Expectation of sellers with regard to best offer

[richard1957]

If a seller has created a bid situation and there is a best offer option, is the expectation of the seller that he/she expects an offer higher than the starting bid?  If a seller created a buy it now situation,  and there is a best offer option, is the expectation of the seller that he or she expects an offer below the buy it now price? Or, would you say it's wrong to assign (for want of a better word) any expectation, on the part of a seller? Thanks.

[**peaseblossom**]

I think generally sellers expect higher offers with auctions and lower with Buy It Now.

[*vyolla*]

It's entirely your call, you must have a price in mind that you'd be happy to accept.

No matter what the listing format, if you receive an offer that's a price you're happy to accept then accept it. Or, you can decline the buyers offer or make a counter offer at the price you want. 

However, I can only see one live listing up and running on your account (for a sewing machine) and it's an auction style listing with no Best Offer feature on it.

[richard1957]

I'm actually enquiring as a buyer.

[tressygirl]

Adding to the other correct answers and observations,  I would agree to your last statement,  and also would not assign / guess at any incoming offers.

They can be reasonable a pound or so less than asking price for example,  so worth selling perhaps,  or totally ' cheeky'  and that's worth a polite No !

[richard1957]

Does "best offer" imply that a seller will accept a lower price than is shown?

[m25jet · Accepted solution]

With a Buy It Now listing, if the seller has included the Best Offer option then it indicates that he/she is open to considering offers that fall below the asking price (within reason).  However, when you see the Best Offer option on an auction, you already know the minimum amount that the seller is prepared to accept for the item, as this is shown as the starting price for the bidding.  Unlike Buy It Now listings, however, when the Best Offer option appears on an auction listing this is to give a potential buyer the option to submit an offer that is high enough to tempt the seller into accepting the Best Offer and ending the auction at that point, rather than having to go through the process of outbidding all of your rivals once a bid has been submitted and the auction has started, thus avoiding a scenario where you may well end up losing the auction and not ending up with the item.  If somebody places a bid on the auction then the Best Offer option vanishes and cannot be reinstated, whereas on a Buy It Now listing that has the Best Offer option included you have three chances at submitting a decent offer to the seller that would persuade him/her to sell the item for the price offered.

[tressygirl]

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@richard1957 wrote:

Does "best offer" imply that a seller will accept a lower price than is shown?

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It could imply this,  but to be honest many sellers may list their items, and accidentally add a Best offer option,  or copy a ' Sell Similar ' not realising or checking,  that this option has been added.

As a buyer always worth sending in an offer through that option if it's there, one thing to be aware of,  there's been a new ' feature ' recently added when sending in an offer you may be asked to add a payment method,  if the offer is accepted an immediate payment from your selected method is made.

This introduced to stop the many non payments when offers are made.  To be fair sellers were not told of this,  and still some / many,  may not know they are opted into this.  Only a seller can opt out if they wish.

[a45heaven]

With the major problems associated with the Checkouts, combined posting, messaging and other issues, I personally consider Offers as a gimmick to be best avoided. 

For a buyer its a bigger issue directly - to save a couple of quid, is it worth the hassle (Including allowing ebay access to your payment source)?

For a seller do you really want the communication issues and irrate buyers who can adversely affect you in the future.

Sell through the normal methods and hope maybe one day will perform as they are supposed to do.

Little to gain , more to lose - forget it.

[richard1957]

The problem with paying immediately  on an accptance of an offer is that it prevents paying by cash on a collect in person situation.

[tressygirl]

Yep,  that introduction for the immediate payment has quite a few drawbacks,  you cannot pay in cash or indeed by different methods of pay,  no click and collect option and sellers cannot combine postage.

If are your thinking of making an offer,   might be best to  send a message ask the seller if they are opted into this,  and could they deselect it for you, so you can pay by a different method etc.  They don't have to oblige of course, but worth an ask,  as said,  some do not know they're even opted into this.

[a45heaven]

and inabilty not to have combined shipping on multiple items bought from same seller.

[m25jet]

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@richard1957 wrote:

The problem with paying immediately  on an accptance of an offer is that it prevents paying by cash on a collect in person situation.

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Admittedly, this is something of a pain in the backside; however, there is a way around this that does not breach any eBay policies.

If you wish to submit a Best Offer for an item you want to buy but are hesitant about doing so as you do not want to be forced into providing your credit or debit card details for immediate payment then the best option would be to contact the seller via the Ask Seller A Question listing and enquire as to whether he/she has the feature activated on his/her account to require immediate payment upon receipt of an accepted Best Offer.  If the seller has set this up but you don't trust eBay with your card details (I don't, which is why I removed my card details from my eBay account as soon as I became aware of this change to the Best Offer option) then you may well end up in a situation whereby you cannot purchase that item.  However, what you could do as an alternative would be to make PayPal your default payment option when making Best Offers, although you would have to keep tabs on the balance in the account and make sure that you had enough money to cover the total cost of the item if the seller were to accept the offer and payment was subsequently taken automatically from your PayPal account.

In the event that you want to make a Best Offer for a collection in person only item it is always best to pay in cash, which is where this new system that eBay has implemented can be described as being somewhat flawed.  The reason I say this is because with Collection In Person Only items if you go to collect the item and it becomes clear that it is not as described you can just tell the seller "I've changed my mind" and walk away with your money still in your wallet.  If, on the other hand, you had already paid for the item as a result of eBay automatically taking the money as soon as the offer was accepted you would have to open an eBay Item Not As Described case in order to get your money back, an inconvenience that you could do without.

One other aspect of this new system that I don't like is that it makes it easier for scammers to get hold of your money, as eBay are actively assisting them in taking the payment straightaway.  In the event that the item doesn't actually exist and it's just a listing with a nice lot of photos on it then the scammer has got your money courtesy of eBay and then you've got to get it back again by opening an eBay case against the seller scammer!  Given that eBay can be damned awkward at times I'd rather not chance making a Best Offer to any seller unless I knew for certain that he/she offered a Collection In Person option on the listing and was OK with the buyer paying for the item via cash on collection.

[magpiecorner1]

I'm a seller who offers best offers, almost always in bin items, and on some auction items.

Always happy to negotiate, especially where the buyers want to buy more than one item.  Best offers, far from being a gimmick, work very effectively in the used and vintage area of selling on eBay.   I accept offers below start price in auctions.

As a buyer, and indeed I buy far more than the vast majority of buyers, I'm a fan of offers, and make loads.  I tend to make offers below start price on auctions towards the end of the auction.  Some folk have the settings to only accept offers over start price, but I frequently get offers below start price accepted.

So the answer is, often yes, often just depends on the seller and you never know.

Never does to be close minded about any means of getting a sale, offers are a great way of gauging interest and pricing, and being able to negotiate and indeed to kite fly are two of the joys of selling, and especially selling on eBay.

[237ben]

On a few, rare, occasions I've had offers accepted which were below the auction starting price. I was essentially chancing my arm (with minimum expectations) on sellers coming to terms with the fact that they’d been over optimistic with their starting prices.

On other occasions I've had sellers message me in high dudgeon about my "offensive" offers, which simply used amounts suggested by the eBay screen. I regularly get counter-offers which suggest that some sellers regard a 2% discount to be the height of generosity. My last offer from a seller lopped an ungenerous 17p off the BIN figure.

One thing I’ve learnt. That is not to expect any degree of consistency, or even rationality, across sellers or buyers.