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How do you handle lowball offers for your watch?

7K views 94 replies 78 participants last post by  benji19 
#1 ·
I have been selling on E-Bay for about 18 years now. E-Bay has made many changes since the early days.
I do not list with the auction format since putting a reserve carries a big charge if the item does not sell.
Therefore I list all as Buy Now or make an offer. I do not pull my asking price out of my a** but do some research
on the Internet to arrive at the market value. I have had lots of offers that are simply ridiculous.
These are offers that an interested buyer would never make in a face to face transaction. I know, I used to have
a brick and mortar store. If they did they would be asked politely to leave.
If you sell a watch online and experience ridiculous offers, how do you respond?
 
#4 ·
I've never sold a watch online, but I've sold a whole truck load of used bicycles on the interwebs. Here's what I've always done... I bite my tongue, then reply "thank you for your offer, but I'm holding out for a better offer".

There's no reason for you to get mad or upset. It's nothing personal against you. They're just looking for a great deal, or starting the negotiations off with a low offer to feel you out.

Jeff
 
#69 ·
I've never sold a watch online, but I've sold a whole truck load of used bicycles on the interwebs. Here's what I've always done... I bite my tongue, then reply "thank you for your offer, but I'm holding out for a better offer".

There's no reason for you to get mad or upset. It's nothing personal against you. They're just looking for a great deal, or starting the negotiations off with a low offer to feel you out.

Jeff
I think this is the best response to lowball offers. I once tried to sell my watch. It was worth around $850 and someone offered me $425. I immediately say to myself,"I'll get myself two of these watches if I can buy it for that price" or "I would rather use this watch as a desk clock rather than selling it for half the price".
 
#5 ·
If it's a member with a large post count, you might want to actually look into the price a little more.

If not, ignore them.
 
#34 ·
On the one hand, this is good advice, and I agree; on the other hand, I had a ridiculous offer from someone with thousands of posts once. Guy wanted to give me $65 for a watch that I listed for $100 or so, and on top of that wanted me to ship (for free) to another country. I just ignored his PM. I sold the watch to someone else for $90 IIRC shortly afterwards.

Another time someone offered me 450 for a BNIB Seiko Tuna (eventually sold for 650). I did reply, but the conversation didn't result in anything.

In general, unless the offer is laughably low, I respond. I suppose I am more likely to respond to users with less posts who maybe don't know about watchrecon &c. and thus don't realize quite how badly they are lowballing.
 
#6 ·
I just went through this on ebay while selling a watch. While a couple offers were comical I do wonder if the people bidding genuinely feel they have a shot at you accepting such a lowball offer. You can always counteroffer, but when an offer is so low why bother. As the poster above said ignore them and move on. Patience pays off someone reasonable will come along.
 
#8 ·
I send back my bottom line and say it's the bottom line, sometimes they take it.

Sent from paradise!
 
#10 · (Edited)
The problem is this; nowadays people over analyse the smallest of things. They dissect it, inspect it, when most of the time, just ignoring something is all you have to do.

From the flip side of this, if you are low balling someone, for something, and your stupid low ball is ignored, then you know it was a stupid offer. So, you revise your strategy and either increase low ball, or move on to another unsuspecting seller.

I buy and sell many things online and in real life. I've low balled people many a time, but I don't low ball to such a level that it's laughable.

However, low balls on the bay can be rejected and countered (automatically if you wish). I have had sellers ask me to call them, and we done a deal outside of eBay (yeah yeah, it's wrong, send me to jail), and they eventually accepted my low ball.

The problem with eBay (and similar places) are the fees. If you sell something for £1000, that's £100 in eBay's pocket, plus PayPal's fee too.

It's swings and roundabouts. Ignore low ballers, but ensure you are not over pricing your goods.
 
#11 ·
on WUS is one thing, on eBay, I dunno. If anything, the fact that you're not willing to take just any amount of money supports (but does not conclude) that the watch is probably not fake. If I were to offer, say, $1K for a Submariner or something and you accepted it, I would have some pretty strong suspicions about its authenticity. On the other hand, you'd be well within your rights to ignore me completely for such a lowball offer (doesn't eBay have an option to just auto decline?).

It's the slightly lower range of offers that I think would be helpful to respond to. Anyone looking to buy an authentic watch off the bay knows that he/she is going to have to likely wade through tons of fakes and replicas. Much like poker, the more knowledge you have about the other person's hand (or what's on their wrist, if you will), the better your chances of properly assessing risk. So, communication is important. Unlike, poker, however, it's win-win. You sell your watch and your buyer can be more certain of having purchased an authentic timepiece.
 
#14 ·
I do occasionally put in lowball offers on some watches, though within the realm of reason.

It depends on the segment of the market you're working in and how narrow the band of "market" prices is for the watch. There are a lot of factors that could motivate me to lower my offer for one piece vs. another. To give an example, bad pictures, or lack of a photo of the movement, will automatically lead me to cut hundreds off an offer of a vintage piece. There's just too much risk to offer the "market" price that a well-photographed piece could attain. Especially for vintage as well, a lot of the pieces do not have well-established values, or they move according to trends quite rapidly. I might offer what is a fair price in my mind for the watch but, if it became hot in the last 6 months, maybe that's now half of what it's listed for. I'm happy to negotiate and also understand if the seller's not interested.

It's a bit different if we're talking pieces like a Rolex, where the band of acceptable offers is clearly far narrower, and most times won't really vary by more than 10-20% off asking. I won't offer $2.5k on a $5k listed Sub that looks like it's in perfectly fine condition.
 
#18 ·
On a watch I listed for $799, I was offered $500 (and an explanation). Rather than ignore, I thanked him for letting me know why he could only offer $500, and countered saying, "let's split the difference and get the deal done for $788." It was a move in his direction that suggested my price wasn't going to budge much.
The only response was, "cute." Oh well...
 
#19 ·
I'll counter with a price I think is more fair. If they counter again with a lowball offer I just decline. I don't get mad about it. Just the nature of the business.
 
#20 ·
I haven't sold on WUS, but I have on other forums.
I think sometimes it is a feeling out process by the buyer, to see how low you might be willing to go, and sometimes in a hope to get lucky. Then again, sometimes the guy is just a tool.
I dont take offense to it. I just give my best price and go on.
 
#21 ·
I haven't sold any watches on EBay but I have flipped a bunch here at WUS. I have received some ridiculously low offers on watches and they have made me consider my asking price. Human nature makes us think that our items are worth more than they really are.

I look at the offer, determine if I have room to move on the price and then throw a counter offer out there. This separates the wheat from the chaff. I believe if you have a buyer that is looking for that watch and not just looking for deals, you may end up getting your counter offer accepted. Look at a members post count and you can gauge how active they are in the forums. I respond in any case with WUS member offers just to be a good citizen of the community. No sense taking any offense at something you can't influence. Just my two cents worth.

Kevin
 
#22 ·
I love to bargain, and though I just recently got back into watches, I think the same principles should always apply:

1) I always have a firm price I'll let a piece go for. I set that before I buy it.

2) I always answer people who offer, because you never know. I'd like to say I'm polite, but firm. If we can't agree, it's nothing personal. Generally, I'll make the last offer. If I'm at the bottom, I'll counter with the same offer.

3) Some people like to test the water. Doesn't mean they won't come up, they may just want to see how low you'll go. I just sold one to a guy who low balled me, I shot him a counter offer, and he accepted with a line that said "Hey, I had to try." It was all good.

I guess I just try and not make it personal. I'm just here to have a little fun and see if I can get something spectacular. They way I see it, it's all a part of the game.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
#23 ·
i've sold many watches on here, and have pretty much accepted all reasonable low ball offers. In most cases, people are just rounding down to the nearest whole number. what i don't like are people who've messaged me with 0 post count (obviously from watchrecon) with an impossibly low offer and expect me to take them seriously.
 
#25 ·
I'll never ignore an offer, no matter how low. If it is insulting, I'll just respond "Sorry, too low" or something like that. If it is low but not beyond the realm of reason, I'll counter or give my rock bottom price. But it weighs less on the mind to quickly and simply reply "no" to a low baller and move on than to sit in front of my computer and feel insulted by someone who is just doing the equivalent of roaming the beach with a metal detector.
 
#26 · (Edited)
I only flip here on WUS but I don't take lowballs personally anymore either. If it's ridiculously low, I will usually just ignore it. If it's within the realm of logic I'll counter. Once when I was selling a piece I got an offer of 50% below ask, so I proceeded to counter and raised my asking price by 10% lol. I honestly at least appreciate the "hey I had to try" response though.


Sent from my blah blah blah.
 
#28 · (Edited)
I won't answer lowball offers and I won't sell a watch to a lowballer even if they raise their offer.

The type of person that makes ridiculous lowball offers is the type of person that would take advantage of return policies.

I have time for neither.

edit* One time an Ebay buyer lowballed me and I did not accept. He kept raising the price until I accepted; then he withdrew the non-binding Ebay offer.
 
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