Make an offer.

[lesroux]

Is anyone else fed-up with sellers who put 'make an offer' on their listings when they clearly have no intention of lowering the price. It's happened to me several times and all it does is waste your time. I really think ebay should do something about sellers who do this.

[tressygirl]

Impossible for eBay to ' do something about this'.  

To be fair it's easy when making a listing to inadvertently  add a Best Offer on your listing.  Also,  without adding a minimum price accepted some do receive the most daft offers,  so sellers ignore these,  eBay could never be judge or jury as to what is acceptable an offer on an item they have never physically seen, so couldn't do anything about any refusal to accept an offer.

Private sellers have seen a recent massive change in selling procedures,  and listings have been automatically  changed to accommodate this,  for most,  an unwelcome change.  Many changes have included different options sellers have not themselves included so may not have even noticed if a Best Offer was included now in their listing.

Always worth sending in an offer but please do not be annoyed if not accepted there could be many reasons for the refusal.

@lesroux 

[jckl1957]

Is this with auction items or buy it now sales?

On an auction item, the seller might be looking for an offer higher than the starting price.

I could start an auction at £20, hoping to get £40.  However, I would be happy to accept £30 so I would add 'Best Offer' and set it to reject offers below £30.

A potential buyer could then buy the item without going through the bidding process.

As stated, Ebay can't make sellers accept offers.  If you feel that making offers is wasting your time, you don't have to do it.

[john1297576]

I suspect you have no understanding of how offers work.

Item for sale by auction at £20 with best offer.

Buyer can make a lower offer, or a higher offer, or if they want to buy, but no more than  start price, they can offer £20. That can save the waiting up to 10 days for auction to end. A sensible seller will only list at a price they are happy with, so likely to accept and get paid faster.

Offers for BINS, can only be lower than price, but gives much more choice for auctions.

As already said if you do not like offers, do not make them.

[lesroux]

I didn't know you couldn't use ' make an offer ' on auction listings. I was
talking about ' buy it now '.

[lesroux]

I've been on ebay as a buyer and seller for over 20 years so I have plenty
of experience, thank you. I'm talking about ' buy it now' sellers who have
no intention of lowering the price but offer the ' make an offer ' option
anyway. They just waste the buyer's time.

[lesroux]

That should have said ' could use '. Predictive text altered it.