Why would I get an offer from a buyer that was only good for 15 minutes?

[eburtonlab]

[edited]

From a buyer?

Perhaps the offer was sent much earlier, but for some reason you did not see it until it had almost expired.

Or perhaps the buyer's account was removed by eBay.

[rj-1842]

I guess I wasn't clear.  I am the seller and I received a message from eBay stating that a buyer sent an offer to me but I only had 15 minutes to respond.  Is that normal?  I thought offers were good for 24 hours.

[eburtonlab]

48 hours is the default, I believe, but at one point eBay allowed offers to be for different selectable time periods. Too long, and impatient users will move on to other items rather than wait for the offer to expire; too short, and there is the possibility that the offer expires before the buyer/seller sees it. The minimum amount was twelve hours, I think.

But other things can cause an offer to expire, such as a purchase or an outstanding bid on an auction.

[buyselljack2016]

...

[transamcc]

All best offers expire either at  the iniator's specified time or the listing end date and time, whichever is sooner.  If the listing only had 15 minutes left until expiration, that would be the duration of the offer.

[sandhya@ebay · Accepted solution]

@rj-1842 All offers currently have 24 hours for seller to respond.

Is it possible that your item was ending soon and it had just 15 minutes on it? If offer gets sent it will take into account the end time of the item. 

If you can share the item, I can check and confirm.