I get occasional low-ball offers (not a huge amount), and am wondering what other people do about this. I'm going on the assumption that, sometimes, it's a good strategy to list with accepting offers but, if you do it too much, it can become a bit of a time-water. Here's the following stratgies that someone can use (which can be for everything you sell or just one item). The only assumption on this is that it's NOT for auction items. Too many of the items I sell are "wait for a buyer" and would sell too low on auction (i.e. they are either repair or some other type of "I want it now"). Please don't waste your or my time by making this part of the discussion (unless you like to write things that are ignored). This is ONLY about strategy on low-ball offers for strictly "Buy in now" items.
Here's what I see as strategies (that I know of):
1. Price with enough research that you don't accept offers. If you don't sell, maybe eventually just lower the price. Downside: maybe takes more time to research up front and adjust prices in the future. As you know, some people will ask you questions about pricing/offers anyway (someone once pointed out that it was cheaper on Amazon and so I did adjust my pricing for them and sold it).
2. Put in additional "auto reject and accept" pricing. I don't use this much, thinking maybe I should. Do you get a notification that someone was rejected? Downside: just a bit more time upfront to think about what those limits should be.
3. "Just deal with it". Accept offers and go with the flow: take them, counter offer or reject. This is how I typically do things and, I can't say it's horrible or even bad, but just wondering what other people think & do. Here's my substrategies on that:
- If it's too low, I just reject (don't counteroffer). Doesn't take much time and this happens maybe 1 out of 3 or 4 offers but only a few times each week.
- If they low-ball me again, I put them on my "blocked buyer" list, mostly just to make me feel good, LOL. If everyone did this at some level, those idiots would get smarter and not low-ball as much but I can't see getting everyone in on that.
- Eventually I do make price adjustments if I don't get any offers. I do know that if something is priced too high (which still works out ok sometimes) that people may not even give an offer.
Just curious about what other people do. Just FYI, most of my stuff is one-offs, new or used and this is just a small side-gig for me. Overall, I can't say I'm writing this because it's going bad, just wondering if there's a better strategy.
Thanks,
BB1
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