make an offer

[wotused]

Abit frustrated when I found an item that had buy it now or make an offer.  The price was $39.99 buy it now. There were already 3 offers that had been declined, so thought Id make an offer, my first offer was $25 and declined, my second offer was $30 and declined so I thought gee what are they going to give.... so I thought I might as well offer $35 and AGAIN it was declined!!!! it was $4.99 off the buy it now price and they still didnt accept it....... Please explain.

[dylan11235813 · Accepted solution]

I have the 'best offer' in my listings mainly for bulk orders but will usually counter a low offer for single purchases with around 10% off depending on the product.

[phorum_junkie* · Accepted solution]

I too use 10% in most cases so on a $39.99 item the lowest acceptble offer would be $36. Nor unreasonable IMO.

[bsal6160]

offering $35 for a best offer on a $39.99 is absolutely fair. IMO why even bother having a best offer on it in the first place if they are not willing to take that. some sellers just seem not to understand how ridiculous that is. i understand the seller wants to make a profit but declining your best probably only means it will not sell now.

[davewil1964]

I price my items at what they're worth. The only time I offer 'best offer' is for those that I'm not sure of the value. I  MIGHT accept offers 20% below, but that is MY choice. Not the buyer's. if it doesn't sell it doesn't sell. But more often than not it does. At BIN.

[digital*ghost]

I use Best Offer on select items, but I would only decline an offer outright if it was so low I can't take the buyer seriously (eg $5 on an item priced at $100 - I don't see that as someone genuinely interested in buying the item who will be prepared to negotiate a fair price).

If an offer is lower than what I am prepared to take, but is still within the realm of reasonable, then rather than decline, I'll counter-offer as it at least gives the buyer a clear indication of the ball-park price I'm going to accept. Personally, it's a bit silly to decline 3 offers in a row, as you were obviously interested in buying it and were prepared to go up on your offer - a counter-offer at some point would have been more appropriate, IMHO, or a note explaining under what circumstances a lower offer would be accepted if it's reserved for bulk or multiple purchases. Still, dave's right in it being the seller's perogative to choose to miss out on a sale altogether. 

[thecatspjs]

How low I will go with best offer depends on how cash flow is going in a nut-shell.

[ekrabappel]

I once bought some second hand golf balls that  were advertised at $30 for $27.50 using best offer (accepted sutomatically). A month later I needed some more (was a real hacker then) and saw the same seller offering the same packages of used golf balls for $30 so again put in an offer of $27.50 - DECLINED automatically. Go figure.

[springyzone]

From what I can make out (unless it has changed recently), you get a chance to make  only 3 offers and sellers can set it at a figure where an offer is automatically accepted and a figure under which  it is automatically declined. The middle bit, I take it, is where they might elect to manually examine offers and decide whether to accept or not.

If the price is around $40, I would say the odds of you having an offer automatically accepted at $25 would be very long. About my chances of winning lotto this weekend. I would expect it to be automatically declined, to tell the truth.

In fact, I would think an offer of $30 on a $40 item would be auto declined in most cases. By all means try your luck, but don't expect to get it at 25% off.

So if you were serious about wanting it, I reckon you wasted your first bid. You only get 3 chances, so why go for something as unlikely as $25? My advice would be maybe if you really want to get lowest price, start at no lower than 20-25% off and go from there.

I don't know the seller's lowest price, obviously, but at a guess, I would say you would probably start to move into range at $36.

Okay, it is not a lot off but even if you pay $36 or $37, that's better than $39.99, isn't it.

As far as I can see, there is no reason why a seller has to accept your offer of $35, most selelrs probably only offer a small discount. I think you only feel astonished because $35 is so far above your first bid so in your mind, you have offered 'close'. But the dealer only had a small amount, maybe 5-10% in mind.

[tonalidesigns]

We used to have best offer on pretty well everything - our main reason was that with "free" postage we wanted to make it attractive for multiple item purchasers. It didn't work - pretty welll all the offers we received were from single item buyers while almost all multi item buyers didn't make an offer!!! It was more trouble than it was worth and apart from a few specific items (where we have detailed price guidelines for quantity purchases) we've pretty well removed it altogether. We find other ways to compensate the multiple item buyer.

We DID however always respond to a best offer explaining the reason why we didn't accept that particular offer (and suggesting a price we would accept).