I’m sold four or five motorcycles on craigslist. If you ever try to do the same, I guarantee that sooner or later, someone will try to get you with the old VIN report trick. The “buyer” asks for a VIN report, like Carfax or whatever, but they want you to go to a skeevy website that their mechanic recommends as being “the best”. They even say, " I will pay you back for the cost of the report." Which of course will never happen. They get a kickback on the report, which is always from some shady site. It happens every time. It sounds like small beer, but I’m sure they watch Craigslist ads nationwide and make enough off it to make it worthwhile.
4 Likes
This makes me think that the “proof of possession” photos I’ve seen with the item next to a hand written note with the sellers name and current date (as required in some sales groups) could make re-using the photos for resale more difficult. I think I’ll do that for some items I list on-line - with the note placed in areas that are hard to crop out or to inconspicuously cover up.
2 Likes
10 Likes
I think what some might mean is “or better offer.” I tried explaining this after I’d made my best offer for someone’s TV.
I did not end up with said TV.
4 Likes
Money + Strangers = Trouble
3 Likes
I’m not a lawyer and this might be a really bad idea, but I’d have been tempted to give him the stuff, then call the police to report him for receiving stolen property.
2 Likes
Not even spam and scammers, but lazy pieces of SH…
I don’t generally sell stuff on Craigslist for the above reasons (and I’m lazy), but do find that it’s a great way to get rid of still useful stuff that really shouldn’t end up in a landfill.
That being said, I can’t tell you how many times someone has been really happy to take something off my hands, then been pissed that I won’t load it up and deliver it to them. Um, you’re getting something that I could probably sell for absolutely free. Maybe being willing to pick it up yourself or bugging one of your friends to help is the least effort you could put into it.
10 Likes
That seems like a self own.
The threat to prospective buyer made to call the cops unless the seller gave him something of value (the discount) was straight up extortion and completely illegal. No need to make up a crime when a real one was actually committed.
4 Likes
Reading through this thread, I had no idea how many people expect that haggling will be tolerated or welcomed.
I negotiate for a living. I have no desire to do it on the weekends with someone trying to save $5 on an item that I already priced low. I’m not wasting my time just so you can feel like you got some kind of “win” - find another way to get your kicks, the price is the price. So I laughed hard when I read this post. I didn’t find it to be excessive at all. I thought it was just a humorous way to get the point across that the seller does not feel like haggling, since I know from experience that just saying “the price is firm” does nothing.
It never even occurred to me that anyone would find this position extreme.
That said, there’s no way I’m paying that much for those stools. Highway robbery.
8 Likes
I’ve reduced CL to the “curb alert”, if it’s still there at the end of the day it’s trash 
.
7 Likes
It’s weird how satisfying a “curb find” can be. I’m still delighted by a nice new roll of seamless background paper I got from a curb leaving (dunno what they are called 
). It’s not even that expensive an item, but it feels kind of luxurious to have it since I wouldn’t have bought it (have a grey roll I use).
4 Likes
Not really. CL is great for cases where you have large or heavy things - and this is important - when you don’t want to fuck around with shipping them.
For instance I sold a several thousand dollar long arm quilting machine. It was big and heavy and pretty esoteric but it was priced right and I was in no hurry to sell so I was fine waiting for a reasonable buyer to come through. I’ve also sold things like vacuum cleaners, PC cases, and other stuff. Never had any drama. I’d get plenty of insulting offers over email which were simple enough to ignore. Typically when someone was willing to meet in person they wouldn’t be a dick about the price. If they wanted to try to get a reasonable discount I’d go for it.
5 Likes
Life long scrounger, the stuff I’ve found in the trash are my favorites.
9 Likes
… yeah, no. I’m trying to find a way of responding to that last one especially without breaking the ToS.
Just: no. I suspect what you’ll find is that many people who don’t haggle are neurodivergent or socially anxious. It’s bad enough under normal circumstances to be dealing with not being able to even perceive all the side channels you NTs are communicating with all the time, with the continual fear that we will get, are getting, or have gotten our communications wrong to some catastrophic degree that you’re trying to inform me of on one of those side channels that I can’t detect. But when that whole thing is turned up to eleven, made into a game to which I don’t know the rules and can’t see the moves, and there’s a financial penalty to it all as well if when I get it wrong?
I do not give a rat’s arse whether it’s “socially expected” or not (and do not get me started on whether Craigslist is a community:
there may be a community on it, which itself is something I don’t get, but its primary purpose is for randoms to join, buy or sell a thing, and then leave. If you have to join, then learn all the social mores before it’s safe to do anything, then that’s an even harder no.)
Haggling is not fun, haggling is not pleasant: indeed, it’s actively horrible for many people, and everyone who says “oh, but you’d save so much money” can also get stuffed. I am happily willing to pay that perceived extra for the privilege of not arguing about it.
So much neurotypical interaction seems to revolve around lying to each other. Haggling is an example of this: two people lying to each other about how much money they think a thing is worth. Life is too short for that sort of bullshit. Especially if the effort of playing those games cuts into the amount of energy you have to do other things, like eat, or talk to your family.
Tell me what you want for it. If I think it’s reasonable and I want the thing, I’ll buy it. If I don’t, I won’t. If you’re going to want to play lying games about it, say so, and I’ll leave you the hell alone so you can go play lying games with someone else.
23 Likes
Oh, your new to the human process. /s
4 Likes
The mothership is coming to take me home any day now.
3 Likes
How are we 70 posts into this thread without a little Weird Al?
5 Likes
Speaking as someone on the spectrum, I think you’ve misunderstood this. Haggling isn’t about lying, it’s about two people attempting to reach an agreement on a price. There’s a protocol that’s fairly easy to learn, and it includes some simple rules for checking whether someone is serious about wanting to make a deal, or is just jerking you around. I spent some time learning the rules around buying cars (new and used) from dealers, to the point where I can now usually get thousands of dollars off the asking price. Friends and neighbours regularly ask me to come along with them when they want to buy a car, so I can get them a good price.
If you say you’re against all haggling, then you are merely yielding all power to the seller to set a price, and the only move a buyer can make is to buy or walk away. But a sales transaction has two parties, and both should have equal opportunity to set an agreeable price. That’s all haggling is.
However, the assholes who lowball on CL? They’re just as bad as the assholes who would prefer to destroy something rather than haggle over its price. There’s no need to provoke people, no matter whether you’re NT or ND.
8 Likes
Counterpoint: Haggling is actually a fun way to interact with another human, if done lightheartedly and both parties are willing to walk away if necessary.
That’s a very succinct description of a market economy. A great example is basically all markets for financial securities. Information asymmetry (which is not the same thing as lying) is the fundamental feature of the process of two entities reaching a price together. Eliminate that information asymmetry and the necessary haggling that goes along with it, and you’ve eliminated the potential for profit in trading, and then all trading will grind to a halt. That’d be pretty bad for your 401(k).
An interesting corollary is that because the market sets the price of a thing, the concept that the thing has “value” is eliminated. Because the market price of a thing can theoretically reach zero, that thing has no inherent value. I’m fascinated by this. We’ve created nothing from something.
Speaking of markets, holy cow, let’s not even get into how little haggling there is in residential real-estate transactions. In my opinion, a major cause of skyrocketing residential real-estate prices is that buyers just roll over and pay the asking price (or more!) without a shred of haggling. It’s just bananas. As my real-estate guy always tells me, “You make your money when you buy,” and it’s the truth.
I give you a price, and you don’t think it’s reasonable, then just simply tell me what you do think is reasonable. How hard is that? It’s not rocket science.
PS. I should add here that I never, ever do any selling nor buying of stuff online, so YMMV.
7 Likes
The two aren’t mutually exclusive. To a certain degree deception is required. The seller has to think that you will not pay more, even if you would pay more.
