Serious buyer se M**r!

• Sara Kasim

Am I the only one who gets mad at Facebook sale posts by stupid people stating “Serious Buyers Only”?

Have you never thought of finding the little twat to kick his yellow-stained teeth back into alignment for assuming you are not serious?

Can someone who has done sales please explain how the phrase helps the buyer at all?

I would appreciate a phrase that helps me check if the item for sale is meant for me. Saying “serious buyers only” only makes my exhaust burn from anger.

Buyers need serious sellers too!

THE IDIOT SELLER

Here is a person on Facebook selling a used 1999 Toyota Corolla 1.6 and all you see is one picture of the car and the description saying “Selling Colola (misspelt), lady owned, makes me offer. Call me 081-blah-blah. Serious buyers only!”

First, you look at the name of the seller and it is ‘Kota Mapiano Paulus”.

Red flag!

So you scroll back up to look at the item description again because you are truly looking for a small car that can save fuel to mitigate the increasingly inflated fuel prices.

You have been scaling the Facebook walls and searching the marketplace for at least an hour a day! You’re as real a buyer as they come.

The problem is this seller says he will only entertain serious buyers, but he starts with a joke of a sales post.

Besides, how do you know a serious buyer from a mediocre buyer unless they go through the ‘enquiry phase’, commit and eventually complete the transaction.

By the way, he could have at least posted five good pictures to clearly show the state and condition of the car, but he posted only one blurry picture from above the bonnet. He then misspells “Corolla” while omitting important information such as the year, model and series of the car, mileage, location and most importantly the price. But he remembers to specify “serious buyers” only.

THE STONE KICKER

I asked a good friend of mine what “serious buyer” means and he told me that if you enquire about the price and all other information but do not buy then you are wasting the seller’s time. You are a stone kicker. These are the guys who call and even ask to see the item and then start kicking stones and sand, biting the lower lip just to ask “Ta! Why so expensive?”

Yes, yes, I know that sometimes the item is not expensive but rather out of your budget, but it is always expensive in Namibia because they think the buyer will try to negotiate. That is why they leave headroom.

Nonsense!

I told him that he is also just not a serious seller if he thinks that it is a bother for people to ask questions about the product before they can make up their minds. I mean, how serious can you be about an item you know nothing of.

As a serious buyer, I would like to prompt the government to compel anybody advertising anything for sale in Namibia to include all relevant information required by the potential buyer to make up their mind. We, potentially serious buyers, want to engage serious sellers in stores and online. Let us all get serious!

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