Why oh why did ebay bring back variable time limit offers? I thought we banished this 4 years ago?

[netherworldgames]

Seriously. eBay. You tried this 4 years ago.

It made it impossible for sellers to keep up with offers, and created (sigh, even MORE,) unrealistic buyer expectations.

All of this was covered here:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Archive-Selling/Yes-eBay-modified-Best-Offer-system-Yes-it-is-terrible...

But most notably, ebay, why did you AGAIN make this change without notifying sellers, or even your own reps? When I called in to ask about it, none of the MSO reps knew about it.

[netherworldgames]

To those of you saying "this is useful for buyers who don't want to wait that long for the seller to respond", please keep in mind three important things:

1) eBay is INCREDIBLY buyer biased already
2) a buyer can make a (normal) 48 hour offer, and include the note "this offer is valid for 6 hours, after that please decline", and if the seller accepts with that note, the buyer can get out of the deal. Even without that note the buyer can get out of the deal these days
3) a buyer can RETRACT a bid or offer for ANY REASON at ANY TIME without any penalties. So a buyer can make a 48 hour offer, and retract it after 6, or 7 or 15 hours, or whatever the buyer wants. eBay don't care.

My point is that the buyer already has the mechanism to make 6 hour offers, however by formalizing it into the system, eBay is cementing (even more) unrelastic buyer expectations on the sellers. That is a huge probelm. 

[netherworldgames]

@watchingbands

The two things I'd like to point out to you are:
1) eBay is crazy buyer friendly. buyers can already back out of deals, and retract bids and offers with no penalties. So they can make a 48 hour offer, then retract it if the seller doesn't reply "fast enough", they can retract it.

2) The problem we had 4 years ago (when they first tried this (again without any notification to sellers or training to support staff,),) is that it created unrealistic buyer expectations. Even now with 48 hour offers, if you scan the boards you see tons of buyers complaining that sellers ignore offers entirely. By enabling 1 and 6 hour offers, you're making buyers think that sellers are robots that are there at their beck and call, and when they don't get replied to buyers get mad.

Last time they did this, it went on for weeks before we even put all the pieces together. We just started getting angry messages from buyers saying "why did you ignore my offer?" we get hundreds of offers a day, and were answering offers every 12-18 hours, which is reasonable and safe in a 48 hour offer environment. So for a while we assumed that the buyer crazy level had just increased.

[netherworldgames]

The following is a summarized version of my call to ebay about this.

Dan: You've changed your best offer system so eBayers can make offers that are 1 hour, 6 hours, 12 hours, or 24 hours instead of just 48 hours. This is incredibly taxing on sellers, and makes it so that buyers have even more unrealistic expectations. You tried this before 4 years ago, and after a minor uproar you got rid of it. Do you have any info on why you're doing it again? if this is a test thing or for real? Any info on when they're getting rid of it?

eBay rep: I haven't even heard of that. I've been with the company for a while, and we've gotten no training on it. I don't think that is a thing. 

Dan: you've been with them for a while? How long? decades? 8 years?

ebay rep: Since May.

Dan: oh. ok, well launching new features without warning is a thing they do all the time, and it makes it harder for us to sell on your site. And i get that they don't notify us of these changes, because I mean "sellers, **bleep** 'em, right?" but its baffling that they don't tell YOU, the eBay rep about this sort of thing, because you're on the front line. When the site breaks or they do something wonky, YOU have to deal with the angry sellers calling in!

ebay rep: yeah, there's no documentation on this, and no one here has heard of it, can you show me an example?

< i have him log in to a personal account, give him a listing, and he is able to see that he can make a 1 hour, 6 hour, 12 hour, 24 hour or 48 hour offer >

ebay rep: That is odd. Maybe they are just testing out a new feature to see how it works or how it looks on the site

Dan: Right. But you guys did this already. Literally the exact same thing almost exactly 4 years ago. It was awful. After a few months, you got rid of it. It cost us money and customers, but you've tested this already

ebay rep: I don't have any answers for you, but I can ask about it, and try to get back to you. We're closing up here in an hour or so, but I can be sure to get back to you next week.

Dan: Next week? I want to know which listings of mine are affected. Can you get back to me tomorrow at this time? 60 minutes from now? 5am tomorrow?

ebay rep: Um no. I don't know how long it will take to get an answer, but it will probably be longer than that.

Dan: I don't understand. Why won't you let me choose when you will reply to me? I'd like to be able to have an answer 1 hour from now, or 6 hours from now, or 24 hours from now. Why can't you accommodate this?

< there's like a 15 - 20 second pause >

ebay rep: Ok, I see what you did there.

[annasunicorns]

but no one is forcing you to have best offer

yes they are.  There are sellers removing it unwanted from thier listings DAILY.  If ebay could get better at offering the carrot, fewer sellers and buyers would be frusterated and throwing sticks at each other in this platform.

I would like to be able to choose how many options buyers have for best offer. Thatd be sweet.  

[annasunicorns]

@netherworldgames THAT IS EPIC. I needed that laugh!

[bigchief2472000]

I don't see any problem with it.  If a person has a legitimate reason for giving a time limit on their offer, this will be good for them.  If a person is just impatient and gets mad because they don't get a response within their timeframe, oh well, let em pout.

[netherworldgames]

@bigchief2472000
The problems with it were explained in the original post and in the subsequent discussion. I'll list them for you again so they're all in one place:

1) They tried this 4 years ago. It was awful. They undid that after a minor uproar from sellers
2) It creates an unrealistic buyer expectation. If offers last X hours, a seller need check offers once every X/2 to X/4 hours. If offers last 48 hours, checking ever 12-24 hours is reasonable. If offers last 6 hours, you need to check once every 3 hours to keep buyers happy. If you offer buyers a 1 hour offer option, buyers WILL EXPECT sellers to reply to their offers. This is unrealistic
3) eBay is already crazy buyer-centric. Buyers can already retract bids and offers with literally no penalties. If you're a buyer, and you want your offer to be valid for 6 hours, or 1 hour, or 9.5 hours, you can make a 48 hour offer, then retract it whenever you want. A system already exists which does this, but which doesn't unrealistically raise buyer expectations
3b) buyers can also add "terms" to their offer. So right now a buyer can make a 48 hour offer and say "please accept this within 5 hours of me making it. If you view this after 5 hours, please decline." And then even if the seller accepts after 12 hours, the buyer can still weasel out of it, because ebay lets buyers cancel for no reason.
4) eBay made this change with NO NOTIFCATION, not just to us lowly sellers, but with no notification even to their reps.
5) "If a person is just impatient and gets mad because they don't get a response within their timeframe, oh well, let em pout." Last time ebay tried this, this is exactly what happened. They didn't tell us about it, and we just began getting angry emails from buyers wondering why we were "ignoring their offers" and saying they'd never buy from us again.

Just to restate #5, because this is important, eBay made a change to their site, didn't notify us, that change changed buyer expectations, making buyers mad at us the seller.

This is a problem. 

[reallynicestamps]

The answer would be to set automatic refusals on Best Offers under a certain amount or percentage and an automatic acceptance above a certain amount or percentage.

Let the customer haggle with a machine.

[penguins_dont_fly]

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@reallynicestamps wrote:

The answer would be to set automatic refusals on Best Offers under a certain amount or percentage and an automatic acceptance above a certain amount or percentage.

Let the customer haggle with a machine.

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🙂

If they want to give the buyer a choice of response time, give the seller a choice  of auto response.

Item $60 BIN w/BO ... Auto-Decline at $42 (30%) Auto-Accept at $54 (10%)

If the offer comes in the "haggle zone" with a shortened response time requested ...

Auto send counter offer $57 (5%)

If accepted, great

If countered, send second seller counter at $54 (10%) or OFFER+$2 whichever is greater

If accepted, great.

If countered, send third seller counter at $49 (15%) or OFFER+$1 whichever is greater

If countered again ...  accept whatever it is 🙂

They want to haggle with the machine, let 'em 🙂

But ... I would also add that "shortened response time"= NO buyer terms allowed. Get rid of the box completely.

[nobody*s_perfect]

That sounds very complicated. I don't think eBay's programmers could handle it.  Meanwhile, the buyer can just argue back-and-forth with your auto decline or submit 1-hour offers at increasing amounts.

[leadgard9]

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@annasunicorns wrote:

but no one is forcing you to have best offer

yes they are.  There are sellers removing it unwanted from thier listings DAILY.  If ebay could get better at offering the carrot, fewer sellers and buyers would be frusterated and throwing sticks at each other in this platform.

I would like to be able to choose how many options buyers have for best offer. Thatd be sweet.  

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I've been selling here for 20 years. Not once has that happened to me. ANd I've had quite a lot of things happen to me over the years. The only times anything even remoetely happened like that, was me accidently pressing best offer on my listing during editing. That's actually happened multiple times. SO I'm just going to assume that is exactly what's happening to others.

[penguins_dont_fly]

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@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

That sounds very complicated. I don't think eBay's programmers could handle it.  Meanwhile, the buyer can just argue back-and-forth with your auto decline or submit 1-hour offers at increasing amounts.

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Exactly.  Let the system haggle while I sleep LOL.

It's not really that complicated.

It's really just "decrease auto-Accept by 5%" on each counter-offer by the buyer until middle ground is achieved (with the caveat that the seller's counter is never less than the buyer's offer)

"Welcome to haggle-bot! There is no human at the other end of this negotiation. Thank you for choosing eBay, where we take all personal interaction out of the equation for a smoother buying experience!"

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@penguins_dont_fly wrote: ... It's not really that complicated.

It's really just "decrease auto-Accept by 5%" on each counter-offer by the buyer until middle ground is achieved (with the caveat that the seller's counter is never less than the buyer's offer)...

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If you think that wouldn't sound complicated to eBay's programmers, I recommend that you spend a few minutes over on the Technical Issues board.

[penguins_dont_fly]

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@leadgard9 wrote:

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@annasunicorns wrote:

but no one is forcing you to have best offer

yes they are.  There are sellers removing it unwanted from thier listings DAILY.  If ebay could get better at offering the carrot, fewer sellers and buyers would be frusterated and throwing sticks at each other in this platform.

I would like to be able to choose how many options buyers have for best offer. Thatd be sweet.  

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I've been selling here for 20 years. Not once has that happened to me. ANd I've had quite a lot of things happen to me over the years. The only times anything even remoetely happened like that, was me accidently pressing best offer on my listing during editing. That's actually happened multiple times. SO I'm just going to assume that is exactly what's happening to others.

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You might want to read this eBay Announcement before assuming anything.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Announcements/UPDATED-eBay-is-Helping-Boost-Conversion-with-Best-Offer...

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@leadgard9 wrote:

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@annasunicorns wrote:

but no one is forcing you to have best offer

yes they are.  ....  

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I've been selling here for 20 years. Not once has that happened to me. ....

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It mostly happens to new sellers.  For a while, BO was automatically added to all fixed price listings that were set up using the Quick version of the listing form with no way to opt out; as an experienced selelr, you are no doubt using the Advanced version.