Offers being accepted then not showing up as sold creating havoc for sellers and buyers

[danra_1073]

I am a very active seller in the hobby/model train space with over 1000 transactions a month processed on Ebay.  Recently, we have noticed that when and offer comes on for an item that we accept, sometimes, and the key word is sometimes... the offer acceptance never processes as an actual order.  It disappears completely and the listing remains active.    Yes, I have reported the issue and opened a Case with Ebay.  No fix as of yet and this seems to be happening 2 - 3 times a day on my account which is frustrating and wasting everyone's time.  

The fix in the meantime is to relist the item at the agreed price and send the purchaser a message with the new listing ID number.  Be sure you DO NOT promote the new listing and use the "Sell Similar" option when doing so as this avoids any promotional fees that might have been applied since Ebay cannot seem to fix the issue, they certainly do not deserve my advertising dollars on the items affected.

All Ebay can tell me is they are working on it and no one seems to really be elevating the issue that is affecting my revenue, likely your revenue and of course the mother-ship.

Anyone else having this issue?  Work-around ideas welcome!  Happy New Year Sellers!  Wishing you all much success in 2024! 

[siamjane8]

Just wanted to report..... Its possible that they rolled this ridiculous and confusing change back already.   A week ago i had the "counteroffers" I  had  accepted being sent back as the decline or checkout and they would go into the buyers "offers page and nobody would see them- sales lost for sure. Confirmed earlier in this post with screen shots from the buyer saying he would never had known if i had not messaged him directly.

   Yesterday i had two separate similar experiences BUT both instantly said sold when i accepted their counter-offers like before this whole mess started. Both people paid within an hour or so and i was grateful that ebay decided to let them know that i accepted the offer and they need to pay instead of misrepresenting and hiding my acceptance in a return "offer".    

    Is anyone else still seeing the new goofy way still?   Also it would be nice if an ebay rep would let us know what is actually happening. 

      Time wasted trying to understand and figure out these unannounced changes and time spent on the boards trying to make sense of it all comes at the cost of time listing new product....Ebay is shooting itself in the foot as well as us when they make such stupid changes.

[ittybitnot]

Just wanted to report..... Its possible that they rolled this ridiculous and confusing change back already.

@siamjane8 
@gurlcat 

You could be correct.  It could also be "by design", for other sellers have reported that "sometimes they do, sometimes they don't" randomness.   Just for comparison I am going to post both screens from above together in the same post for comparison.    They are again, both SELLER GENERATED offers from items on my watch list. 

[ittybitnot]

@siamjane8 

I just wanted to report that I just make offers on THREE items from the same seller.  They do not require an upfront payment source, or I would NOT have done it.  (today 1/8 at 12 noon)

All were apparently accepted, but I got no message saying so.  They did not MORPH into SELLER SENT YOU AN OFFER...there were no messages at all.  They just were in my cart, with a "request combined shipping" notice available, which I used.  

There is still the option to check out and pay full shipping on each.  I will wait for the invoice.  This is a seller that I have purchased from before, so I am certain I will get one  shortly. 

[lonebuck-books]

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@ittybitnot wrote:

No fix as of yet...

@danra_1073 

Don't expect one.  It is a new feature, intended change, and/or enhancement that looks like a glitch.   When you accept an offer from a buyer and you accept, the transaction is renamed into YOU SENT AN OFFER.  On the buyer's end instead of a notice that their "offer was accepted" they get a notice that "YOU HAVE AN OFFER".   Their choice is to pay, decline, or ignore.   There is no longer an 'accept' feature that would allow it to go to the cart and request a total for more than one accepted offer, no more unpaid item strikes for those that don't pay, and if you retain the buyer preferences that previously resulted in auto-billing for the buyer and instant payment to you that is all over, too.   

The listing remains live until somebody pays for it. 

You can "accept" all the offers you want from multiple buyers for the same product/listing.  

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Wow, what a terrible way to fix a problem.  Come on eBay, you aren't this stupid.  Fix the problem, don't create a new one.  Seriously, how hard would it have been to send a "your offer was accepted" message and then in the email put a line that says the order is not complete until you pay and can be bought by other people until you do.  I have no problem with keeping an item available for sale until it is actually paid for but what moron thought sending a "you have an offer" email was the way to do it?  

[ittybitnot]

So does this mean that (hopefully) an actual seller generated offer does have the accept button?

@toomuchstuffagain35 

Looks like a "maybe"....LOL... see message #108   

I got one of each.  

[toomuchstuffagain35]

Okay, so "other buyers did NOT get my offer" if I sent one to a lone buyer, right? So maybe they DO get the accept button? /she said hopefully

[toomuchstuffagain35]

I'm a long time ebayer...hope is my middle name LOL

[ittybitnot]

Okay, so "other buyers did NOT get my offer" if I sent one to a lone buyer, right?

@toomuchstuffagain35 

It is my understanding that a seller who Generates an Offer does not get to know to what buyer(s) the offer is sent.  I would assume they would not know if it was sent to one buyer or ten.

The BUYER GENERATED offers I made today, did not MORPH into SELLER SENT YOU AN OFFER as was described in all these threads last week.  I suppose eBay is still TWEAKING this mess. 

[gurlcat]

VERY interesting, thanks.  And if you're 'losing it' I would say it's not your fault nor an isolated case -this stuff is gaslighting all of us.  

@ittybitnot @siamjane8 @toomuchstuffagain35 
Just thought I would share this since I got the opportunity just now.  A buyer sent me an "informal" offer (email message) for an item.  I usually don't appreciate that one bit, since they could use the official offer feature, and it appears this person has not even tried that.  But given the current situation, they may be under the false impression that all offers now require a card number entry to even try to get their price (not true with me, as I have the requirement switched 'off').  And what they offered me isn't much lower than than what I set the 'minimum' for anyway, plus they wrote a very polite message and said they would pay right away.  

SO, I decided to use that handy 'Reply With Offer' email feature, for maybe only the 2nd or 3rd time ever, ha.  And I noticed this heads up at the bottom.  Well boy howdy -transparency for once!  -But watch it be untrue.  Oy vey. 

Anyway, just thought I'd share since I haven't seen any discussion on how that unique feature is working at this time.  

[quadethemaestro]

I'll chime in with my issues. This exact problem happened to me on 12/31/23. It happened to someone I know lat week. And again it happened this morning on 1/8/24. Both times offers were made on my items. Both times I accepted. But there is no record of sale. eBay just told me they are aware and working on fixing the issue. The only solution is to reach out to your potential buyers through messages and ask them to Buy It Now. You can't message them directly on the ebay app though. And you'll have to lower your item price to the price that you accepted. And then I guess you just wait and hope you can still sell your item. It's ridiculous. But I also received an offer this morning on another item, accepted, and it went fine. i was paid in no time.

[fern*wood]

Still no ebay reps popping in to help?

[gurlcat]

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@fern*wood wrote:

Still no ebay reps popping in to help?

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Sure doesn't look like it!  -Maybe we need to use curse words when we ask for help now?  I'm half-tempted to try.  For scientific curiosity.  😉

[gurlcat]

Correction: we sellers CAN see how many buyers we sent offers to, and how much time remains on their offers.  Note, we can't see their usernames, and I'm not sure why that is.  Also note, when a seller does a round of 'Send offers to interested buyers' it also shows how many will receive it (sometimes that number is greater or lesser than the current number of watchers, for a few reasons -if you don't know I can explain).  But we cannot change the number, to send the offer to only one buyer for instance, and in fact we can't see the usernames at that time either, can't even see the feedback scores like we can after sending, on this Review page.  Batch-sends like that are really a bit of a trust fall, since we can't know anything about the recipients, other than the fact that they don't have unpaid item strike histories that exceed our (seller preference) maximum set amount in the past year.  

The only way I know of to send an offer to a single buyer is via that email 'Reply with offer' thing, or if the current batch number is only 1 interested buyer.  



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Here's another interesting feature of the Reviews page.  -For this item, I apparently received buyer offers that were automatically rejected by my settings.  -Note that I CAN see their usernames and they are blue hotlinks.  As I said, I don't know why the names of the buyers for seller-sent offers are obscured, but I do know why the auto-rejected ones are accessible -because if an offer is reasonably high enough that it makes the seller rethink their minimum acceptable amount, they can contact that buyer to see if they still want to offer what they did before.  I haven't used that option because I just have this image of them smelling desperation and getting 'uppity' in some way, lol.  But I do appreciate having the option and maybe someday I will be desperate enough.   

[gurlcat]

UPDATE on that 'Reply with offer' I did a few hours ago.  
Well this buyer opted to remind me of another reason I usually just ignore emailed offers.  Ye olde 'give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile' thing, ha.  It's like since we've exchanged a few hand-typed words, we're suddenly BFF's and I should be even more generous than I already agreed to be.  🤣
Her offer to me was $30 by the way, so that's what I set the 'Reply' amount for. But no, I didn't also erase the $5.45 shipping.  

Luckily standing my ground appeared to be wise in this case; she went ahead and bought the item and sent 3 more friendly replies.  But here's the weird thing. -Remember how it said "if the buyer accepts the offer, immediate payment isn't required"?  And remember how I joked "Now watch that not be true"? Well I think my joke might have been correct!  -I did not receive the usual 2 separate notifications for 'Buyer accepted your offer' and 'Buyer paid, ship now'.  
I got ONLY this, and I don't know if I've ever seen that phrasing before -"confirmed a payment of ...."   So I've written her to ask if she can remember what the options were, and if she had to pay immediately or not.  I will update if she replies.  

[gurlcat]

Check it out.  -Maybe only certain members can get their attention now?