"Make an offer" Etiquette?

[mardaddy]

This is a non-issue.

If someone is posting "Make me an offer"

THERE IS NO LOWBALL.

Lowballing (and the offense it represents) is in the eye of the receiver - I (and nobody else) can control how the receiver takes ANY offer.



npd_bigdaddy - I know this is Batertown, and barter is part of the name, but I for one despise the constant back and forth, jockeying for how much you can get/how little you will pay. For the *most* part, I offer what I am willing to pay, or what I want for something and if it's agreed, fine, if not, fine. I am not into endless haggling or the social aspect of the deal, just getting what I want and getting the other guy what they want.

But - - Unlike those you mention, I'm not rude about it. I always answer q's and replies, I hate to be left hanging out there wondering and would not do that to anyone.

[npd_bigdaddy]

Well Mardaddy, yes CONSTANT back and forth is a hassle, but when I see that you have an item for say 60 dollars, and I offer you 50, then you counter with 55, and we agree that's fair, that's the sort of "bartering" I'm talking about.

Contantly splitting hairs over a buck here and there is silly, I agree.

For instance, I offer you 20 dollars on an item that you have listed for 60, then you counter with 50, then I recounter with 25, well.....yeah, you can pretty much tell that the "buyer" isn't really interested, he's just lowballing for lowballs sake. That IS mildly annoying. At that point I would just say, well let me know when you want to put a reasonable offer on the table and then we'll talk.

But when you say, "make me an offer", yes, I agree wholeheartedly, all bets are off, and all bids are fair.......some are reasonable, some are not, but in the end all are up to interpretation to the seller.

Erik

[specs.esd]

If a person is saying "make an offer" on things that are brand new, they need to rethink the strategy.

1: stop posting new items and asking for people to make offers, it's pretty clear they have a range of acceptable prices.

They need to stop wasting people's time.

That is silly.

Silly eh?

Quite.

Whose competing with who exactly? The person accepting the offers or the people making them?

In the instance of the person making the offer, you get one shot to make it, and if you're passed up you can make another or drop it.

In the instance of the person accepting, you wouldn't know if there was a better offer unless you passed up the previous offers.

It stops being "make an offer" and becomes "Or best offer" when the person goes through a list of offers and takes the higest one.

OK, so you've gone Definition's Lawyer over the difference between "I've got a Rhino - make me an offer" (your "make an offer") and "I've got a Rhino - make me an offer" (your "Or best offer") because only in the latter posting will that seller actually choose the higher amount reply?

Again, silly.

Would you be of the same opinion if it was MMAO for brand new Forge World products?

Forgeworld from my perspective is no more rare than archive models.

...and this means you still think it is waste of time if an archive model/FW piece gets posted as MMAO?

MMAOs are no different from, and no less a waste of time than, Best Offers on eBay.

eBay-OBO's come with that little niggling detail of a "starting price." It's not the ambiguous "no posted value make an offer on item X." They are quite different.

My bad - completely assumed that someone who is participating in a discussion would have the slightest in business acumen. For those else who are as equally as handicapped, consider the Buy It Now* to be this thing called "the retail price".

*I'll have to expose myself further by making the assumption that your "starting price" qualifier would have to be the Buy It Now price in order to make any sense of your reply, as only the Fixed Price formats have Best Offer and only the Auction-style formats have a starting price.

Just because you can't make that particular selling strategy work for you doesn't give you the expertise to tell people on how not to sell items.

I hope you're not speaking at me, you have less expertise on that subject than you claim I have on this one.

Then I forget my place by publicly exposing your failings, oh Omnipotent and Omniscient One, as you obviously know every experience and motivation behind every user and sales posting, and none can possibly rise to the level of your BarterTown Wisdom and doubt that your postings, nay Commandments, could be in any way Flawed or Misguided. Please do forgive this latest incarnation of a threat to Your Most Awesome Selling Knowledge Skilz, and I will humbly retire to the time wasting activities of making money for fun and profit.

Hopefully, you realized I wasn't serious when I said that.

Not really, but nonetheless it does represent that generic potential buyer who actually participates in that manner - nothing personal, and I laughed when I initially read your post as I have seen my fair share of those.

...little niggling...

As a complete aside, I so totally got banned from a certain site for using that moniker.

[npd_bigdaddy]

As a complete aside, I so totally got banned from a certain site for using that moniker.

LMAO! OK, now all the other dripping sarcasm aside in this post (LOL), that right there is some funny stuff..........

Erik

[SteveBerenyi]

Personally, i am not a fan of lowballing. i have made a few low-ball offers, but in the cases that i have i make the following disclaimer:

"Sorry for wasting your time, but the amount i have to offer for this item is $$$$$ unfortunately i am unable to offer more. if you receive a better offer or dont feel willing to part with said item for this amount please do not take offense. none was intended but i realize that offering this amount is almost insulting. Thanks for your time. please feel free to disregard this PM if you want.

Steve."


I have gotten a positive response and a few items for really cheap especially with my lack of funds.

My 2 cents.

[MEDEVL]

OK here's another take on the OBO thing...
I recently tried to buy some FW stuff from a Btown poster. He listed all his items and the price he wanted followed by the phrase "or best offer". I was the first person to see his post (you can tell by the post count) and PMed him imediately. Long story short he sold them to somebody else that obviously contacted him after me. Now I have always thought that if you list a price then "OBO" that means you'll take either that price OR the highest price lower than that you are offered. The only thing I can think is somebody offered him more (it was a really good deal he offered) and he took it. I think that's crap. You advertised the stuff for a price and I offered to buy it at your listed price. You then sold it to somebody else. Not cool.
So how does everybody else interpret OBO??? Is it OK to take higher offers if the ycome in even though you have already have willing buyers at your listed price??? Am I way off base here??

[Adunaphel]

Wow. It's BARTERTOWN!

If you don't have a price (or a percentage) next to something you are willing to sell, then you have to deal with the "hassle".

If you are selling and somebody offers you WAY less then you want, then IGNORE it.
If you are buying and you offer WAY less then you might expect a bad answer. Why worry? No big deal. You haven't assaulted anybody.

There is no LOWBALLING. It's just an offer. Take it, leave it, or counteroffer. But don't get wounded over it.

If you get upset over what someone offers you for your stuff when you have left the price up to the buyer, then you need THICKER SKIN!!

Karl

[CypherIsGod]

MEDEVL - If he hadn't sent you a PM to make a deal, then he didn't do anything wrong, but it is bad etiquette. It's possible someone sent him a trade offer that was exactly what he was looking for. Obviously you can generally get more in a trade than you can buying the stuff with the money you made selling another item.

That does lead me to my biggest etiquette problem I see on B-Town. I think it's pretty bad when a person does not respond to your PM for a trade at all. I can't stand that. If I make you an offer for a trade or cash, please take the 2 seconds to send a PM back saying "no thanks", or something of that sort. I think if that happened to you in the scenario you listed above, you could have at least understood the reason. Even if the reply came back that he sold the stuff to someone that offered more than what he was asking, you could at least think, thanks for letting me know and I guess I can't really blame you for taking more money.

Anyway.... I think we have now established if you deal with me, I don't like MMAO posts and I don't like it when I do not get a PM back. So at least some good has come from this topic.

[npd_bigdaddy]

OK here's another take on the OBO thing...(SNIP)

So how does everybody else interpret OBO??? Is it OK to take higher offers if the ycome in even though you have already have willing buyers at your listed price??? Am I way off base here??

That would be my take on it, and I think the "socially" accepted reality of it. This is my price X, OR best offer, which will be the closest thing to price X.

I think that much, without splitting hairs on the verbage, is something that is universally accepted.

Erik

[npd_bigdaddy]

That does lead me to my biggest etiquette problem I see on B-Town. I think it's pretty bad when a person does not respond to your PM for a trade at all. I can't stand that. If I make you an offer for a trade or cash, please take the 2 seconds to send a PM back saying "no thanks", or something of that sort.

Good Lord, don't even get me started on that one. That is by FAR my biggest pet peeve on here.

You can send someone 3-4 PMs, and they can read them all, but can't take 3.5 seconds to say, "thanks but no thanks", "sure", "go to heck", nothing?

Don't even give me that, "Oh, I've been busy" line either. If you have the time to log onto Bartertown and READ a PM, you have that extra 5 seconds to reply. That's just common courtesy.

Don't have to reply right away, or even that day, but just freakin' reply for God's sake. That is hugely annoying.........

Erik

[Rhaalidor]

Without a crapload of quotes trying to prove somebody wrong, or myself right:

This is BARTERtown. Somebody look it up in the #$*&@*&$@#^%@ dictionary.

You say, "make me an offer" or "best offer". You have a NIB Rhino.

I offer $10.

You have a higher amount in mind. First thing I think is "Why didn't you name your price in the beginning"? You say $25.

Okay, we are beginning the barter.

I offer $15, or maybe $20 shipped.

Still not good enough? Tell me what you're looking for. Don't ignore me. I may have low-balled you, but I am INTERESTED. You come back with $25 shipped.

That's a barter. I offer, you counter. I offer, you counter. I accept, or I move to the next ad. If you can't do this, you're really lazy, and you wouldn't know a barter if it slapped you in the face. Put your crap on eBay, where you have to choose a starting price.

No offense to anyone. Just my way of doing business. It's worked for the last 4 1/2 years.

[CypherIsGod]

Nail... Head... Bonk!
You got it Rhaalidor. If lowball offers annoy you (and by you I mean anyone), then do not put out a MMAO post. Put in a freakin number. Any number. Every seller knows how much he/she would like to get for the item. Share that knowledge with the rest of us. It is very helpful.

[MagickalMemories]

So how does everybody else interpret OBO??? Is it OK to take higher offers if the ycome in even though you have already have willing buyers at your listed price??? Am I way off base here??

Same thing's happened to me before, my friend. I even offered MORE than his asking price. Someone else just offered more than me.
"Or best offer" means just that... he's taking the best he can get. He even stated it openly.

As much as I feel for ya, I have to say that I don't feel he did anything wrong.

Eric

[GearHead]

I'm jumping on really late with this, but my own $.02 is that one never knows. Some people really don't care how little they get for something- they just want to be rid of it. I've made some deals in the past that I never would have believed if I hadn't been directly involved.

Thing is, when I post "Make me an offer," I almost never get something that might be considered a lowball because hardly anyone *DOES* make me an offer in their messages!!

[MEDEVL]

"Or best offer" means just that... he's taking the best he can get. He even stated it openly.

As much as I feel for ya, I have to say that I don't feel he did anything wrong.

Eric

I have to disagree with you on this. I realize it's a matter of somantics but there is a diference between saying you'll take the "best offer" and saying you'll take "$40 or the best offer". The first is obvious, whoever offers the most wins. The second, and this is where I disagree with you, is you placed a conditon on that phrase. You said "I'll take $40 or if I can't get that much I'll take the best offer." In my opinion if a sale price is listed, even with the OBO, you should have to honor that price. The logic just doesn't support taking more since that secondary parameter is nullified if somebody offers the sale price. Maybe it's just me having sour grapes but that's how I ALWAYS understood the phrase to work. Even Ebay's BO function has a sale price listed. To my knowledge you can't offer more than that, only less. If you offered more it would just default to the sale price wouldn't it???