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Comment by silisili | Hacker News Reader

> I also have a suspicion that people even find haggling rude.

I do. Or used to. Then I kinda learned how it all works. If I had an item that could sell for say, 100 on ebay, I'd list it for 80 to get a quick sale without shipping. Then people offering 50 seem rude or crazy to me.

Then I learned to just price it high. So now, that item I'll list for 120, and 'fine, final offer' it to 80 and that works way, way better.

I think people just want to feel like they won, more than about values of items.

Another protip: Never list anything for free. You'll find the worst in society. List it for 5 or 10 dollars, then just tell the buyer it's free when they come.

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> Never list anything for free. You'll find the worst in society. List it for 5 or 10 dollars

It is insane how true this is. If I put something on Craigslist for $10 that I was thinking about throwing away, someone polite will buy it within a week and show up on time. The first time I put something in the "free" section instead, someone sent me a legit hate email because they didn't like the item I was giving away for free... wtf?

or you wont find anyone at all - listed some chairs for free, no response, changed it to $25, and 3 offers in an hour...

That's interesting, and I wonder why. From my perspective, I'd probably either assume if it's free you already got a million offers, or they are in terrible shape. Perhaps that's why people didn't bother.

When you do a search on craigslist you pick the section of the site you want to search (i.e. "Furniture", "Computers", "Cars/Trucks", "Free", etc...). Based on my experience, the "Free" section is almost always not worth the effort. Either the items are low quality or they are impossible to get due to craigslist "flippers".

So I could see a situation where most buyers with actual intent to purchase are only searching in the "Furniture" section. And the chairs in question might not have been nice enough to attract interest from the "flippers" in the free section.

It's pricing theory (there's a better name for it ... but I cannot recall of the top of my head)

Underpricing something is as bad (or worse) than overpricing it

If I think that chair is worth $50, and you're giving it away ... I think there's something wrong

If I think it's worth $50, and you ask $20 ... I think "he must not want it - this is a great deal!"

I've had a lot of good experiences with my neighborhood's free box/buy nothing facebook group. I've probably had two dozen pickups and everything has been picked up usually in 1-2 days at a time convenient to me.

Ah, good to know. I guess I'm thinking back to my experiences on Craigslist. You get some absolute crazies for free things. I've had multiple encounters of people cussing me out, calling me names, and even death threats for a) not holding items, or b) not delivering items...that again, are free.

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