Bartertown.com

Is it me or has a large portion of the site's users forgotten what the term "Barter" means?

It seems that 9/10 of my interactions with people on the site in the last few months, where I offer a $ amount that is OF COURSE LOW (as that's how BARTERING WORKS) I get either no response or "no thanks, too low" and that's the end of it.

FYI, here is how it works IMHO...

Person A offers a low figure or trade value OBVIOUSLY in their favor in hopes that maybe they get a hell of a deal.

Person B then either accepts the offer as they don't particularly care about the item and they are glad to be rid of it, or they make a COUNTER OFFER more to their liking or very high, obviously in THEIR favor.

Person A can either accept the counter offer or make yet another offer (most likely) closer to the middle and what the item might actually be worth.

So on and so forth.

I can understand if the initial is ridiculously low ball, but it sure seems like people are either too lazy to DEAL, which is what this site is for (as I understand it and have used it in the past), or they are expecting to get full retail value for their used stuff, in which case they should be using EBay right?

Anyone else experienced this change? I have used the site for years and it used to be much more "give and take" than it is now, have people just forgotten what it means to "Make a deal"?

My experience goes both ways. I have had some very vigorous negotiations..and they can be tiring.

The problem is, bartering on line is harder than in person. I person you have 'para-language' gestures, facial expression, tone of voice...etc. On line is much harder.
Also, just like in real life bartering/negotiating, if you start too low, you insult the person and they figure it isn't worth their time. You have to come with a reasonable offer (on both sides) from the beginning. also, if I am already offering something at an insanely low price (which I almost always do), I am saying, hey, this is my bottom line. I might accept alternative offers including models, but in terms of buying, that's it.

my 2 cents.

Actually, oldskool, your definition of barter is wrong.
To barter is, simply, to trade. You defined "haggle." For some people, haggling is an important part of bartering but, with other people, not so much.
There are places in the world that, if you do not haggle with the person you're trying to buy from, he will be insulted. In the end, though, that is still haggling.

You also have to consider what you're offering. Certainly, haggling begins with one person asking more than they'll accept and the other offering less than they'll pay. Whichever one you are, if you throw out the wrong number, you could just turn the guy off all together.

I do it regularly. If someone doesn't have a price listed for an item and doesn't ask the buyer to make the first offer, I ask them what price range they're looking to get. If they ask for way more than what I know my best offer will be, I just send them a polite note thanking them for their time, noting that my best offer would be far below their asking price, and letting them know I didn't want to insult them or waste their time. If I'm willing to pay $25 for something, but you start at $50, I'm not even going to bother. Half of your asking price is too low a place to expect to reasonably END at, so I'm not even going to bother with it.
Conversely, if I begin by offering the $15 to $20 that I'd need to offer to give myself some wiggle room to come up to $25, then the other guy's going to be as immediately disinterested as I would have been @ his price.

Eric


Eric

Ahh good point.

I just somewhat enjoy the "Haggling" process and I have been known to undersell my stuff just to be rid of it, as well as enjoy getting a good deal just because I started low and the other guy either didn't know or didn't care what it was worth.

I understand.
*When I'm in the mood,* I enjoy haggling, too. It's a lot of fun, provided both individuals are taking a healthy p.o.v. towards it.

Eric

I have to agree with you Oldskool. I've been here quite a while, took a break for a while but here I am again... I too remember the members being more open to the haggle side of the process, while lately I get the firm hand of "Not interested, your asking price is too high, even though it's less than 5% above what I'm offering" type conversations. Much like Jturner said, I've offered some of my items at quite low prices (within respect that we're all here to get rid of one thing for another in one way or another), but I have yet to find someone who's honestly "in to" the process that we remember and love.

One recent example, I've had someone offer $100 on some models I have, and my asking price was about $160, the retail on the models are over $200. When I counter-haggled to $140 they lost all interest. On those models I would have accepted $120-130 but the person didn't even bother. It sometimes makes me wonder if some of these people are actually interested at all... lol

I live to barter. I love to haggle. Never pay retail. Pataince is the name of the game.

I would normally agree, however I am a busy individual, and I don't want the haggling process to add another week of time to the trade.

I've never had a a haggling/bartering process add anywhere close to a week to my offers, but I can understand on how some individuals may drag out the process, especially if it's haggling between 2 people who may not check their messages daily.

I do miss the old Bartertown though where telling someone that their offer was too low didn't automatically end the negotiation. People used to seem more "hungry" for things, now I find they want to spend lunch money on 1000pt armies.

I enjoy haggling as well sometimes - I mean, to be honest, I WANT to get a good deal AND I want the guy I just dealt with to either THINK he got a good deal ( lol ) or FEEL he got a good deal - so that either way he's walking away happy. And if I got some stuff I'm not using that I can throw in - hell I'm happy to for a good cause. Because it makes me feel good to be "that" kind of guy.

But, I guess it irritates the hell out of me for a guy to post something for sale... say "Rare GW Thingamabob, $50.00 shipped" when the average going price for the item is $35.00 and the thing COST 10 bucks to begin with. 100% profit? awesome. 250% profit? F*cking EPIC. 350% profit? God [Admin Edit to "darn"] greedy and ballsy if you ask me. (yes, I know.... "where's the line drawn then?" - but I dunno... I still think there should BE a line. )

Sorry, it shouldn't irritate me so much, but it does. Because people buy 10 of an item knowing they will sell them all for 25 bucks and yeah hey, who doesn't want to make a profit - but the problem is 10 people MIGHT have been able to get them for retail price if someone hadn't hogged them all up.

If you want to haggle, hell that's cool. But then your stuff should always have OBO after it. That's the clear indicator that you want to haggle.

Two cheers for "OBO".

Just my 2 latinum pieces worth of opinion.

Oldskool wrote:Is it me or has a large portion of the site's users forgotten what the term "Barter" means?

It seems that 9/10 of my interactions with people on the site in the last few months, where I offer a $ amount that is OF COURSE LOW (as that's how BARTERING WORKS) I get either no response or "no thanks, too low" and that's the end of it.

FYI, here is how it works IMHO...

Person A offers a low figure or trade value OBVIOUSLY in their favor in hopes that maybe they get a hell of a deal.

Person B then either accepts the offer as they don't particularly care about the item and they are glad to be rid of it, or they make a COUNTER OFFER more to their liking or very high, obviously in THEIR favor.

Person A can either accept the counter offer or make yet another offer (most likely) closer to the middle and what the item might actually be worth.

So on and so forth.

I can understand if the initial is ridiculously low ball, but it sure seems like people are either too lazy to DEAL, which is what this site is for (as I understand it and have used it in the past), or they are expecting to get full retail value for their used stuff, in which case they should be using EBay right?

Anyone else experienced this change? I have used the site for years and it used to be much more "give and take" than it is now, have people just forgotten what it means to "Make a deal"?

If the first offer is reasonable but low, i will counter offer. If it's a ridiculous lowball, i won't bother wasting my time.

I'm at the point now that i put in my ads under "cash" for a want something like :

"Cash - offers less than 50% of MSRP + shipping will not even be responded to"


Or something like that. I've had multi-hundred dollar lots receive offers of "Would you take 50 bucks, shipped?". I personally am just not going to respond to that - its not even worth the 20 seconds it takes to hit "reply" and then "No."

Haight wrote: If the first offer is reasonable but low, i will counter offer. If it's a ridiculous lowball, i won't bother wasting my time.

I'm at the point now that i put in my ads under "cash" for a want something like :

"Cash - offers less than 50% of MSRP + shipping will not even be responded to"


Or something like that. I've had multi-hundred dollar lots receive offers of "Would you take 50 bucks, shipped?". I personally am just not going to respond to that - its not even worth the 20 seconds it takes to hit "reply" and then "No."

Perhaps I need to adopt that onto my -getting-to-be-very-wordy-intro- to my ads... lol I haven't quite had one that lowball yet, but I have had 35% retail offers on mostly new on sprue/bare plastic unassembled models...

I like to haggle, but people sometimes need a realityu check on what their stuff is worth.

One of the things that I hate is that a lot of bartering can be trading like items for like items or at least 1 for 1 for total quantity of items. Dark Angel bolter arms or Black Templar bolter arms for standard bolters with their separate arms, for example.
Becasue of the Warstore setting high prices on certain items, people treat them like they are made of gold.

Many moons ago, when I started trading on this site, I could trade people 1 for 1 normal heads for beakie heads and normal pads for studded shoulder pads. No body wanted them.

Now people get pissed when I offer 20 regular heads or shoulder pads for 20 beakie heads or studded shoulder pads, they want a Land Raider in trade.

It can be ridiculous sometimes.

Jakai_Musashi wrote:

Haight wrote: If the first offer is reasonable but low, i will counter offer. If it's a ridiculous lowball, i won't bother wasting my time.

I'm at the point now that i put in my ads under "cash" for a want something like :

"Cash - offers less than 50% of MSRP + shipping will not even be responded to"


Or something like that. I've had multi-hundred dollar lots receive offers of "Would you take 50 bucks, shipped?". I personally am just not going to respond to that - its not even worth the 20 seconds it takes to hit "reply" and then "No."

Perhaps I need to adopt that onto my -getting-to-be-very-wordy-intro- to my ads... lol I haven't quite had one that lowball yet, but I have had 35% retail offers on mostly new on sprue/bare plastic unassembled models...

Honestly, I have found that it pretty much shuts down all nonsense type offers with exception of those that don't read the ad in the first place (which I also don't respond to... i have several ads for which i am trading things for friends - i.e. i am in possession of their stuff, and i have a list of "their wants" - consequently, those lots have their own mini "wants" posted after them. When i get offers of things other than what i'm looking for in exchange for those lots, i don't even bother responding).

I hate coming off like a jerk, but i mean, if someone can't be bothered to read an ad, then i have a hard time believing that person is going to be a serious trading partner.

Anywho.... it is worth putting into your ads if you find yourself bombarded by low-balls like I found myself 6 or so months ago. I definitely recommend it. But i also understand not wanting to have twelve paragraphs of boiler plate language for every trade ad.

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@ Dakkar - oh god, 1000 times what you said. I could not concur more.


-- Remy