How are customers purchasing a £9.99 item for £7.99?

[webuyibuyyoubuy1]

Hello

Often, a customer is able to purchase a £9.99 item for £7.99 and I cannot understand why? A few facts which this is not...

1. It is not related to coupon

2. It is not related to any sales event

3. It is not related to VAT; £9.99 - 20% VAT would equal £8.33 sales price

This has been going on for years. I've contact eBay a number of times and they are just as baffled, they say they will past on for investigation and email me results, but I never heard back from them.

Any ideas what is going on here please and how to stop it?

Thank you

[1956glyn]

Hi on another account?

Hard to even try and offer any kind  of  explanation without seeing an affected listing.

[m25jet]

To be honest I can't say that I know for sure the true reason as to why this is happening.  Perhaps it's due to an eBay glitch as a result of yet another unnecessary site "improvement"?  However, if nothing else seems to work, then perhaps in an effort to combat the problem, you should work out how much you are losing on average as a result of the problem and then raise the asking price/auction start price by that much so as to compensate for the amount you are losing as a result.  It might be useful as a workaround option until such time as eBay finally get around to devoting some time to fixing this problem for good, although I wouldn't hold your breath with regards to the hope that eBay will actually bother to do anything in order to resolve the issue.

[bravergrace]

A couple of suggestions to look at:

- Have you accidentally set up automatic Best Offers on the item?

- Have you accidentally set up some sort of "dynamic pricing" or "dynamic offers" on this item, that means eBay can alter the price on its own whim?

As for a way to solve the problem, is it just one (or a few) listings, or more general?  If you end the affected listing(s), and redo them from scratch (not just by "relist" or "sell similar", that should get rid of any problems that are specific to that listing.

Without seeing the listing (or one of the listings) concerned, it's obviously impossible for anyone to spot the problem.

[best-range · Accepted solution]

It happened to me as well some time ago, apparently the "sent automatic offers" was enabled, although don't remember ever setting it up, as would not even know how to do it or that such an option even existed.

Upon checking I found 5 items that were set to send offers automatically some with very low prices - again I'd never sent offers that low, so it's a mystery to me.

Anyway good news is you can disable it, if indeed this is the problem.

To check if you have automatic offers enabled, go to your seller hub "Search" page & check:

Let me know if this was the case with you as well, thanks.

[webuyibuyyoubuy1]

Oh my God, thank you, thank you, thank you.... this was the reason! I too never remember setting this up, and yet it's running on two listings! I would never have found this, so big thanks!

It's bizarre that not even eBay customer support could suggest checking this, and eBay really should make it clear somewhere, anywhere, that this was a sale from "Sent Offer" (like they highlight sales from ads) to avoid confusion. 

[1956glyn]

Glad the mystery is now sorted 🙂

Come here for advice first........the responders who are members like you are really good and often have a much more in depth knowledge that CS.

[best-range]

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@webuyibuyyoubuy1 wrote:

Oh my God, thank you, thank you, thank you.... this was the reason! I too never remember setting this up, and yet it's running on two listings! I would never have found this, so big thanks!

It's bizarre that not even eBay customer support could suggest checking this, and eBay really should make it clear somewhere, anywhere, that this was a sale from "Sent Offer" (like they highlight sales from ads) to avoid confusion. 

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Glad it was helpful to you.

Hope you managed to disable the automatic offers, it has taken me a while to learn how to do it.