Strategies for trading and negotiating in general - Part 2

The first thing I want to talk about is bait and switch tactics. People will offer a card for trade or sale for a certain price. When I messaged the seller, they said they still had the card and before they took tickets said, the price had gone up and said it would be more. I told him no thanks. I think he just posted the lowest price by 1 ticket so people would go to him and then would raise the price by a couple tix in order make extra profit. It’s actually happened to me multiple times in a day, but when I check a price guide or two online, the price hadn’t changed.

Another thing I encounter are (mostly bots) who advertise cards for certain prices then charge more when you go to make the trade. It’s likely this is a mistake, but it’s not when a person does it (it’s happened to me more than once). It’s just a simple bait and switch and is pretty crappy. Much of the time it’s possible to talk the person into giving the initial price but I don’t recommend doing it.

I recommend not doing business with people who try to bait and switch. Negotiating with a bait and switcher reinforces the notion that people will still do business even if they try to bait and switch you. You shouldn’t even waste your time with them, if no one took the bait, they’d stop the tactic.

Also, remember that when you negotiate and get them to concede to the originally advertised price you didn’t win, you just got what they initially offered. What do you think the odds of getting an even better deal now that you accepted the premise that they “made a mistake” and are “willing to be fair with you” by giving the advertised price? Zero. So you’ve had to negotiate to buy for the advertised price, feel good about getting the deal that was advertised. You shouldn’t feel that way, you should be upset because you worked extra by negotiating for something that should have been there from the beginning.

I recommend you not waste your time with people who bait and switch (even if it’s a legitimate accident). It starts you off in the hole and makes the negotiation harder for you to come out the place you should have come out. 

One last thing, do you really think someone you don’t know is going to say, “oh, wait. The price went down, give me less” because a price dropped since they listed their card? I don’t.