Culture of private commerce

[mtbc]

The experience of selling items online can be a little disappointing. For instance, I explain why I am offering an indivisible lot and somebody responds wanting only part of it. Or, I say that the price is firm and somebody makes me an offer. I am probably wholly unsuited to buying in, say, a Turkish market: I really don't have the patience for haggling. I do not know if buyers are not reading carefully or if they suspect me of strategically lying. It is certainly so that in the past when I have clearly told another party that they should do me a favor or I will do something that will cost them more than the favor, they have tended not to do me the favor and I have thus acted as promised^*, so I suppose that is additional evidence that people do not always take me at my word. It would be nice if there were some unambiguous way I could convey my honest lack of game-playing. Buyers who persist in useless queries tend to have to wait increasingly long for subsequent responses. At least so far when I have replied restating what I originally said, some have paused then assented, so the process may be inefficient but is ultimately productive.

^*No, I am not in the business of exaction!