cheeky responses to lowballs. (1.Viewing)

Anybody have a great go-to response to lowballs? Usually I'll just ignore them but sometimes I can't help myself, especially when the offer comes from an identifiable business person.

Got one today, $5 USD on the domain o2.ca. My response was:

Thanks for your offer of $5, but I'll have to pass. I'd hate to see you spend your entire allowance on a domain name.

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Too cheeky or too douchy?

And on the flip side, I also got a $100K USD offer on a true ultra premium CA. Haven't responded yet, presuming its just a 12 y/o, but they did leave a phone number so I'll attempt a follow up phone call tomorrow. Rarely do you get that kind of starting offer, but then again, that was the minimum offer required to submit the form.

I sometimes like to respond with humour when I get a really lowball offer on an ulta premium, your response made me laugh.


On the flipside.... I often get a high opening offer on my ultra premiums only to find out it was someone wanting to open up dialogue because they had no other way to contact me.

I mostly get it on my private listings where there is no other contact other than a minimum offer. So very similar to your situation.

In fact I recently made a 250k usd offer on a domain that is advertised at 1 million. I put in one million but in the comment section wrote that my real offer was 250k and if they ever decide to sell for less than 1 million my offer stands.

Here's one a actually used a few times when the lowballs were obviously abusive.


"Thank you for the generous offer, but I think you'll need to search a lot more couches for spare change."

I normally say something like: With that sort of budget, you are best off hand registering a domain.

Hopefully not too mean, and puts things in perspective.

Oh the flip side, had a very low ball offer last November, and countered something much higher than the value. Which is what I like to do on extremely low offers.

Their response did give me a nice chuckle.

lotsofcoffee said:

I normally say something like: With that sort of budget, you are best off hand registering a domain.

Hopefully not too mean, and puts things in perspective.

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That's what I usually say the first time too, but if a nitwit starts harassing me with multiple lowballs, then he gets the back of my hand.

I use to own o2.ca and dropped by mistake. Good for you to catch it. I was going to use it for our indoor air quality division. Ended up buying IAQ.ca as a replacement. I had great hopes for that domain but people don't seem to see that value in it. Took me 2 years to finally get to the decision maker at o2.com for them to offer me reg fee. o2 Oxygen yoga pissed on it and everyone else. It was my best domain. I lost a lot of domains due to missing renewal but this one hurt a lot. Hope you have success with it.

Asselin said:

I use to own o2.ca and dropped by mistake. I had great hopes for that domain but people don't seem to see that value in it. Took me 2 years to finally get to the decision maker at o2.com for them to offer me reg fee. o2 Oxygen yoga pissed on it and everyone else.

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That's about par for the course with most .CA buyers - they literally want a domain for nothing, or very close to it.

It's not surprising given our Colonial-level reliance on natural resources (hewers of wood and drawers of water) that we are far, far, far behind the US and other countries in understanding the value and importance of owning your core online brand in either .COM or your appropriate ccTLD.

Canadian buyers are so far behind the times that most are probably wondering when Charles Dickens will write his next book.

I think with a $5 offer on a domain like that you are free to reply any way you like. It can't top the absurdity of their offer.

rlm said:

Anybody have a great go-to response to lowballs? Usually I'll just ignore them but sometimes I can't help myself, especially when the offer comes from an identifiable business person.

Got one today, $5 USD on the domain o2.ca. My response was:



Too cheeky or too douchy?

And on the flip side, I also got a $100K USD offer on a true ultra premium CA. Haven't responded yet, presuming its just a 12 y/o, but they did leave a phone number so I'll attempt a follow up phone call tomorrow. Rarely do you get that kind of starting offer, but then again, that was the minimum offer required to submit the form.

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Nafti said:

Oh the flip side, had a very low ball offer last November, and countered something much higher than the value. Which is what I like to do on extremely low offers.

Their response did give me a nice chuckle.

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$17,500 isn't even unreasonable for a decent .ca!

@rlm are most of your recent inquiries on .ca's, or other tlds?

rlm said:

$17,500 isn't even unreasonable for a decent .ca!

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Asselin said:

I use to own o2.ca and dropped by mistake. Good for you to catch it. I was going to use it for our indoor air quality division. Ended up buying IAQ.ca as a replacement. I had great hopes for that domain but people don't seem to see that value in it. Took me 2 years to finally get to the decision maker at o2.com for them to offer me reg fee. o2 Oxygen yoga pissed on it and everyone else. It was my best domain. I lost a lot of domains due to missing renewal but this one hurt a lot. Hope you have success with it.

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Yikes, sorry to hear you lost that one. That stings. I feel for you.

Well it was a fierce auction for it, so I ended up laying down some serious TBR cash to get it.

When I bought it, I never had the UK's o2 Telecom in mind as a potential buyer though. Anyone who has travelled the UK and Europe know the name o2 as being a big cell provider there. They're actually owned by a spanish company, but they're one of the top 4 cell providers in the UK, and have naming rights to something like 20 stadiums in the UK. I know they at least used to be pretty popular in Germany as well, as I remember seeing them sponsoring arenas there as well. But I never considered them (the .com owners) as a potential buyer here in Canada because its a big leap to go from business in europe to business in Canada. Yes, there is/was Virgin, but even virgin.ca seems to be dead now. While I suppose the UK/Spanish o2 could try to get into Canada, we all know how monopolistic the existing telecom situation is here in Canada and I'm sure the political influence would find a way to keep them or any other foreign telecom big-boys from coming to play here.

The reason I went after it is that it is a fantastic domain in its own right and "o2" is a very popular term already in use with many hundreds if not 1000+ existing .CA domain names, not to mention numerous existing Canadian business names and even hundreds of existing Canadian trademarks. And since the past predicts the future, I know there will be many more wanting to use the term o2 in the future as well. So I am very optimistic long term with o2.ca and a future start up wanting it. There is a lot of potential confusion in the market with the hundreds of existing o2{word}.ca domains, the only real way to build a big brand without additional confusion and major leakage will be to own the one and only o2.ca itself.

Oh, another reason I went after it was simply because I already owned o3.ca too Its the chemical formula for ozone.

domains said:

@rlm are most of your recent inquiries on .ca's, or other tlds?

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Most of my portfolio is .CA, and most of the .com's I have aren't for sale anyway, so there's no real comparison I can make there.