Sellers - watch out for prior offers in your messages
Summary: world-city-distro raises concerns about a new feature on eBay where expired offers are visible in seller messages. They recount a situation where they refunded a partial amount to a buyer who noticed an expired offer after a courtesy message was sent. Other participants shared their experiences and strategies, like avoiding unnecessary communications to prevent similar situations. It was noted that these messages became visible when eBay upgraded its messaging system. Some find the feature useful for tracking offer prices, while others find it problematic. Overall, there's a shared sentiment about the increasing challenges of selling on the platform due to fees and changes.
Are offers in seller messages a new thing? I have not noticed them before and then this happened. Sellers beware!
In this case, I was busy and got a notification of a sale. It has been a while since I had a good sale so I was excited. I did the usual and sent a "thank you it will ship soon" message. Just your basic polite thing to do.
Since I was busy and didn't notice there was a trail of a prior offer in the message. I have not seen them before so I didn't think to look. It was an offer sent to the buyer because he had a watch on the item. The offers sellers send as a nudge with an additional percentage off.
In this case the buyer let the offer expire or didn't notice it. However, when I sent the thank you message he saw it and wanted me to honor it and asked to refund the difference. In this case it was about $40.
I know someone will say "the offer expired - you didn't have to do that" and they are correct. However, since it has been a while since I had a good sale and it was a return buyer I did respond with the partial refund of the difference. I felt compelled to and didn't want a full refund because I did not. I just wanted to stay good with the buyer as to not get a bad feedback by not refunding the difference.
I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. If this is a new thing for Ebay to send these offered through messages it is an issue. So look out for that...
It's hard enough here to sell anything these days as it is. Ebay's percentages are just going up and up. Just thing about it, if a seller opts in for promoted listings there is an addition percentage there. If a seller offers to the watchers there is an additional percentage there. Not much to Net from there.
So if you are being Mr. Nice Guy and just saying thank you, think it over maybe it is better to just be robotlike and not correspond at all.
Enough is enough Ebay - you are killing us with your fees.
Let the contrary "that was your choice" responses roll. I don't care, if that is what you need to feel superior go for it. Just watch out when driving those huge 4x4 pickups guys. The visibility at crosswalks is dangerous. Jst get a high-chair for your home to feel like a big boy.
sonomaresale
·3 weeks agoThis change has been around for a long time. I think overall it is a good one because the old way would only send offers as a separate message conversation and email notification.
In the older messaging system I would often have situations where the less technologically adept buyers would be unable to find the offer at all or the swap between messages would lose the buyer's attention enough that they didn't purchase in the end.
The only critiques I have now is that buyers accepting an offer in an ongoing message thread doesn't mark the conversation as unread, not sure if having an offer sent to you makes the message unread. And the little offer bubble doesn't show a quantity, so you may not notice until you click on the full view.
jollyroger14
·3 weeks agoBeen like this all year. I have my support bot auto sending 5% off best offers so ebay dont nag me. ANd the offer is in messages. Kinda good...so I can see if they paid full price or ebst offer price..
gloryglorygifts
·3 weeks agoThey seem to have started including the offer messages since they upgraded the messaging system a few months ago. I actually like that we can see them when a customer buys an item. I have only seen them on the listing followers that I sent offers to though.
hartungcards
·3 weeks ago · EditedI noticed this annoying development too, and I have two different ways I deal with it.
1) Don't send needless messages (like "thank you" messages) to buyers, especially if you've sent them a previous offer that has expired.
2) If you absoutely have to send a message to a buyer who let an offer expire, don't use the listing as your message basis --just send them a message "not related to an item."
dhbookds
·3 weeks agoI would have no problem honoring the offer......we can't see who they go to.......so no way to recognize the buyer....