What made you think this would work?

[Shep]

I'm selling stuff on eBay (other thread in appropriate forum for it, won't link here). The Vico Power Plus sells for $60 new. I am selling it new, pics even clearly show original shrink wrap around OEM box. I get a message from the second bidder right after he bid -- with a day and a half left to bid by the way -- saying this:

If you wanna sell it for $10 I would buy it now.

Thread title went through my mind, and I kept thinking about how to respond. I didn't want to be insulting, nor mean, frankly this was a sign that he wanted exclusive rights to buy and was a terrible negotiatior, so I didn't want to dump all over that. I finally wrote this back:

I don't, they go for $60 new regularly. Are you looking for these cheap? I have three used ones that fully function but have some silver sharpie on it with writing saying which cams they were for. Best to max out at 2 cams per retailer, so I did that for a 6-cam setup.

Let me know and I can work with you on pics and such

This is how you deal with guys on eBay that don't rub you the right way. He wanted an exclusive deal? Hey, I got three! The best money comes from calm responses. I've dealt with a lot of people recently that come out guns blazing, and responding with positive, "let me work with you" type responses gives them a pleasant surprise. Hasn't failed me yet.

eBay buying tip:
Don't bid and THEN ask to pull auctions. eBay doesn't allow it, the sellers sometimes will, but if you bid, that locks it in auction mode.

eBay selling tip:
If you get bids more than 6 hours before the auction ends, expect a bidding war, or just one super determined bidder. The earliest bidders are those new to auctions, and those who bid super high and will not be defeated. I do lots of the latter!

 

[DashcamDPR]

Ebay is just ridiculous, I use buy-it-now only, with immediate paypal payments, and completely ignore anyone and everyone who messages with offers even slightly less that what I want for what I'm selling

ever since sellers lost the ability to leave negative feedback, it's opened the doors to every kind of scumbag, and buyers complaining about any little thing in order to get refunds they're most likely not entitled to and also for people who insist on bidding with absolutely no intention of paying when they win

 

[Shep]

When I'm selling DeLorean parts, I add the "Make Offer" option for international buyers. I do free shipping for those parts, which suddenly wildly eats into my costs if I sell to a guy in Switzerland. I get all kinds of guys that will offer me 121.88 as a joke, or some derivative thereof. There's a line between funny joke and straight-up fraud. I accepted one of said offers because the $300 price point was intentionally way too high, and the dude never paid and dropped off the radar. I don't think he'll be doing that again.

I've had another guy try and tell me "I've had hundreds of cars, DeLoreans are no different!" when I sold my DeLorean steering wheel -- a part designed and made to be unique to the car and no others. I asked the guy how many DeLoreans he owned and he got so aggressive and condescending about it, I had to involve eBay staff and threaten legal action to eBay over their failure to coral this individual that clearly was violating terms of service and laws. My inbox went from crickets to nothing but this guy writing novels of hate-filled garbage about how I'll never amount to anything and he's got it all, so give him the damn wheel already and stop it. Took two months to get an apology from eBay -- which was well deserved given I blocked the guy through their system and got a BS response about how "he already communicated with you, so he's exempt from that". They reviewed the case after I flagged each and every message and took two months to realize their mistake.

Meanwhile the only reason he stopped contacting me was because I sold it to a guy in Switzerland for $150 above asking price as a "thank you" for giving a damn about foreign countries. It's the kind of car where everything decent is in the US and nobody wants to sell overseas. Only took $70 of that to ship it there, and I helped a guy with his restoration. The guy that blasted me was -- via eBay's own system -- forbidden from reaching out to me as he no longer had a question about an active item. Good riddance.