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.

[vintagecraze50]

Liz, please do some research on this and get back with us. I do not wanted to be ultra surprised by this and need to know how to deal with this as all of us do for our business. Thanks.

[vintagecraze50]

OK wow thank you, that made me really nervous.

[a_c_green]

---

@vintagecraze50 wrote:

Buyer is not demanding anything. Ebay is showing them a better product price and buyer is running to cancel sale.

---

Y'know, the more I read through this whole discussion, the more I wonder whether eBay is really finding or showing the buyer an actual "better" choice at all. Unless I missed a post somewhere, I don't think anyone on the buyer side has had an instance of requesting a cancel and then being shown a specific lower-priced item instead.

What it looks like (to me) is that when a buyer gets cold feet about his purchase, clicks on the cancel request (which I understand can only be done within 60 minutes of purchase) and selects the "Found a lower price" reason, eBay now pops up a new option of seeing if the seller will take a lower price, as opposed to cancelling altogether. While eBay does word the offer as saying that the buyer "found a better price," there's no real indication (that I can see) that that's the case, or that a comparable lower-priced item really exists.

That verbiage seems more like window dressing on an attempt to renegotiate (or renege on) the sale that the seller thought was already concluded, by giving the buyer an avenue for more haggling.

[wastingtime101]

Yeah, that's what I've been saying in messages to others and upthread a bit @a_c_green . There doesn't have to be a comp listing shown to the buyer. All that has to happen is buyer hits the cancel request within the first hour, chooses the found a better price option, and up pops a prompt asking the buyer to make an offer and see if the seller will accept instead of canceling.

To: @wilsonharborsales - I wasn't ragging on you. I was asking questions about what you may have remembered about the wording on the screen as we're all trying to understand what's going on. I was questioning if eBay used the specific term "price match" since that would be incredibly confusing considering they already have a "price match guarantee" unrelated to this. As I'm sure you've seen, lots of posters conflating the 2 "features" already.

One thing I haven't seen addressed yet: when a seller uses promoted listings they pay an full ad fee. When sellers issue a partial refund, that ad fee is not credited/prorated. The ad fee is only refunded when the seller refunds in full through a cancellation or return. So ... I'm assuming sellers would pay the full ad fee on these sales as ad fee is processed when buyer's payment is processed. Let's say you refund the buyer $10 on one of these post-sale cancel offers, and you had your ad fee set at 7%, that means you paid an extra $0.70 in ad fees - potentially slightly more when you factor in sales tax.

[janet9988]

---

@vintagecraze50 wrote:

Buyer is not demanding anything. Ebay is showing them a better product price and buyer is running to cancel sale.

---

LOL knowing that they wanted to cancel the sale because they found it cheaper is FORCING the seller to comply or  cancel against the terms the buyer agreed to. There is no choice if you have already shipped.

The buyer could have just NOT requested the cancel in the first place.

This will mess with unpaid item strikes.  Buyers will love this new technique.

[albertabrightalberta]

---

@campanaelia wrote:

---

---

@wilsonharborsales wrote:

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

---

---

@a_c_green wrote:

---

If that stunt was pulled on me, I would simply cancel the sale as Buyer Requested and weld that buyer into my Blocked Buyer List.

---

I'm sure if you chose the cancel option given, as the OP stated, it would be processed as buyer requested by default. I agree the seller should be able to see the competitors listing to compare items, which any regular business would require when doing a PM.

What I don't get is why be so defensive and resort to blocking the buyer? Price matching  is part of doing business everywhere everyday. I'm sure every seller has done it here many times in their lifetime. Can you imagine asking a store to do a PM and instead they cancel your order and tell you you are banned from ever buying from them again? I can't. IMO PMing is just human nature, nothing wrong with it. If this becomes a thing on ebay, I think you'll end up shrinking your buyer pool if you block everyone who attempts this.

---

If a buyer asks for a price match before buying an item, that's one thing. But to make a purchase, pay for it then be shown (or search for) better prices is a problem. Not only is the buyer not doing their pricing prior to purchase but this cancellation is costing me money (and making more money for ebay) because with the cancellation, it's costing me 40-cents fee each time it happens. 

Hmm. Now that I think of it, maybe that's why ebay snuck this in -- they make 40 cents on each cancellation as well as the FVF on the subsequent purchases.

[fern*wood]

I guess I should be used to things like this by now, but it still surprises me that ebay makes changes that can directly hit our bottom line without any warning or explanation of how the new procedures work.   Seems a select amount of sellers are chosen for each change to be guinea pigs.  Then they watch us to see how successful it is or how much we object.   I hate having to guess as I select new options without any idea of what will happen next. 

[vintagecraze50]

---

@janet9988 wrote:

---

@vintagecraze50 wrote:

Buyer is not demanding anything. Ebay is showing them a better product price and buyer is running to cancel sale.

---

LOL knowing that they wanted to cancel the sale because they found it cheaper is FORCING the seller to comply or  cancel against the terms the buyer agreed to. There is no choice if you have already shipped.

The buyer could have just NOT requested the cancel in the first place.

This will mess with unpaid item strikes.  Buyers will love this new technique.

---

Well that gets me a little worried.  But, the option to cancel has always been there within that time frame. I ship so fast sometimes like within a few hours even though I have a 1 day handling time set just in case I get tied up and cannot  get it out in a flash.

[vintagecraze50]

So I am making ebay an extra 40 cents and I am loosing a sale or my profit margin. Sounds like a winner to me. LOL!! Except I get more VELOCITY of sales. But I make less.

[vintagecraze50]

You just cant keep these profits up on here can ya. LOL .

[very-nice-finds]

What disturbs me, as a seller of preowned goods, how do I know what the condition is of the lower-priced item? If mine is perfect and the one I’m being asked to match is flawed, that’s not cool.

[a_c_green]

---

@very-nice-finds wrote:

What disturbs me, as a seller of preowned goods, how do I know what the condition is of the lower-priced item? If mine is perfect and the one I’m being asked to match is flawed, that’s not cool.

---

Pending the production of some screenshots actually showing the lower-priced item in a cancel request, I'm not convinced that a lower-priced item is actually shown to the buyer (or selected by him). I think it's more likely a bad or misleading choice of wording by eBay when framing the buyer's lower offer to the seller. 

In other words, maybe the buyer really did spot a lower-priced item amidst all the clutter of other listings that eBay adds to the page view, but I don't think eBay would have chosen one and handed it to him. Unless the buyer himself identifies a specific lower-priced listing that caught his eye, I would say it's more likely just the buyer using that option to try to negotiate the sale price even lower.

[vintagecraze50]

This works when seller are selling items with upc or whatever you call them codes that match the item in question. Sellers who compete with each other on here selling identifiable matched items Same thing, HAVE to be on it with the competitive price . You see this everywhere online especially with Amazon. Still, buyers choose from these different sellers depending on a number of factors including those who offer Prime member shipping etc.

[vintagecraze50]

That’s  exactly what I JUST SAID IN PRIOR post. You have to be showing a matched item. That is not always possible with preowned non UPC CODED merchandise.

[a_c_green]

---

@vintagecraze50 wrote:

This works when seller are selling items with upc or whatever you call them codes that match the item in question.

---

Right, I understand the mechanism at work. I just think it's eBay encouraging the buyer's cold feet by continuing to cough up cheaper listings, even after the sale, as opposed to just shutting up and letting the transaction go through. I suppose one could also argue that the buyer initiated the cancel request first, then eBay tried to salvage any sale at all by showing him lower-cost alternatives.