"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.

I like this strategy.

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 once sold an iPhone to a 16 year old. I said "I want $300 but I'm willing to negotiate" and he said "okay, how about $350?"

That was a good day.

Sometimes I do this when I don't want to haggle; I just want a price on which I can decide a simple go/no-go.

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.

If you don't want to haggle, then you get the listed price.