annoying offer, and, honestly, it wasn't unsolicited since it was an item I was interested in.

But no, I never got haggled on any of the items I sell on EBay. Probably because my prices are so insanely good because I just want the junk out of my house!

Thank you ebay, for the princely sum of £20 I now have an SGI Indy! It'll look the nuts next to my sparcstation. Hmm, i wonder what's next for my computer museum? I've two Sun i386's I want to turn into a table.