Offers and counter offers - a stab in the dark

[clarke6394]

The new 'buyer protection' fees seem to result in buyer and seller speaking two different languages when it comes to offers and counter offers. 

As a seller, I want say £10 for an item so that's the offer I'm looking for. If I tell a buyer that, and they offer £10, it arrives with me as an offer of £9. Because of the eBay fees - which I don't see, but the buyer does.

And if I make a counter offer, if I want £12, how do I know what to suggest as my counter offer? Do I have to try to calculate what that will be with the fees added on? And if so, is there a ready reckoner for doing that?

[plum993]

The buyers BP price is shown as included in the offer,see here,Buyer Protection - information for sellers | eBay 

[clarke6394]

Thanks for the reply. I get that, but my question was more about what happens subsequently, with counter offers, or just message conversations about what offer I (as a seller) would take.

I receive an offer of £90 but I want £95.

If I just submit that as a counter offer, that seems to translate to the seller as £95 including the buyers protection fee. And I just get back another £90 offer!

Or I get a message asking what I'd accept. I say £95, get a message saying OK, and, again, just get an offer of £90. 

Because what I see as £90 (net of buyer protection fee) the buyer sees as gross - and makes no addition for the fee.

Both of these are examples of what's actually happened to me in recent days . So whatever is meant to happen, clearly isn't. and we end up misunderstanding what amounts we're talking about.

[plum993]

This has been raised buy other sellers and ebay CS have answered the issue:

"I can totally understand your frustration here as when buyer makes offer or bids on the items listed by private seller, the offer amount is inclusive of buyer protection fees which then misleads as buyer makes offer correctly but private seller receives notification and amount less than the actual amount they had made offer for".

Cs has forwarded this issue to the developer team in the hope it gets sorted.

[clarke6394]

Thank you, 

It's good to know that it's not just me, and is recognised as an issue. 

I can't help feel part of the problem is eBay's strategy of trying to 'hide' the buyer protection fee and not being transparent about it. That relies on the buyer and the seller each seeing different amounts for every transaction - and that works for a straightforward transaction, but falls down as soon as anything else happens!

Hopefully they'll get this one resolved - thanks again

[red_magpie]

You would have thought that eBay would have trialled and tested the new system before it went live. It's astonishing that they hadn't even thought about the obvious problem with offers before launching it.