I'm not sure this is a direct competitor or not but just to pass on info to HNers, here in Japan Mercari is #1 for buying and selling used stuff online.
It's mobile 1st. Take a picture of the item you want to sell, add a price and it's on sale. They've done nearly everything possible to make things as seamless as possible. When a sale happens you get notified where and how to ship it. They partnered with the post office and the 50k+ convenience stores so you can ship from the stores. At both locations they auto print labels via QR codes and offer fixed box sizes. I think they do a little bit of escrow (not 100% sure the actual mechanics) but I believe the buyer pays immediately but the funds are not forwarded until the buyer approves the item. (really not sure about this part)
Certain things seem like it might only fit Japan. The convenience store partnership is huge since, at least in populous areas there is always multiple within 2-5 min walk. Even post offices are relatively many. I also don't know to what extent a more trustworthy populus helps.
They are hiring like crazy and hiring foreigners as well if you want a job in Japan. They're probably the #1 company for running dev meetups in Tokyo and those meetups feel like SV, all English, in rooms that might as well be at Google Mountain View including food and kitchens etc..
AFAIK they've had no luck replicating their success outside Japan
In Australia where I live, selling goods online outside the likes of eBay and normal ecommerce has become a generally painful experience.
Facebook marketplace (and Gumtree to a lesser degree) have given the buyer this weird desire to lowball on pricing to the point of insult. It's almost like as soon as people open Facebook, they become this extreme version of themselves, and this extends to "haggling".
I thought it's only a Polish phenomenon. It's bit of a meme in Poland, about services such as Olx. People try to haggle for every product. Let's say the price for a product is $300, you will have people messaging you with messages like "$50 and I'm there in few hours", often being aggressive if you refuse them. Also a common method is try to get emotional and lie to get a better offer, for example claiming to be a single mother who wants to bring joy to her child.
The worst thing is when people come and start haggling right at the very end, trying to force you to sell at a lower price.
I started to flat-out refuse to offer ANY discount. You should have thought about the price before coming, not try to put a psychological burden on me and force me to discount the product at the last moment.
But yes, in general selling is painful (here in Poland). I find the lack of standardized packaging and shipping prices especially annoying. I could sell lots more if somebody took care of supplying standard boxes with standardized shipping pricing.
This used to be the case in Dubai when I used to live there. The defacto classifieds website in UAE is called dubizzle (dubizzle.com) which is a subsidiary of OLX. People used to use similar (in fact, worse) haggling tactics to get things for cheap. Couple this with spam and selling an item becomes a nightmare. On the contrary, I have had a far better experience on Kijiji and Facebook in Canada.
I've only ever had one person try to haggle with me on US Ebay but he was trying to buy all of my stock so it made sense that he wanted some volume discount. I've sold stuff on forums before and that is always a haggling experience. It's pretty much expected to have someone haggle with you even if you don't say OBO (or best offer). It's mostly good, sometimes people will throw in some goods to bring the cash price down or you might waive the paypal fees if they have a good reputation. You still get a lot of "PM me ur lowest price", like if you don't want to pay sticker price, you have to play the haggle game a little bit. I would always mark things up a bit more than what I actually wanted to get for it just so I had room to haggle the price down a bit.
People really love when they think they are getting a deal or somehow taking advantage of the seller so it's better to entertain them a little bit if it's going to get the sale.
>I would always mark things up a bit more than what I actually wanted to get for it just so I had room to haggle the price down a bit.
I always thought that was kind of the standard way of selling things in an informal situation. I just assume everyone's going to haggle or barter so might as well just do it that way. I get the price I wanted, they feel like they got a deal and everyone's happy.
On an aside, my grandma came from travellers. She was probably the best haggler i've seen. She managed to haggle in Sears and places like that successfully. She had this story about being a poor old Scottish pensioner. They also drove across Canada years and years ago with some of her relatives and would set up a fortune telling booth where they stopped. Her sister would case the people waiting asking about their lives, then my grandma would 'tell their fortune'.
Definitely a lot of tyre kickers. Every time I've marked something I'm selling as e.g. '$500 negotiable' I get tons of messages saying "what's your best price" or "what's your lowest offer?"
That's not how haggling works. My lowest offer is $500 until I hear yours.
Aside from that, I've had good experiences selling old video game consoles on Gumtree.
"Negotiable" is the magic word that invites bargaining. Just list the price alone and people will assume it's negotiable, unless the term "firm" is included somewhere near the price. Even then, some people don't read, so that crowd just comes with the territory of selling things online.
I have a simple rule. If the offer is less than 80% of the asking price, then I assume it's a lowball and simply ignore it and the offeror.
And yet I've bought many items with patience at those prices. There was a bike I wanted originally listed at $1800. I offered 1000 as that's what it was worth. Every week it was relisted $50 lower, every week I dropped my offer by like $25. Ended selling buying for $700 (I emailed the seller so much they were chatting with me). Took 7 months but the demand was just not there. At the end guy was like sigh should have sold for $1k.
Some people list at a fair price. If that's what it is I'll not even haggle. like bought a fully CNC taig mini Mill with computer software and 4th axis for $900. Hand cash walk out. Fair price.
Other shit is obviously over priced and so you negotiate.
Sold a lathe recently for $1400. I had firm on the price. Took a year to sell. Sold firm.
It also depends on the product here. Consumer popular shit like games and cars have a lot of negotiation. Some tools. Other shit is less negotiated.
Some shit is high demand and lots of haggling like motorcycles. I just enjoy the hell out of telling people no.
"That offer is offensive and I've setup a block list for you"
> And yet I've bought many items with patience at those prices. There was a bike I wanted originally listed at $1800. I offered 1000 as that's what it was worth. Every week it was relisted $50 lower, every week I dropped my offer by like $25. Ended selling buying for $700 (I emailed the seller so much they were chatting with me). Took 7 months but the demand was just not there. At the end guy was like sigh should have sold for $1k.
This is my experience in Switzerland with generally polite population - set an exact price (without that 'firm' wording though), and we got like 10 generic questions what is our lowest price, or people offering 50% or below. Suffice to say the one reasonable person got that product.
This seems like inexperience on our side and naive expectation for more reasonable approach, but it really felt borderline rude.
The people asking what's the lowest price and such and most likely to be time-wasters. This applies to all transactions, I find.
Of course, there are cultures where haggling is the norm so, in these cases, it's best to start with an artificially high price which enables you to keep making concessions until you reach the price you wanted anyways.
I usually respond to that by asking "What's the most you will pay?" Then I get their lowball answer and tell them that it looks like we can't agree on a price.
What's your best price is a good tactic with a poor negotiator or someone who isn't attached to the item. Maybe they play the numbers and it works. Just like you though, I hate that tactic when tried on me and it will never work.
I would always mark up my prices for things on forums a little bit so I had room to haggle it down but I never entertained people asking what my lowest price was. If you can't afford sticker price, you can afford to haggle. It was a pretty niche marketplace so there was pretty much never going to be anything like those crazy thrift store finds where someone buys something worth $5000 for $5, all the sellers usually had a good idea what their stuff was worth and priced appropriately. There were always the morons who priced their junk 5x it's market value but those people were too stupid to haggle with, they would get insulted when you offered a good market price.
When I don't want to haggle (which is often, as I hate it) I simply take the posted price and pay that or ignore the offer. I will never ask for a cheaper price if not interested in haggling. People with deliberately overblown prices which never expect anyone to actually pay that will simply not get my business at all in that case.
I personally hate haggling, but I do appreciate the raw efficiency as opposed to arbitrarily set prices. Maybe the ideal would be some built-in automated haggling: you set a desired starting price, and a private "red line", and the prospective buyers do the same. Then the bots can haggle and maybe dynamically update the prices as they discover more information about the market.
We have the other issue in Germany on ebay kleinanzeigen (Germany's version of Gumtree / Craigslist) where sellers will expect prices on used goods comparable to buying them new.
I don't think anyone replying to you understands how much the selling experience varies by what you're selling. If you're selling used tires or consumer electronics you are gonna wind up dealing with idiots 24/7 no matter which platform you choose because everyone is a potential buyer for those things.
If you're selling things that are only of use to a few people cost more than a grand, weigh more than a couple tons and don't move on their own you'll generally only deal with people who are serious about buying.
And even worse, Facebook has the suggested message to send to seller. So many people click “is it still available?” And after my prompt response never write back. I’d estimate over half of people don’t respond at all. It’s so weird.
My wife's friend used to make a habit of offering to pay people on CraigsList cash for things, and then showing up with 10%-15% less cash than she committed to. Usually people were annoyed but eager enough to get rid of the thing that they sold to her anyway to avoid the hassle of posting it again. But it was scummy.
I've had people do this to me. It irritates me so much that I tell them 'your loss'. Someone offered to go get the rest and I called them out on this scummy practice and moved on with my life.
I've had tons of people do this to me, too - in fact, I am guilty of having done it (like when people ask for a $50 multiple knowing full well that ATMS only dispense $20 bills and I'm short on time to be able to break a $20).
As the seller, though, you should know that they value their time enough to at least be present, so they obviously want the item enough. You've got enough leverage to be able to tell the buyer who does that 'No'. I've said and had that said to me in those occasions.
The UX is poor. Haggling should be automatic. Make it an auction - allow everyone to post their offers and then the seller can take the offer they accept based on price, location or whatever. To make it work, the offer has to be committed as long as it is posted. Hey, come to think of it, isn't this a description of how stock markets work? The ultimate haggling.
Mercari is starting to grow in the States but it's having a hard time going against eBay. I tried it out for my store and got like no traction, listed the same thing on eBay and they sold pretty much instantly.
I'd love to see it really take off here as a competitor to eBay would be great.
Ebay started using not so nice tactics to cash on the number of sales by automatically enabling the "Make offer" option, no matter if disabled by the seller, at every posting renewal at ridiculous prices, often half or less than half the initial price, so if I have say 20 items for sale at already a very convenient price, they will renew with the make offer option enabled (regardless if I explicitly disabled it) at half or less that price which of course mean I'll receive loads of offers at prices that sometimes won't ever cover the shipping.
I can understand their motives: more sales = more sales fees, but that's not fair at all. As of today I haven't found a way to keep the option disabled and have to get online in time at every renewal and disable the option on all items, or refuse all offers and politely contact the users explaining the reason.
This makes me angry; although I have been an extremely happy Ebay user for over a decade, we badly need other options because the lack of competition is giving them too much power.
Admittedly however, Ebay works well enough so far, which is why it would be really hard to compete against them.
Seems like a bug, I've seen some people complain but others not have it happen, myself included.
But that's kinda been the theme for them recently, so much stuff has been broken, and they end up just pushing the sellers for it through either automatically siding with the buyer or higher fees. Their recent sales tax thing is getting really annoying for bookkeeping.
I wish it was a bug; I reported this in a recent survey but neither the problem was solved (very likely one binary field in a database) nor I was contacted for an explanation.
In the Seattle area, offer up has been taking off and has so far been much better than Facebook marketplace about lowballing. Generally things sell quickly and buyers are much more serious.
Do people actually ship items to buyers on Craigs List? In Canada, Kijiji (the only popular online classified system) explicitly says that you should meet with the seller face-to-face. They offer PayPal payments (being owned by eBay), but say something like "Pay with PayPal when you meet with the buyer" or something.
> AFAIK they've had no luck replicating their success outside Japan
Anecdata, in the US I knew someone in college that made enough to sustain themselves by doing arbitrage of Lululemon clothing on mainly Mercari, but also poshmark and eBay. The market was active enough for an individual to maintain 50-100 items in stock consistently buying and selling.
Mercari would automatically provide a USPS label, or would give the seller the option of shipping themselves. Mercari wouldn't go so far as "ship from here on this date," but was more of a "let us know that you sent it."
I can't remember which directions, but for buyer/seller conflicts mercari support leaned heavily towards one side, poshmark the other.
Post offices may be many, but their opening hours make it essentially impossible to visit them if you're working. (Unless you want to visit during lunch break and take whatever your received home on your hour-long commute.)
i've received many packages at the convenience store but not everything is shippable there. My local 7/11 just installed a set of shipping lockers so maybe I can receive more stuff without being home. On the hand it's one reason to opt for an apartment complex that has a way to receive packages.
They have a commercial that runs pretty often on one of the streaming services I use (I can't remember if it is Pluto or Hulu)so they are trying to expand in the USA.
In the US my only exposure to Mercari have been low budget Youtube ads that make it look like a side project from a high schooler. I guess that's marketing at work (or not at work).
OfferUp, at least in SoCal, is mostly stolen stuff.
You'll mostly see people selling lots of completely unrelated goods, all in "original packaging, never opened", at good prices. It's stuff stolen from people's front doors.
It's mobile 1st. Take a picture of the item you want to sell, add a price and it's on sale. They've done nearly everything possible to make things as seamless as possible. When a sale happens you get notified where and how to ship it. They partnered with the post office and the 50k+ convenience stores so you can ship from the stores. At both locations they auto print labels via QR codes and offer fixed box sizes. I think they do a little bit of escrow (not 100% sure the actual mechanics) but I believe the buyer pays immediately but the funds are not forwarded until the buyer approves the item. (really not sure about this part)
Certain things seem like it might only fit Japan. The convenience store partnership is huge since, at least in populous areas there is always multiple within 2-5 min walk. Even post offices are relatively many. I also don't know to what extent a more trustworthy populus helps.
They are hiring like crazy and hiring foreigners as well if you want a job in Japan. They're probably the #1 company for running dev meetups in Tokyo and those meetups feel like SV, all English, in rooms that might as well be at Google Mountain View including food and kitchens etc..
AFAIK they've had no luck replicating their success outside Japan