The eternal cheapskates & no-show lowballers on OLX!

Kilroyquasar

4 seconds, inhale; 4 seconds, exhale.
Skilled
hello all,

not sure if this is the right place for this subject. the post is not about the plentiful fraudsters & scammers infesting the no-control olx, but the suspicious 'prospective buyers' who lowball like anything, usually vanish after a couple of messages, insist on having your phone number (these ones, a majority of them am sure must be phishers, asking for number to spam/scam you later or to sell them off), and mushroom up from nowhere after you post an ad, and then go back to nowhere. i suspect that a majority of them are some kind of 'bots' (?), or people from the olx-team/employed by olx to post these useless random messages supposedly showing their interest, just to give the user an impression of how much interest your listing is generating & thus to show how 'well' the platform works! what do you think? i usually dont give my phone no. unless am sure that a person is genuinely interested, nor do i entertain the lowballers much beyond telling them my last asking-price.
 
A month ago, I posted an ad on Olx. There were many interested buyers. But there was this particular guy who messaged me day and night, requesting, begging, and even saying some emotional things about his daughters, family, also how he didn’t have kids for few years, etc to reduce the price. Finally, I thought okay let it go, as I was shifting house and anyway wanted to get rid of the item quickly, and the guy was very happy when I shared the number. And that's it, he never called.
 
Last edited:
This is happening on TE as well. People msg asking about "Best price" even after you've put up a price on sale thread.
You still humour them, and then they stop replying. So irritating.
I've started making a list of these offenders so that i can avoid them even if they do behave nicely in the future.

Sometimes, when I get a surprising reply when the other guy doesn't negotiate, I end up covering the shipping at least just to be nice to good buyers.
 
Few days back i got a PM for an item i listed for 600. The buyer asked for the best price i said this is the best price. He agreed to buy then transferred 500 rs . When i asked why 500 was transferred instead of 600 he said you will ship by speed post it will cost only 50 rs. On another occasion there was a guy begging me to reduce my price because his friend cant afford to spend more. TE has become OLX.
 
The worst ones are those "hard cash" offers.
As if looking at some notes is going to convince me to sell at 50% off.
That's an effective psychological trick in real life with larger figures when buying second-hand cars.

You just count the money in front of the guy and come up short and say that's all you have.

50% is ambitious I'm thinking maybe 10-15%
 
That's an effective psychological trick in real life. More effective with larger figures.

You just count the money in front of the guy and come up short and say that's all you have.

50% is ambitious I'm thinking maybe 10-15%
"That's all you got? No problem. You can GPay me the rest."
 
A month ago, I posted an ad on Olx. There were many interested buyers. But there was this particular guy who messaged me day and night, requesting, begging, and even saying some emotional things about his daughters, family, also how he didn’t have kids for few years, etc to reduce the price. Finally, I thought okay let it go, as I was shifting house and anyway wanted to get rid of the item quickly, and the guy was very happy when I shared the number. And that's it, he never called.

may be afterwards he called you again but as his 'real self', ie, a scammer pretending to be a good samaritan offering to help you with your oncoming-woes of an about to be discontd electricity connection/bank acct/paytm wallet & what-have-you! :smile:

How do you tell if they are?

@raksrules started a thread about this some time back. What was you experience ?

variously; i simply put off this request/demand for sharing phone no. by this or the other thing, by probing if the person is really interested in the item or just in the phone no. if he still insists & i find his questions (and language) and intent to follow-up beyond olx genuine, then i do share my no. otherwise often i just say that we can discuss here as well first. some still continue, others abandon it. i can count such people only on the fingertips, a couple in years.

yes i was earlier looking for the thread on olx (forgot its title & OP), couldnt find it and then created this.
 
1) There was this guy in OLX who was asking my RTX 3090 for 40K while selling his 3070 Ti for 55K. He is assuming sellers for fools
2) Also there was another person quoting a ridiculously low price with a statement "Take it or leave it deal" and how I should not be too much attached to money
 
@raksrules started a thread about this some time back. What was you experience ?
ok, so @raksrules didn't start a thread but bumped one

I remember this 'send details' quote :D

An older thread

variously; i simply put off this request/demand for sharing phone no. by this or the other thing, by probing if the person is really interested in the item or just in the phone no. if he still insists & i find his questions (and language) and intent to follow-up beyond olx genuine, then i do share my no. otherwise often i just say that we can discuss here as well first. some still continue, others abandon it. i can count such people only on the fingertips, a couple in years.
These lowballers are looking to make a profit after buying from you. They speculate they can find a customer
yes i was earlier looking for the thread on olx (forgot its title & OP), couldnt find it and then created this.
Couple of old ones
 
Last edited:
also how he didn’t have kids for few years, etc to reduce the price. he never called.
Seems he got motivated as soon as he got your no...he thought about bearing a child first on priority..olx can anyways wait!
The worst ones are those "hard cash" offers.
As if looking at some notes is going to convince me to sell at 50% off.
This system used to work 2-3 decades back when one walks-in to a shop for buying any appliance and having hard cash used to give you hefty on the spot discounts..
 
A month ago, I posted an ad on Olx. There were many interested buyers. But there was this particular guy who messaged me day and night, requesting, begging, and even saying some emotional things about his daughters, family, also how he didn’t have kids for few years, etc to reduce the price. Finally, I thought okay let it go, as I was shifting house and anyway wanted to get rid of the item quickly, and the guy was very happy when I shared the number. And that's it, he never called.
I had the same thing happen to me on OLX a few months back. Felt it was way too emotionally charged of a story stitched up just for haggling. I ended up not entertaining any further chats from them.
 
Back
Top