Audiogon Anti-Lowball Offer setting

Thank you for sharing. I applaud Audiogon for adding this feature.  But they should allow user defined threshold for our listings, just like eBay. Many of us expressed concerns over the ridiculous low ball offers. I do sell quite a bit here and man, wish you could share the flock of low ball offers comes through towards the end of your listing duration.  

I simply laugh and ignore the offers.  

Bottom feeders and turkeys i tell them keep on trucking.

ebm, I like that :-)

When does an offer below the asking price become a "lowball" offer? I really don't know but, knowing that the asking price is an arbitrary figure, I typically will offer up to 20% below it. Let's face it, once you decide to sell any piece of equipment you just want it gone. I'll admit that 45%-55% below the asking price is ridiculous, but so are some of the asking prices I see here and on other sites. To sum up, the only thing better than buying equipment that you always wanted, is buying it at a price you wanted to pay. Feature or no feature, it certainly doesn't take much to ignore any offer. Just my opinion!

Jedinite24,
Thanks for passing that along.
Somehow I missed it!
Best regards...

When does an offer below the asking price become a "lowball" offer?

That is rhetorical question, right? As obviously "lowball" means many different things to many different people. I think everyone can agree that offering less than 55% of asking price is a "lowball" offer though.

I'll admit that 45%-55% below the asking price is ridiculous, but so are some of the asking prices I see here and on other sites.

What makes an asking price ridiculous? Another rhetorical question.

Let's face it, once you decide to sell any piece of equipment you just want it gone.

Not true. Maybe in my younger years I panicked , but I've learned that patience is a virtue, as a buyer or a seller. Just as some buyers will panic and overpay, some sellers will panic and undersell as well. It's human nature to want to take advantage of an impatient buyer/seller.
It may take me months to sell an item, but I would rather wait than give it away. I approach buying the same way.

In fact I will usually try to sell an item on another site for a couple of months before I break down and buy an ad on Audiogon.
Audio Asylum Trader and USAudiomart have lower traffic, but lower scammers too, and they are free.
Some items have even taken me years to sell. Almost everything sells eventually though.

" Automatically reject offers below 55% of your asking price "  &   " I would have set this to 45% off of listing price ".     What's the difference, as they equal the same discount(just different semantics)?    I have to agree, lowballers are annoying and letting the seller determine the acceptable knock-off rate would be a good practice.    

Once again, Audiogon sticking it's nose where it doesn't belong. A "low ball" offer can develop through productive discussions. Too much policing again and anything to get their fees.

Selling an item for $1000 . Twenty percent ($200) is max i would even consider if listed conservatively . 

Feel free to serve up low ball offers to anyone selling overpriced cables though 

To me this lowball offer setting is like eBay’s auto decline offer setting but the only difference is the user can set the tolerance while here it is fixed. Definitely there is room to bargain in any sale but IMO the lowballing has just gotten out of control across all selling sites. I’ve listed all sorts of items on various selling sites. Before listing and setting my starting price I look at comparable completed sales, take the average of those sales and list at that price. To me that is a fair market value price. Then as soon as I list I get 50% to 70% off of that price constantly. I wish I was like TonyKay and others that can just let BS not bother them but after awhile of constant BS I start getting very angry. It gets frustrating when you research to set a fair price and repeatedly get slapped in the face with lowball offers. It is such a waste of time. I’m beginning to laugh at the stupidity of the offers but there are times my patience just wears thin.

To me this lowball offer setting will make the A’gon user experience a lot better and deter the idiot bottom feeders. At least that is what I hope will happen.

Hi Rodman9999

You got me. I feel real dumb. My math was way off on that 45% part of my comment. From looking at some historical sales I actually follow maplegrovemusic's formula. I'll accept 20% off of list. Sometimes 30% off of my list price depending on the situation and buyer. I'd love to have that setting that if any offer is below 35% off my listing price the offer would get auto declined. That and the buyer should only have a limited amount of offers to send to a seller. Ebay sets the limit to 3. Maybe a'gon should set it to 5?

I am of the opinion of 'send all offers', I am never offended by any offer. For any offer you consider as 'low ball', it means you need to educate the buyer, move the person to move their price up.  This is sales, 101.  Years ago I had a person offer me $100 for an item listed at $1100, worth about $900. Four emails latter I had the person at $800, and we closed the sale. No, the buyer was not Trump. 

Anyone offering up silly offers do not care if they buy what you are selling . It has happened where a buyer started low and after numerous counter offers by me got within my asking price ,then a new bidder comes along with the same offer . Who do you think i sold the item to ? Well that does not really need to be said does it ? The most frustrating aspect of the lowball bid is seeing the email that you have an offer . You think great i most likely have a sale . You get your hopes up and turns out to be that lowball crap . Thats the biggest reason why it sucks !

agree with Maplegrove. unless you are a dealer the lowball offer is really not even a nuisance. it does seem as their are more offers for 50%+ off asking price, there are also mant used items where the asking price is 15% off MSRP, actually more than the item would cost new...

the Audiogon policy that if you make a counter offer, you cannot accept other offers for 48 hours also makes it more difficult...

A seller can just say no. There are no ridiculous offers. If you don't like an offer say no thanks.

Well after close to a year since this thread has started I have found what the vultures are doing now to get around the setting is just messaging you their lowball offers. They don't even greet you or say anything. They just blurt out their offer. Oh well this is the times we live in.

You can always counteroffer with a price 50% higher than your asking price.
This always seems to be fairly amusing.   ;^)

I string them along for weeks, like as soon as I get back from vaca, or wait till the ad expires. Maybe I'll take an even lower offer if the item does not sell. A few bucks is one thing but lowballing is BS.

I got flamed for this awhile back on the same subject but I found over the years a certain nationality ALWAYS lowballed me 95% of the time over the rest. I can't make this crap up.

Hi Samzx12. I used to think the lowballing was due to a certain nationality as well but in my experience lowballing happens with nearly all of them. Brown, white, black or yellow people will lowball you. I'll never forget there was one preppy white guy whose member picture was a portrait of his family. The guy looked like had money. On a pair of $800 speakers I had for sale he offered me $250 shipped.

@jedinite24 ~ I am usually quite tolerant of low ball offers.  Not too long ago a buyer in California, who happens to be a Doctor sent me a $500 offer on a speaker advertised for $1799.00. I blocked his sorry ass from bidding on my stuff :-)

I sold that speaker at my asking price to a very nice gentleman in Oregon a month later. 

Hi Lalitk,

I'm going to message you on how to block a lowballer from bidding on your stuff. I haven't found that option yet on Audiogon. And here I thought the lowball offer I got was bad. $500 on a pair of $1799 speakers. Whew. That is some crap. I really think people that make these offers really take advantage of them not being face to face in person. I remember I said to one lowballer. Would you make that offer to a small business if you were face to face in front of them? They never replied again.

The sad fact is that they would not be doing this if it were not a successful buying method for them. For every 20 ads they throw a lowball offer at and get laughed at or yelled at, they probably will get one desperate seller to bite.

It's very similar to the young guy who has too much self esteem issues, just asking 100 women to sleep with him. Sure, he may get spit on and slapped dozens of times......but the payoff is worth it to him if 1 or 2 of them say yes.

Some people just have no problem handling rejection.
Either they enjoy the rejection, or they must catch some fish using their buying methodology.

Part of the problem is many jack up their asking prices past market value  . Someone makes  what they think low ball offer and that offer gets accepted . They do the same on the next item for sale that is priced right and bam ! you have your low ball . Some blame can be attributed to the high price listings .

A while back I had a seller send me a very nasty response accusing me of lowballing him when my offer was 10% off of his list. 

What I've learned from this thread is I my offers are way too high.

3 weeks ago a listing for a Simaudio w-5 amplifier came up . I had some interest as i owned the matching pre at the time . The seller was asking 2k . It sold the very next day for $1500 . 25% off original listing . Had I known he would accept that i would have made an offer or would have done a buy it now . The lesson to me is make any offer (within reason) .

Valid points  maplegrovemusic and  jmcgrogan2. I think there are people out there who get off on the rejection and there are sellers out there who have created these lowballers. It ruins it for the sellers who list fairly. Oh well. I'm learning to just deal with it and when I see an offer on Audiogon I expect the worst rather than hope for a sale.

If you don’t want lowballers, just list BUY IT NOW. That’s the way I always list an item!

Morning yogiboy

I hear you and I'm glad  you have had good luck with just putting Buy It Now. When I've listed an item as Buy It Now even with a price based on the average of what an item sold for I didn't get any hits. When I added the make an offer option more inquiries came in. Seems like with the budget gear I've sold people don't want to pay fair market value. They wants deals. I'm adjusting to this better now.

Maplegrovemusic is correct. I find some sellers are jacking up the price by several hundred dollars. Case in point and Mark Levinson 27.5 used to sell for $1700-$1900. A dealer had one not long ago for almost $2600. Has the Blue book gone up on Levinson? I actually emailed the dealer and asked if he made a mistake with the price and of course he said no and he wanted to sell it as quickly as possible but I thought at that price? Maybe he knew the market but Geez O Pete never thought an older 27.5 would increase that much in value.

@Jedinite24 How do you consider somebody making you a lower offer than your asking price to be equal to a slap in the face ? ,im curious how you determine a set value on the gear you sell.

Ive bought enough gear to drive the 2 massive systems i have now as well as the hundreds of pieces ive sold ,ive not paid asking price for a single piece ive bought,nor have i been paid asking price for all the gear ive sold ,which is why im wondering how you determine your gears value so definite you consider a lower offer equal to a slap in the face ? 

In my experience, most of the low-ball offers come from people who message you thru Audiogon, not those who make a formal offer on the site.

This reminds me when I had a McIntosh receiver for sale and a very nervous-sounding guy from Ohio went back and forth on Audiogon's messaging with me about issue after issue (will my rack accommodate?  will you drive and meet me half way? will you accept $$$? etc.)  After a few days of this, a nice young man from Texas made a formal offer, I made a counter offer and the deal was done.  When the guy from Ohio saw the unit had sold, he criticized me for selling the unit "out from under him".

I had a similar experience with someone from Ohio with lowball offer after lowball offer. 35 emails later I had him blocked from contacting me and added his direct emails to my spam folder. My dealer ended up selling my speakers for me.

@bubba12,

don‘t agree, sometimes no answer is the best response

As a seller I generally know the market value of the gear I am selling. Usually interested in moving the piece, and ask what I believe it should sell for. If I had the choice, I would set the lowball cutoff at 20%.  

As a buyer, if someone is asking much more that I believe the market value is, I pass.  

I don't blame people for trying to see if they can get a better price on used equipment, but some of the games people play are just a waste of time.

I will not agree to any pricing via email, will insist the potential buyer make a formal offer thru the site.  I had a guy go back and forth on Audiogon's messaging, eventually we spoke by phone and agreed on a price and a day/time for him to drive up to my house to pick the unit up.  When he arrived, he said that, during the drive he decided he'd pay $600 less than we agreed on for the item.  After I told him I wouldn't sell to him, he had the audacity to ask to see the unit.

I’m currently trying to sell an Anthem I225.  I’ve had 7 people over the past 2 days say they are buying it.  I answer all their questions, e-mail back and forth and then they go cold. 
I’ve only done this one time and I felt horrible about it and in retrospect, probably should have gone through with the purchase.  I have never arrived somewhere, demo’d a unit and then negotiated further after we had already arrived at a price.  I friggin hate that, especially because I sell my stuff at lower than average prices.  
I’m going to try to sell my Anthem today at the same low price that the others beat me down to, to another new buyer.  I figure if I’m giving someone a good deal, it’s not going to be the low ballers.

The way people place little to no monetary value on experience and knowledge is quite telling of the buyer.  I’m saying this in response to people wasting sellers time (usually at brick and morter stores) milking them for info and demo’s only to go buy from the lowest price seller.  Most people would dis their grandma in order to save $5.  

I've found that there are many "flippers" out there that want something for as low as they can get so they can flip it.   There is an audio blue book out there, which I have actually seen at some of my favorite dealers.  There is an average sale price for most used items.  Most reasonable people know this and know what something is typically correctly priced at.

Therefore, they know what they should or shouldn't offer for an item.  The ones that are "flippers" or worst, people that want something for nothing, will offer extremely low prices, hoping someone is desperate.

I don't get it, but some are like that.  I know what a fair price is for an item I am interested in or that I am selling.  Fortunately, I am not desperate and I won't give something away (unless it is to a person I like). 

My advertisements (when I sell) say clearly that Lowballers will be politely ignored.  I typically price an item to sell, so it is already at the low end of the blue book price.  This means that I don't have much room for negotiations.  But I get lowballers anyway.  I guess to them it can't hurt to ask, but to me, it is stupid and insulting.

enjoy

I have been using the lowball option for some time and it does save  in dealing with a lowball mindset.  Now if there was something that AudiogoN could do to stop the late night "drunken" (or impaired) buyers that come up with a lame excuse the next morning to cancel the offer.  Happens to me once a month, but i have bought things I shouldn't have gotten to save face, more than once :)~