Simply-the-best-for-you Volunteer Community Mentor
Glad you posted this. I came here to see If anyone else mentioned it. I've had a large amount of offers this week and I have No Offers enabled. After looking into everything, there is a setting inside the listing when you send a seller initiated offer. You have to manually turn that on to no counter offers. I did however get a couple offers on things that I never sent buyer an offer. It has me stumped. I hate how there is no way to bulk edit those to no offers or counter offers. You have to go into each listing and turn them off. It gets tedious so I'm doing them bit by bit. I noticed it didn't start until I seen the post that's posted at the top. Not sure if it's some bug or a new button that just appeared. I'll send out offers but I hate getting those offers or counter offers for crazy low amounts. I don't have time for it. We need a way to bulk edit or a button on the Hub to turn them off. You shouldn't have to spend days revising a hundred listings.
@red308gts @wirkaholic I have insight into this, but no answers as to how to fix it. I have had this problem for a long time, but only about once a month. In the last 2 weeks, it's suddenly happened 5 times.
So first off, when you send an SIO, there are 2 slider bars at the bottom of the SIO page. One for 'Send Automated Offer', the other for 'Allow Counteroffers'. Your choice should be sticky & in my experience IS sticky for long periods of time, until it inexplicably changes.
Now this is IMPORTANT, depending on a variety of factors, you may not even see those 2 options unless you scroll down, so you may not even know they're there. Some people see both options all on 1 screen w/o scrolling, others don't see either of them & some of us (me) only see one. Though I used to not see any. I'm sure that has to do with screen size & what you're using to view. BTW, I'm only talking about Desktop here.
So, normally you set those to off & forget them. Which is what I did from the beginning until about 9 months ago, when they would suddenly turn on about once a month. Once was on a Thurs night & my husband & I (both IT techies to the max) watched it change & then seconds later, watched it change back. It was wild!
The problem lies in why is it happening, but also, if you don't SEE the choices on your screen, you have NO idea that it happened. Until you start getting 20 Counteroffers a day & you don't allow them.
Initially it would only happen about once a month & I eventually went to check & saw that my settings had been changed to ALLOW, but I didn't change it. I would NEVER turn that on. I never have & I never will. Then in the last 2 weeks or so, it's started happening a LOT more often, 5 times in the last 2 weeks that I noticed. One thing that's slightly different is now I get a popup when it happens, but again, with that option not appearing on my screen, I sometimes miss the pop up, cuz I'm flying through my SIO's. I have not been able to ID why or when it happens.
Anyway, no fixes yet. To get around it, just turn your slider off until the next time, but I am in touch with eBay about this situation & hoping we'll see some improvements soon.
Also, if anyone else has been experiencing this, it would be helpful to know. Please drop a quick note in here.
@simply-the-best-for-you @ittybitnot @az93 It has to be a bug in the programming due to them adding a new feature. After reading the pinned post about Offers, they say they are gonna take feedback. They should have at least let us comment on that thread so we could leave feedback. I actually went into the offer system and hit the feedback button to let them know what is going on. I would suggest everyone having issues do that so they know there is a problem. If they don't know they can't fix it. Maybe kyle@ebay can pass on the word to them or let us know what our next steps are to get this resolved. When you have seasoned sellers having problems, You know there is a problem. There are way too many buttons in different places to turn off and on the offers. We should have only one and it should be on the Hub main page and a way to bulk edit them. Telling a buyer no sometimes makes people mad, but when they give a rediculous counter offer it's all you can do. I don't want someone coming back and buy something just to leave bad feedback. I strive to make buyers happy and still make a profit. I'm not a turn and burn store who doesn't care about customer satisfaction just to make a buck. Too many of those are ruining the Ebay experience. I hear it all the time from customers. We just need a simple fix from the programmers.
@ittybitnot wrote:Initially it would only happen about once a month & I eventually went to check & saw that my settings had been changed to ALLOW, but I didn't change it.
@simply-the-best-for-you
Do you suspect that eBay has started adding the "best offer" feature to listings all on their own? I know they used to do that 'to help the seller sell' even when the best offer feature was intentionally not selected.
eBay would put it on there anyway, and even if the seller revised the listing and removed it, eBay would put it back. It was a virtual game of "whack a mole", and why preferences for the make offer feature would subsequently be set to 'reject all offers submitted' that were at least one cent below the asking price.
Maybe it is starting again. Does it "stick" if you revise and remove it?
@ittybitnot No, I do remember what you're talking about, but this isn't the same thing. Best Offer is not on the listing at all. These are ONLY SIO's that I'm talking about. It's also not the same type of problem in that it is very random & occasional. Whereas that older 'problem' was happening on all or most listings & it was clearly eBay trying to 'help'. Thank you for the thought though.
Additionally, I don't think it's something eBay is doing intentionally b/c it's so random & intermittent. But that part I'm not positive about. I have a theory, but haven't been able to test it yet.
@wirkaholic wrote:@simply-the-best-for-you @ittybitnot @az93 It has to be a bug in the programming due to them adding a new feature. After reading the pinned post about Offers, they say they are gonna take feedback. They should have at least let us comment on that thread so we could leave feedback. I actually went into the offer system and hit the feedback button to let them know what is going on. I would suggest everyone having issues do that so they know there is a problem. If they don't know they can't fix it. Maybe kyle@ebay can pass on the word to them or let us know what our next steps are to get this resolved. When you have seasoned sellers having problems, You know there is a problem. There are way too many buttons in different places to turn off and on the offers. We should have only one and it should be on the Hub main page and a way to bulk edit them. Telling a buyer no sometimes makes people mad, but when they give a rediculous counter offer it's all you can do. I don't want someone coming back and buy something just to leave bad feedback. I strive to make buyers happy and still make a profit. I'm not a turn and burn store who doesn't care about customer satisfaction just to make a buck. Too many of those are ruining the Ebay experience. I hear it all the time from customers. We just need a simple fix from the programmers.
@wirkaholic I'm not convinced it's a bug, it may be an intentional 'feature' (longtime former developer here) but I don't think it's related to the new feature b/c it pre-dates that by many MONTHS. This has been going on for me for probably 9 months now. Additionally, the new feature is related to Automated Offers, I don't use AO's & this has been happening to me. I won't rule it out, b/c that is also turned on, but that's not the biggest issue to me. But yeah, this issue very much pre-dates the new feature.
I just brought this thread to eBay's attention late on Friday. kyle@ebay Just FYI I am working with someone on this, please reach out to me directly as I can't post it here, but hate to duplicate effort. I have let the person know about this thread.
FWIW, I disagree about only having 1 global option on the SH page as the ONLY option. I prefer to set them per item. There are some items I may be willing to accept counters on (old, stale items), while not being willing to accept them on most.
It's great to hit the link to give them Feedback! I know those do get read, as I've been contacted through them several times. But for me, this way pre-dates the new feature.
@red308gts wrote:I wish it would. I listed like 20 items yesterday and I every one of them had accept offers “on”. I had to select “don’t accept offers” for every one. This is on the iOS eBay app on my iPhone.
@red308gts To be clear, are you talking about turning on Seller Initatied Offers or are your referring to turning on Best Offer? Perhaps I misunderstood you due to the problem I am having. I thought you were referring to SIO's.
If you're simply referring to Best Offers BO's, which are totally different, ON can be the default depending on how you list. Some of the ways to list I think have BO's set to ON by default or at least did at one time & others don't, so you always have to be sure to check that field when listing.
@ittybitnot wrote:@simply-the-best-for-you
Thank you for your response. I did not realize that your problem was related to Seller Initiated Offers. The OP @red308gts seemed to be addressing the Best Offer feature in general.
In either case, do you ever use the "sell similar" feature to make a listing using another seller's listing (i.e. sell similar or sell one like this)? Others have reported in the past, if that method was used it would carry over other attributes from the listing used.
At the same time eBay announced a change/improvement/enhancement/ or whatever they are calling it to the SIO program. It is the thread pinned to the top of this forum that is read only. From my experience of 27 years of being here, the rolling out of 'something new' on eBay rarely goes smoothly, and often causes the malfunction of the things about the program that did work.
Please let us know if you find out anything or see other posts reporting the same or similar anomaly.
@ittybitnot Yes, you probably saw my follow up post after you wrote this, I took another look at OP's wording & realized that they may simply be talking about BO's, I asked them to clarify. If they are, it's likely a case of just the default wherever/whenever they listed from. There are places & times that allowing BO is the default.
Thanks for your thoughts/ideas, but as for me personally, no I don't use Sell Similar & have never used another seller's listing to copy from. In fact, I don't even list using eBay. I def know what you mean about new updates not always going smoothly & I agree. I've been here since 96, so I've seen a lot, but in this case, I'm just saying that the problem I'm having started WAY before the recently announced upgrade/change, almost a year before, which is why I don't think they're related. As always, I could be wrong though 😀
I will def post if I find out anything. The main challenge is that I cannot recreate the problem at will, which makes it very difficult to diagnose. As it stands now, I can tell eBay it's happening, but I can't show it to them 😞
