Ebay has been my solution to the problem of selling cheap stuff without actually having to deal with the buyer. FB is a disaster for cheap things as you all have pointed out, and everyone thinks they deserve a deal. Yeah, ebay has some fees and such, but 99% of the time I get an email that an item sold, the money has hit my account, click here to enter the weight and dimensions to print your label, and out the door it goes.
Yeah, cheap stuff can be a pain, but it takes about 45 minutes between creating a listing and doing all the shipping stuff. It only takes a $15-$20 profit on a sale to make reasonable per-hour money.
It has also been the difference between "I'll keep this just in case" and "time to get rid of stuff," since I suck at throwing things out but have no problem selling things.
I hate selling anything online. Just the sheer amount of flakes out there is always shocking. Folks can't show up on time or at all. Folks want to throw out an offer without putting eyes on something. Gotten to the point when folks ask if I'll budge on price I just tell them "come see it and we'll talk about price." Most never show. And when I'm buying I don't even talk money until I've put my grubby mits on whatever it is. Usually if I'm there I already think it's a fair price and don't bother to haggle.
Beer Baron said:
I'll throw a monkey wrench into your theory. Pricey speakers are *not* a good test case.
High end, used speakers are a niche item that will attract someone who is a hobbyist who has educated themselves.
I agree. Try selling a $7500 motocross bike on marketplace. Most of the responses indicate that they didn't bother to read the very descriptive ad.
I put cheap stuff on marketplace, and expensive stuff goes on Kijiji, where you still get idiot responses, but far fewer, and you get people who are genuinely interested.
I recently put a dozen items for sale on both Kijiji and MP, all priced below $1000. MP beat Kijiji 5-1 on hits and every single item sold quickly on MP. My experience with motocross bikes is the opposite.
"Mind-vomit" That's exactly where smart phones and excessive texting have gotten us. Get outta my yard.
There's a lot of accuracy in the OP's post.
Don't start believing that the world is full of humans whose existence is less important than yours.
Beer Baron said:
I'll throw a monkey wrench into your theory. Pricey speakers are *not* a good test case.
High end, used speakers are a niche item that will attract someone who is a hobbyist who has educated themselves.
Having wealth doesn't necessarily make someone intelligent, well spoken, or considerate. There are plenty of Karens running around with Coach bags. The monied shiny happy people aren't buying high end used equipment though. They're buying a home stereo setup from Best Buy and being rude to the poor kid doing customer service there.
Imagine it's cars. You're going to get a very different person looking at an $8,000 NB Miata in excellent condition, than someone looking for an $8,000 350z. The two people have the same amount of money to spend, but value very different things.
I'll agree with this. I've sold some cheap stuff on FBM ($20-40) and mostly had good luck with the buyers. I don't reply to one-word replies, only to people who have obviously read the ads. I take sales like these as just supporting my parts habit. Two, $20 sales got me the $40 that bought me a solid trunk lid for my 510.
Trying to sell my truck has been entirely like how the OP describes his low-cost sales. "Still available" or just a random $$ thrown at me will get you nowhere. I've even had replies like this from my ad on Autotrader. Not one person has started a conversation, asked a question or asked to schedule a time to see the truck.
And I'm with Toyman on getting deals, Be respectful, offer specifics on pick-up options and don't discuss price until you get there. Scored me some great deals.
At one point, I thought there may have been an age gap in this- younger people with less money to spend tend to have less experience buying things. While I think this can be the case, it isn't always so.
The best example of this I had is as a buyer for a boat anchor. I thought I was dealing with somebody older that knew a lot about boats. It turned out to be a Tween that fished it out of a lake and decided to sell it for $20. I'm betting that tween does well in life. They communicated well, had details (dimensions and weight), had their parents drive them to meet at the appointed time, etc.
I'm almost certain that their parents were helping them sell the item, but they learned valuable things during the process.
I have joined those of you who simply throw stuff away. Im not wealthy by any stretch and every dollar counts but I do know my limit in dealing with people.
Last week I listed these on FB for 50 bucks. Four mint condition wheels with beauty rings and center caps. 50 bucks.
If anyone had even showed up in person I'd have given them the wheels as a gift or taken whatever they offered.
Instead I got "10 dollars CASH today" offers. I guess there's a lot of folks out there selling E36 M3 to get a wad of meth or something so "10 dollars cash" carries weight in some circles.
So I threw them in the dumpster behind my fire station.
I don't think it's the speakers, that's just two of the items I'm selling now.
I also have a cheap Sun Pro temp gauge and a drone. The drone buyers ask good questions and can string a sentence together. The gauge buyers probably spent their school years licking the window of the school bus.
I will say this. There IS a difference in the type of item you're selling. $50 speakers will get you a much, much dumber pool of buyers than a $50 end table, for example.
you've actually had inteligent questions? That's better than I've had
Last major thing I sold was a washer and dryer. I had some mouth breather with horrible grammar ask if I could deliver them. To BFE 3 hours away. My location is in the ad. It deeply puzzled me that I had to point that out.
Thankfully a normally functioning human found my ad and picked them up for exact asking price. So I got to experience both sides of the buyer pool!
In reply to clutchsmoke :
Hahaha. Ahhh, the old 'will you deliver' question. We were giving something away for free. Some window licker asked if I would deliver. I said yes. As it was garbage day I would deliver it to the curb this evening. He seemed genuinely pleased.
As I mentioned, people often ask where the item is located. Naturally I respond with my city and state. I would say 40% of the time they will then say "how far is that from me?"
ok, first off we have the same ability to punch cities in google to find that out so I'm not doing that for you.
Second, about 1/4 of the time they ask me how far it is, they don't tell me where they are LOL.
I suspect these people spend much of their lives on breathing machines in the ER because nobody reminds them to breathe in AND out.
AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) said:
As a FBMP buyer, I never ask "is it available". When can I see it, do you have service records, how long have you owned, etc. Yet sometimes I get response "yea it's available." WTF kind of seller is that? Pavlovian response based on so many unintelligent buyers?
It's the pre filled FB responses that do a lot of this. It's not just a 'send message" button but when you click it they pre-fill possible questions that you may have. After 40 "Is this availables" that were either sent by accident or the person couldnt figure out how to send their own question, it does become a Pavlovian response. Craigslist 15 years ago was perfect. Just perfect.
I've sold a lot of stuff on FBM and some of the things I've sold for the least $$ resulted in the highest number of messages and bizarre "asks" for me to spend 1-2 hours delivering the nearly-free item. It always amazes me how some people handle things. I've definitely posted things for "free" and had people ask me to deliver them +40 minutes away.
With that said, I've sold plenty of things for pretty low $$ to people who were very straightforward and generally stoked to be getting a good deal. I donate a lot of things, but junk I sell helps me fund new projects...so if I can easily get $40 for something, i'll post it for-sale. If it doesn't sell, or takes up too much space...it becomes free.
One thing I have found is that it's really important to resist the urge to get snarky with people who make unusual requests. Some people (including my real-life colleagues) don't know how to interact in writing w/out sounding like a total shiny happy person. I've had a few of these "will you trade for something weird" interactions wind up being generally positive...only because I didn't act on my impulse to respond w/sarcasm etc.
Worth noting...sometimes when you share your add to a group, the location gets hidden or can be difficult to find. Sometimes a "where are you located" is a legit question. Of course, I usually add my location into the product description.
Looks like we need to send better messages to lowballing time-sucks by lighting E36 M3 on fire in our driveways.
In reply to Appleseed :
Needs to be done in person for best results
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
Lighting E36 M3 on fire in their driveways?
In reply to Jesse Ransom :
Nope. My driveway to prove the point.
Ive mellowed A LOT since then
Yeah, I put my location right in my posts. 
I agree.
An anamoly I've seen is when I was selling my 1.5ton jack for $20. Just wanted it out of the house.
Lots of questions in Spanish (no habla, senor/senorita) which is fine but my name + profile picture definitely do not make me seem like someone who speaks Spanish. That's not my story though, just an observation.
I had one dude message me: "Where is it, when can I pick up."
I said "<zip_code>, right now. Come through."
In about 20 minutes dude rolls up in a truck, asks me if it works, I give him a demo on my car, we exchange money, he goes on his merry way with a $20 floor jack. Best transaction on FBMP ever.
Any other interaction I've had on there are the same as your observations, and I'm inclined to agree with you on your observation.
Jesse Ransom said:
In reply to Dusterbd13-michael :
Lighting E36 M3 on fire in their driveways?
Lighting THEM on fire in your driveway.
DrBoost said:
The A people are more successful (assumed because they are looking to drop serious coin on something absolutely not necessary) in life because they put more care into a job interview, or more care into performing a job than the B folks. The B folks see speakers listed and thumb out the most elementary question without even reading the ad. That's how they approach work, thus (assumptions here folks, sorry) they never get ahead.
Am I out of line? Am I a jerk? What's the deal?
Bro the poor can't even afford to pay attention what did you expect
But seriously, little of A and a little of B. What you're dealing with here is the extrapolation of the Sam Vine's "Boots" theory of socioeconomic unfairness; It's already been said before that selling something as specific as high end speakers have a very specific economic group, but you're also in the problem that the poor can only afford to think in the -now-, and when potential to get something for less comes up they'll always take it. You're dealing with lowest common denominator here, comparing the clientele of a used 25 year old camry to a used 25 year old porsche.
The people we bitch about- who ask "is this available" and don't respond, or demand delivery, or any other crap I just ignore and move on- probably wont have that money in 1-2 days. Something else will come along they'll try to snag, or they'll have a sudden bill, or something else that'll rip it from their hands. These are people who use tax season as a savings account. You cannot teach a concept of "wealth" to a people who have no understanding of it. The poor cannot afford to pay attention, or be patient, or wait. If they like something or need it, they just damn the torpedos and try to get it regardless of anything else.
In reply to hobiercr :
You still have your old truck??!?!
I call those people "human bots"
Someone gets a wild notion that they should do that project of putting speakers in their garage after their third Miller Lite, so they scour FBM and find every set of speakers under their budget and send the laziest message.
Someone who is looking for audiophile-level speakers will be more meticulous about researching before they drop coin or waste their time coming to look.
This is exactly why I never list anything for free. You get 50 "is this still available" messages, to which you reply "yes," then ghosted. I just sold a couch last week for $20. The couch was free, but putting a value on it weeds out the tire kickers. The guy came and picked it up and tried to pay me, and I said "nope, it's free, enjoy." He's happy, I'm happy that I didn't have to respond to a ton of stupid messages, all is well.
