buyers and messages

[davidc4430]

2 cases, 1 buyer? says my price too high but if a agree to a lower price (his price) he will buy 'straight away'

so as his price was lower than i really wanted i decided i'd accept, messaged him that it was ok and i would change the listing right away which i did.

havent heard back from him, this was yesterday.

today, i get a message from another buyer? asking the condition of the box? i reply its perfect.

again, no reply, no sale. that was earlier today.

a sales not a sale until the cash is in the till LOL

[Anonymous]

If you'd left it at the original price they probably would have decided they wanted it enough to actually buy it.

[gutterpunkz05]

Put the price back up and see if they respond

[davidc4430]

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@Anonymous wrote:
If you'd left it at the original price they probably would have decided they wanted it enough to actually buy it.

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i normally give 24hrs, if he hasnt taken up the offer by this evening i will put it back up.

[davewil1964]

When replying, respond with an offer for the amount.

That way the ball is in their court. If somebody comes along and pays the full price while they're thinking about it, stiff biccies. Or dead stiff. 

[joztamps]

I wouldn't reduce my price in those circumstances, I would leave it at the higher price, add Make an Offer, and tell him you'll accept the lower price if he binds himself through the Make an Offer system.

Am I missing something in doing it this way?

[countessalmirena]

David, have you read through the latest version of Adding Best Offer to your listing or using Reply with offer?

Sending a custom offer using the "Reply with offer" button

If a buyer sends you a question about one of your fixed priced items, you have the option to reply with an offer. If you've already replied to the buyer but wish to make them an offer, you can find the Reply with offer button in your first message to them.

Your offer can be for more or less than the Buy It Now price, and you can send a buyer up to 3 offers. Each offer is valid for 48 hours or until the listing is sold, whichever comes first.

I think in the past eBay specifically spelled out that buyers could not make unsolicited offers on fixed-price listings. However, I can't find that now... The closest thing I can find is in the Making a Best Offer help page, where it says "You can make a Best Offer on items where you see Make Offer below the Buy It Now price." By implication at least, this means a buyer cannot make a Best Offer on items where Make Offer is not showing.

However, given all of eBay's recent not-so-funny playing around with people's listings (enabling Best Offer and even auto-accept when the seller did not enable either of those), I wonder if eBay is trying to enforce acceptance of Best Offers irrespective of the sellers' own wishes.

For now, at least, sellers should be able to reply to people messaging them with an offer on a fixed-price listing that doesn't have Best Offer enabled, with something like this:

"Dear [buyer],

Thank you for your interest.

This item is available at the listed Buy It Now price. If you wish to purchase at the listed price, you are very welcome to do so.

To find items where Best Offer is available, please read through eBay's help page for Making a Best Offer.

Yours sincerely,

[name]"

For the record, if I were a seller, I would not entertain an offer on an item which is listed with a fixed price. That fixed price sans any suggestion of Make an Offer is pretty clear indication that I wouldn't be interested in a lower price. An offer would seem rude to me. Think about it... Someone making an offer when they can see you haven't enabled the Make an Offer button means that they're flagrantly uninterested in your terms and conditions, and they feel free to make their own rules. That is a red flag about the sort of buyer they are.

[melbourneclearance]

Oh, I get plenty of those trolls. I spend half my days answering these people in the hope of getting some of them. Not sure what the conversion rate is, but certainly under 50%. I used to ignore some of the most picky ones, but then I thought, "Hey, that's a defeatist's mindset", so now I bend backward and forward and run the mile for them.

[brerrabbit585]

It depends how desperate you are for a sale, but most of the ones who ask me for a discount want my best selling items that someone else is always willing to pay full price for.

The 80/20 rule would say that 20% percent of your buyers (or potential ones) cause 80% of the work you do. I know that's not quite the right percentage in this case but the fact is that we can waste a lot of time on people who ask for a discount but never buy, so now I usually ignore them (and often block them, depending on what they ask and how they ask it). If they think I'm rude, then they're even more rude because it should be obvious to them this isn't just a hobby for me, and I'll bet they don't ask similar b&m stores to discount the price for them!

Rather than chasing rude people for sales I'd rather spend my time on something that's more profitable, eg. growing my own vegies, which is a form of income that's not taxable. It's a lot less stressful too!

[digital*ghost]

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@countessalmirena wrote:

I think in the past eBay specifically spelled out that buyers could not make unsolicited offers on fixed-price listings. However, I can't find that now... The closest thing I can find is in the Making a Best Offer help page, where it says "You can make a Best Offer on items where you see Make Offer below the Buy It Now price." By implication at least, this means a buyer cannot make a Best Offer on items where Make Offer is not showing.

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ebay currently define spam messages as "Email sent using eBay Messages (or features such as the Contact member link) to send unsolicited commercial offers", without specifying if it's an offer to buy or sell, and spam messages aren't allowed, so (theoretically, at least), it's still against policy.