Low Ball Bidders (Best Offer) Out in Force!

[goldrushfinds]

I have included Best Offer on many of my listings in the past 2 months or so. Well at first it was OK as many of the offers were reasonable. However, this week all I have been getting are ridiculous offers, like $5 on a $39 dollar item. Too many now to count, but it is seemingly just a waste of time. Now we now why the River doesn't allow Best Offer. 

[eburtonlab]

If low offers are wasting your time, you might benefit from setting an auto decline threshold for your listings.

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/selling-buy-now/adding-best-offer-listing?id=4144#section...

[onefootflipper]

I don't have it turned on at all and I still get people who send them to me manually.

I feel like I don't need the feature. I research my prices and price my items correctly. In the case of things that have no comps I just start them high and bring them down slowly over time. 

As a buyer best offer just tells me that I can absolutely buy the item for less money.

[coolections]

I can buy most of what you are selling at Kohls for close to the same price. Ebay is branded as a site for haggling and getting best prices so you will always get low offers. Lower your prices and skip best offer.

[lightlily_arts]

I don't use the Best Offer option without setting an auto decline or you will get ridiculous offers.   I still get offers on items even when there isn't a Best Offer option.  Most of them aren't even close to being reasonable.   Although it's somewhat annoying it really doesn't matter and I just politely decline.  One thing I do like is that you have an opportunity to check their feedback profile, and read the feedback they've left for their sellers. If you see a lot of negatives it might be someone you would rather pass on.

[slippinjimmy]

Yeah no freedom of choice on AMZ, here in the wunderland of eBay we get to CHOOSE to allow Best Offer or not.

Yeah I know people send offers even if you don't officially ask for them, this happens with all Marketplace style sites and AMZ is not immune.

[dnasilver]

Thank you for inquiring. We are unable to meet your price. Thanks for asking and have a great day. ~goldrushfinds~ 

[johnrj1226]

Here are your options -

1.  You can delete your BO option and hang tough

2.  Just do fixed price listings w/ immediate payment required - really helps minimize the non payers issue

3. If you like the B/O options (personally I don't -but that is me) - you  can set limits on the minimum you are willing to accept & it will reject those below that number and/or  a price level that you will auto accept in a NY second.

4.  The ball is in your court.

Some people just like to  haggle over price - it is common place in many parts of the world - the US is made up of people from all over - I do it all the time at  yard/estates sales & B & M stores - you will be surprised how many will accept - it saves me  $$ - but I am reasonable - and the worst thing that can happen is the seller will say no.

Shouldn't matter what Amazon doesn't do - don't believe they allow  folks to sell  much used stuff - they do allow "refurbished" electronic PC, laptops, etc  but don't  have auction style listings - that some folks like.

[dbfolks166mt]

     I have never use the BO option on any of my listings but like lightlily_arts I still get offers that are generally unreasonable or people wanting to take the transaction outside of eBay. I don't even respond to those. Using the BO just encourages buyers and personally I don't want to waste my time dealing with them nor do I want to expend the effort setting auto reject parameters up on each individual listing. 

[downunder-61]

I have never enabled offers, ever. I know what my product is worth so I won't bother bartering with people who just want to haggle like a flea market when they ovioulsy have no product knowledge.

Any unsolicited [message offers/sob stories] - I simply ignore.............

[dubiousgain]

It's almost comical how cheap some of these low ball offer placers are; And if the seller tries to bump them up, with just a few dollars, counter offer, they become MIA.  The thing I didn't like about setting low offer ceilings, was because if I had an item listed for $60 and the least I would take would be $45, if the buyer offered me $50, they would get it for that $45 lowest I would take figure set. I haven't used this for a long time so possibly that has changed in some way. 

[soh.maryl]

There is no eBay requirement that your listing include Best Offer.

There is also no eBay requirement that you respond to Best Offers.  

[7606dennis]

The advantage to having the BO option in a listing is that when someone makes an offer you have the opportunity to check their bid retraction record and their feedback left for others record.  Thus you can decide, based on that, if you want to do business with them or not.

Your options when you receive an offer are:

1)  Accept

2)  Decline

3)  Counter

4 )  Ignore and let it expire

Some people like to haggle.  If you do, ask high and when the buyer offers low, counter.  Hopefully, you'll meet somewhere in the middle.    

[varebelrose]

I always figured what amount I wanted for an item, the put that value in as the automatic accept "make an offer" value, with the auto-decline a penny less. Then I would set the fixed price at around 10-20% higher. I never had to deal with offers, they were all handled by the software, and amazingly, most of the time the item sold for the higher fixed price. The only PITA about doing this was when I had to revalue a bunch of items (due to postage increases or whatever).

[downunder-61]

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@dubiousgain wrote:

It's almost comical how cheap some of these low ball offer placers are; And if the seller tries to bump them up, with just a few dollars, counter offer, they become MIA.  The thing I didn't like about setting low offer ceilings, was because if I had an item listed for $60 and the least I would take would be $45, if the buyer offered me $50, they would get it for that $45 lowest I would take figure set. I haven't used this for a long time so possibly that has changed in some way. 

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Doesn't  work that way - the lowest you set means any offers under that are auto declined.

If your auto decline is set at $45.00 and a buyer offers you $50.00 you get $50.00 if you accept it - the auto decline ceiling of $45 allows any higher offers get through to you so you decide to accept those offers if you want.