Takes all kinds of buyers. Thankful for the BestBuddyList
I have a diecast car listed for a BIN price of $49 with an auto accept best offer price of $45. I know a number of sellers don't bother with best offers but I figure a number of buyers like to get a "deal". I price most of my listings around what those items have sold for in the past. And my best offer price is a price I would be very happy with. About 25% of my buyers don't even bother with attemping a best offer. They just use the BIN price.
So today I get an email from a potential buyer stating they made 2 very reasonable offers that were auto rejected ($42 & $44). The buyer then informed me that they were going to buy it elswhere.
I didn't reply (but was really tempted to make some snarky comment) but that buyer immediately made the BestBuddyList.
smilekc
·5 months agoOn the subject of bargaining at large & small businesses.
A friend's dad would ask the clerk or sales person to break down the items & cost on the invoice, be it an auto parts store, lumber yard, appliance store or the like. When the clerk would get to sales tax, dad would say "Whoa, stop, I don't pay sales tax". Clerk would say "everyone pays sales tax". Dad would insist he didn't , take the tax off, or take 7% (the state's sales tax) off the total ticket. If the clerk wouldn't take 7% off, he'd ask to speak to the manager. My friend said this worked almost all the time to get 7% off the total bill.
gurlcat
·5 months ago@smilekc Did he offer a REASON why he was special and didn't have to pay sales tax? How embarrassing, your poor friend. 😆
smilekc
·5 months agoAs far as I know he didn't give a reason, he just liked bargain with people. The sales tax excuse was just a way to get the foot in the door to lower prices.
Yeah, he embarrassed my friend in a lot of other ways too. Hilarious stories. Dad was a genuine character.
jameshen1
·5 months agoAs a buyer, I have come to really dislike the whole best offer thing. If a seller has best offer on a listing, I assume that they would take less for the item or they wouldn't list it as a best offer item. I try to only make what are to me reasonable offers. Say 10% off. I have actually gotten some items that way. But I have had many, many more where the offer is turned down without a counter. It is instantaneous so I know it is auto declined. That is fine. But I then send another for say 5% off and it is also immediately declined. More than once, I have sent an offer for $1.00 less than asking price and been immediately declined. I offer $49 on a $50 item, and it is immediately declined. Why is there best offer on there then? I don't get it.
So, I usually just decide if the item is worth the full price or not. If it is, I buy it. If not, I don't even offer. Best offers have really been a turn off for me when buying. I mean it has literally caused me to buy something from another seller who doesn't have best offer. But I don't send messages to those sellers, I just move on. Their loss. But on my selling account, I don't use best offers at all because I know how I feel about them. If I will take less on an item, I price it at that amount.
albertabrightalberta
·5 months ago@jameshen1
If the listings you're talking about have auto-accept/decline b.o. offers enabled, your post makes no sense because it can't happen that way.
"But I then send another for say 5% off and it is also immediately declined."
"More than once, I have sent an offer for $1.00 less than asking price and been immediately declined."
"I offer $49 on a $50 item, and it is immediately declined."
Those offers would have had to be manually declined. Maybe those sellers didn't want to offer a b.o. option but ebay enabled it as the default without the seller noticing and disabling it.
In order to have auto-accept and/or auto-decline, the reduction must be at least 5% or ebay won't let it be activated.
But I do have to say that I'd (personally) be embarrassed to offer $49 on a $50 item!
jameshen1
·5 months agoBut I do have to say that I'd (personally) be embarrassed to offer $49 on a $50 item!
You can be embarrassed all you want. Why do I care? I only did it because I was turned down on my offer of $45 on a $50 item and then $47 so I thought, what would the seller take? So, I sent $49 and was turned down as well. I bought it from another seller for $50. It wasn't the price so much as why have best offer if you won't consider reasonable ones.
And I don't think eBay put it on without the seller noticing because on their completed items it showed several other items that sold through accepting a best offer. My point is just that as a buyer, sellers having best offer and then turning down offers of 90% or more turn me off the whole process. Waste of my time. I am sure the op's buyer felt the same and it may turn them off of eBay a bit which isn't good for anyone.
Sorry if you don't agree with that, but as a buyer that is my feeling. The whole process can be frustrating at times.
gurlcat
·5 months agoYou're not wrong; some sellers' idea of a discount is just a joke. And not just in terms of what buyer-sent offers they'll accept, but also offers they'll send to buyers. Fairly often I receive seller offers of 5% off, maybe 7% off, and I'm like "REALLY???" 😆
But I would urge you not to write off the whole concept altogether, especially when you get an instant rejection, because if the seller has automation set up, it's a favor to YOU, because you don't have to wait for them to see the offer and answer it, and you get up to 5 tries! Considering each try takes only a couple seconds, it may be very worthwhile, particularly if your offer would be of considerable savings compared to the BIN of another seller.
And more importantly, just as there are sellers with ridiculous (low) ideas of a discount, there are others who will shock you with how BIG of a discount they'll give you!
When I saw this listing it was only minutes old, and any experienced jewelry reseller would know the lot was probably worth the $250 investment, but since the it had Make Offer I gave it a try. I offered $210 (16% off), just hoping it would be an instant yes or no because every minute that passed was a minute someone else could snatch it. But after I hit 'Send' ..... I got the ole 'Thanks, we'll let you know what the seller says' response. UGH. But luckily the seller was on the ball, responded within a few minutes, and it was YES!!!
That was the end of March; I have made at least a thousand bucks from only about half the pieces, with the rest still left to list. Looking back, I really was being a daredevil and could have lost this amazing inventory to someone willing to pay full price immediately. BUT it's a good example of how much discount some sellers will accept. And remember, the listing was only minutes old, so it's not like this seller felt she had to "settle" for a lower price, as one would with an old listing.
You just never know, but trying never hurts.
nh_sales_lv
·5 months agoWow you have an Alexis Bittar piece. I can confirm that Alex is Bitter
The jewelry business must be where it's at. I was reading how Alex & Annie owner made 1 Billion dollars by selling bangles and such.
gurlcat
·5 months ago@nh_sales_lv Yeah not even precious material jewelry, just glass, pot metal and plastic! But I will say, Alexis Bittar does some kind of sorcery with plastic, and it's really hard to capture with a camera, the way the pieces glow from the inside. I think this is the 3rd Bittar piece I've handled. The effect he creates actually reminds me of Lalique art glass.
A lot of costume jewelry values baffle me, but not Bittar.
jbbowers12012
·5 months agoHi Everyone, A few years back we here in New Jersey listed just about everything with a "Best Offer" & did A-Ok with it - with many reasonable offers accepted. But, then things turned around a bit & we started receiving waaaaay low-ball offers along with silly & some just nasty messages. We never really blocked anyone as, we didnt' want to make any enemies. But now we rarely use "Best Offer."
kibble-net
·5 months agoLet me see if I am understanding this. The buyer made you not one, but TWO reasonable offers.... and you BLOCKED them?
This is the kind of toxic seller behavior that drives buyers to shopping on other platforms. Give yourself a pat on the back.
shire123
OP5 months ago@kibble-netble-net
It wasn't the two reasonable offers. It was the subsequent statement Qne attitude by the buyer that was taken by me as a put down. I have learned long ago that buyers who challenge me like that are often a problem post sale. I was just being proactive and trying to avoid issues down the road.
And look at my past sales and feedback. You can then see I am very far from being a toxic seller. If anything this was a toxic buyer
toomuchstuffagain35
·5 months agoHow is that toxic? The offers were only 'reasonable' in the buyer's eyes. not the seller's.
I've had buyers who were convinced that BO meant the seller had to accept the BUYER'S BO.
pickapaper
·5 months ago@toomuchstuffagain35 wrote: "I've had buyers who were convinced that BO meant the seller had to accept the BUYER'S BO."
Me, too. I had a guy tell me one time, after I declined his offer, that I wasn't "playing the game right". I was supposed to counter and then he would counter and then I was supposed to accept. Nope, not how it works.
gb58
·5 months agoEven though ebay gives buyers up to 5 offers, I don't do the back and forth thing. If the buyer makes an offer, and it is too low, I'll just decline, which gives them a chance to come back with another offer.
If their offer is close to what I can do I'll send a counter offer.
I only send one counter offer. if the buyer counters my counter, I reply, "I'm sorry $--- is the best I can do on this item", and just send back the same counter I did the first time.
Most times they will just decline. I feel going back and forth and back and forth (5 times, which is actually 10 times from buyer to seller and back again) is way too much negotiating.
linenandlaceltd
·5 months agoI had this happen on Poshmark today. Got offered half my price, I countered with my lowest. They kept coming back a little more and a little more and I kept countering with my lowest. 4th time it was my turn to do something, I declined because I was tired of it and they offered me what I was asking.
Going back and forth that much is too much negotiating. Especially when multiple people are doing it to you daily across platforms.
gb58
·5 months agoyes the back and forth thing gets to be a bit much.
I don't care if they want to use their 5 offers, sending low offers, I can just keep declining until their 5 offers are up.
However if someone sends an offer, and we aren't that far off, if I make a counter offer, at that point it's time for the buyer to decide if my offer is acceptable and if it is or even if it isn't, at that point that's where the negotiation should end and we either make the sale or we don't.
linenandlaceltd
·5 months agoI've been trying to experiment with my items with this same thing in mind. People want to get a deal.
Lately I've simply just had my items priced around what they've sold for in the past, or something similar if I can't find the same thing. Then I take offers, but don't have a set price put in to auto decline.
Constantly I was getting 50% off offers. It's been driving me crazy at the amount of them when usually it's been uncommon to get an offer that low. It's happening more on other platforms too, just happened in the middle of writing this with an item on Mercari. Asking $19.99 and got offered by message $10.
I thought maybe I'd run a sale for 20% off and turn off offers, starting today into the end of the week. Just to see if I get more sales. Problem is, some of my items had an offer out for them so the make offer option is still set on a few. On one of those items, I had two offers within minutes of each other today. One for $2 off and one for $1.50. With my sale, it's already as cheap as I'd take on it so I declined both.
Neither wanted to pay that extra bit for an item that's already on sale for a really good deal. They needed an even bigger deal.
Didn't end up making a single sale today on eBay, but apparently enough interest to be able to send send several offers on items.
studiodeflores
·5 months agoHave you thought of removing auto-accept from your listings? I don't use it because of the situation you described. If the offer is reasonable you can accept it or counteroffer with a slightly higher offer, rather than lose the sale. A lot of people enjoy haggling. I don't, but if they start out with a fair price it's OK.
gurlcat
·5 months ago@studiodeflores A seller uses auto-accept if they already know what is the lowest amount they would consider reasonable. To the OP, $44 would not be reasonable. $45 would be.
shire123
OP5 months ago@studiodeflores
I am the OP here. It wasn't so much the level of the offer. Yes. 44 is hardly different from 45. But the way the potential buyer phrased his statements that caused him to be put on my BBL.
He stated that his 2 offers were very reasonable (in his opinion). Then he goes on to state that by telling me that he was going to go and buy it elsewhere. (Note that the BIN price of $49 was already $20 less than what the item had sold for recently.)
Had the potential buyer "nicely" asked for me to take $44 I would have agreed.
Prior to putting auto accept offers on my listings I had to deal with lots and lots of low ball offers that were ridiculous. It was just wasting my time. Having an auto accept offer in my listings has resulted in about 75% fewer time wasters.
jbbowers12012
·5 months agoNot so sure that we would have blocked this this buyer - losing a sale. Some buyers just dont' think before they type. Why make an enemy? IMHO Of-Course.
shire123
OP5 months ago@jbjb
Didn't really want the sale from someone who (in my experience coud be a problem down road especially with how they worded things). It wasn't the offer per se. It was their attitude that came across loud and clear in their message.
I am not that desperate to make a net $35 sale.
umccars
·5 months agoYes, attitude has a lot to do with it. I've done all kinds of shows, festivals, flea markets, etc. From MI to LA. Never go to a seller with an attitude. Don't tell me "I'll give you", you won't give me anything. Ask nicely and I just might give you a deal. "Could you do any better?" "Is that the best you can do?" is a little better than thinking you're going to tell me what I'm going to take. A bad start to the interaction pretty much ends any chance of a seller making a deal.
gurlcat
·5 months ago@umccars Oof, that "I'll give you" thing just reeks of arrogance, like "I'll do you a favor". 😆
Even worse, when they're so cocky they think caveman text is a fine and dandy way to convey their gracious offer. I remember one time I listed some gold scrap for $85, without Make Offer enabled because my price was already under melt value, as I wanted a very fast sale. Within a few minutes I got an email:
give u 50
I copied the username, wrote
no u won't
hit Send, then went to my BBL and pasted the username. A few more minutes later, someone else bought the gold.
inhawaii
·5 months ago@shire123
I use the exact same text on all offers.
"Thank you for considering my offer."
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Just curious, would you have sold it to me? 😉
shire123
OP5 months ago@inhawaii
The only thing that set me off was the buyers statement that their offers were reasonable(even though my BIN price was $20 lower than what the exact car had sold several time recently). So the buyer told me they were going elsewhere to buy. Sounded kind of entitled to me.
Had they just asked what my best would be everything would have been fine.
And yes I would sell to you.
linenandlaceltd
·5 months agoI think it's reasonable that you did block them. It's not the situation, but their behavior.
A buyer has to be smart enough to know they're being auto declined, meaning the seller never sees it. The fact they're angry enough to send you a message about how their offers were reasonable, like you personally saw it and declined, and threaten to buy somewhere else, isn't going to be a good buyer. They could've messaged and been polite and ask what the lowest since their offers are getting auto declined. But they chose this way instead.
I sold a pair of pants this week. I have my shipping days in my listings, and say I may ship within any day of the 3 business day handling time, unfortunately sometimes things happen that delays me a day or two. My buyers leave feedback a lot about my fast shipping, so never had an issue.
The buyer messages me the next day, the day I go to pick up my orders from storage, and angrily messages me asking when it'll ship. Very demanding, no politeness. I replied right away and I never got a response back, either.
I have to hope she's not going to cause problems once she receives them, but I definitely wouldn't have accepted her offer had she displayed this prior to purchasing.
It's not the topic of the question that's the problem, but the behavior. It makes all the difference.
albertabrightalberta
·5 months ago@shire123
I have to disagree. Usually when buyers make offers, they based the "reasonableness" based on what the BIN price is. Not all buyers go to search the previous sales history of an exact item and most don't know how to do so and even fewer buyers know about Terapeak.
So in my mind, $42 and $44 are reasonable. (I consider "reasonable" to be a discount of less than 20%. So the $42 offer was requesting a 15% discount and the $44 offer was a 10-11% discount, neither of which are lowball.)
YMMV. And since ebay allows minimum 5% discounts, you're certainly allowed to discount less than that 10-15% but to say the buyer's offers weren't reasonable is IMO unreasonable.
And FWIW, I offer a b.o. option in my listings. more as a way to screen feedback left for others but I would never send out a seller initiated offer of less than 10% discount from my BIN.
inhawaii
·5 months agoI agree with you.
A low (even ridiculously low) offer is not grounds for me to block a buyer.
But that's just me (and you).
gb58
·5 months agoThe offer they made was for $44, your acceptable price was $45.
The way I would have handled it, I would have messaged the buyer and explained that your settings are set on auto-decline and your acceptable price is $45. I think I would have just told him if he'd like it for $44, I would do that.
The guys comment wasn't out of line, "I made you two reasonable offers, I'm going to look else ware". Why in any universe is that a reason to block someone? It is not insulting or snarky (as you said you thought about writing back to him a snarky comment.).
If you had worked with him, explained that it was an automated decline and tried to make the sale, who knows you may have gotten a good repeat customer. You'll never know that because you took it personal and decided to block him for no reason.
chapeau-noir
·5 months agoThe venue is everything: P2P you get the dickering; with corporations it's fixed price.
jerzee908
·5 months agoMy background is in the corporate grocery world. There's fixed prices because the price of groceries has to make sense to pay for overhead and every other expense in operating the store that grocery item is being sold in. This is really no different than someone selling on ebay that has to cover their own expenses/overhead.
chapeau-noir
·5 months agoYes - in that case of course prices have to be fixed because of fixed costs; however, with P2P, the scale and venue are quite different and the seller in fact has more agency over their stock and prices, i.e., one is dealing with the owner, so to speak, and buyers have more of an incentive to dicker. Whether the seller wants to or not isn't really relevant, it's the fact that the environment is much more conducive to it.
jerzee908
·5 months agoI never understood why not wanting to pay an asking price on something became okay on ebay, at garage sales and at flea markets.
Nobody walks into a Walmart or a Target to haggle with employees over the price of something that was mass-produced and being sold by a multi-billion dollar corporation.
shire123
OP5 months ago@jerzee908
I think it is probably in our "DNA" to get things for as low a price as possible. I used to do toy fairs in the UK and EVERYONE expected to pay less than what the item was originally priced.
Those large corporations have conditioned us to accept whatever price they want.
slippinjimmy
·5 months agoSmall businesses do the same, I do not discount my items, I don't send offers, I don't accept offers from buyers, my prices are my prices. That is true here on eBay and was true during the 25+ years as an independent retailer prior to eBay.
grann-4629
·5 months agoWonder no more ... "I can get it wholesale" has been a buyer's first statement in negotiating with a seller since stones were used as currency and is especially true In today's economy.
ETA: And you can walk into a big. box store and haggle ... just not with Target ... they blew it by trying to set up here without doing their due diligence.
tarotfindsandmore
·5 months agoYou can haggle with a big box store?
jerzee908
·5 months agoOff subject, but THANK YOU for the punk rock tarot deck I bought from you in the past (and I didn't haggle over the cost ;-)).
tarotfindsandmore
·5 months agoYou're welcome!!! I love when a deck ends up where it belongs. That's a great deck.
It's since been changed. I think a bigger publisher may have picked it up, so you have one of earliest versions. Congrats on the find. It's one of the few I've kept a copy of for myself. 😁
pickapaper
·5 months ago@grann-4629
I was a little taken aback by this comment "you can walk into a big box store and haggle". I can't imagine any store, whether big or small, giving their employees the authority to haggle with customers. What a can of worms that would open!
albertabrightalberta
·5 months agoAlthough it's not really haggling in the yard sale kind of way, many stores such as Target, Lowes, Home Depot, Walmart, Best Buy (and probably others) do offer a lowest price guarantee.
If you can show the identical item available from a competitor for less, they'll match the price. Lowes and Home Depot used to do one better whereby they matched the lower price and further reduced it by 10% in order to make the sale.
pickapaper
·5 months agoA lot of stores, especially big chain stores, do "price matching", but that's not haggling. Two totally different things.
ryry-jj
·5 months agoNot sure if "haggling" is the right word. But I have gone into Walmart when they were clearing out items and have said if the price it at such and such I'll buy them all, and they have. Today department managers don't have that power. And just last month went into a barns and noble and worked out a price for a bunch of damaged box Lego sets they had in back. Wanted the roses/flower for my daughter's wedding, she wanted Lego flowers mixed in with real flowers
pickapaper
·5 months agoYou said that "today, [Walmart] department managers don't have the power" to give you a better price if you buy all of a CLEARANCE item. I wonder if those department managers got in trouble for taking it upon themselves to change prices and that's why they no longer "have that power". Like I said earlier, I can't imagine any store giving employees that kind of authority, even department managers.
Also, you got a better price on some damaged Lego sets at B&N; that's also a different thing and I'll bet you worked with the store manager to get that better price, not just a floor employee. I'll bet you wouldn't have gotten a price reduction on regular, undamaged sets.
At a small business we used to own, my DH explicitly told an employee that he was not to haggle or make any kind of deals with customers. That very same day, this employee gave a customer $100 off an item. He was fired on the spot.
gurlcat
·5 months ago@pickapaper The very same day?? That was clearly a defiance move. If it was my store, that employee might be having police search his pockets for that $100 before he left the premises. Either that or he'd be pulling a boot out of his pants on his way out the door. 🤣
Cuz that's the thing -if floor employees are allowed to give customers discounts, at closing time there'd be no way to tell the difference between money actually saved by customers and money skimmed by employees.
pickapaper
·5 months ago@gurlcat
Yes, it was the same day. He didn't handle any money; he had to bring the customer to us to pay. That's when he told us he had told the customer he could have it for $100 less. My DH went ahead and took care of the customer and then asked the employee why he did that. All he could say was that the customer offered that price and he (the employee) said okay. My DH said, "I told you not to bargain with customers." He didn't have an answer. I don't know if he was "dumb" or just didn't equate "making deals" with accepting a customer's offer but it got him fired.
jerzee908
·5 months agoIf someone is using "today's economy" as an excuse to bicker over the price of a toy car (or any non-essential item), maybe they shouldn't be buying toy cars.
meme6253
·5 months agoThat's funny, I have constantly thought the same thing, People even want to haggle if you have a sale going on, Like your sale isn't good enough for them.
lovefindingtreasures2
·5 months agoRight! I have a 30% off sale going on right now and most buyers still make offers even when it's on sale. It makes me question if they even notice the item is on sale, especially with all the noise eBay throws at buyers with their ads.
gb58
·5 months agoThey know it's on sale. Many times they figure, "if the seller will put the item on sale, they must want to move it, so perhaps they will take ____".
I had one yesterday, Had an item, $12.50 minus 25% off made it $9.38. I noticed I had someone watching that I could send an offer to. I sent them an additional offer of $8.50.
They messaged me, and said, "could you do $6.50 plus shipping on this item".
It's all part of the game. I don't block people for making offers, even if it is a low offer. I do flea markets, and we get it all the time there also, it just comes with the territory.
soh.maryl
·5 months agoHave thought about this a lot, although I no longer sell. Learned long ago from a friend who was stationed overseas in a diplomatic capacity that there are some cultures where haggling is an accepted part of the game, that buyers who pay the stated price are somehow cheating themselves. In the US, I shop quite a bit at flea markets and similar situations where "Will you take XX dollars for it?" is a common bargaining tool. Ditto at garage/yard sales.
rugerskick
·5 months agoThey dont try guilt sob stories on walmart managers either.