Lowball Offers

Now, there's a discount if you buy multiple chins or guinea pigs or geckos or whatever.  Re-homing two or more at the same time is a benefit to me, so I can lower the price a little.  The more you get, the more I'm willing to lower... but within reason.

Someone messaged me on Hoobly the other day, commenting on how nice the geckos looked and how well taken care of they appeared... and then asked how much for all of them.

Now... let's start off with the warning bells... only reason someone wants all of them... ESPECIALLY since most of them are males and cannot be bred... is to flip them.  I mean come on, I am NOT that stupid.  They could go for a lot more at a reptile show, I know.  But they are rescues.

Anyway... before I even have a chance to read that message, she sends another message, saying she'll offer $300 for all of them.  There were 19 geckos at that time, so this worked out to around $15 per gecko.  Want to know what that price is?  Wholesale gecko price... FURTHER indicating that this person wants to get them and flip them.  Um, NO.  They're in a fucking rescue.... not a garage sale, not someone trying to dump them off.  I HAVE THEM HERE because someone wanted them to find good homes, not be flipped for more money.

Knowing $300 was way too low of an offer, I thought, I'll add them up and see what they add up to.  Just for shits and giggles.  Came out to $1,080... works out to an average of $56 per gecko.  Which is hardly unreasonable, as even at the reptile shows where you can find dirt cheap geckos, about the only ones in the $40-60 range are these tiny little hatchlings, and most of the ones here are up to adult size... and reptile people who have come to adopt have commented how cheap they are.  You can imagine how irritated that makes me at an offer of basically $15 per gecko.

It's one thing for someone to ask, is there a discount on multiple.  But don't you think I'm too stupid to realize why you want ALLLLLLLL of the animals (and I've had people who wanted ALLLL the chins before or ALLLLL the guinea pigs too), at a significant discount.  This isn't the Toys R Us liquidation sale, people.  They will stay here until they find homes.  Not flippers.  Homes.  End of story.

Update! -- I got a message later that evening from the person lowballing, saying that they hadn't looked at the full ad, and thought that the geckos were $40 each.  They wished me good luck in rehoming them.  I mean, no offense... but that's STILL $760 for all the geckos, so $300 is still a super lowball offer.  Again... not about the money, but it does take a lot of effort and care (and crested gecko diet) to feed these things... something has to pay for all of that.  Just for quick reference, a 1 pound bag of CBD is like $35.  We mix two flavors, so that's 2 bags ($70) being fed at once, which only lasts maybe 2-3 months with as many geckos as are here... and if some are leaving, people are taking some of that food with them, so it goes even quicker.  It all ads up!  Anyway, I messaged the person back and said no worries, thanks for the well-wishes, and I let them know that I actually had someone coming to look at some geckos that night.

Later LATER That Night Update! -- The people looking for the geckos showed up.  Really awesome family with several kids that has multiple upon multiple tanks for their cresteds and other geckos and reptiles and is well-versed on reptile care.  They ended up taking 5 geckos home for $250 in adoption fees.  So much for $300 for 19 geckos...