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Would you ever choose to NOT sell to a specific customer?
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55 posts in this topic

Here's my quandary. I set up at local shows, and there's a guy who travels all around to various cons as a buyer. I always had the idea that he was a reseller, which is fine by me. I have a price on my books and if you think you can make a profit on it, I have no problem selling to you. However...

I am a member of various Facebook groups where people sell comics, and I noticed that he sells there. The only reason I was able to connect the dots was when he put up three things that I sold the at a show the previous day, all of which were odd enough that it had to be him. While some of his sales on Facebook are a straight price for comics, about half of them are raffles. He will sell 10 or 15 or 20 spots for a specific price and then have an automatic number generator pick a winner. He ends up collecting around twice the value of the book from these poor suckers who are trying to win. 

For example, he had a New Teen Titans #44 CGC 9.4, selling 15 spots at $10 each.  He gets $150 (minus Paypal fees). You can find this same book on eBay for about $75. 

Now, I'm not going to tell someone that they're being idiotic in trying to win these comics (even though it's obviously not worth it), and I'm not even going to tell this guy to stop doing it (even though it's against eBay's policy). But I do want to tell him that I'm not going to sell him my stuff. Am I being overly sensitive? Should I just not care? He's not buying anything that I couldn't sell to another person.

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I don't have any problems with the buyer's own selling tactics. As long as you're happy with the sale between yourself and this person then I don't see the problem. His raffle is something new to me, and if the buyers have $10 to potentially waste, it's no worse than buying a $10 lottery ticket.

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There are valid reasons to not sell to people but I wouldn't consider this persons willingness to exploit people who want to gamble on facebook as one I'd worry about.  It's the same as selling to someone who packages up and offers mystery boxes where they're seeking out buyers willing to take on risk to "win".

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1 minute ago, bababooey said:

There are valid reasons to not sell to people but I wouldn't consider this persons willingness to exploit people who want to gamble on facebook as one I'd worry about.  It's the same as selling to someone who packages up and offers mystery boxes where they're seeking out buyers willing to take on risk to "win".

You at least get something with mystery boxes, though. Here (at last 90% of the time) you're throwing money away.

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I have a guy local to me that buys books off of me at comic shows and then sells them the same day in the evening in a Facebook channel. Usually he gets 30-40% more than he paid me for the book. I honestly do not understand how he can get the price he does by selling via a video auction on Facebook: you can't make out any detail at all regarding defects.

if he pays my price I don't care.

 

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1 minute ago, Artboy99 said:

I have a guy local to me that buys books off of me at comic shows and then sells them the same day in the evening in a Facebook channel. Usually he gets 30-40% more than he paid me for the book. I honestly do not understand how he can get the price he does by selling via a video auction on Facebook: you can't make out any detail at all regarding defects.

if he pays my price I don't care.

 

I'm more annoyed at the raffle style of sales he does. People reselling doesn't bother me in the least.

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17 minutes ago, RCheli said:

I'm more annoyed at the raffle style of sales he does. People reselling doesn't bother me in the least.

yes I agree. But the people giving him money are equally to blame for compensating the seller for his practice. Unfortunate.

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30 minutes ago, RCheli said:

Here's my quandary. I set up at local shows, and there's a guy who travels all around to various cons as a buyer. I always had the idea that he was a reseller, which is fine by me. I have a price on my books and if you think you can make a profit on it, I have no problem selling to you. However...

I am a member of various Facebook groups where people sell comics, and I noticed that he sells there. The only reason I was able to connect the dots was when he put up three things that I sold the at a show the previous day, all of which were odd enough that it had to be him. While some of his sales on Facebook are a straight price for comics, about half of them are raffles. He will sell 10 or 15 or 20 spots for a specific price and then have an automatic number generator pick a winner. He ends up collecting around twice the value of the book from these poor suckers who are trying to win. 

For example, he had a New Teen Titans #44 CGC 9.4, selling 15 spots at $10 each.  He gets $150 (minus Paypal fees). You can find this same book on eBay for about $75. 

Now, I'm not going to tell someone that they're being idiotic in trying to win these comics (even though it's obviously not worth it), and I'm not even going to tell this guy to stop doing it (even though it's against eBay's policy). But I do want to tell him that I'm not going to sell him my stuff. Am I being overly sensitive? Should I just not care? He's not buying anything that I couldn't sell to another person.

You don't need any reason to refuse to sell to any customer. The fact that you don't want to based on ethical reasons is admirable. I wish more people and businesses had that attitude. I don't think you are wrong to refuse his business.

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25 minutes ago, Artboy99 said:

I have a guy local to me that buys books off of me at comic shows and then sells them the same day in the evening in a Facebook channel. Usually he gets 30-40% more than he paid me for the book. I honestly do not understand how he can get the price he does by selling via a video auction on Facebook: you can't make out any detail at all regarding defects.

if he pays my price I don't care.

 

As someone who hardly ever uses Facebook, I have a question...

You know how you can search 'sold' items on Ebay? Does Facebook have that same option? IOW - Do we know that people get their asking price on Facebook?

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1 minute ago, Gaard said:

As someone who hardly ever uses Facebook, I have a question...

You know how you can search 'sold' items on Ebay? Does Facebook have that same option? IOW - Do we know that people get their asking price on Facebook?

No you can't search Facebook for sales results. I only know the seller got the price as I watched his video. Did the buyer follow through and give him the money in exchange for the book: not sure.

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So you put goods out for sale with the goal of someone paying you your asking price, or near to it, someone does, seemingly regularly, and this is a problem? Hmmmmm.... I'm not sure I follow the logic here.

If I sold someone a comic, or anything else for that matter, and they paid my price, gave me the money and proceeded to light it on fire right in front of me, it really wouldn't bother me one bit. My goal has already been reached.

Also, would it not be the people spending the 10$ each for the raffle you should take issue with? I can ask 10$ for a used Kleenex if I wan to on eBay, but someone has to pay the 10.... 

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I dont know that I would not sell in the particular case you cite, but I wonder if a different situation might be more cut and dried (in terms of not selling to someone)

 

There's the guy on ebay who regularly cracks restored books and sells them raw w/o mentioning (or under reporting) the restoration. 

If you were selling a restored book and found out he was the buyer, knowing his likely intent with the book, would you still sell to him? 

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13 minutes ago, ygogolak said:

There are lots of raffles on FB and Instagram.

Really? That's a shame. It's against their Terms of Service, but we all know how much Facebook cares about those.

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8 minutes ago, RCheli said:

Really? That's a shame. It's against their Terms of Service, but we all know how much Facebook cares about those.

Sounds like you would be surprised about the amount of money that goes through those if you are just talking about a $150 book.

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1 hour ago, romanheart said:

You don't need any reason to refuse to sell to any customer. The fact that you don't want to based on ethical reasons is admirable. I wish more people and businesses had that attitude. I don't think you are wrong to refuse his business.

Raffles of that kind are illegal.  So I think the above response is correct.

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18 hours ago, miraclemet said:

I dont know that I would not sell in the particular case you cite, but I wonder if a different situation might be more cut and dried (in terms of not selling to someone)

 

There's the guy on ebay who regularly cracks restored books and sells them raw w/o mentioning (or under reporting) the restoration. 

If you were selling a restored book and found out he was the buyer, knowing his likely intent with the book, would you still sell to him? 

This is a situation that I would 100% agree with not selling.

In the case the OP brings, the buyer (and seller) is just hosting a lottery/raffle for a book. Just sounds like a legitimate business idea that seemingly works.

In the case that you bring up, the buyer/seller is defrauding potential buyers by purposefully omitting critical collection information. IMO that is not kosher and I would personally never sell to that person (among other things...).

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If the guy is utilizing product from you as an opportunity for resale then honestly, who cares?  To me it is no different than when a dealer buys an individual's collection in bulk at a discount.  Then the dealer bundles some series to sell them as sets, sticks some stuff in quarter bins and then burns some stuff to mark up the good stuff at a premium.  There really is no difference except in the business model to sell the book. 

However... If an individual is using you as a supply to engage in a fraudulent business practice, not only should you turn that supply faucet off you must. 

I had a guy that was buying used jewelry from me on eBay and then reselling it on eBay as 'new' without tags.  He was taking items that he knew were used then misrepresenting them as new.  He wasn't even making that much on the markup.  If I sold it to him for $150 he marked it up to $200. 

When I found that out he was blocked.  When he asked why since he was a good customer I explained why.  I also blocked his other account and refused to ship an item to the same address as the original account.  Then... being me.  I trolled all his listings and kept humping the report button to eBay.

Now there is also another way to look at things but I warn you that it is petty and I don't think anyone should think this way.  I knew of a comic store owner that refused to sell to any customer he knew was selling.  He felt that if a comic collector bought a book in the area from someone other than him then it was money out of his pocket since that buyer was spending money that he could be spending on comics from him.  That store went out of business.  

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