The Wallapop buyers who never buy: haggling, doubts and reservations

Those who haggle, hesitate or ask for reservations: a portrait of the buyer who never buys

The pattern repeats itself with almost statistical fidelity. The one who asks for more photos to check a detail, the one who promises to get back to you, the one who asks whether the item works even though the listing makes it clear, the one who saves it to favourites and disappears. None of them buys. The list circulates among second-hand sellers as a kind of taxonomy of wasted time, and the diagnosis agrees on the essentials: doubt is the first sign that the deal will never close.

Which buyer profiles never close a deal

The range of cases is wide. There's the one who asks you to hold the item until Friday and never comes back. The one who asks if it works when the listing already says so. The one who offers half the price without even saying hello. The one who pesters you for a week over a fairly valuable item and, just when they seem ready to commit, starts squeezing again because shipping costs and the platform fee are getting out of hand. And the one who opens the conversation, gets a quick reply and answers that they've already bought it elsewhere, sometimes within minutes.

Lowball offers deserve their own reading. Some argue that people who offer far below the asking price usually do so to resell and pocket the difference. It's not a universal suspicion, but it fits a market where the same item changes hands several times before reaching the end user.

Sellers have their own catalogue too

The other side of the coin doesn't come out much better. There are sellers who have to be talked into shipping, sellers who accept a purchase and then sell to someone else, sellers who price a used item at almost the cost of a new one, and sellers who promise to ship in the morning and take three days. Distrust, then, is not one-directional: it is the natural state of a platform where both sides arrive with their guard up.

One case sums up the asymmetry. A seller drops the price of an out-of-print book from 30 to 20 euros, then to 15 with the warning that it's the final price, and receives an offer of 11. The anger is understandable. The buyer, meanwhile, believes they are negotiating. Both are right and neither is.

Is second-hand shopping still worth it?

The answer depends on the type of buyer. Those looking for electronics that are no longer manufactured find in these channels an outlet that doesn't exist in the retail circuit: the seller gets some money and the buyer gets the part they need for a repair. There the exchange works because both gain something that isn't measured only in euros.

For everyone else, the experience feels more like an obstacle course. Some defend meeting in person because it lets them discover neighbourhoods they would never otherwise visit. And some have simply given up: they prefer to buy new or go to second-hand shops, even if it costs more, because they value their peace of mind over the savings.

The most unsettling figure is this: in a market that prides itself on efficiency and on connecting strangers, the dominant complaint is not price. It's time. Hours of conversation, questions answered, reservations never honoured and offers that never materialise. Second-hand selling works, but at a cost that shows up in no official statistic.