Do some people haggle just to haggle?

[BeeGood]

The one that gets me are "best offer" Ebay listings.

When an item is listed as "best offer" I assume that the seller is encouraging offers and I always make one(unless it's already such a good price that I don't want to risk it sitting there and being gone).

Despite having the "best offer" option on a listing, though, I've seen sellers who won't budge off their buy it now price. I've made what I thought was a reasonable best offer(usually 5-10% off the BIN price) and had the seller counter with the BIN price. That goes all over me-Ebay gives you the option to put Best Offer on listings or not, and if you don't intend to even consider offers don't bother putting it there.

I sold as BIN with best offer turned on one time for my iPhone 6 Plus that I just sold. All I got were offers for $300-$400. They were deleted and eventual I turned it off.

Honestly, yours would have gotten deleted too if you offered me $30-$60 less than my BIN price (which was in line with what 16Gb pluses had sold for previously).

 

[A.Goldberg]

This is embarrassing but I haggled the price of grilled cheese in my cafeteria today. On the menu there is only a tomato and ham or turkey grilled cheese at the sandwich station, but there is a standard grilled cheese at the grill section. The sandwich station uses better breads and always has a much shorter and faster moving line. I only wanted a completely plain grilled cheese.

The checkout woman wanted to charge me $5 for it thinking it had meat and vegetables in it. The price of the plain grilled cheese from the other station is $1.75. I negotiated to $2.00 given the fact the bread was higher quality. I took $2 of the $3 saved and donated it to a homeless man on my way home.

 

[z31fanatic]

The one that gets me are "best offer" Ebay listings.

When an item is listed as "best offer" I assume that the seller is encouraging offers and I always make one(unless it's already such a good price that I don't want to risk it sitting there and being gone).

Despite having the "best offer" option on a listing, though, I've seen sellers who won't budge off their buy it now price. I've made what I thought was a reasonable best offer(usually 5-10% off the BIN price) and had the seller counter with the BIN price. That goes all over me-Ebay gives you the option to put Best Offer on listings or not, and if you don't intend to even consider offers don't bother putting it there.

When you list an item as BIN on ebay, the "Best Offer" box is checked by default so it may be that the seller wasn't aware of that. That's why they refused all offers and only wanted the BIN price.
You have to uncheck the Best Offer box before you list the item.

 

[Tomorrow]

I once contacted a seller through Craigslist who was offering something I wanted for $225. I countered to him $175, thinking he might take $200. He asked for $190. Why spend more money than you need to?

Would I have spent $225 if he had not budged? Maybe, maybe not; I definitely would have paid $200.

 

[bunnspecial]

I sold as BIN with best offer turned on one time for my iPhone 6 Plus that I just sold. All I got were offers for $300-$400. They were deleted and eventual I turned it off.

Honestly, yours would have gotten deleted too if you offered me $30-$60 less than my BIN price (which was in line with what 16Gb pluses had sold for previously).

I'm assuming that since you said my 5-10% would have been $30-60 off, I'm guessing your BIN price was $600.

Why even bother with best offer if you list something for $600 and won't consider $570?(in that particular situation if I'd been interested I probably would have offered $550 and expect the seller to counter at $575 or so).

If you don't want to be bothered with best offers, turn the option off. Otherwise, don't get offended when people make them. As I said, if the option is there, I'm going to make an offer. What sort of offers would you have accepted on that listing?

 

[BeeGood]

I'm assuming that since you said my 5-10% would have been $30-60 off, I'm guessing your BIN price was $600.

Why even bother with best offer if you list something for $600 and won't consider $570?(in that particular situation if I'd been interested I probably would have offered $550 and expect the seller to counter at $575 or so).

If you don't want to be bothered with best offers, turn the option off. Otherwise, don't get offended when people make them. As I said, if the option is there, I'm going to make an offer. What sort of offers would you have accepted on that listing?

I stated in my post that I did in fact turn it off. As the other guy said, eBay turns it on by default. This was my first BIN sale and I wasn't aware that it was even an option until minutes later when the clown show offers started rolling in.

The BIN price was $669 (which is what it sold for), so we're actually talking $630-$600. *Maybe* I would think about $630 after a few weeks, but minutes after the listing is laughable and any price lower than that is absurd for a 16GB plus in almost mint condition.

And it's not about being offended. It's about wasting my time (and yours) making offers that don't jive with reality. The average sale price was around $650 for 16GB pluses at the time. If I had listed it at $600, would you still make a lowball offer just for the sake of making a lowball offer and miss out on a insanely good deal?

 

[lowendlinux]

Remember an "insanely good deal" is completely subjective and it's OK for either party to walk away it's no big deal at $650 I'd walk away though I am glad you got what you wanted.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Well, then, for those on this thread who enjoy haggling, - and the detailed recollections lead me to conclude that the 'chase' and 'sport' of competitive haggling is part of the whole excitement of the thing - does the good you have purchased or the price you have purchased it for matter more in your recollection?

So, in short, what is more important to you - price or product?

 

[lowendlinux]

It's a bit of both, with consumer electronics there is nothing special nor unique they are commodity items so walking away is really nothing especially online when the walking away is clicking the next ad.

 

[bunnspecial]

Well, then, for those on this thread who enjoy haggling, - and the detailed recollections lead me to conclude that the 'chase' and 'sport' of competitive haggling is part of the whole excitement of the thing - does the good you have purchased or the price you have purchased it for matter more in your recollection?

So, in short, what is more important to you - price or product?

Ultimately, if it's something I'm interested in I'm probably going to be the price.

To be honest, though, for used items there is no "set in stone" price(unlike new retail items). If the price is fair or low, I'm not going to haggle.

On the other hand, if it's priced high but not out of reach for me, I will try to bring the price in line with where I'd like for it to be. Depending on what we're talking about, I might finally cough up the seller's asking price or I might walk away.

As an example, there's a fellow that often shows up at the watch shows I frequent who has a watch I'd like to have but I'm not slobbering at the mouth to buy it. It has a lot of issues, and to me it's probably a $50-60 watch because it's a Kentucky private label. To most other people, it's just a crummy low grade Illinois with the wrong dial and is probably worth $30 on a good day. The seller wants $100 for it, and is absolutely glued to that price-he's also had it for sale for at least 3 years.

If he were asking $75, I might consider it, but I'm probably one of the only people in the world(quite literally) who would pay a price that high for it.

But, again, if I see something on Ebay with a best offer, why would I not try to save some money on it? If it's a unique or rare item, that's one thing, but for a commodity used item, I don't think that's a completely unreasonable approach.

And, I'll just throw in another quick anecdote. Not too long ago, I was discussing a computer here in the for sale section with a prospective seller. They were responding to a wanted to buy ad, but initially wouldn't give me a price-they instead insisted that I make an offer. I spent some time researching sold listings on Ebay(I included links), and considering the problems that the seller stated with the item came back with an offer that was probably a bit low but not out of line. I made my offer expecting the seller to counter.

What I didn't expect was for the seller to come back with a number that was about 4.5x my initial offer-I could have bought a newer and completely functional example of the same model for what the seller wanted. My response was that we were just too far apart and I didn't think we'd be able to come to a deal, and left it at that.