<p>So I put up my Calc textbook for sale on Craigslist, and girl A contacted me yesterday morning but never replied to my response. I refreshed the ad, reducing the price. Girl B contacted me in the evening, and I agreed to meet her on Saturday to sell her the textbook. This morning, girl A reappears and says she’s ready to buy it at the original higher price.</p>
<p>Do I tell the girl B I found somebody who’s willing to pay more, or do I honor my prior commitment?</p>
<p>I would sell it to Girl A.</p>
<p>Technically Girl A did respond first. Perhaps she got caught in some other business and couldn’t respond to you earlier. Either way you shouldn’t penalize her for not being able to reply in 24 hours. If it were a a couple of days in b/w the return of Girl A then I would have said Girl B. But one day really isn’t that bad. perhaps you were a bit too impatient.</p>
<p>Time’s are rough. I say screw B and take the higher price. xD</p>
<p>I wouldn’t tell B that you are selling it to someone else until you have money from A in your hand. Because then B could find someone else and A could disappear again and then you are just out of luck.</p>
<p>Tell B that you would rather meet a day after Sat, any day. Tell A you want to meet on Saturday or a day before B. If A buys, you can tell B not to come/you got a better offer earlier in enough time to not inconvenience her.</p>
<p>You made a verbal commitment to sell to B at the stated price. You made no such deal with A since A did not get back to you. I would honor my deal with B. The price difference is not worth more than your word.</p>
<p>i recently went through this. i tried buying a book from someone and we had an agreement. i let him know i was still interested and i get an email back saying too late he sold it already. i didnt even get a day to reply (and I did reply that day). it’s ********. don’t do that. i was real mad at that guy. keep your word. no matter if you’re the buyer or seller, you should always keep your word. another similar story. one seller sold me a book at a certain price, then i got an offer to buy it at a cheaper price. i could have taken the cheaper price but i wasn’t going to go back on my word on the first seller (plus she’s a friend and i made a verbal commitment anyways).</p>
<p>Well, you can probably have two options: </p>
<p>1) You should sell to Girl A because she asked first. Even though you made a commitment to Girl B, you made it in bad faith to A (1 day isn’t time to doubt Girl A). </p>
<p>Then, tell Girl B what happened - that you had a possible buyer, that you lowered the price because you thought the buyer wasn’t going to respond, that she (Girl B) came in, and then that Girl A came back. Say you should honor previous buyers. (Don’t say Girl A made a better offer.) Apologize for the inconvenience.</p>
<p>Or 2) Explain to Girl A that because she replied late, you already sold it to another buyer. Tough luck for her; she didn’t make a commitment.</p>
<p>1) is more honorable, though it’ll probably hurt for you because Girl B might get mad.
2) is possible because Girl A didn’t reply right away, but you didn’t give her a grace time to reply, which is rather unfair.</p>
<p>I’d take 1. Explain, apologize, sell to Girl A.</p>
<p>I kind of totally ****ed it up. First I replied to girl A that fine, I’ll sell it to you and be over your place in an hour, but then I realized right after that I feel that the right thing to do is to honor the verbal agreement l made with girl B, and I got back to girl A in like a minute and told her that I was selling the book for my roommate, and he just told me he decided to keep it. So I ended up lying and taking the worse deal… but I think I listened to my conscience? Anyway, the lesson here is that you should make a decision and then stick to it. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Well… <em>shrug</em> You did what you could. Don’t worry too much about it. ^^ Good luck on the next sell.</p>
<p>wrong lesson learned.</p>
<p>you should go back to girl B, say that you actually need the book now, and then resell it to girl A.</p>
<p>Since Girl A contacted you first, you should have give her more than a few hours to respond (which is a real jerk move on your part to not give her more than a few hours. Some people aren’t at their computers all day, and she responded the next day which is an acceptable time frame), and said to Girl B “I have another buyer interested, but if she doesn’t want it, you can purchase it.” You should have sold it to Girl A, since she asked you first.</p>
<p>The problem was when you agreed to see it to Girl B while having another buyer interested, who contacted you first.</p>
<p>Next time you sell something and the buyer doesn’t tell you they want it right away or confirm the purchase, give them like a day or two to respond back to you in your initial email to say they want it, and don’t make commitments to other people during this period. If they didn’t check their email either, well, that’s their problem.</p>
<p>This is not really a big deal. Sell it to the person who will give you more money. Since they did send you a message first, i guess its ok. Its not like your cheating on a test or something.</p>
<p>This happens to me on craigslist all the time.
I’d tell girl A if she can come by to pick it up BEFORE saturday, she can have it. also let her know that there’s someone else who’s interested in buying it too, so you’re working on a first come first serve basis.</p>
<p>I really think it’s first person who’s willing to meet up with you or a higher price gets it first. However, if you have made a verbal agreement then that def stands.</p>