Making an offer to a buyer

[moonlight-rhapsody]

I thought I'd try making an offer to a buyer to see how it works.

The item price is £5.53 plus BPF = £6.00

I want to make an offer to a buyer so that they see £5.60 (just over 6% off).  Am I right in thinking that I would send the offer as £5.14 and ebay would add the BPF to make it up to £5.60?

I want to make it 6% to allow for the buyer making a counter-offer of 10% so that I can see how the system works.

[style_wise · Accepted solution]

Yes, that's correct. Please be aware that currently when you send an offer the Buyer pays BPF on top of your offer. But when they counter offer you pay the BPF!

[suelel1968]

I always make sure counter offers are switched off. It gets way to confusing now. 

[moonlight-rhapsody]

@style_wise 

Thanks for confirming, and I've gone ahead with it 😊

@suelel1968 

I agree it's very confusing and it took me a ridiculous amount of time to work out the percentages and figures for both me and the buyer.  I've left counter-offers on so that I can see how it works, but I'll be surprised if a sale will result because ebay sends offers to people even if all they've done is click through rather than watched, so they're not really interested.

I'm waiting for the day when the AI bot sends an offer to itself and accepts it! 🤣

[suelel1968]

Hi Moonlight @moonlight-rhapsody 

I always set minimum offers (I really only allow offers because people used to say it gets you a better search ranking - who knows ) But when counter offers are on the counter offer can be below the minimum set and then BPF is included as well, It's to much of a faff.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

I agree, it's too much of a faff.  Nobody's bitten at the offer, and considering the time I spent trying to fathom out the mathematics of the BPF, it's just not worth it.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

Well the item sold at the offered price, no counter-offer was made so I still haven't seen how the BPF works with counter-offers but no matter. 

The arithmetic isn't like when I was at school.  My arithmetic says item price £5.14 x 7% = 36p + 10p.  Buyer pays £5.60.  Ebay's arithmetic says they pay £5.58.  Only a couple of pence difference, but it would have made the difference between a tick and a big red cross when I was at school! 😀

[sml192]

The flat fee is 'up to 10p'.  In most instances it seems to actually be 8p. 

[eastern-lights]

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@moonlight-rhapsody wrote:

Well the item sold at the offered price, no counter-offer was made so I still haven't seen how the BPF works with counter-offers but no matter. 

The arithmetic isn't like when I was at school.  My arithmetic says item price £5.14 x 7% = 36p + 10p.  Buyer pays £5.60.  Ebay's arithmetic says they pay £5.58.  Only a couple of pence difference, but it would have made the difference between a tick and a big red cross when I was at school! 😀

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I have a theory that all Ebay calculations are carried out in US dollars. So in the UK Pounds Sterling are converted to US dollars, with rounding errors, BBF is calculated and added on, then the result is converted back to Pounds Sterling, with rounding errors.  🙄