u/Adjectivenounnumb

I've been complaining about non binding offers for a while here, and I've had a bit of luck with a new system of handling them.

Rather than accepting a good offer and reaching out with a handshake and possible shipping times, I don't accept, counter, or decline, I just message the buyer and say that if it's a real offer to let me know and we can discuss.

This has resulted in a few outcomes:

1. I get ignored (most frequent, obviously). After the offer expires the "buyer" gets blocked.

2. a real person on the other end gets a little flustered and starts acting like there's something wrong with my listings/demands measurements, etc, then eventually stops responding. These people were never going to buy anyway.

3. Actual sales to someone who is happy to be talking to a human! (And I accept their first offers, which are often good ones.)

But the real win is that people or bots probing for my lowest price with no immediate intention to buy don't get that information, because I don't accept, counter, or decline the offer until they talk to me.

And it's mostly due to the non-binding offers. I like a lot of things about Depop including the more casual feel, but I can't find a way to get around the way the offers system works (and people wanting everything at rock bottom prices).

I got so sick of the only good offers being the fake non-binding ones that I started adding text to my "hot" listings: please DM me before you make an offer so I know you're a real person.

What I'm getting instead is people DMing me with INSANELY low offers.

Also, I'm suddenly getting people who want to bundle, but even though I already have some of kind of bundle offer or discount enabled, they seem to think that means the pricing will be their lowest possible offer, but will ALSO be buy one get one free. :) (I am not Kraft, people.)

So instead of cutting down the annoyance factor by asking people to DM me, I accidentally increased my annoyance factor because I'm getting the people who want to just nag me into even lower offers via DM.

Depop still has those weird weeks where people will either just buy at my (totally reasonable) prices without some big drama, or make a reasonable offer and follow through, and the next thing I know I'm going out to ship stuff every day. But the last few days have just been exhausting and I'm spending so much more time on this than my time would be worth at any actual job. And it's not fun. (And the people who ask for specific, strange measurements NEVER buy in the end.)

It makes me want to go back to Poshmark more heavily, which automates away a lot of this silliness, or Mercari which I'm just now starting to get the hang of (and seems to have a crowd with a tiny bit more money). But I did enjoy Depop's younger crowd for some of the stuff I like selling. I don't know, man.

I know, "don't let the door hit your ass on the way out" and all that, but I might just shut it down until non-binding offers are removed. Or only do a couple Depop listings at a time so all the back and forth is a bit more manageable.