Do you say Thank You?

It's been said before, but I was reminded when it happened to me again this week: When a seller places an ad, how hard is it to briefly respond when someone emails indicating they'd like to buy, replying thanks but the item is sold/sale pending as of now, instead of simply quitting responding at all? I wondered for two days before this seller finally tagged their ad sale pending, the only way I knew why there was no reply to my offer. This is rude -- if a seller goes out to solicit response he ought to at least acknowledge it when people take the time to read his ad and email their interest, regardless of whether he agreed to sell to someone else. I always do it. Just common courtesy.

Whether I have already sold an item or it is sale pending, I always reply to any questions. What's frustrating sometimes, i.e, I've already sold the item, marked the ad as SOLD, even wrote in the ad headline and body of the ad that it is sold, sometimes repeating the words ****SOLD, SOLD, SOLD *** with stars and asterisks to shout to all viewers that it is sold, and I'll occasionally still get the e-mail with, "Is this still available?" Now that's frustrating! Can anyone relate to this?

Sherod: Why not just delete the ad then?

Zaikes, I let my ads them run their course after tagging the item Sold because I think it's useful information for the market, as it were. As someone who regularly monitors various products in the classifieds, I like to see that something has sold and not just disappeared.

Zaikesman,
Good question. I usually keep the ad alive until the buyer has received the item and we both give each other the proper( hopefully positive) feedback to finalize the deal. Then I usually cancel the ad. There's always that small chance that the item might have an issue that would cause him to either back out of the deal or return the item. By keeping the ad alive to that point, I can either cancel it or fix the issue and re-list the item. Very rare, but stuff happens.