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!

twnpopcards · ‎04-15-2019

@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!

I have used Best Offer for years and now am glad that I never have used auto decline. That allows me to always have the final decision without the buyer having any insight into what I may or may not be thinking for the Best Offer.

It appears the easiest solution to this issue is to just stop using the Auto Decline and that takes that option away from the buyers. I know it may take a bit more time to have to respond to the offers, but again the advantage has been moved back to you as the buyer has no idea what you are thinking price wise. As you stated, most buyers do not come back after a receiving a counter offer so the wisest move would be to remove that piece of information that they are able to use to their advantage, or be happy that at least you are selling your items.

unclepauliscoins · ‎04-15-2019

Sales have been so slow that I added Best Offer to some of my listings were I had watchers. When I went in those listings later I seen that there was a low price but in automatically that I would not accept offers lower than half of the original price. I don't do much Best Offers due to the always low ball offers, but I sure don't want to accept a offer just above half the list price. I cancelled all the Best Offers I had put in.

the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth · ‎04-15-2019

I don’t get it. Who cares what the autodecline amount is? The important number if there is one is the auto accept.

This is just like knowing the reserve. Just because you bid above the reserve doesn’t mean you will win. Just because you offer just above the autodecline doesn’t mean the seller will accept. Most auto declines are probably set by eBay on the listings they modify.

Although eBay should not be giving away seller information I just don’t see this as scandalous as some seem to.

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎04-15-2019

Conversation starter equals doing the offers manual. No auto declines. I do this every single time. "Thanks so much for the offer, this is the least i will take with free shipping. In hand and ships tomorrow."

Then send the counter you will take and stick to it. Its a discount on something the buyer wants with free shipping and you established you are a serious ebayer who communicates ready to ship. Keeping any further counters to your first shows honesty. You will weed out the bad ones this way. Its a real pain. But the good ones will buy more from you as you showed a good stable merchant who is upfront and honest.

twnpopcards · ‎04-15-2019

@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:
I don’t get it. Who cares what the autodecline amount is? The important number if there is one is the auto accept.

This is just like knowing the reserve. Just because you bid above the reserve doesn’t mean you will win. Just because you offer just above the autodecline doesn’t mean the seller will accept. Most auto declines are probably set by eBay on the listings they modify.

Although eBay should not be giving away seller information I just don’t see this as scandalous as some seem to.

I didn't say anything about it being scandalous, just stated that I am glad that I don't use auto decline since that information is available for the buyer to see. Unfortunately, the auto decline amount is usually just below the amount that the seller knows they will accept for the item so if the buyer is able to see that, the Seller winds up leaving money on the table most of the time.

city*satins · ‎04-15-2019

It's funny how we think of looking at source code for some things and then totally don't think of it for others! A lot are unbelievably easy to read.

I used to look at source code on eBay listings quite often when I was trying to figure out how some listings were coming up in search for key brand names but those brand names weren't visible in the listing. Those were in my dudley do-right days. Then I quit doing it but yeah - there's an awful lot of info right there for anyone to see if they want to look!

For my own part, I look at source code frequently when trying to list lingerie by the brand Wacoal and some others. With some brands, the price tags only show a color by color number, not its name, whereas the websites that sell them show the color name. With so many buyers shopping online, a lot know the name of the color they want. When I'm trying to sell an item that might have matching pieces that a buyer is trying to get by color - it's handy to be able to state the color name and is really good for sales. Buyers looking for Deep Sea Blue are going to search for Deep Sea Blue, not color code 415. By looking at the source code on Wacoal and/or department store websites, I can match color code to color name and I keep a small file of those codes.

Personally, I don't use auto-accept on my own listings , but I know that if it had occurred to me, I could have saved myself a lot of wasted time and annoyance making auto-rejected offers to a seller whose stuff I liked but whom I ultimately realized set her auto-accept to 1 penny less than her BIN price.

I guess in some ways auto-accept $ are like reserves. Some folks think they should be known and some don't.

THIS SPACE LEFT INTENTIONALLY BLANK

a_c_green · ‎04-15-2019

@azjustin wrote:
Hey all, sorry for the delayed response. We're changing warehouses and I have been working every hour that I'm not sleeping. Not much computer or phone time.

Hey, a little cooperation would help, y'know. We're not doing this for free out here. No, wait...

The specific auction with the random minimum auto decline has been sold and ended for a while, but I'd be more than willing to change some others to further prove the point. The pelican cases always sell, it's just a #'s game. Just msg me, I'm willing to trade secrets.

And again, a massive flurry of offers all right above the minimum auto decline all this weekend and almost every one with 4 offers left. I'd love to hear an eBay rep comment on all this.

If you could, can you please try at least a couple more listing tests like your first one? Pick some whacko unique minimum auto-decline number, a price that no one is likely to set routinely or guess on the first attempt (e.g. $28.37 or $68.52), and one that you yourself have not used in any other listing. See if you then get offers for one cent higher, as you described (e.g. $28.38 and $68.53 respectively).

You don't, of course, have to accept those offers, if for no other reason than that it looks like the prospective buyer for that listing may be cheating on his offer (or at least not being very sporting about it). If you're feeling clever, you might try countering with a message that, I don't know, admires his shrewd negotiating skills or something ("You'll be surprised to hear how close you were to my auto-decline price..."), and see if you can get some kind of hint from him about how he really did it. ("No surprise at all! I use eBay Kracker™ from Fly-by-Night Discount Programming, the same outfit that wrote the offer code in the first place!")

Thanks for the suggestions from some, but the eBay algorithms will direct traffic to auctions that accept offers, not just the search pages that have the "Seller accepts offers" button. Again, we do offers, and don't mind doing offers. But the rub is with eBay showing the code to whomever wants to find it.

Understood. Perhaps you could do your test auto-declines at a price around what you will accept, but still make your limit in each test some rather unusual number?

I'm sure auto accept is visible also, but no one would probably think twice about it while packaging said item up for shipping.

I would sincerely hope that an auto-accept price is not visible; there are all kinds of reasons why that would be a disaster for the seller (and, indirectly, for eBay as well). However, in some squinting at web page coding yesterday, I did not see anything resembling the auto-decline value in the code that reaches the user's browser. I did see what appears to be a call to an eBay DLL or behind-the-scenes function that presumably takes the prospective buyer's offer and sends back a response.

In my opinion, the more plausible eBay hack, if there is one, would be an app or desktop product that uses available eBay programming functions (those made available to third-party software developers) to tease out the seller's auto-decline setting without triggering the offer counter, after which an acceptable lowball offer can be sent in as a first attempt.

In a nightmare scenario, the same functions might be able to find a seller's auto-accept setting as well. It would be interesting to test for that also, but obviously you'd have to leave real money on the table in order to do so. Thanks for your reply!

castlemagicmemories · ‎04-15-2019

@castlemagicmemories wrote:
I did it again and I found it! Thank you, everyone!

Just to clarify, I am not sure I did find it, after all. In any case, while this would save buyers money, it would take money from sellers, although they would still be getting what they want. Of course I would like to pay less, but it seems like bidding during an auction and retracting to discover someone's high bid. Although I know many abuse retractions to do this (I can recall a thread where a buyer said all "professional" buyers do this to explain his many retractions) I question the ethics, but that is just me, personally~I don't know that I am comfortable with it.

the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth · ‎04-15-2019

People who bid high and retract to find the high bidders proxy are doing something stupid and pointless. Who cares what the proxy bid is in the middle of the auction? We know that most bids come in at the end. We all know it's what it is at the end that matters. That's why I don't think ANY professional buyers would do this. It's a total waste of time.

Just like this. The fact that you know a seller won't accept something below a price point doesn't mean they will accept any or all offers above that point. Especially since we know Ebay is adding auto-declines when they add Best Offer to unsuspecting sellers' listings.

Both are mostly meaningless findings.

brian@ebay · ‎04-16-2019

@dtexley3 wrote:

@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.

Hi @dtexley3, I'm looking into this. When I have more information then I'll come back to this thread to share. Thanks!

Brian,
Community Team

dtexley3 · ‎04-16-2019

brian@ebay wrote:
@dtexley3 wrote:

Hi @dtexley3, I'm looking into this. When I have more information then I'll come back to this thread to share. Thanks!

brian@ebay

I had a little time so I looked at a couple listings last night, adding and removing decline and accept amounts and used a compare tool to view the differences. In Chrome, the prices don't seem to be present. I didn't check with other browsers.

Member of the Grumpy Old Man crew

tracdea1 · ‎04-16-2019

Ebay is not the only site that is tainted with these kinds of extensions. Apparently they're perfectly legal too, since they are advertised "Do not shop online without this tool!"

The problem is larger than ebay. This is lawmaking material right here.

azjustin · ‎04-16-2019

I truly appreciate the help and your (end everyone's) attention to this small issue!

Item # 293038255400, 43.21

There is no doubt in my mind that this information is visible somewhere. It may not be in the page specific code, but accessible somehow. Looks like we have an eBay person looking into it, hopefully something gets turned up.

femmefan1946 · ‎04-17-2019

Okay but-- if a buyer finds the point at which the offer is not automatically declined-- can it still be manually declined?

I hope so, because there are a few bidders out there that no sensible seller would want to deal with. (See Feedback Left for Others.)

If it can be manually declined, then I can't see a problem.

The customer is now making offers that are reasonable, not stupid low, and negotiations can begin.

castlemagicmemories · ‎04-17-2019

@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:
People who bid high and retract to find the high bidders proxy are doing something stupid and pointless. Who cares what the proxy bid is in the middle of the auction? We know that most bids come in at the end. We all know it's what it is at the end that matters. That's why I don't think ANY professional buyers would do this. It's a total waste of time.

True, but they have discovered what the high bid is which tells them they are out of the water if they don't at least match that, and that the item could go higher. They can then decide if they want to go that high, if they have a chance, or if they just want to pass. The poster of that thread had the bid retractions to prove his words, and there are those who have a lot of bid retractions. Surely they aren't all for entering the wrong number or not being able to contact the seller or the description changed. It removes the element of guessing too low and missing out on something.

Just like this. The fact that you know a seller won't accept something below a price point doesn't mean they will accept any or all offers above that point. Especially since we know Ebay is adding auto-declines when they add Best Offer to unsuspecting sellers' listings.

Both are mostly meaningless findings.