Seller requesting buyer make their offers 'higher' than the 'Buy it now' price!

[2486buffyslay]

The 'Buy it now' price is US$89.89. I made an offer of US$80.90. I consider that a fair offer, but ask if the seller considers it too low to please make a 'counter offer'. That's a reasonable request. However I noticed when making my offer that as soon as I typed 80.90 a message appeared saying "The buyer will be more likely to respond to your offer if it is around US$104.90".  Obviously I'm neither stupid nor a scammer to make an offer higher than the 'Buy it now' price. I don't know any circumstance where doing so would make sense to the buyer!

My question is who is this message coming from? Is it the seller or eBay? Surely either party should know better than to 'suggest' to the buyer their offer be higher than the 'Buy it now' price! If it's the seller what can I do - report them to eBay? The implication from the message is the seller will ''ignore' any offers made by me unless they're higher, or possibly equal to, the 'Buy it now' price! My 1st offer has 'expired' i.e. NO response from the seller!

[papermoon.lady]

I agree with springy that the suggestion to make an offer higher than the BIN most probably comes from eBay. I haven't made any offers either lately, but last year I did make some offers and got similar suggestions from eBay (to offer more than the BIN). My offers were accepted, and they were not higher than the BIN of course.

[sugar249]

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@2486buffyslay wrote:

It seems the seller had no intention of accepting ANY 'reasonable offers', even if only US$1.00 less than the 'Buy it now' price! In other words they were waiting for someone to use the 'Buy it now'. So why waste several days of my time with offering to take 'offers' as while waiting for a response from the seller I can't really be making an offer with another seller for the same item!

Also as I was unable to buy the item I was unable to leave feedback. Maybe eBay could change this? Afterall one can have a negative experience with a seller without buying anything from them e.g. rude replies to a buyer's inquiries.

So I had no choice but to try the seller with the next best price, which was US$101.19. So I put in my offer and within a few hours they'd responded and accepted!

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How do you know that the seller wouldnt accept an offer of $1 less, you never made it, and you know what it means to assume.    I always respond to offers,  but a seller is not compelled to respond to ridiculous offers.

And guess what you would have being better buying the original item at its buy it now price, as now you have paid an extra $10 and lost a week.  Maybe if you didnt try to play games with this seller you may be better of.

And why should you be allowed to leave feedback,   would you be happy if the seller could leave you negative feedback for making ridiculous offers.  There was no transaction, no feedback to be left.

[papermoon.lady]

I wonder if the suggestion to make an offer higher than the BIN has to do with eBay possibly not distinguishing between BIN and starting bid (sometimes, before bids start, there is a best offer option for auctions too)?

I think it started last year though. It didn't happen in the past...

[*sons_n_daughters*]

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@2486buffyslay wrote:

Also as I was unable to buy the item I was unable to leave feedback. Maybe eBay could change this? Afterall one can have a negative experience with a seller without buying anything from them e.g. rude replies to a buyer's inquiries.

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That will never happen. Reason being, feedback meant to be for the item, not the seller. Although, plenty of people often mention the seller in feedback too, which I don't object to.

Another reason it would never happen is, can you imagine the amount of people leaving negs for sellers, just because they can? It's absurd that anyone could think this acceptable!

[sandypebbles]

Given the amount of people who come on here and hurl abuse at other members simply for giving factual information/posting eBay policy etc those people are just as likely to leave a seller a neg because the seller said no to giving freebies/gifts/90% discounts or whatever

And if that were the case, how about if sellers could also leave 'buyers' negs if the buyer did'nt buy but sent rude/demanding messages?

That would be a different story would'nt it?