NEW eBay Price Match Guarantee Feature?

[wilsonharborsales]

Hello,

I hope this message finds you all well.  Today an interesting thing occurred on the app that has never happened to me before.  I am going to write this in point-form.

1. I sell an item to a buyer

2. Buyer immediately requests to cancel sale after payment

3. I open the app to proceed with cancellation and a pop-up window from eBay shows up that must be completed.

4. The pop-up says that the buyer was shown a better deal and that the buyer wanted to cancel because they ‘found a better price’.  I am given two options to proceed.  Either cancel the sale, or refund the buyer the difference and continue with the sale.

5.  I choose ‘agree to new terms of sale’ and eBay automatically refunded the buyer a portion of the sale so that my price matches the other sellers price.

I have sold 11,000 items on eBay and I’ve never seen this before.  Has eBay rolled out some kind of price match guarantee or something?  Today was the first time I have ever seen this.

[trip98]

My understanding is, ebay sold listing show the original price, even in cases where an offer was accepted. I doubt that would change. And Worthpoint shows whatever ebay shows as the sold price.

If we know how eBay is populating the sold price maybe can figure out how they are treating this "I  want cancel price match dealie".

Yes, As most of  know Terapeak (Product Research) shows actual sold price. Worthpoint shows asking Price. Can be huge difference!

From what I can tell when an eBay offer is accepted from a Buyer it shows a line through the price in a sold  search without showing the Offer Sold Price in the 3 months sold data available to everyone. I have found there are exceptions to the line through: In my experience with my inventory, The original asking price shows in the 3 month sold data when an offer is accepted and listing continues to be live showing more inventory available or when you send an offer to a watcher and it is accepted.

[vintagecraze50]

I meant that if you did get a buyer who was put into this and the price match offer is so close to what you want you might consider keeping the sale. Now, on the other hand if it is a low ball price match, then cancel.

[wilsonharborsales]

Oh Jon!  I know him very well!

[vintagecraze50]

If it’s going to generate more sales it will be well thought out. It does not matter where the sale came from how much it cost the seller to do it, how much the seller loses by giving into the offer. What matters most is the sale happens, and gives the buyer more tools to negotiate. Think of it as a reverse make offer feature for buyers. I do not like it but if it comes to pass.,You will need to work with it. I’m not smiling as I write this by the way.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@vintagecraze50 

Agreed. No point in complicating this.

Before this change, if I got a cancel request before I shipped, I just accepted. I have a 30 day free return policy, so there's no point in insisting on shipping the item instead....it will just come back to me.

With this change, I'll accept the cancel request OR I'll accept what amounts to a lower price offer, and I will treat it the same as I would a pre-sale offer: it either works for me and my margins or it doesn't. I don't need to know anything about the "other" item the buying is going to buy. The last thing I want it to engage in is a discussion with the buyer about why the two listings aren't really identical or whatever. Waste of time. 

Two things I would want to be sure of:

If I do a partial refund, will ebay provide a pro rata fee refund (including any PLS fee)?

By making this request, has the buyer made clear to ebay that he does indeed WANT my item and will go through with the transaction if I accept the lower price. I really don't want to provide the partial refund only to then have the buyer ask to cancel again.

I would prefer to keep the sale intact, even at a lesser price, IF that lesser price is still acceptable. 

[selsa84]

The time to negotiate is BEFORE you click buy it now, not after. Don't see anyway possible this will bring more sales. 

[sumsum70]

Exactly. Instead of using it's massive wealth of data to give sellers the tools to automatically block bad buyers who do too many returns and cancellations, eBay gives those buyers another way to rip off sellers.

Why is anyone surprised?

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@selsa84  I would guess ebay sees this as less a way to gain more sales directly...after all, the end result here is either the buyer buys mine or buys the other one, which is still only one sale. (Unless, I suppose the buyer ends up buying both for some reason)  I think it's more about making buyers happy , and if they are happy, they will continue to buy here.

Now, from my perspective as a seller, if I accept the lower amount, I still have a sale. If I simply cancel, I don't have a sale. Generally speaking, I'd rather have a sale, as long as the price is acceptable to me. So, this could bring me a sale I would otherwise lose if it were a straight up cancel request---because I would cancel rather than end up dealing with a return and refund.

[sextons-sweet-deals]

you really think that? You seem to have no active listings. Are you hiding under another I.D.?

you stated:  gives the buyer more tools to negotiate. Hope that is just a joke. 

eBay already has options for a potential buyer:

1. 'best offer' for the buyer if seller selects that option in their listing.

2. buyer adds item to watch list. Seller can then decide if they want to send an offer. 

eBay needs to provide details and not jusrt drama to get everyone fired up. 

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@sextons-sweet-deals 

"eBay needs to provide details and not just drama to get everyone fired up"

What details do you want ebay to provide?

[a_c_green]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@sextons-sweet-deals 

"eBay needs to provide details and not just drama to get everyone fired up"

What details do you want ebay to provide?

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I think at this point we'd be grateful for any dialogue at all. To date I don't believe anyone from eBay has explained this test (or whatever we should call it) in any posting. Kyle has promised to ping some teams, but he has not logged in here since last Tuesday.

kyle@ebay : Before we head into the weekend, can you please tell us if you've had any replies from others within the company about what's going on with this? If no one has answered you yet, can you either rattle their cages again, or go up the chain to emphasize that a response would be helpful (especially since, jeez, you're all supposed to be working for the same company)? Thanks!

[mam98031]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

If it’s going to generate more sales it will be well thought out. It does not matter where the sale came from how much it cost the seller to do it, how much the seller loses by giving into the offer. What matters most is the sale happens, and gives the buyer more tools to negotiate. Think of it as a reverse make offer feature for buyers. I do not like it but if it comes to pass.,You will need to work with it. I’m not smiling as I write this by the way.

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How do you see this generating "more sales"?  A sale gets cancelled or the sell price gets lowered.  I simply don't understand how that translated into "more sales"!  What am I missing?

[mam98031]

This is a monster created by Ebay.  Something we as sellers have complained about for a very long time.  Ebay should NOT be showing buyers the same or similar items to what they have purchased for lower prices.  This has always been detrimental to sellers and it falls on deaf ears at Ebay.

Now Ebay is just increasing the issue.

What if the seller has already shipped the item when this new notification comes in but has not yet uploaded the tracking to the transaction.  Now the seller has an additional issues brought on by Ebay.

[gloryglorygifts]

They why did he get that message from ebay? Something caused it. 

[trip98]

eBay already has options for a potential buyer:

1. 'best offer' for the buyer if seller selects that option in their listing.

2. buyer adds item to watch list. Seller can then decide if they want to send an offer.

And just old fashioned

3.  Ask a seller a question off listing page.  Seller can send an offer through the email question. Or buyer can ask if you will take so and so amount because...for whatever reason...