Question for online sellers

[rickvs]

For anyone reading this who regularly sells stuff online (and this may apply primarily to Cragslist sellers), how do you sort your customers? Lemme 'splain:

I've started to post my leftover radio loot on Craigslist, and have had several times when I get more than one interested customer. My tendency used to be to give dibs to whoever's e-mail I received first ...but I've had customers say, "Yes, I want it, I can meet you to exchange money for those tickets ...in a week". Then they don't show, and stop responding to my messages, and I'm scrambling to sell tickets two hours before an event, having lost the meet-and-greet portion because I already submitted the no-show's name to the radio station.

I plan to start doing something distasteful to me, but if I'm up-front with the customers, I'll hold my nose and proceed: Tell every single person who responds that the first person to physically put money in my hand gets the item.

I'm also trying to sort for people who respond quickly, but with a lower offer. I don't have an ethical problem skipping over those folks for higher bids that arrive later, right up to the point when I tell someone specifically, "I'm on the way to meet you".

In the meanwhile, I had a customer the other night who kept nudging up his bid in an attempt to get me to cancel a meeting with another customer who had already "won". I didn't quite have to hang up on this fool before he begrudgingly took "no" for an answer ... but it almost makes me wanna start paying eBay's fees.

Any advice would be appreciated.

Comments

[bkwrrm-tx.livejournal.com]

Because of no shows and the like, that's how I'm doing business with Craigslist and freecycle both. Whoever shows up first, wins.