eBay

azjustin · ‎04-12-2019

Don't get me wrong, we do offers, lots of offers, love offers. However, I became suspicious when all of a sudden almost every single offer started coming in at the exact price we have the auto decline set to. Typically that lower price is meant to get the conversation started for us, and as most of you know, most buyers don't counter back or accept after a counter. Most noticeably is that almost every buyer had 4 offers remaining, meaning that they "guessed" the lowest price the first time, almost every time.

Soooo, started looking around and sure enough there is apps, extensions, pages, scripts, etc., all designed to "help you get the best price you can on eBay!". Looks like they can pull the minimum offer price right out of the code on the page and even see what the previous offers have been accepted at. And these are offers that are coming in from buyers that have been longstanding members using this ability, not just new members with minimal feedback. My favorite one was an extension that had a search that only showed sellers that would take offers (there's a button for that now!) and showed the minimum price the seller would take. No other items or sellers were displayed that didn't fit that criteria.

My wife didn't believe me, so to prove myself wrong (she's never wrong), I set an auto decline at $80.78. Sure enough, a couple days later an $80.79 offer came in and the buyer had 4 offers remaining, miraculously guessing the lowest price available on a $100 item.

All that being said: yes, I know we can change the settings. Yes, I know that offers are optional (sort of). Yes, I know pretty much all the self help options.

However, my complaint is that eBay can't/won't encode the page enough for people to find this information, that shouldn't be available in the first place. Why even have the offer option in place when someone will just attack your lowest price right out of the gate? IMO, offers are there to get the conversation started, not for someone to automatically know what the lowest price you'll take for something.

Playing the offer game has been interesting at best, very punishing to the bottom line most times, although seemingly a necessary evil for ebay to send you more traffic for sales. I'm all for playing games, but not if I'm getting kneecapped at every sale.

Anyone have any good insights? Dealt and conquered the issue? Am I just off base and need to stop being irritated?

Thanks in advance!

coolections · ‎04-12-2019

If you do not like it just raise your minimum. Either that or be happy you got a sale for the price you willing to accept.

escuintla · ‎04-12-2019

I got a $215 on a $299 listing.

Thanks but no thanks!

I am barely making $ to pay for a lunch for our family this Sunday.

_________________________________________________________
If you haven't paid for your item, you're a winning bidder, not a buyer!
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

mr_lincoln · ‎04-12-2019

@azjustin wrote: " ... Anyone have any good insights?"

_________________________________________________________

Yes, I have never used Best Offer and never plan to. I set prices at what I want to sell the items for. Sure, I get occasional offers "messaged" to me but most are declined mentioning that at the price they are offering I would be selling at a loss. At times the acquisition cost drives the selling price and other times while I might get a deal on the acquisition side I don't just list the price lower, I don't believe in devaluing the marketplace ... like eBay does ...

Regards,
Mr. Lincoln - Community Mentor

ekmadonna · ‎04-12-2019

That's a really interesting tidbit of news, because I have been noticing this same exact thing so much to the point I came to believe it was no coincidence. Now I know for sure. I had 3 high priced items come in at exactly my lowest set decline price right around April 1st, I accepted them all only because I wanted to get a good start to the month. Then another came in-- a $350.00 item with auto decline set at $199.99, an offer came in at $200, I did not take this one because I noticed the pattern. and the item is worth every penny of the $350 price so I countered at $275 and the guy vanished. I will make sure to set my auto declines higher now. Thanks for that very helpful piece of info. I may just stop and go back to NO OFFERS!

dtexley3 · ‎04-12-2019

@azjustin wrote:
Don't get me wrong, we do offers, lots of offers, love offers. However, I became suspicious when all of a sudden almost every single offer started coming in at the exact price we have the auto decline set to. Typically that lower price is meant to get the conversation started for us, and as most of you know, most buyers don't counter back or accept after a counter. Most noticeably is that almost every buyer had 4 offers remaining, meaning that they "guessed" the lowest price the first time, almost every time.

Soooo, started looking around and sure enough there is apps, extensions, pages, scripts, etc., all designed to "help you get the best price you can on eBay!". Looks like they can pull the minimum offer price right out of the code on the page and even see what the previous offers have been accepted at. And these are offers that are coming in from buyers that have been longstanding members using this ability, not just new members with minimal feedback. My favorite one was an extension that had a search that only showed sellers that would take offers (there's a button for that now!) and showed the minimum price the seller would take. No other items or sellers were displayed that didn't fit that criteria.

My wife didn't believe me, so to prove myself wrong (she's never wrong), I set an auto decline at $80.78. Sure enough, a couple days later an $80.79 offer came in and the buyer had 4 offers remaining, miraculously guessing the lowest price available on a $100 item.

All that being said: yes, I know we can change the settings. Yes, I know that offers are optional (sort of). Yes, I know pretty much all the self help options.

However, my complaint is that eBay can't/won't encode the page enough for people to find this information, that shouldn't be available in the first place. Why even have the offer option in place when someone will just attack your lowest price right out of the gate? IMO, offers are there to get the conversation started, not for someone to automatically know what the lowest price you'll take for something.

Playing the offer game has been interesting at best, very punishing to the bottom line most times, although seemingly a necessary evil for ebay to send you more traffic for sales. I'm all for playing games, but not if I'm getting kneecapped at every sale.

Anyone have any good insights? Dealt and conquered the issue? Am I just off base and need to stop being irritated?

Thanks in advance!

tyler@ebay

@Anonymous

brian@ebay

This is totally unacceptable if it's accurate!!!!! How could eBay be so sloppy as to expose this type of information? How are we supposed to trust eBay to keep our financial information secure if you can't even keep basic things like a buyers minimum on an item private?

Sheesh, a new low for the eBay IT team, a new low. Totally, complete, utter FAIL.

Member of the Grumpy Old Man crew

femmefan1946 · ‎04-13-2019

almost every buyer had 4 offers remaining,

I thought the new normal was 10 offers-- it stuck in my memory because it was such a time-waster.

coolections · ‎04-13-2019

@ekmadonna wrote:
Now I know for sure.

@ekmadonna

I would have offered $200 and do not use a program. I very seriously doubt the other guy did either. If it was posted on the internet it must be true.

tunicaslot · ‎04-13-2019

Unless they changed back - I thought it was 10 offers too. I wouldn't be surprised if there is some new program wherein a buyer can input an item number and the lowest acceptable offer is shown. I have links to tools that show me a lot more than we are shown on these venues.

my-cottage-books-and-antiques · ‎04-13-2019

A buyer can make five offers.

a_c_green · ‎04-13-2019

@coolections wrote:
I would have offered $200 and do not use a program. I very seriously doubt the other guy did either. If it was posted on the internet it must be true.

Given the test that the OP performed, using a very non-standard decline price breakpoint that another user mysteriously guessed exactly right on the first attempt, I'm inclined to believe that someone out there has indeed found a way to determine the breakpoint without wasting offers to home in on it:

"I set an auto decline at $80.78. Sure enough, a couple days later an $80.79 offer came in and the buyer had 4 offers remaining, miraculously guessing the lowest price available on a $100 item."

Yes, that could be just a great big co-inky-dink, so I'd want to see a few more confirmed examples like that, but I don't think it really stretches credulity all that much. My semi-technical guess is that unless eBay programmers had a massive Duh moment and actually embedded the auto-decline price in the listing code (which is entirely possible), then perhaps someone has found a way to use the eBay API coding interface to submit an offer amount that does not decrease the offer counter. If an error comes back, their test price offer is too low; if an error does not come back, their test price would be accepted for consideration (if offered through proper channels).

It's pretty easy to home in on the "secret" auto-decline price with binary guessing. Start with an offer that's half the listed price. If no error comes back, you could go lower, so drop the price by half of the previous offer increment and try again. If an error does come back, you'll need to go higher, so raise the price by half of the remaining amount and try again. Repeat the test again by moving your test point half the distance that you did last time, evaluate the result again, and within a few tries, you'll be very close to the true number.

For example, using the secret $80.78 of our current example here, it could go like this (against the listed price of $100). Again, these would not actual offers to the seller, but internal coding calls to see if an error comes back, and please excuse any errors below as I am operating on only two cups of coffee so far this morning:

Offer half of $100, the starting price: $50.
$50 will be declined, so boost the offer by half of the previous increment: $50 + $25 = $75
$75 will be declined, so boost the offer by half of the previous increment: $75 + $12.50 = $87.50
That will be accepted, so decrease the offer by half of the previous increment: $87.50 - $6.25 = $81.25
That will be accepted, so decrease the offer by half of the previous increment: $81.25 - $3.12 = $78.13
That will be declined, so boost the offer by half of the previous increment: $78.13 + $1.56 = $79.69
That will be declined, so boost the offer by half of the previous increment: $79.69 + $0.78 = $80.47
That will be declined, so boost the offer by half of the previous increment: $80.47 + $0.39 = $80.86
That will be accepted, so decrease the offer by half of the previous increment: $80.86 - $0.19 = $80.67
That will be declined, so boost the offer by half of the previous increment: $80.67 + $0.09 = $80.76
That will be declined, so boost the offer by half of the previous increment: $80.76 + $0.04 = $80.80
That will be accepted, so decrease the offer by half of the previous increment: $80.80 - $0.02 = $80.78
That will be declined, so boost the offer by half of the previous increment: $80.78 + $0.01 = $80.79
That will be accepted, and the latest increment was down to one cent, so we have now determined the lowest offer that will actually reach the seller, and we're ready to send him a real number.

As I said, the above is based on an app having access to the offer mechanism without actually decreasing the offer counter, and none of this is visible to the seller. The simpler reason for this to be possible would be if eBay actually had the auto-decline price sitting visible in the page code, and given their programming skills to date, that would be the first possibility that I would look into. The above is more complex and relies on some knowledge of eBay APIs to manipulate, but could be do-able if some internal eBay conditions were favorable.

18704d · ‎04-13-2019

@azjustin

Your listing:
Pelican 1620 Protector Rolling Case | 24.76" x 19.57" x 13.90" | Foam | Hardigg
which has a price listed of 94.95

Is your best offer 72.95?

Thanks
Lynn

Lynn

You love me for everything you hate me for

.

18704d · ‎04-13-2019

Well everyone,

it looks like the OP has only done 2 posts on these boards

each of which was an opening thread which they didn't respond back to.

(which is ok, or course)

I got curious,

I opened one of the OP's listings, then

on that page, I Right Clicked and selected View Page Source.

That allows my browser to show me the entire source code for that page.

I use Firefox, but I'm certain Chrome allows this too.

then,

with the Huge amount of code.. I did Control F (for find)

and told it to find $ dollar signs.

I figured any 'hidden' price would have a dollar sign next to it...

It showed me the first $ and then I hit F3 (for repeat)

to one at a time, show me everything with a dollar sign in it.

I did see the listing price, then shipping price

and then the other price which I believe may be the best offer.

Make sense?

Lynn

Lynn

You love me for everything you hate me for

.

a_c_green · ‎04-13-2019

@18704d wrote:
I did see the listing price, then shipping price
and then the other price which I believe may be the best offer.

Make sense?
Lynn

Indeed. Can you find the OP's $80.78 listing, by any chance? (Got to run out the door or I'd dig further into this. Back later to check for further discoveries. )