Buyers who bid rediculous prices and want free shipping.

[barblindseybargainvarietystore]

I have seen suggestions from ebay on how to increase your sales. One is to lower your prices and take bids. During September I am having a 20% discount throughout my store in hopes of increasing sales. I am continuously having customers want to bid rediculous prices. With the 20% discount price they were great deals. I have people bid $5.00 for a beautiful dress and want free shipping. How could a person sell at such unrealistic bids. By the time you pay the shipping of $3.00 or more, buy the supplies to mail them in, ebay gets their percentage and most of us have purhased the item, you would be in the hole.  So I have found that offering low prices and sales only leaves customers wanting lower prices than what you are giving them so you have accomplished nothing by having a great sale!! I try to respond without being rude or saying what I want to say, but it is hard sometimes. It is very frustrating!!

[missjen831]

Low prices like that, in my experience as well as what I've seen other sellers on the board experience, tend to attract bottom feeders. I know some dislike that term but I'm really not sure what a better word would be? I guess I could say it attacts the buyers who want something for nothing. The same ones who want Sak's quality at Wal-Mart prices (and Saks customer service at Wal-Mart prices!). 

[d-k_treasures]

You mean 'best offer'. You don't 'bid' on a fixed price listing.

[keziak]

If you use Best Offer (as opposed to people emailing you with offers) you can set your mimimum accepted offer. That helps avoid the aggravation of too-low offers. In my opinion there should be wiggle room so you can give your customer a good discount if you feel like it, but obviously if the item is already on sale like that, you probably won't want offers much lower.

[southernfriedbelle]

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@keziak wrote:

If you use Best Offer (as opposed to people emailing you with offers) you can set your mimimum accepted offer. That helps avoid the aggravation of too-low offers. In my opinion there should be wiggle room so you can give your customer a good discount if you feel like it, but obviously if the item is already on sale like that, you probably won't want offers much lower.

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Yes, but not if you're using the simplified Quick Listing Form. You have to use the Advanced Listing Form to set the offer limits.

Also @barblindseybargainvarietystore, as I'm sure you're aware, Free Shipping is not part of the Best Offer option, and potential buyers should not be requesting it if your listing requires the buyer to pay shipping.

[a_c_green]

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@barblindseybargainvarietystore wrote:

I try to respond without being rude or saying what I want to say, but it is hard sometimes. It is very frustrating!!

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Then stop putting the Make Offer option on your listings. At a glance, I see your listing prices average around $13 or lower, so when you put Make Offer on them as well, you are essentially inviting buyers to try to go lower... or in other words, you're implying that anyone who pays full price on your listing is wasting their money, because you're already inviting lower offers. When the item is only $13 to begin with, you're wasting your productive time by having to field lower offers, regardless of whether you plan to accept them. 

Although I am speaking as a guy who (I am assured) has no fashion sense, I don't see anything wrong with asking $13 or so for each dress, and sticking with it. I don't see any need to entertain even lower prices than that. Just because you have a Make Offer option available on the listing form, eBay doesn't require you to use it, and I don't think you need it.

[muttlymob]

The number one suggestion for eBay selling is to sell things that people want to buy.

Have you run a completed listings search on your items to see if they have a history of selling?  And to see if they do sell, at what price?

You are selling clothing.  That is a supersaturated market that is hard enough to sell in, much less get a high price.

[luckythewinner]

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@barblindseybargainvarietystore wrote:

I have people bid $5.00 for a beautiful dress and want free shipping. How could a person sell at such unrealistic bids. 

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IMHO when your listing has 'Best Offer" you are pretty much announcing that you are willing to take less than your asking price. These people just want to find out how much less you are willing to take.  

If your prices are already a "great deal" there is no reason to solicit offers.  

[imakesugar]

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@barblindseybargainvarietystore wrote:

I have seen suggestions from ebay on how to increase your sales. One is to lower your prices and take bids. During September I am having a 20% discount throughout my store in hopes of increasing sales. I am continuously having customers want to bid rediculous prices. With the 20% discount price they were great deals. I have people bid $5.00 for a beautiful dress and want free shipping. How could a person sell at such unrealistic bids. By the time you pay the shipping of $3.00 or more, buy the supplies to mail them in, ebay gets their percentage and most of us have purhased the item, you would be in the hole.  So I have found that offering low prices and sales only leaves customers wanting lower prices than what you are giving them so you have accomplished nothing by having a great sale!! I try to respond without being rude or saying what I want to say, but it is hard sometimes. It is very frustrating!!

I read this 2x's before I realized that You meant BIN instead Bid. 

You need to go to Your listings In the listings there is a place that says automatically reject any offers less than XXXX. then go to the same area and it says automatically accept any offers greater than XXXX. If You set those perimeters then You don't have to read they LOWBALL OFFERS. Maybe You also need to adjust the listings to charge shipping. Best OFFERS don't include shipping IF shipping is listed. You could lower Your prices and add shipping in, instead of having free shipping. Check and see If that option is not available in the basic listings, try Advanced listings. I use Auctivia so I don't know how eBay lisitngs work! 

I do not know the clothing prices and how they work on eBay. You have nice things,but maybe Your prices are too high? Maybe that is why You are getting what You consider "LOWBALL OFFERS"  Maybe that is what the market will bear? 

There are 600,635 items in todlers clothing, Bonnie Baby, BIN, Used, had 206 completed and 33 sold. about 1-6 sold. Most seem to be upscale Holiday dresses. They would probably sell better sellers later on in the year.  

You don't offer returns and You do not have measurements for it. In all honestly, I will not buy ANY piece of clothing on eBay without measurements. toddler clothes are especially bad. When I was dressing My granddaughters they could be wearing a 3-6 moth in one brand and a 9-12 month in another...Then IF it didn't fit then they can't return it, with Your policy.  (complete waste of money) You also get a better rank in search with returns. I do think that 30 days are out there with clothing but try 14 day returns. 

[buyselljack2016]

eBay suggest lots of silly stuff.  Lower your price.  Start bidding at $ 0.99. Accept offers..................

I have had a fixed price item not sell. They suggest that I do an auction. I do an auction (not starting at $0.99, I know better ) and the item doesn't sell. then they suggest that I lower the price, and sell fixed. 

Bots are programmed by non-sellers that know more about what I sell than I do.  NOT

If I am going to take offers (seldom do) I am going to raise the price first 🙂

[southern*sweet*tea]

You sell clothing, which is a ridiculously oversaturated category here.  You don't need to do best offer, your prices seem reasonable especially considering you offer free shipping. The only clothing types that I could see best offer used on are certain vintage pieces that are desirable or hard to find. Other than that, clothing is mass produced, not rare, not hard to find, no need for best offer. Set a competitive price and stick to it. Remove best offer from your listings. If you want to do markdowns, fine, but that doesn't work well with best offer because you will get insane lowball offers.

Best offer should only be used for those items that do not have a "market value". In other words,  items that are not mass produced, hard to find, and they're only worth what a person is willing to pay for said item at any given time.

JMHO FWIW

[lookng2015]

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@a_c_green wrote:

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@barblindseybargainvarietystore wrote:

I try to respond without being rude or saying what I want to say, but it is hard sometimes. It is very frustrating!!

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Then stop putting the Make Offer option on your listings. At a glance, I see your listing prices average around $13 or lower, so when you put Make Offer on them as well, you are essentially inviting buyers to try to go lower... or in other words, you're implying that anyone who pays full price on your listing is wasting their money, because you're already inviting lower offers. When the item is only $13 to begin with, you're wasting your productive time by having to field lower offers, regardless of whether you plan to accept them. 

Although I am speaking as a guy who (I am assured) has no fashion sense, I don't see anything wrong with asking $13 or so for each dress, and sticking with it. I don't see any need to entertain even lower prices than that. Just because you have a Make Offer option available on the listing form, eBay doesn't require you to use it, and I don't think you need it.

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@a_c_greenBut if the OP is using the Quick Listing form eBay in their wisdom decides to add the BO function. OP needs to change to the Advanced listing tool so they can uncheck that.

[mistressmime]

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@missjen316 wrote:

Low prices like that, in my experience as well as what I've seen other sellers on the board experience, tend to attract bottom feeders. I know some dislike that term but I'm really not sure what a better word would be? I guess I could say it attacts the buyers who want something for nothing. The same ones who want Sak's quality at Wal-Mart prices (and Saks customer service at Wal-Mart prices!). 

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Worse, they want close out thrift store prices with Sak's quality and customer service

[a_c_green]

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@lookng2015 wrote:

But if the OP is using the Quick Listing form eBay in their wisdom decides to add the BO function. OP needs to change to the Advanced listing tool so they can uncheck that.

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Ah. Gotcha; thanks for pointing that out. Yet another shortcoming of the Quick Listing form... 

[retrose1]

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@mistressmine wrote:

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@missjen316 wrote:

Low prices like that, in my experience as well as what I've seen other sellers on the board experience, tend to attract bottom feeders. I know some dislike that term but I'm really not sure what a better word would be? I guess I could say it attacts the buyers who want something for nothing. The same ones who want Sak's quality at Wal-Mart prices (and Saks customer service at Wal-Mart prices!). 

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Worse, they want close out thrift store prices with Sak's quality and customer service

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They want Louis Vuitton purses for Chinese fake prices.