I regularly receive uneducated offers that some might consider “lowball” offers. I don’t take them personally, and I don’t respond rudely (if I respond at all) because I don’t generally find that to be productive. Most of the time when I respond, I simply tell the person their offer is far too low.
I recently received an offer for Lilac.com that I thought was amusing enough to share. The prospective buyer offered to pay me $1.99/year for Lilac.com. I assume the buyer was interested in leasing the name for that price.
Nevermind that I turned down several 5 figure  offers for Lilac.com, and nevermind that the domain name was created 20 years ago, meaning that hundreds of dollars have been paid in registration fees alone (not even considering the acquisition cost). This person submitted an offer that is way below the wholesale annual registration cost of .com domain names from the registry!
Of course, I think this silly offer is a product of ignorance rather than being a lowball offer, but I found it amusing. My response was measured, and I told the prospect that he should seek out an unregistered domain name with his  budget and hope to find a coupon code to defray the registration fee.
Anyway, I thought you might find this offer amusing.
http://www.lilacc.com is taken too. Perhaps he/she can shoot for lillacc.com
I’ll go $2.00/Year, Offer Valid for 24 Hours and you pay Escrow fees 🙂
I used to get a good handful of these usually more like $10-$50 offers. Now I set my own sales pages and market sales pages up with $500-$750 minimum bids to avoid low or cold offers.
Did turn a $50 initial offer few years ago before I set minimum bids up into $7500 on a registration fee expired domain I picked up but not an everyday occurrence.
Amusing: $1.99 a year for Lila.com. (Check if really meant $1.99 million.)
Not amusing:
http://domainincite.com/21215-rant-governments-raise-yet-another-un-threat-to-icann/
Lilac*
LOL!
Elliot,
Maybe the prospective buyer got confused with commas and was offering $1.99 million?
I also respond when the offers are “low ball”, but that usually means at least $10,000 USD.
LOL — Lilac.com for $1.99 per year? Er, no thanks, but thank you for your generous offer.
Steve,
I’ve seen you comment a few times on Elliot’s posts. Would you mind communicating with me directly? I’d like your advice.
Jon
WarehouseBroker at gmail
Aside from the cheapness, $1.99 offers are funny for another reason.
Usually those charm prices are designed to make amounts seem LESS than they are – not $2 but $1.99. As a psychological gimmick, that makes sense when sellers are pitching buyers. But what on EARTH does a buyer hope to achieve by making his offer seem lower than it is?
Believe me Elliot, people like them are actually STUPID!! It seems paying Pounds 150 rent a month for Oxford Street commercial space. Reply him silly.. Double silly even..