[Closed] Selling bike stuff. What a palaver.

I'll give you a fiver for them

I feel your pain.

Sold a bike on Evilbay, 5 day auction, loads of "Hi M8 wot u wnt 4 bik" messages, i even replied to most.

The auction ended on Saturday evening, buyer straight into communication,

"if I pay you tomorrow can you ship on Monday"

of course, no problem. So yesterday I spent hours wrapping and boxing the bike, gentle reminder to the buyer.

"sorry M8 change of circumstances blah blah blah"

now offered it to the second highest bidder

grrrrr

That's more advanced than the "How much do you want for the forks?". Eh, read the 'kin ad....

eBay and buy-it-now, so you don't have to put up with messages asking to end auction early.

Just go high on the price and allow offers.

Loads of idiots on Facebook classifieds, however... There's plenty of genuine buyers on there too. You just have to pre screen as many of the idiots as possible I find, putting a "no offers will be entertained until you've seen the item" helps, as does being deliberately exhaustive with specifications (the average chav doesn't read past the title mind!).

But you do still have to put up with a few stupid "giv u 1/2 for cash, i'll cum now" messages...

I had one guy yesterday attempt to lecture me on my business strategy when I requested he stop wasting my time when he said "i'll give you 700 for it" for a bike I have listed @ £950 on there... He then proceeded to try and tell me how he thought this was a "reasonable offer", I explained that of course it wasn't and I had already turned down £800 for it and that he clearly hadn't read the description anyway of "no offers until item seen in person"... He then went into a tirade of "what do you do for a living", followed by "I'm a self made millionaire, you don't have a clue how to run a business" (I'm selling a bike ffs!) and "well keep it then, it's not worth more than £700 anyway" (err, two offers of £800 clearly state it's worth at least that, and is probably worth £850-900 to the right person!)...

But yeah, otherwise... It's bloody quick and convenient for getting rid of unwanted cycling related tat, especially right now!

eBay and buy-it-now, so you don’t have to put up with messages asking to end auction early.

I've been trying to sell a camera body like that, but I've got so fed up with non-paying buyers and buyers who pay then ask to cancel (presumably attempting some sort of scam, which at least means I've come to see a number of holes in eBay's systems) that I've decided it's just not worth the hassle and it will have to live in a box. I'm not sure I'll ever bother using eBay to sell anything again.

At least when I listed it on here it was just tumbleweed and no-one dicked me around.

Lol @Bez so true

eBay and buy-it-now, so you don’t have to put up with messages asking to end auction early.

Just go high on the price and allow offers.

I spotted a surfboard on eBay that I really fancied that was listed as Buy It Now but also open to offers. I put in an offer and the seller counter offered the BIN price. Why put offers if you won't take an offer?

Wats ur best mate?

Spent the weekend packing two bikes, masterly I might add. Including LBS courtesy purchases to procure boxes.

Both sold to locals that wanted to pickup. And one, in a brand new range rover, insisted paying with wads of notes.

First world problems. Ouo'd ave em.

It’s the ones that do the “how much for cash” bit that irk me the most. I have no use for paper money, that’s not an incentive for me to knock anything off the price for you. It’s 2020 ffs, I’ve not seen the inside of a bank for about ten years and have no desire to have to visit one. I now just add £100 to the sell price when this happens.

I’ve never had any issues selling through here, Pink Bike or EBay though. Gumtree can just **** off 😀

Might be interested in the forks benz if there available my email is cagliari5@hotmail.co.uk
Cheers

Sold my 13 year old bike for £500 buy it now this afternoon on eBay paid for and collected. Hopefully the buyer is as happy as me and gets as much enjoyment as I have had from the bike 🚲

I'm selling a frame and some forks on ebay at the moment.. lots of interest and bids so think it's a good time to get rid of unwanted bike stuff. The make an offer thing is something that does annoy me, I'm not actually sure you can turn it off though, seems to default to on at least until there is a first bid.

Anyway, keeping fingers crossed that I'm not going to get messed around at the end.

What would happen to a seller that listed a no reserve 0.99 p auction start where item was ended early or seller didn't want to just give away item ?

As seller does not agree with reserve price listings as they are simply risky and cost prohibitive

What would happen to a seller that listed a no reserve 0.99 p auction start where item was ended early or seller didn’t want to just give away item ?

As seller does not agree with reserve price listings as they are simply risky and cost prohibitive

Your grammar is all over the place!

To be fair assuming you are selling the forks under your wife's account

The 14 word advert probably put serious buyers off.

Selling stuff is a 2 way street.

I really need to shift some stuff, not because I need the money but I need the space!

I don't mind the messages, the problem I have is either dealing with a pickup or arranging post. All seems a bit alien at the moment.

Timely. Just listed a bike on Ebay, the first time I've sold one on there (though I sold a motorbike recently hassle free). First bidder messages me after bidding with "how much want for it". I replied with "whatever the the highest bid is at the end of the auction, good luck". It's a seven day auction, I hope it doesn't turn out to be loads more of the same!

I'm gonna put myself at the mercy of the good ole ebay seller contract much like the ebay buyer contract

😜🤗

I have no FB ;-). Ad changed (think I did that one after a glass or 2...). Better now?

Aye looks more legit now.

The short sharp advert just came across as similar to if you were a mastrick scrote trying to shift hot property

I did put 2+2 together with the surname and came up with probably you so not stolen

I don't think allowing eBay 'offers' really helps you as a seller. You've got someone interested and committing to buy, but you invite them to make an offer and that moment of commitment is lost, it's basically a cooling off period so the buyer can walk away to reconsider.

Similarly, as I buyer I almost wish the offer option wasnt there as it's very difficult to just buy something when the seller is saying 'don't you want to haggle?'.

Buy It Now, immediate payment required is the best method.

[I] I put in an offer and the seller counter offered the BIN price. Why put offers if you won’t take an offer?[/I]

eBay are someone's quite helpful and email you to say they've turn on offers on your item. It's infuriating, they did it three times in one item I had, and I had trouble getting them switch off as one item had offers on it. I even had to cancel and relist on over item 🙁

You can turn off 'accept offers' easily in the iPhone app or desktop site. Think it charges you 50p to list without offers, or free if you accept them.

You can also change settings to automatically reject offers below a certain price - that way you don't get spammed with offers below what you'll entertain.

What he said.

I don’t think allowing eBay ‘offers’ really helps you as a seller. You’ve got someone interested and committing to buy, but you invite them to make an offer and that moment of commitment is lost, it’s basically a cooling off period so the buyer can walk away to reconsider.

I partially agree, it works better for some items than others. I turn it off for some things and leave on for others.

Currently selling a bike on FB and meeting prospective buyer tonight - not sure whether to ask them to pay cash (few bundred) or run the gauntlet of Paypal, bank Xfer etc. Had a few chancers though "My best offer is £100"... "No thanks"... "I can come today"

Interesting to hear about ebay pain here. I use Gumtree and thought it was just me with the time wasters. I'd say the mix of time wasters and scammers to serious people is 100 to 1.

Got a bike to sell and trying to figure whether to eBay and then obviously lose a pile to fees or Road Cycling UK marketplace on Facebook. Not people will see it on eBay and it's got all the background stuff done for you, less people will see it on Facebook and you have to deal with sorting stuff out yourself. Is eBay 10% fees now?

I love the “I can come round straight away and give you the cash” comments, this was at 11pm on Fartbook meerkatplace.

Bloke who did buy the bike, didn’t even know what 27.5+ was, I did ask if he knew how to operate the gears, as he was riding it home, his reply was “wot you mean the uppy downer levers”...

You also have an idiot screen on ebay in your settings so you can block those with low feedback, negative feedback, etc etc.

Selling bike stuff is always a PITA on ebay, i sell allsorts and have no issues on any categories except cycling.

Facebook Marketplace is just a whole different level. Its like two worlds colliding, a world most would prefer to not know existed. It is just a constant reminder of how much of your tax is wasted on education, im amazed some have made it this far in life.

well this is not encouraging. I need to flog off 3 Islabikes (stealth add, Cnoc 14 and 16 and Beinn 20L) and have been looking where to do it. Classifieds here dont want to work this morning, and horror stories of FB, ebay and gumtree put me right off. Postage is my biggest bug bear with full bikes, as soon as it's damaged you end up with a case/argument..

I like Gumtree because it's local, people can see the bike before buying (or not), and it saves having to send the goods. It's also free to use.
I've just sold 2 bikes, both within a couple of days of placing the ad and with not too many "how low will you go?" idiots.

One buyer paid cash, one used bank transfer over the phone which took about as long as counting notes would have done. Very easy.

I sold a few bikes last week, two got there fine but the third has minor damage and has obviously been battered.

The buyer (eBay) is being lovely about it and I'm going to pay to sort it and claim from the courier after, so no drama hopefully.

@Sui wrote:

well this is not encouraging. I need to flog off 3 Islabikes (stealth add, Cnoc 14 and 16 and Beinn 20L) and have been looking where to do it. Classifieds here dont want to work this morning, and horror stories of FB, ebay and gumtree put me right off

Use the 'Preowned Islabikes for sale' group.

https://en-gb.facebook.com/groups/826309394088435/

Because people are forced to join and it's a private group, they tend to know what they want and it weeds out the idiots.

Is it just me who finds the eBay website is horrific from a navigation PoV? I've sold a load of stuff and I just find it painful to navigate back to the pages I want to see. There appears to be no common menu that sticks with you across pages. It just feels like a total hodge podge of different ideas stuck together.

I have sold 1,000's of things on eBay and a high % of that would be bike stuff and don't have any problems. I move to Buy It Now with Payment required immediately many years ago which may explain why I don't have problems.

I typically ignore questions as they are pretty much always stupid questions and the person is typically a time waster who wouldn't buy it anyway. I also block people who sound like they are going to be a hassle so they cannot buy the item after asking stupid questions.
Had one person ask me if the frame I was selling had a broken chainstay and didn't like my stroppy answer. He was very upset when he went to bid at last minute only to find he was blocked.

@bensales cheers for that, never knew!!

I think its just the pain of selling, Gumtree seems the worst for people not turning up or messing you around.

I sold a bike just before lockdown on FB marketplace, it had only been up for a few hours, we arranged a time for him to come and look, he turned up we agrred a price we both went away happy.

Other things i have sold havent gone so smoothly.

I remember i sold my motorbike a couple of years ago, and one guy messaged me 3 days in a row with the same offer, telling me exactly why i should sell it to him for half of what it was worth and why i was asking too much money, he then wished me good luck in selling it. I sold it a day later for full asking price.

You just have to come to the realisation that you will get idiots when trying to sell something. All par for the course.