NEW eBay Price Match Guarantee Feature?

[wilsonharborsales]

Hello,

I hope this message finds you all well.  Today an interesting thing occurred on the app that has never happened to me before.  I am going to write this in point-form.

1. I sell an item to a buyer

2. Buyer immediately requests to cancel sale after payment

3. I open the app to proceed with cancellation and a pop-up window from eBay shows up that must be completed.

4. The pop-up says that the buyer was shown a better deal and that the buyer wanted to cancel because they ‘found a better price’.  I am given two options to proceed.  Either cancel the sale, or refund the buyer the difference and continue with the sale.

5.  I choose ‘agree to new terms of sale’ and eBay automatically refunded the buyer a portion of the sale so that my price matches the other sellers price.

I have sold 11,000 items on eBay and I’ve never seen this before.  Has eBay rolled out some kind of price match guarantee or something?  Today was the first time I have ever seen this.

[pjcdn2005]

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@dhbookds wrote:

With the caveat that I haven't had much coffee

Since the "price" was the paid price.......that means the price included shipping and tax........so it wasn't necessarily the only the item price that was matched.........the "cheaper" could have been cheaper shipping....(tax would be the same).   Which could mean GA versus priority?  UPS vs USPS?  Free vs anything else. 

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Or commercial shipping cost vs retail cost.

[wastingtime101]

Or free returns vs buyer paid returns. So many factors.

[ltldpr]

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@campanaelia wrote:

I wonder how long is the price match guarantee window is good for? Is it just for the first hour, until the item ships, or 30 days like the MBG

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Oh my! I hadn't even thought about the 30 days. That would be a nightmare!

[steady2304]

@campanaelia 

The time to price match is before you commit to purchase, not after you purchase and then see a better price from someone else or eBay suggests another listing with a lower price. That is what watchlists are for, to compare and choose the best and/or cheapest one for you. I am not interested at all in this option, it's just a race to the bottom.

Playing devil's advocate, what happens if the seller does not agree and cancels the sale and then the buyer before paying for the lower priced item eBay showed them finds the item lower again from another seller, will eBay give them a second bite of the apple and go through the same scenario all over?

Once you hit purchase there should be only 2 options, the buyer can cancel at buyers request or pay for their purchase.

[a_c_green]

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@steady2304 wrote:

Once you hit purchase there should be only 2 options, the buyer can cancel at buyers request or pay for their purchase.

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Right; the time to try for price-matching is pre-sale, not post-sale. I'm not going to waste time with a buyer playing sillybuggers with the final sale price after the purchase has been made and I'm gearing up to ship the thing.

I generally don't block a buyer for requesting a cancellation alone (at least not the first time, and I do wait at least 60 minutes following the payment in case something comes up), but I'm not indulging in this latest game. As is often said around here, "It's a business, nothing personal," and that's how I conduct my business.

[ltldpr]

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@wilsonharborsales wrote:

The buyer bought and paid for the item from me and then I had to refund the buyer approximately 20% in order to keep the sale and match another seller’s price.

I don’t know the mechanics of it or what it looks like from the buyer’s side and I am not going to reach out to them.  Going forward I will deny the price match requests if they pop up.

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At first I assumed that you sold brand new items because how else could there be a "Price Match" unless the items are identical, but I just had a look at what you sell, and I don't understand how eBay or a buyer would find an exact match (not even considering shipping).

Similar? Yes. Like "old photo" vs "old photo" but not the exact one. 

It makes absolutely no sense! I can't take an ad for a self propelled lawnmower and get a "price match" on a riding lawnmower. It has to be exact make, model, everything!

I just can't believe what a bad idea this whole thing is.

[campanaelia]

So is the Price match only for matching other sellers within ebay's platform or other stores as well? Price matching outside of ebay could attract more customers to buy here rather than elsewhere and ebay needs to increase their traffic. And in the long run those buyers could add to more sales overall.

[itsjustasprain]

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@trip98 wrote:

And doesn’t eBay have confidence in its search engine to show the lowest price to buyer if that is what how the buyer chooses his purchases? We all know a buyer can search for results by lowest price.

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You can try to do that but it does not work properly.

Do a search for some product you want and then look at how many results you get back. You will probably see the same number of results as long as you choose a Sort setting (on your results page) of 'Time: Newly listed' or 'ending soonest' or 'Price + Shipping: highest first' and so on.

Now choose 'Price + Shipping: lowest first' and you will see the number of results drop dramatically. For no apparent reason that is the only Sort setting that actually throws out valid search results. No one has ever fixed that or explained why it does what it does.

[wilsonharborsales]

 

Another seller is reporting that this was being tested on the desktop site as well.  In this case, the seller has a cancellation option that did not appear on the iOS app.   The buyer stated that they found a better price after purchasing the item as well.  I am including the screenshot with the appropriate redactions.  Please note that this transaction is from April 8th 2024

[wastingtime101]

Thanks for posting the desktop screenshot @wilsonharborsales .

The way it reads to me is buyer requests cancellation, chooses reason found a better price, and eBay presents an option for the buyer to either proceed with cancellation request or instead make an offer for that lower price with a comment box.

My listings do not have "make offer" buttons, and I do not want offers post-sale, either. Buyers need to shop around before committing to a purchase.

[steady2304]

Wow---Right in the buyer comments "I thought this unit had the base station and 1 more cordless handset. Definitely not an apples-to-apples price match comparison.

This is a trainwreck in the making.

This is nothing more than buyers remorse.

[powell-memorabilia]

A factor in this should be that you offer free returns. When you do that, a buyer that finds a better price can just return the item to you, no questions asked, get their refund, you are out shipping both ways.

[trip98]

Yes, exactly my point,  if the search engine worked properly this extra step PM interference wouldn't be necessary. How about fixing the search engine instead.

And consider the dumbfounded seller who priced lower for a quick sale, sees the higher price one sell over his. Does that lower price seller even know he is the teaser stallion?

[wastingtime101]

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@powell-memorabilia wrote:

A factor in this should be that you offer free returns. When you do that, a buyer that finds a better price can just return the item to you, no questions asked, get their refund, you are out shipping both ways.

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Factoring in my free returns on many items, as long as I hadn't shipped yet I would cancel the transaction, not agree to the lower price or force the buyer to go through with the transaction.

[ltldpr]

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@wastingtime101 wrote:

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@powell-memorabilia wrote:

A factor in this should be that you offer free returns. When you do that, a buyer that finds a better price can just return the item to you, no questions asked, get their refund, you are out shipping both ways.

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Factoring in my free returns on many items, as long as I hadn't shipped yet I would cancel the transaction, not agree to the lower price or force the buyer to go through with the transaction.

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That'll end well lol. 

This whole thing stinks. I wish they'd focus on making the search better instead of this sort of stuff that they don't even announce. But, like my dad used to say, wish in one hand and bleep in another. See which one fills up the fastest.