Low offers and suspicious accounts

[auctiongabble]

The past wk or so the amount of low, stupid offers is crazy!

I try and not let it get to me but people wanting or expecting discounts of upto 40% on items

My usual response is if thats your budget, look for an item priced at that to begin with....

Whenever i get offers i always checkout their feedback first, both received and left for others.

Seeing so many accounts that have not had or left feedback for well over 90 days suddenly pop on ebay to want to make offers.....something just seems very suspicous of these accounts.

Are others experiencing this?

[m25jet]

Although I have long since stopped selling on eBay, having given up selling on the site when eBay got rid of PayPal and introduced Managed Payments, in order to stop this kind of thing from happening one thing that I always used to do when setting up Buy It Now listings with the Best Offer option included was to make the use of the Automatically Accept and Automatically Reject functions.  That way if a potential buyer made me an offer equal to, or greater than, the minimum amount that I was willing to accept the buyer would then see the listing change and the prompt would come up on the screen saying "Your offer has been accepted.  Please pay now", whereas if the buyer made a ridiculously low offer that fell below the minimum price that I was willing to accept then the offer would automatically be rejected.

Given that it's been a while since I last sold anything on the site I suppose it's possible that eBay may have tampered with the listing template and done away with this option, but if it is still available then set up the Automatically Accept and Automatically Reject options so that if a buyer makes you a ridiculously low offer it'll automatically get rejected and you won't be left with silly offers to consider that'll make you look at the amount offered and think "Are you winding me up?"

[auctiongabble]

I recall seeing that a while ago when going through settings, yes you right i think best to set that up on my listings.  It will get rid of  the chancers who have been watching too much bargain hunt programs!

[magpiecorner1]

I used it a few times when it first appeared years ago.  I do 'sell similar' on existing listing to create new listings and missed that the auto accept was too low for the new listings.  East to miss stuff when listing in a hurry.

I've been getting daft offers, had a few at more than 50% off.  I'm very tempted to put some items on at near twice my original price to see if I get any offers.  Not such a daft idea, I frequently see very similar items at twice or even three times the price.  Crazy in the world of new items, but in my world a big variance in prices is quite the norm.

[vintagewatchpart]

Adding best offer to your items almost guarantees you'll get annoying low offers.

As a buyer when I see best offer my assumption is that the seller will take less for the item and that it potentially was listed at a higher value to compensate for the offer.  It seems like more of a feature for people to get rid of unwanted items than for a business.

The feature by eBay almost encourages sellers to list at a higher price. 

I could be wrong of course but I only ever used best offer for about 5 days when first starting out then turned it off after getting annoyed! If something is listed at the best price on the platform or a reasonable price for being a unique piece it should just sell for what it's listed for. I sell around 4 to 5k items per year without the feature and get very little communication on "would you take £x" for this and if I do I politely say it's the cheapest available global price and the same as what the item usually fetches so no sorry and then more often than not they buy it.

[simplyessential_uk]

Agree - I removed this feature as buyers want way more than 10% - Goodness knows what profits they think we make - the only advantage was to look at your buyers FB left for others to see if they would be a potential problem but honestly its not worth the hassle - set in a cap of instant decline or remove altoghether

[weedeochandoris]

LOL, i was looking to buy something the other week with a "best offer" (item was £52) and i offered £46, seller didn't accept so i offered £48 still no joy so what was the best offer even added to the listing for if they weren't prepared to accept any offers, i don't sell much myself but have only used the best offer option once and someone offered me £3 less than i had listed so the "woman from Del Monte she said yes"

[auctiongabble]

I have also come across some sellers like that, what you offered was respectable.  asking for 12% discount i see no problem with that.

Its the ones that want 27% plus discounts (seems to be the same percentage discounts wanted lately) and the ones i get also want a ring resized for free after offering low ball offers.

Only yesterday one wanting 37% discount, shipping to overseas so additional charge to me and then they tell me that theres no real value in used jewellery to justify what they offered ... 🤣

[weedeochandoris]

I would just quit.

I thought my offer was respectable too, but it made me feel like a cheapskate so i ultimatley bought the same item from a different seller so for the sake of a few quid, the first seller lost out on my custom but i suppose that's the way the cookie crumbles.

[bravergrace]

Offering a 12% discount may seem reasonable to you, but there are many sellers on eBay whose profit is considerably less than 12%.  If you sent the offer to one of them, you were asking them to give the item to you.

Unfortunately, many buyers believe that if the seller "accepts offers", it is a personal insult if the seller turns their offer down.

The seller may have an offer button on the listing for many reasons:

- to enable buyers to buy multiple items with a discount.

- to accept and reject near offers automatically - your seller might have it set to "accept all offers less than 90% of the asking price, reject all others".

- to bring cheapskates to the seller's attention so they can block them from buying.  A surprising number of buyers who make offers, go on to demand a partial refund after purchase, or cause expense to the seller by returning the item when there's nothing wrong with it.  If they get an offer, they check the buyer out before deciding whether to accept it.

- they may not be able to remove the offer button (for instance, if there are outstanding offers on the item).

[vinylscot]

Also, if the item was on an auction listings, the seller will be looking for offers higher than the starting price, not lower.

I had an item listed at £25 last week, and received an offer of £10.49. There is no way on earth I was going to accept that offer. It wasn't even worth sending a counter offer.

However, I didn't reject it; I just let it run and it expired a few days later. Of course I have added the idiot to my blocked buyes list, but I'd like to think I "bleep"ed him off by not playing his game..