eBay Makes Surprise Change to Best Offer (Make an Offer)

[pilgrimelectronics]

We just received an offer for one of our items this morning, and while responding to it I noticed that instead of "2 offers remaining" it now says "9 offers remaining". To my knowledge, this was never announced by eBay in the Spring Seller Update, but it is reported here:

eBay Makes Surprise Change to Best Offers - eCommerce Bytes

3 tries was more than enough to come to an agreement; 10 tries is absurd. I hope declining an offer cuts this process short.

[rw011164]

It is in certain catagories, other catagories it is a limit of 5. I agree with you, I cannot figure out why you would need so many times to go back and forth. I think 3 was plenty, but Ebay claims they had many requests to extend.

We handle a lot of Make Offer requests and have never felt we needed more offers to close the deal

[emerald40]

Yes, there is another thread where a mod did confirm that best offers are now up to 10 attempts in certain categories.

I and many agree with you that it is overkill and as someone else said - an auction in reverse.

[pilgrimelectronics]

Yes, it's been increased to 10 in Business & Industrial and Collectibles; 5 in all other US categories (10 in all Canadian site categories!).

99% of our listings are in B & I. I understand the usefulness of Best Offer to allow for virtual price breaks on multi-item listings. 3 is usually adequate; 5 would be more than enough back-and-forth because we spell out the price breaks in our first counteroffer response. Occasionally it gets complicated if a buyer wants to buy multiple items in multiple listings at one time.

But collectibles are usually one-of-a-kind items. In real life at a north African bazaar I couldn't imaging going back and forth 10 times with a seller unless you feel you could wear them down. They would probably throw you out first.