An eBay shop refused to sell a bike to a man because he is from Liverpool. Ray Watt made an offer of £1,000 for a Giant TCR Advanced Pro during the auction, but was then sent a message by the seller saying, “Hi sorry too low, and would be unhappy if I sold to Scouser.”
The Liverpool Echo reports that Watt expected that the offer would be seen as too low, but that he had been willing to pay more.
“I thought I’d bid £1,000 initially and then go up if needs be. I got a message back to say declined. I expected them to say we won’t take that price but would take another price, maybe £1,200 or £1,300.
“But he came back saying he wouldn’t sell to Scousers. I nearly fell over when I read it, I couldn’t believe it.”
The bike was being offered by Lainhead_electricals, which has 99.9% positive feedback on eBay.
Someone from the shop appears to have replied to Watt on Twitter since the Echo article was published.
Danny Grimes said: “My general manager got drunk last night and sent that stupid message. I am so very sorry. There is no excuse for it. It is difficult and people are stressed but it doesn’t excuse what he did. We deserve all of the trolling. So very sorry.
“Some of our employees support Liverpool FC and maybe he thought it was funny at the time as I notice on company chat there is some banter. We will honour the offer you made and fine him for misconduct. Please be assured we do not think what he said.”
Grimes added that the person in question was going to make a £200 donation to Liverpool food bank initiative Fans Supporting Foodbanks.
“We are not going to sack him as life’s a bit crap now and he’s decent chap. Hope he learns. All the best.”
Watt tweeted: “I think we can say that is a fair apology from the company and I hope this person in question never makes comments like this again.”
67 thoughts on “eBay seller refuses to accept bike auction offer – says “would be unhappy if I sold to Scouser””
I’m with them when someone
I’m with them when someone puts in an offer that far below the asking price!
alansmurphy wrote:
I always get these muppets email me with a crap offer after I:
a) Turn off the ‘Best Offer’ feature
b) literally put in the description no offers accepted.
I think they do it on purpose
I think they do it on purpose, just to prove they are a fuckwit.
“You don’t want to haggle
“You don’t want to haggle bignose?”
AlsoSomniloquism wrote:
Ok then £1
Sorry is that too low, £5,000
Have to say, I’ll sometimes
Have to say, I’ll sometimes make stupid offers (50p, say) when someone’s listed something at a ridiculous price or put something clearly stolen on. Petty, but entertaining.
I sell stuff with ‘make an
I sell stuff with ‘make an offer’ on Ebay and if you don’t want a derisory offer you can set it up to automatically decline those offers. They should have set it to automatically decline any offers under £1200 for example and once that amount was reached then they can haggle.
Leaving the scouse comment
Leaving the scouse comment aside for a moment, this is incorrect. It is not a “winning bike bid,” it’s a best offer which has not been accepted.
So it wasn’t a ‘winning’ bid
So it wasn’t a ‘winning’ bid – it was an (derisory) offer.
Just because he’s from
Just because he’s from Liverpool doesn’t make him a Scouser…..Anyway, he made a bid under the asking price.
The response was unwarranted,
The response was unwarranted, however the offer was insulting. Mr Watt and his ilk (ie chancers who want to get one over on others) are a pain in the arse on ebay and FB market-place
Captain Badger wrote:
What nonsense, that’s how bargaining works, they would have set the price at a bit more than they wanted, he offers a bit less than they wanted, and they could meet in the middle at £1250 (which would be about right for that bike) and both be happy. If the sellers weren’t willing to consider offers, that option can be disabled.
Rendel Harris wrote:
In which case offer 1250, and be prepared to move on till you find someone who is selling at a fair price. But, these silly Pythonesque games of meet in the middle are a waste of everyone’s time and good will.
Captain Badger wrote:
That’s just how bargaining works though, and I speak as someone who grew up going to car boot sales bargaining with sellers for video games! Whatever the buyer offers, the seller is going to use the “meet me half way” reasoning. That’s why you offer below what you expect they’re willing to sell for first.
That’s why I wouldn’t go near
That’s why I wouldn’t go near a “It probably belongs in the tip” sale. Everything these days is classic or retro even when it was shit the day it was released.
If someone sticks a £50 price on a coat stand then walk on, don’t offer £1
I’m looking for a laptop for my lad and one was on Fleabay with a start price of £139 and my budget was around £160. I told the seller I wasn’t the best in terms of knowing value and my kid had provided the spec he wanted, I asked if he had a BIN price in mind and he said he was looking for over £200. I said fair play and wandered off. Like a normal human!
alansmurphy wrote:
There’s a shop in Golborne Road, near Portobello Road in north-west London, that has a sign in the window, “We buy junk, we sell Antiques“.
Admirable honesty.
Boopop wrote:
In this case, it looks like the bargaining didn’t work….
For the buyer, it (eventually
For the buyer, it (eventually) did – they got it for less than they were expecting, and the seller made a donation to charity on top of that.
mdavidford wrote:
Can’t find that bit – what did it eventually go for?
Fourth last paragraph:
Fourth last paragraph:
So they’re getting it for the £1,000 when they expected to be haggled up a bit.
mdavidford wrote:
Aaaah. I wonder if Mr Watt will use this tactic in future…..
I might?????
I might?????
I feel sorry for the shop.
I feel sorry for the shop. Trial by Social Media.
In fairness that’s a pretty
In fairness that’s a pretty stellar response from the shop and were I the buyer would more than make up for any initial bad feeling.
Yeah but they’ve still put it
Yeah but they’ve still put it all over social media, haven’t they?
Oh contrairé, they accepted
Oh contrairé, they accepted his offer, apologised and donated to a foodbank.
Billy1mate wrote:
Yep mdavis pointed that out. Missed it in my first read
Captain Badger wrote:
Oh contrairé, they accepted his offer, apologised and donated to a foodbank.
— Captain Badger Yep mdavis pointed that out. Missed it in my first read— Billy1mate
While I’d love to be a jazz legend, I don’t think I can lay claim to that.
mdavidford wrote:
?
In a perfect world inhabited
In a perfect world inhabited by sensible nice people, you would pay what you thought was a sensible offer, not try to get one over on someone who is trying to run a business. eBay is inhabited by stupid, ignorant, cheeky fuckwits who want a new item for fuck all, free postage, and can’t be arsed to even leave positive feedback. eBay should set up a feedback system whereby no feedback is shown until both parties leave it.
Car boot sales are horrendous
Car boot sales are horrendous, people bartering on something selling for 20p. It happened to me and I increased the price when offered less than the 20p and then said it’s not for sale.
Captain Badger wrote:
Well we’ll have to change the whole of human nature then. Throughout history it’s been accepted that sellers try to seek the highest price and buyers the lowest and that they try to negotiate an acceptable compromise. It’s generally – and not just in buying and selling goods – the way humans work, via negotiation, and if it’s done with good will it can generally end up with an outcome that satisfies both parties.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Quite. And offering ridiculously low gets up people’s noses, and results in ill-feeling, as we have just seen. That is also human nature…..
As someone who works in the
As someone who works in the B2B world an opening offer of c. 80% of what turns out to be a sale at a fair value is absolutely not ‘insulting’ – if you don’t like the idea of negotiating fair enough, but that is what the ‘make an offer’ option is for
Compact Corned Beef wrote:
Clearly the seller, judging from their response thought a 66% offer was insulting (you may have faired better with your 80%). And I frankly don’t blame them, although as I originally said, their response was unwarranted.
You’re on a hiding to nothing
You’re on a hiding to nothing Captain Badger, it seems nobody gives a shit these days as long as they’ve got a cheap deal.
biker phil wrote:
I dare say you’re right. I doubt there’ll be any sweet deals struck between myself and my esteemed colleagues this weekend at least….?
Compact Corned Beef wrote:
When I was in the Middle East the advise given to me when buying goods was to knock 20% off the vendors asking price as your starting point. The end result would be an agreement on anything between a 5-15% discount (usually 10%) depending on how desperate the vendor was to offload the goods or you go gain them. Even in the markets you could ask for a sweetener when buying large amounts of fresh food.
This practice can be implemented here in the U.K. in markets or high street when buying in bulk or when dealing with tradesmen who surprisingly are willing to knock a small percentage off their bill.
Over the years I’ve had independent shops give me a discount when I’ve purchased large items. Even recently a craft shop gave me a discount after spending a ludicrous amount of money over Christmas and while it was their decision the mindset is there to move from a carved in stone price point.
Here in the U.K. we have lost the art of bartering due to major retailers having established price points in order to speed up turnover.
All the vendor had to do was say no come back with a better offer. Now they’ve wound up with offering a massively inflated discount. The other way round it would simply said fixed price no haggling!
Captain Badger wrote:
It gets up people’s noses if they’re pissed and want to be rude, I think this story shows. Really not sure how out of other things to be annoyed about I’d have to be to get annoyed about someone making an offer on something I’m selling when I’ve expressly stipulated, as here, that offers will considered. I’ve sold bikes on eBay and had people offer me 50% of asking, you get an email from eBay and you can click reject offer, make a counteroffer, or you can just ignore it. If that’s too annoying, you can just set your auction/sale not to accept offers at all, then you don’t have to get angry about it. Seems fairly simple.
Rendel Harris wrote:
Not only then, but clearly that didn’t help the situation, and backfired immensely on the seller – I think it fair to assume that they’ll be reconsidering their policy accordingly….
All these things re eBay are also true – these functions are there to help avoid timewasters.
But, timewasters are still timewasters, and it is insulting to have disregard for other folks time.
Anyway Rendell, as ever it is a pleasure to debate with you, but I have some goods to put on eBay at an inflated price. Have a great weekend
Not really, it’s bartering.
Not really, it’s bartering. One would ask for a better deal buying a car or offer less than the asking price if buying a property.
You can accept offers and
You can accept offers and have ebay automatically reject offers below a set amount; having said that, the not selling to scousers line came across as a joke to me.. social media outrage, who cares.
Add to that Mr Grimes and one
Add to that Mr Grimes and one other that, as far as can be seen, was not involved at all in the original exchange have twice now been doxxed on Twatter (not by Mr Watt I add), this is turning into a bit of a sorry episode….
Well said, there’s far too
Well said, there’s far too many of them on eBay.
The offer isn’t insulting, it
The offer isn’t insulting, it’s just the opening bid in what was expected to be a negotiation. A bike or anything is only worth what people are willing to pay for it and asking prices are often optimistic to say the least. Sellers need to be realistic, polite and not take things personally.
Yes, but, many people on eBay
Yes, but, many people on eBay are rude, and will offer insulting low bids. That said, they did open it to offers. If I get insultingly low offers from rude eBayers, I just block them. Easy peasy, I can’t be arsed being a great eBayer to fuckwits.
I see it as an offer with
I see it as an offer with room to increase, if the seller said yes great, if not, a bit of offer ping pong may ensue.
The seller’s response was polite and apologetic and the donation was a decent gesture.
Offended by everything…
Offended by everything…
Isn’t it one if the best
Isn’t it one if the best replies by a business after a mistake has been made?
Apologies, gesture to the offended person, donation to a 3rd party and explanation of what happened and why they will not fire the person, but try to learn from it instead…
brilliant job!
Last time I listed something
Last time I listed something expensive online (a car, rather than a bike) I got several calls & messages from clowns offering half or 2/3 of the list price. They wasted a lot of my time. It gets pretty frustrating trying to sell stuff online. Come to think of it, last time I freecycled I got the same thing (ie I didn’t want all the hassle of selling a £5 item, only to end up having a lengthy conversation with some clown on the internet who wants me to deliver his freebie in person, 30 miles away).
Selling stuff on the internet can be enraging. Especially if you have to spend all day dealing with the kind of punter who thinks they can get a cheeky 33% discount on a bike at a time when there’s a severe national shortage of bikes.
But that doesn’t excuse refusing to sell to a scouser, of course. 🙂
My old man sold cars on ebay
My old man sold cars on ebay for years, full of messers and idiots, usually thinking winning the auction meant “turn up and bid less when I pick it up, or threaten negative feedback”, reneging after winning etc. It really displays the worst in human nature.
He’d sometimes accept people lowball offers and when they turned up tell them the car had just exploded and had to be withdrawn, just for the lols
A friend, who lived in a
A friend, who lived in a million pound plus house that he’d built, got so sick of telephone calls from a kitchen company wanting to sell him a new kitchen that one day he made an arrangement for someone to come down. The guy obviously thought he had set himself up for a bonus of the year when he arrived at the electric gates, parked next to Brian’s Porsche 911 GT2 and Ferrari F40. He went in the house, his mouth dropped open when he saw their hand made kitchen, and told Brian he didn’t need a new kitchen. Brian said “Exactly, I have just wasted your time just like you waste my time every time you call, now Fuck Off.”
He never got any more calls.
bobrayner wrote:
Thank christ I thought it was me that was going mad…
bobrayner wrote:
Well, this was a sale that included a “Make an offer” facility … and he made an offer. He explicitly said he was expecting them not to accept that initial offer, at which point negotiation starts and he also said he was willing to pay more if need be.
The customer was within his rights to make a low ball offer, the seller within their rights to reject it out of hand or go back and see if the customer was prepared to go higher. That is, after all, how selling stuff works.
Don’t want to deal with that … do it as a “Buy It Now” with a fixed price, or auction with a reserve
When I sell on eBay, I never
When I sell on eBay, I never open it to offers. I always set a reasonable starting price, and either offer free postage or I subsidise it and pay half. I still get messages offering insultingly low bids. The most annoying part is the rudeness. I recently had an item on eBay, it was a new unused and still sealed item. New cost £140. I started it at £80 including £3.00 postage. I got lots of low offers, the best one was a message which simply said “£50 buy now inc postage” And nobody bothers to leave feedback any more. Ebay has been ruined by rude ignorant people.
Quite agree. My wife and I
Quite agree. My wife and I are going through the house and selling off on ebay classified anything surplus to requirements. Anything useful, but out of date/old fashioned, is given away. Better stuff in good nick goes on at a fraction of the original price and people still come back offering a quarter of the asking price. They don’t even get an answer and nor does anybody that writes without a polite address (Hi, Good Evening…..) or sign off.
Only a few pay the asking price plus postage because they know a bargain when they see one.
My favorite is “what’s the
My favorite is “what’s the lowest you’ll go on this?”
My response is, “you go first, what’s the most you’re willing to pay?”
andystow wrote:
That one used to wind me up when I was selling cars, got so fed up with it, i just quoted the original asking price.
Probably worse were the calls from other companies promising they could sell the car for the asking price, for listing with them. They were never interested in buying it for the asking price minus their fee though, so it seems they weren’t quite as confident as they claimed.
After that checked the part ex vale against we buy any car and stopped messing about advertising private sale any more.
You lot could argue about
You lot could argue about anything! ? The actual story is not the offer – but the great customer service and honesty shown by the company. Chapeau Lainhead Electricals!
Smartstu wrote:
no we couldn’t
You’re so wrong about that,
You’re so wrong about that, you villain.
Captain Badger wrote:
no we couldn’t — Smartstu
The great Eddie Mair got his first journalism job partly because the interviewer looked at his application and said “I see it says here you enjoy a good argument.”
“No it doesn’t,” Eddie replied.
Rendel Harris wrote:
I really miss him on radio 4 – I don’t listen in to PM much anymore, don’t even know of it’s still going
Eddie Mair now presents on
Eddie Mair now presents on LBC 4-7pm weekdays….It’s not London-centric, despite its name.
Captain Badger wrote:
It’s not bad with Evan Davis, not a patch on Eddie but nobody is.
To those saying the initial
To those saying the initial offer was ‘insulting’ – you can set up an automatic offer rejection on eBay at a level of your choice.
Saves a lot of time when selling BiN/BO
Calm down, calm down.
YSB
Calm down, calm down.
YSB