I have used Craigslist a few times during the past ten years. I have bought and sold approx a dozen items during that time.
Just recently, I decided to sell a 4 year-old TV that I no longer use. It is a very high quality Sony LCD TV. I’m deliberately not specifying the size or the name of the model here in this post. I figure this TV is currently worth around $130. I placed the ad to sell it for $130 but only got one reply and it was from a man who scolded me for asking $130. He told me it was only worth $100 and I should let him know if I was willing to sell the TV for that price.
Well, I gave up on it for a while but then re-posted it later for only $90.
In general, I find that when I place an ad to sell something, most people who respond will either ask if I am willing to be “flexible” about the price or if I’m willing to sell it for some specific price which is lower than my asking price. To be specific, let’s assume my asking price is extremely low. In that case:
About 10% of the responders will say they want to buy it immediately and that they are willing to pick it up right away and will pay the asking price in cash. I have found these people to be very clever or very experienced because they recognize this as a great deal and they know that if they don’t offer to buy it immediately, it will almost certainly be sold to someone else before they can buy it.
About 50% of the responders will ask if I’m “flexible” about the price or if any further reduction in price is possible. Asking if I’m “flexible” is the same as asking if I’m willing to sell it for less than the asking price. But since they don’t specify any price at all, we both then need to start from the beginning again which is a real waste of time. Asking if any further price reduction is possible is essentially the same as asking if I’m flexible. It’s a complete waste of time. I have found these people are “not very bright” because the odds are very high that the item will be sold to someone else long before they ever get the chance to buy it. These two responses ensure they go to the bottom of the list of buyers and means that someone else will almost surely buy the item before they get a chance to buy it. I call these people “low-ballers” because they offer a very low price and the odds their offer will be accepted is virtually zero.
About 20% of the responders will ask if I am willing to sell it for a specific price and usually that price is close to my asking price. I consider these people to be more clever than those in the previous two categories because I will send them a reply and if their offer is sufficiently close to my asking price, I will often sell it to one of them.
Finally, there is the remaining 20%. These are people that I consider to be quite stupid or to have some kind of mental defect. They will offer to buy the item for a price that is so terribly low that I would never take them seriously and would never bother to reply to them. Alternatively, their reply may be “crazy” in some other way. But I never reply to these people. I take their email address and add it to a file I call the “crazies” file. If they should ever contact me again in the future, I never bother to reply to them and will never offer to do any business with them. Never again. I call these people the “crazies”.
So, what kind of advice am I asking for?
Well, I would like to show you one reply that I received and then I’d like to ask for your help. How to respond to this reply and how would you interpret it? Can you draw any conclusions to it besides the obvious?
Here is the first reply I received to my ad asking $90:
Hi,
