Another enquiry came this morning, and when I told him to make an offer he replied with a number that was enough to make me say, "For that price I'd sell it. What do we do next?"
He asked for my information for Escrow.com, and after I sent it he replied with a letter apologizing that he had not checked with his partner when he made the offer and his partner was not willing to make the investment. His personal budget would have to be lower.
I replied saying okay (what else could I say?) and told him to feel free to check again in the future.
He replied saying that he might do that, but in the meantime his [much lower] offer would stand.
I replied saying that I had accepted an offer of X, and I was not willing to play games to lower the price. He didn't reply to that.
---
Afterwards, I wondered if this was his standard approach ... make an offer that's high enough to be taken seriously, then backing out with a sob story in hopes of getting the price down.
Has anyone else experienced this?
What's he trying to pull with this tactic as compared to making a lower but honest offer in the first place?
I can't decide if he's a scammer or just stupid
Without knowing the actual sale price here's my opinion.
If he is a reseller he's a scammer, If he's an end user he's stupid, or at least should have checked with his partner first.
They push the limits, then, once they have your attention, suddenly, there's no real substance in the offer.
I've always walked away without responding to, "I can't afford it..." responses as it's up to them to react positively. After all, they contacted me in the first instance.
make a high enough offer to get the owner really interested, often they will even string this along for a while before cutting the offer ... the idea being that the owner who would never originally have sold for a lower price now may well accept it as they have become 'emotionally open to selling'
My experience falls along these lines:
Your description of the process makes it sound like you may have been dealing with a crank or a kid, clever but maybe more interested in yanking your chain than in closing a deal. Is it possible that a businessman would agree to a deal involving a significant amount of money without first talking with their partner? Sure, but likely? (Maybe it's a new partnership and the other partner has not yet learned what a knucklehead his new partner is? It happens.)
My #1 remedy for smoking out bona fide offers early is to ask for a land line to a business where I can talk with whomever is in charge of the deal. No land line ~ low confidence. I know we're in the mobile age but most businesses of any size will still have a physical location with a fax, phones, answering machines, a street address, etc.
[edited by: Webwork at 1:31 pm (utc) on April 13, 2007]
If the offer is not acceptable, its not acceptable, period.
In case you're trying to learn signals to avoid getting sucked in again in the future, the tips mentioned here are mroe than adequate, but checking if someone exists as a real trading business should have been obvious before agreeing to any deal.
[edited by: Big_Monkey at 1:46 pm (utc) on April 18, 2007]
That's why upsells work so well. The person has already made an internal decision to buy so adding something on at the last minute is easy to do.
The same can go for selling something. Once the decision is made, there is often a good chance the price can be altered and the deal will still go through.
Unfortunately for the buyer he didn't know he was dealing with a mod, in the domain name forum, at WebMasterWorld :)
This little episode left such a sour taste that even if the guy did come back some day with money in hand for the amount he originally offered I'd probably tell him to go jump in the lake.
Emotions can work in more than one direction!
Putting in the part about playing games may have burned that bridge. (It's debatable if that bridge was even worth keeping, but you never know how events play out a few years down the road.)
Putting in the part about playing games may have burned that bridge
That's true. The whole exchange unfolded so quickly that I wasn't thinking very diplomatically when his tune changed.
To give a bit of perspective here, the offer he ended with was 40% of what I said I'd accept.
One thing that I did learn from this thread is to ask for a land line number early. Good advice.
I once heard a story about a guy who wanted to buy a particular piece of property. The owner didn't want to sell.
Every week the buyer 'dropped' by the owner's place and asked him if was ready to sell. Every week the owner said, "No." This went on for the better part of a year.
Closing in on a year the guy the owner finally said, "I'll sell it to you just to get rid of you."
The guy got his property and the seller got rid of the land and the persistent buyer.
Some owners take longer to get in the selling mood.
[edited by: Storyman at 11:56 pm (utc) on April 27, 2007]
[edited by: engine at 8:31 am (utc) on May 4, 2007]
[edit reason] No urls, thanks. See TOS [webmasterworld.com] [/edit]
