Sixfeetbelle:
This might sound crazy but I think it's sort of a mechanism for making maximum profit off unsuspecting customers. Going to their DM for price means A doesn't get told the same price or given the same discount as B.

Exactly!

KrazyDave16:
Going by the justifications on this thread, majority here are newbs in online marketing.

Sure there are opportunists out there but must some of you act like trolls in the name of making a quick sale and cash...?

If you put your price, expect trolls to comment.
If that would hurt your business, then put the troll down by explaining why the item is priced that way in a professional manner. That attracts potential buyers instead of using the 'DM for price' tactic which would tell others you were lying about the price and force buyers to look elsewhere.

I can point out people who post their prices and are selling well compared to some who sell the same product like they do but use that annoying 'DM for Price' tactic.

You couldn’t have said it better, people or sellers giving excuses that trolls would spoil their page by saying items listed by seller sells cheaper elsewhere are just weak sellers

If I say an item is 1000, and a troll says it sells cheaper at x shop for 200, if I can’t defend my price it simply means I’m not fit to sell


We get plenty of them for car section, you can’t hide value of well known products and still intend to do price discrimination

Na person wey get money dey look for product to buy. Abeg leave me to soak my garri jejely in piss

Rodwave:


If you have never run a business online, please don't say what you don't know. Instagram vendors are not jumia. If you want to buy with price tagged to a product, go to jumia or konga. We have supermarkets and we have open markets. Every business has it's pattern.

Oga, go and sit down. What nonsense pattern? State your price, person wey go buy go still buy.

Rodwave:
If you want to buy a product, engage the seller. If you don't have time to ask a simple question like 'how much"? then you are not a serious buyer. Most people complaining are just passers-by . Stop looking for something to buy when you don't have money . Why are you guys not complaining of landlord not putting the rent on the' house for rent' card? Has that stopped people from renting house?

You nailed it

It just means let's go talk in my office away from preying eyes and mouth. Business is a lot more personal than most t think. If you bargain well you get a good offer, if you don't you get cheated.

I know a product I supply, the seller get it for around 14k and sell for 45k.

That's more than 400% profit. Although you probably have a price range in mind. If you negatiate well they may cut price for you. If you don't well you get it for what it is. It's a lot subjective. There is so much space mostly between invested capital and profit that they are willing the be flexible depending on your bagaining

The margin gap is scary. Dont believe what they say that they are not making much. It's all lies.

NoToPile:
Based on what I see here on NL some people talk anyhow about prices they have no idea about, someone once posted a used Honda generator for sale and the price was around 40-50k , come and see attacks even myself that is not a generator specialist knows that original honda Japan is expensive but most of those talking were talking from the price of new elepaq and other brands.

Some will post used Bed frame for 250k and people will start shouting they bought new one for 50k , do they know the quality of the product?


So I understand when some people (especially those with high end products to sell) don't post prices, its because of ignorant posters.I still prefer when a price tag is on the item but I don't blame those who don't put price, serious buyers mostly make more enquiries.

If a troll comes to your page to spill thrash, the seller should be able to defend his price, In fact when he can defend his price and put the troll down, he would gain more trust points in the eyes of other potential buyers, so a troll is good for business

Kriss216:

Oga, go and sit down. What nonsense pattern? State your price, person wey go buy go still buy.

It is not by force to buy from me. I don't put price on my product and customers are buying. Stop complaining and face front. If you can't buy online go to open market and buy. Stop telling me how to run my business. Don't be an h-idiot

You can state the price and some people will still come to DM to ask for price. Most people don't read caption.

Tayeni:
I think it's because of indecision on the seller's part. They can't stick to a segment of the market for fear of missing out on sales. They want to sell to highend buyers at crazy prices and also to price sensitive buyers for low margins.

You got it.

Rodwave:


It is not by force to buy from me. I don't put price on my product and customers are buying. Stop complaining and face front. If you can't buy online got to open market and buy. Stop telling me how to run my business.

Yen yen yen
You'll not calm down and learn now, be forming business guru.

mimilogistics:
This is a great topic, thanks op.



But then, I have noticed on Facebook, Instagram, etc that even when the page or seller puts the price on the title or description, buyers, especially Nigerian buyers will still be asking: "How Much", " How do I Get This Product?", "Where is Your Shop?", etc even after the seller have put the price and how to order visibly on the product page.



So what do you have to say about that

It's just a phenomenon I will never understand.
Nigerians don't read.
And as someone rightly said too many of them are cash-strapped !

FuckHomophobes:
I think they don't want competitors to know about their price. Talk about keeping your secret safe.

How about giving you the price and you ghost them? That shit is painful from the client end

Most u buy every product u ask for price??
Abi if u enter boutique go price n don't buy... Dem go swear for u?
If u do window shopping at the mall n look at the prices, na crime??

Felibaby:


Kudos. thats the way it should be. If a seller is convinced he is selling at a fair price with decent profit margin, he will set his price and stand by it. Who go buy go buy.
But most wont do that because they want to rip people off. They will give different prices to buyers after checking their profile.

yes exactly....

SegFault:

The thing dey tire person. don't think this rubbish has annoyed anyone as much as my sis, she dey always curse them.

veeeery annoying.

Kendumazy:


You don't term them con artist bro. Don't generalize. All you have got to do is to look away and jump pass like you said.

Remember, every one has his or her way of doing his or her business. It's up to the prospective buyer to determine if such ways are okay with him or her.

With the same DM pattern, na people still dey patronize them cos it's okay with them.

I come in peace!

one of them spotted

Openbusiness:
Many people here are just condemning the sellers without taking a walk in the seller's shoes. Some are calling the seller CON ARTIST. Lol. Even the most legitimate business will tell you when you make a public inquiry on a social media page to DM for price. It is not a scam, it is not to defraud anybody, it is a STANDARD business operations procedure on the major social media platforms by all the big business. Even outside of social media, for certain products among legitimate service providers or sellers, they use the term CALL FOR PRICE or REQUEST A QUOTE. CNN won't display their advert rates on their pages. You have to call for price, or send an email to that effect. You can't compare that with a supermarket, a supermarket deals in basic retail for basic commodities. It is a different sales aspect. If you go to Coscharis website or any major car dealerships dealing on brand new products, you won't find price listed on their pages. You have to call for price or request for quote. Go to Innoson official website and tell me whether you will see price there. No! You have to call for price or request for quote , which is an equivalent to DM. Does it mean Innoson is a con artist, like some people are saying here? Or does mean Innoson is a scam that wants to swindle the public and sell a N2 for N300? No!
Scam or deceit etc is another aspect and it is not necessarily compulsorily dependent on DM for price. Noz that's not true. The people making this complaint have obviously never walked in the shoes of being a seller dealing with the public before through social media. There are several reasons sellers do it, I will list a few that I believe is general. DM for price or call for Price or Request a quote etc
1) to separate or filter serious buyers from unserious or window shopping buyers. Many sellers are faced with situations of having unserious buyers or time wasters knocking on your door. Maybe out of 20 coming by, only 2 are buying. That's not the problem. The problem is the resources, time, materials and manpower spent and wasted in attending to such people. Personally, you will see some buyer's making inquiries, they ask for everything as in every detail of the product, they ask for pictures, they ask for videos, they ask for review, they ask for price, location etc and THEY DISAPPEAR and walk away. That's ok if it was 1 or 2 people doing so, but when such practice is a norm among the buying public, then it's a problem to the seller for many valid reasons. So in the world of sellers, such Buyers window shoppers are called time wasters and you per seller industry, better ways had to be invented to curb this and filter the serious buyers from the unserious buyers. So to protect themselves timewasters, certain filters were introduced and DM for price is one of the filters sellers deploy. If a buyer feels bothered that a price isn't stated, so bothered and angry to the point that they stop themselves from making the inquiry by contacting the seller privately, trust me as a seller myself (and a buyer too), 90% of such people are timewasters. They don't have anything to buy in the first place. They just want to snoop around for fun or for whatever reason. It is unfair to sellers to waste their resources attending to such people. If call for price is a BIG Issue for you, most likely, price will be a big issue for you and probably don't have money to afford the product to begin with. Because, if you investigate closely, out of say every 10 people that DM the seller for price, after they are told the price, many still don't buy, maybe like only 2 for every 10 price inquiries will turn to sale, even when the price is actually very good and competitive. Why some or many buyers like and enjoy wasting seller's time and resources is a story for another day.

2) it allows the seller to keep track on sales potential. When people DM for price, it goes to show they have certain level of interest beyond the Zero interest. Every interest beyond zero interest has the potential to turn to a sale. It can go on to conclude the sale process or not, but it has a potential nonetheless. People that have zero interest or timewasters, many of them will be filtered out by the DM for price barrier or filter. That you are going the extra mile shows you have some level of interest, so a seller can actually make or compute a pattern out of that to track the sales potential performance of a particular product relative to other products he is selling. The seller can say that, Oh, for product A, 50 people made a price inquiry, but product B, 3 people made a price inquiry, so product A has more potential for sales than B. Because generally the bigger the inquiries, the bigger the sales potential.

3) It gives the seller the opportunity to convert an undecided buyer into a sale. Many buyers out there are undecided. They are confused, they are unsure, they are on the fence and need a little push to get them to buy or not buy. They are what we call "silent buyers", and just like in politics where they use the term "silent majority", youl will discover that many silent buyers are usually the majority as per potential customers. Most of them have interest, but that interest is neutral and sitting on the fence, they just require something extra to push their curiosity. And PRICE is a major something extra that provides that push. Their curiosity about what the price could be, pushing them to initiate a conversation with the seller. Otherwise, many of these silent buyers will just look and look and when that spark of initial curiosity that attracted them to your advert fades, they will just walk away. But by pushing their curiosity further to initiate a conversation with a seller, the seller has created an opportunity for himself to have a discussion that can possibly be the deciding factor that will push such silent buyers to make a purchase. By asking seller for price, he has the opportunity to talk to them about other things or it might just even be they way the seller responded and the buyer likes it and is like Oh, I think this seller is cool, let me buy, and the sale is concluded.

4) It is a basic way to limit scam. Yes you heard me, or do you want me to loud it for you? SCAMMMmmmmm . Many people or buyers think it's only buyers that get scammed, but no, sellers get scammed too. So how does price relate to this. IMPERSONATION. Many times, having all the information out there in public domain at once gives scammers a very easy access to wean all info they need without even making any contact with the seller. They just go to his page and copy everything and disappear without the seller even knowing. So sometimes, putting filters or barriers is one of the strategies sellers deploy to limit such opportunity of impersonation by scammers who pose as buyers. Whether this strategy is very effective or not, or how effective is it to combat scam is another topic.

These are some of the reasons

I love and believe what you wrote but that's only before you started listing points, those points seem sack to me.
No offense. The innoson and CNN examples make sense sha

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Kriss216:

Yen yen yen
You'll not calm down and learn now, be forming business guru.

There's nothing to learn from people like you who feel entitled to everything. You can't tell me how to run my business. I do what works for me. I monitor the trend and since I stopped putting price on my product, I have been getting more sales. So face front. Got to jumia or konga if you are looking for a product with a price tag. It is not that difficult.

Ahmeduana:
in my own judgment, they thieves and criminal, online marketing is the new biggest rip off right now thank God I learnt my lesson through Jumia and Konga, this certified criminals wants to become Jeff Bezos And Ali Baba over night.

I don't buy from them because of this. I go to Alliexpress

Felibaby:


Not everyone, only the seller. A competitive market is good. It ensures fair prices!

/
Nigeria has unlimited supply of enemies of progress.

/

pocohantas:


Why do they do this? What are they hiding? It is annoying, stressful and scares clients away. Maybe I am wrong and it actually works for them. Any of them here should please explain to me the idea behind this.

Great observation. Very commendable. Personally I don't advertise on Instagram, only on nairaland and jiji. (I'm an automobile dealer by the way). I used to put a price tag on all my vehicles advertised on nairaland until I noticed something.

I always put price tag on all my cars on jiji (your advert will not even be published without the price, its a prerequisite). However, When I put a price tag on my vehicles on jiji nobody has ever called to abuse me or make mockery of my business, this is due to the peculiarities of that platform. If the price is ok by the buyer, he/she calls for further negotiations but if the buyer feels it is high he/she simply moves on.

But Nairaland is different, it is an interactive forum. For example, You can advertise a tokunbo 2004 Toyota Camry (big daddy) for #1.5m, someone will just come to the thread, click reply and write '#1.5m for a 16yrs old vehicle?'. By this singular comment that thread has been rubbished. Another 'buyer' can also come and make a mockery offer like '#900k serious buyer'. So the real buyer will now say since the other man offered #900k let me just offer #950k, for a tokunbo 2004 Camry
But if you didn't put an estimate at all these may likely not happen. Only a real serious buyer will 'waste' his/her airtime to call the seller just to know the price tag.

I'll give an example with an experience I had few days ago. I will upload the screenshots here for confirmation. I advertised a 2014 keyless Push To Start honda accord, of course without any price tag as usual, a 'buyer' asked how much. I was about writing down the price before I decided to click on his moniker atleast to have an idea of the background of a man that wants to buy a car above #4m. Only to realise that this dude has been jumping from one thread to another making offers for different cars since 2017. Pls see pictures below. Will I now waste my time answering this 'buyer'?.

If there were no price tags on those vehicles, do you think he would have been recharging his phone for the past three years calling different car dealers just to know the prices of these cars?.

Theslumflower:
It's still crazy how they are yet to understand how much of a "bad market" that statement causes their online business.

Like WTF, just say the price upfront. Nobody wants to come to your DM when we have other things to do. So many others buyers products to look at too.

fact

Openbusiness:
Many people here are just condemning the sellers without taking a walk in the seller's shoes. Some are calling the seller CON ARTIST. Lol. Even the most legitimate business will tell you when you make a public inquiry on a social media page to DM for price. It is not a scam, it is not to defraud anybody, it is a STANDARD business operations procedure on the major social media platforms by all the big business. Even outside of social media, for certain products among legitimate service providers or sellers, they use the term CALL FOR PRICE or REQUEST A QUOTE. CNN won't display their advert rates on their pages. You have to call for price, or send an email to that effect. You can't compare that with a supermarket, a supermarket deals in basic retail for basic commodities. It is a different sales aspect. If you go to Coscharis website or any major car dealerships dealing on brand new products, you won't find price listed on their pages. You have to call for price or request for quote. Go to Innoson official website and tell me whether you will see price there. No! You have to call for price or request for quote , which is an equivalent to DM. Does it mean Innoson is a con artist, like some people are saying here? Or does mean Innoson is a scam that wants to swindle the public and sell a N2 for N300? No!
Scam or deceit etc is another aspect and it is not necessarily compulsorily dependent on DM for price. Noz that's not true. The people making this complaint have obviously never walked in the shoes of being a seller dealing with the public before through social media. There are several reasons sellers do it, I will list a few that I believe is general. DM for price or call for Price or Request a quote etc
1) to separate or filter serious buyers from unserious or window shopping buyers. Many sellers are faced with situations of having unserious buyers or time wasters knocking on your door. Maybe out of 20 coming by, only 2 are buying. That's not the problem. The problem is the resources, time, materials and manpower spent and wasted in attending to such people. Personally, you will see some buyer's making inquiries, they ask for everything as in every detail of the product, they ask for pictures, they ask for videos, they ask for review, they ask for price, location etc and THEY DISAPPEAR and walk away. That's ok if it was 1 or 2 people doing so, but when such practice is a norm among the buying public, then it's a problem to the seller for many valid reasons. So in the world of sellers, such Buyers window shoppers are called time wasters and you per seller industry, better ways had to be invented to curb this and filter the serious buyers from the unserious buyers. So to protect themselves timewasters, certain filters were introduced and DM for price is one of the filters sellers deploy. If a buyer feels bothered that a price isn't stated, so bothered and angry to the point that they stop themselves from making the inquiry by contacting the seller privately, trust me as a seller myself (and a buyer too), 90% of such people are timewasters. They don't have anything to buy in the first place. They just want to snoop around for fun or for whatever reason. It is unfair to sellers to waste their resources attending to such people. If call for price is a BIG Issue for you, most likely, price will be a big issue for you and probably don't have money to afford the product to begin with. Because, if you investigate closely, out of say every 10 people that DM the seller for price, after they are told the price, many still don't buy, maybe like only 2 for every 10 price inquiries will turn to sale, even when the price is actually very good and competitive. Why some or many buyers like and enjoy wasting seller's time and resources is a story for another day.

2) it allows the seller to keep track on sales potential. When people DM for price, it goes to show they have certain level of interest beyond the Zero interest. Every interest beyond zero interest has the potential to turn to a sale. It can go on to conclude the sale process or not, but it has a potential nonetheless. People that have zero interest or timewasters, many of them will be filtered out by the DM for price barrier or filter. That you are going the extra mile shows you have some level of interest, so a seller can actually make or compute a pattern out of that to track the sales potential performance of a particular product relative to other products he is selling. The seller can say that, Oh, for product A, 50 people made a price inquiry, but product B, 3 people made a price inquiry, so product A has more potential for sales than B. Because generally the bigger the inquiries, the bigger the sales potential.

3) It gives the seller the opportunity to convert an undecided buyer into a sale. Many buyers out there are undecided. They are confused, they are unsure, they are on the fence and need a little push to get them to buy or not buy. They are what we call "silent buyers", and just like in politics where they use the term "silent majority", youl will discover that many silent buyers are usually the majority as per potential customers. Most of them have interest, but that interest is neutral and sitting on the fence, they just require something extra to push their curiosity. And PRICE is a major something extra that provides that push. Their curiosity about what the price could be, pushing them to initiate a conversation with the seller. Otherwise, many of these silent buyers will just look and look and when that spark of initial curiosity that attracted them to your advert fades, they will just walk away. But by pushing their curiosity further to initiate a conversation with a seller, the seller has created an opportunity for himself to have a discussion that can possibly be the deciding factor that will push such silent buyers to make a purchase. By asking seller for price, he has the opportunity to talk to them about other things or it might just even be they way the seller responded and the buyer likes it and is like Oh, I think this seller is cool, let me buy, and the sale is concluded.

4) It is a basic way to limit scam. Yes you heard me, or do you want me to loud it for you? SCAMMMmmmmm . Many people or buyers think it's only buyers that get scammed, but no, sellers get scammed too. So how does price relate to this. IMPERSONATION. Many times, having all the information out there in public domain at once gives scammers a very easy access to wean all info they need without even making any contact with the seller. They just go to his page and copy everything and disappear without the seller even knowing. So sometimes, putting filters or barriers is one of the strategies sellers deploy to limit such opportunity of impersonation by scammers who pose as buyers. Whether this strategy is very effective or not, or how effective is it to combat scam is another topic.

These are some of the reasons

DAVE5:


You couldn’t have said it better, people or sellers giving excuses that trolls would spoil their page by saying items listed by seller sells cheaper elsewhere are just weak sellers

If I say an item is 1000, and a troll says it sells cheaper at x shop for 200, if I can’t defend my price it simply means I’m not fit to sell


We get plenty of them for car section, you can’t hide value of well known products and still intend to do price discrimination

Gbam!

Until you are a digital marketer and strategist, inexperience will make you say unreasonable and unprintable things about them.

Nigeria market soil is as unstable as roaring sea.. So, placing price publicly on the Nigeria internet space is a very risky method of marketing due to various economic policies and reasons like dollar rates instability, tax increment and exploitations, senseless trolls, bashers and mockers, positive energy drainers known as negative vibes, etc... as we all know the slogan "internet never forgets." Most Nigerians that have backward and negative mentality!

So, comparing Nigeria with western pattern is a crippled and epileptic method of comparism. They have static pricing and value chain system, they all grow and fall at the same length or height or level of slope.

Ripping off clients is out of point!! What happened to pricing and buying power power? Or choice power? Why not check the random prices through online market research first before reaching an agreement with the seller?

Bukden16:


veeeery annoying.

The thing is that when you now send them a message, them no go reply you for some days by then you don fashi am.

mimilogistics:
This is a great topic, thanks op.



But then, I have noticed on Facebook, Instagram, etc that even when the page or seller puts the price on the title or description, buyers, especially Nigerian buyers will still be asking: "How Much", " How do I Get This Product?", "Where is Your Shop?", etc even after the seller have put the price and how to order visibly on the product page.



So what do you have to say about that

So because of the emboldened,you will not state the price of the product you are selling?
This is just a whataboutism way of defending the fraudulent activities of many sellers on the internet!

post=94315737:
More on this DM issue in our second post below.......
And this is the response/reasons they do this from the companies involved.........


These are some reasons they gave for being secretive though,

Interestingly, several business owners boldly defended the practice as either necessary or strategic.
The common reasons put forward were:

It filters prospects from the curious to the serious;

It hides product information from competitors;

It’s a marketing strategy that promotes exclusivity;

It allows for personal engagement with the prospective customer;

It prevents disparaging comments from social media trolls or those who can’t afford it or aren’t their target market; and

Some products, such as cakes and art, are custom-made.

But in all these, The Customers remain the KING!
Aight?
It now depends on us if we wanna patronize 'em!

We Rise!

you have said well

For those of us running online business... You would know that price is Relative to the customer or client in question. This is not law or rule but a business strategy.

Personally as a business man I view the personalities and behavior of a customer before telling him or her the price. It's just business.

Apart from online or E marketing, most of us who go to market a lot would notice the variation in prices per customer. E.G Those meat sellers. If they know sey u be JJC they can sell for you meat worth of N500 for N4000. But when they see regular daily customers they know better than to charge them at a high price.

This business strategy mostly applies for those goods and services that don't have a fixed price. E.G A person offering services for Graphics Designing... The same amount as a Graphics Designer that I will charge a big company like Milo to design something for them is not the same amount I would charge a petty farmer. You may call it scamming but I am just following one of the first rules of business. "Profit at all cost"

And also DM for price is sometimes used to discourage all those fellow business owners and competitors who would only ask price and location to compare prices.

Most of those ranting here don't even own or run an online business. If not you'll know how it feels when you post price and they'll just type ok and nice for your Advert and vamous ...

If you know u know... I rest my case.