topic Re: make an offer in Buying

make an offer

wotused — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 08:28:44 GMT

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.

Re: make an offer

dylan11235813 — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 08:47:17 GMT

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.

Re: make an offer

phorum_junkie* — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 08:50:50 GMT

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

Re: make an offer

bsal6160 — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 09:12:07 GMT

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.

Re: make an offer

davewil1964 — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 09:47:31 GMT

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.

Re: make an offer

digital*ghost — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:03:23 GMT

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.

Re: make an offer

thecatspjs — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 10:48:00 GMT

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

Re: make an offer

ekrabappel — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 23:10:58 GMT

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.

Re: make an offer

springyzone — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 00:17:07 GMT

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.

Re: make an offer

tonalidesigns — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 02:09:49 GMT

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).

Re: make an offer

springyzone — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 04:49:00 GMT

That might be one of the main problems with the make an offer system then.

When I see it, I just assume that it is an item a seller is willing to come down a little bit on. Some sellers only have one of the item in any case.

It would never have occurred to me it applied mainly to multiple purchases, although if a seller had multiples and I 'made an offer' for several at the same time, I would expect to be able to buy them all at the same price.

But make an offer when a seller has several of the items is a definite signal not to 'buy it now'. Why would anyone, when they know they could make a close offer and most likely get a dollar or two off?

I don't know if I would be that keen on it if I were a shop seller either.

Re: make an offer

digital*ghost — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 08:54:10 GMT

In some categories, the variation listing format can solve the problem of offering discounts for higher quantities, just by having different quantities as a variation, eg 1 for $5, 2 for $8, 10 for $35 etc (you can't use Best Offer on variation format listings, and you can't name the variation 'Quantity' because it's a default field name that's not removable, but I see a lot of listings like that and have used it that way myself).

Re: make an offer

tonalidesigns — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:48:31 GMT

The other issue from a sellers point of view is that once you put "best offer" on an item and there have been sales (even if those sales occured BEFORE you put best offer on the item) you can't remove it without completely cancelling the item (and losing sales history).

We'd LOVE to be able to use it for a short term promo on some items (just to add a bit of fun to the business) but this isn't possible - yes, we can use the "sale" process, but that's not quite the same.

Re: make an offer

tonalidesigns — Thu, 19 Sep 2013 10:59:10 GMT

Digital - whilst you are correct, there is a finite limit to the number of variations you can offer (I think it is 102 or something like that). If you have 17 colours and three sizes (which we have for many items) if you start adding quantity variations you are left with just 1 or 2.

It can also be confusing to buyers if quantity is a variation (as quantity is one of the default variations anyway).

It's not simple which is why in the end we opted out of using best offer.

Re: make an offer

nicole-n-daz — Fri, 20 Sep 2013 03:12:47 GMT

Its up to the seller what they accept,it is there item until it is sold.

So if somebody does not accept it ,then bad luck.

I recently removed best offer from all the items in my store that the ebay system would allow,I was sick of people making silly offers

I have since made up for this by making everything free post.

And guess what ? The items that you can still make an offer on which have free post am still getting ridiculous offers on.

This morning somebody offered me $30.00 for a PSP that i have have $95.00 on.

Too many buyers abue this system,so the easy way is to get rid of it.

Re: make an offer

marjorysgal — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 08:24:11 GMT

I am OK with sellers who at least decline the offer. Those who don't bother replying to any of 3 offers earn a place in my list of sellers I'll never buy from!

Re: make an offer

davewil1964 — Sun, 06 Dec 2020 10:02:53 GMT

I'm sure we are all grateful for your thoughts, SEVEN years after the fact.

If you make 3 lowball offers, there's a fair chance you won't be able to buy from those sellers. So your outrage is probably misplaced. Maybe try making reasonable offers.