Did I set my auto decline too high for Best Offer?

[spacetomatoes]

I listed a dress for $70 with an auto decline of offers under $55. Is that a reasonable expectation with best offer? Or do most buyers expect to get more than $15 off?

I just had someone offer their way up from $45 and hit $55 on their 4th offer. I'll be taking the offer but I was just wondering whether I should keep 'Best Offer'? Expect to take more off the price? Or I could lower the price manually after a while instead without Best Offer?

Thanks in advance for your thoughts 🙂

[mbselections00 · Accepted solution]

Just to put forward another point of view, which involves totally different items, so a slightly different perspective.

I know there are some who may not agree with this, (lol, I know there are certainly buyers who don't like it, which is unfortunate), but as I sell low value items, I have it on all my listings to try and encourage buyers who may be interested in buying multiples of a certain item or several different items.  So if I get a very low offer for just one single item, I send a counter offer (usually with a tiny discount) and add a note explaining.  Quite often they will then accept my counter offer and go on to make more reasonable offers on several items.  So it works very well for me.  I actually have a customer at the moment who made a low offer on an item, I counter offered and explained & she has since gone ahead and made offers on around 60 items !

I have also had buyers message with a list of items they would like to buy & ask, would you accept $*** for these ?  So it does seem to plant that seed that you are negotiable

[cq_tech]

I wish buyers would realise that if "Best Offer" doesn't appear, then I'm not interested in receiving offers on my items, and if a buyer does make me an unsolicited offer, I immediately block them. I do this because last year I received a couple of ridiculously low offers on a couple of music DVDs I was selling, and very politely explained that I wasn't interested in accepting any offers.

The buyer then purchased both DVDs at the listed price, and trashed my DSRs when he left me feedback. The mongrel gave me 2s for Item Description and Postage Time, despite my posting them almost immediately, and at a postage cost of less than stamp value. When I complained to eBay they weren't the least bit interested so I now have 2 defects because my toerag of a buyer took offense at having his unsolicited offers rejected.

What really hurt was the fact that only a few weeks later, the buyer was made NARU for some undisclosed reason, so he's now long gone yet I still have to wear his unfair and totally unwarranted defects for another 6 months or so. 😞

[spacetomatoes]

@ausbargainbasement - What?? People don't really make such low offers for expensive items do they?

@mbselections00 - Glad to hear that it's worked out so well for you 😄 I do want to appear negotiable so I hope the Best Offer will get my items sold quickly at acceptable prices 🙂

@cq - That's terrible to hear about 😞 It's a shame sellers have to be so cautious these days. Though, I have taken offers for some of my buy it now clothes when the buyer has a good history. Apologies if I've inadvertently encouraged undesirable behaviour 😧

[ausbargainbasement]

Hi spacetomatoes,

yes you do get some ridicoulus offers on items worth several hundred dollars, but thats wher the auto reject system works for you, you dont even know about them untill you look at the offer history, yes have also taken offers outside of the auto system, mostly comes from buyers who have used up their 3 goes, and realised they need to make a more sensible offer, and if is within reason will accept it

[mbselections00]

That really sux cq  !  and it is so unfair that ebay show such little respect for sellers.  Buyers who behave like that really should be NARU'd immediately - ebay have the ability to see that buyers history with you & thus the defects should have been removed immediately.

[dresscode2479]

Just thought I'd share one of my experiences with 'best offer' as a seller.

This was when it was first introduced in Australia. I listed a pair of jeans for $50 buy it now or best offer. I had my settings set to auto accept offers over $40.01

A very new ebayer put in an offer of $80 and it was automatically accepted by Ebay!

I tick the 'immediate payment required' box on all my buy it now listings so she paid immediately and left glowing feedback once she received the jeans.

I have never had that happen since - lol!

[mbselections00]

sorry space, probably won't make any difference, but I forgot to mention, I don't set any minimum amount, because the minimum I will accept really depends on the individual circumstance.  Eg. if someone is making an offer on just one item, I will not go as low as someone offering on multiple items - for the obvious reasons

[glenbankloel · Accepted solution]

We use Make an offer on nearly all our items. I think that when we get a ridiculously low offer it is the buyers way to get us to tell them via a counter offer what is the lowest we will accept. So I usually have a chuckle, especially when it is really really low, and go OK I know what you are doing, and work out what we will accept, send it back to them and then wait. Probably 75% of the time they accept the counter offer. I don't view it as being rude, just an attempt to suss us out.

Our counter offers are worked out via combination of how old the item is, how long been listed, is it something that normally would or would not sell, do we want to get rid of it, and how are our current sales tracking. So accepting offers or not is not set in concrete and will depend on quite a few things.

Having said all that, if the original offer is around 15-20% off the price, I do think that is probably fair and reasonable, and 90% of the time will accept if we can.

Some items we don't  use Make an Offer as there isn't much room to move so keep them at the lowest margin, and just list as BIN. So we have a mix of listings and find that this works for us, but who knows what is around the corner and we may change our thoughts as changes happen with us or indeed with ebays policies. 

[cq_tech]

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@mbselections00 wrote:

That really sux cq  !  and it is so unfair that ebay show such little respect for sellers.  Buyers who behave like that really should be NARU'd immediately - ebay have the ability to see that buyers history with you & thus the defects should have been removed immediately.

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Unfortunately, it has become patently clear over the past 12 months or so that eBay couldn't give a rat's ar$e about its sellers, while at the same time treating its buyers with kid gloves and bending over backwards to keep them buying. They obviously fail to realise that having all the buyers in the world isn't going to do much for their bottom line if there are no sellers because they've all left eBay in disgust at the treatment being meted out to them. I've said it before and I'll say it again - eBay is being run by a bunch of useless tossers who wouldn't have the slightest idea of how to run a successful business, and you only need look at their bottom line to see the proof of that; they're sinking almost as fast as the Titanic did!