Ebay/GPA questions 1 1

[Turtle]

Ebay has a feature where if someone sends an offer via their messaging system, even if Best Offers aren't enabled, you as the seller can send them an official offer directly via the message.

My question is: what price gets reported to GPA in this case?

If you list an item as a Buy It Now with a Best Offer option, GPA will show the actual sold price.  But how about a "private offer"?  Will it show the asking price?  Will it not get reported?  Does GPA have access to these private offers? 

Does anyone know?

Thanks!

Edited August 5, 2018 by Turtle
added detail

[Ride the Tiger]

A week ago I purchased a comic for $35 dollars. I used the best offer option and was accepted. The finished auction shows the selling price as $35 with 1 bid. It does not show original asking price though.

[Turtle]

1 hour ago, Ride the Tiger said:

A week ago I purchased a comic for $35 dollars. I used the best offer option and was accepted. The finished auction shows the selling price as $35 with 1 bid. It does not show original asking price though.

Thanks, but I'm specifically looking for a best offer submitted through a private ebay message that is then accepted outside of the standard Best Offer option. 

Anyone?

[telerites]

12 hours ago, Turtle said:

Thanks, but I'm specifically looking for a best offer submitted through a private ebay message that is then accepted outside of the standard Best Offer option. 

Anyone?

Shoot George and his team an email - they are very quick to respond.  

https://comics.gpanalysis.com/gpaforcomics_contactus.asp

 

[RockMyAmadeus]

16 hours ago, Turtle said:

Thanks, but I'm specifically looking for a best offer submitted through a private ebay message that is then accepted outside of the standard Best Offer option. 

Anyone?

We could probably test it.

[valiantman]

18 hours ago, Turtle said:

Thanks, but I'm specifically looking for a best offer submitted through a private ebay message that is then accepted outside of the standard Best Offer option. 

Anyone?

It seems like you're asking about outside transactions that might have been a result of Ebay private messaging.  Don't sellers have to cancel the auction to sell outside of Ebay?  There wouldn't be a record of the sale at all.

 

EDIT:  Nevermind, I misread the original post.  I didn't know about the option for sellers to offer a special price to a buyer without the Best Offer option.

Edited August 6, 2018 by valiantman
whoops

[Turtle]

34 minutes ago, valiantman said:

It seems like you're asking about outside transactions that might have been a result of Ebay private messaging.  Don't sellers have to cancel the auction to sell outside of Ebay?  There wouldn't be a record of the sale at all.

 

EDIT:  Nevermind, I misread the original post.  I didn't know about the option for sellers to offer a special price to a buyer without the Best Offer option.

Truth be told, I may have misspoke.  Not really sure.  Details below.

For a little more background, I had a book listed as a Buy It Now with a Best Offer system enabled.

Someone messages me through eBay and says "Will you take $100 for it" (as an example). 

When I go to reply, there is a button that says something to the effect of "send an offer".  This was my first time seeing this on ebay as I thought all best offers were to be submitted via the Best Offer button in the listing.  I assume this button also pops up when no Best Offer option is in the listing, but I haven't tested it. 

_______________________________________________________________________

The reason for the question is a message that a prospective buyer sent me about one of my items.  We negotiated a price through eBay's messaging system after all 3 of his offers were used up.  When we settled on a price and he sent a message that said:

  I’ll accept your offer. Can you do me a favor though. Can you please relist the book at your price of $X as a buy it now (with no offers). Then I’ll send you a message from that listing and send me an offer for $Y and I’ll buy it now.

I had never encountered such a request, so I messaged him back and asked if there was any reason he wanted the listing structured in such a way.  His response was "I prefer for the sale to not be shown on GPA".

At that point, I came here to ask the question but didn't get a definitive response.  I wrote him back telling him:

I've relisted the item. You'll notice there's still a Best Offer option. I gave it some thought. I'm a big supporter of GPA. I don't know for sure if having on offer submitted through a message on a listing without a Best Offer option gets reported to GPA or not, but trying to circumvent the prices reported from Ebay to GPA doesn't make me feel very comfortable. I'd like for this transaction to be 100% above board. As such, I apologize, but I can't comply with your request.

If this fact means you no longer want the item, so be it. There will be no hard feelings, but I wanted to explain my reasoning. If you do still want it, feel free to submit your offer and we'll go from there.

Thank you. 

He wrote back and told me it was fine, he submitted the agreed upon offer and I accepted.  The transaction is proceeding normally.  But I'm still curious as I don't know for sure...would buying an item the way the buyer suggested really keep the price from being reported to GPA?

 

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. 

Edited August 6, 2018 by Turtle
clarity

[thunsicker]

There was discussion about this recently.  At least I think this is the same deal.  @gpanalysis can you let us know how this works?

[WoWitHurts]

7 minutes ago, Turtle said:

Truth be told, I may have misspoke.  Not really sure.  Details below.

For a little more background, I had a book listed as a Buy It Now with a Best Offer system enabled.

Someone messages me through eBay and says "Will you take $100 for it" (as an example). 

When I go to reply, there is a button that says something to the effect of "send an offer".  This was my first time seeing this on ebay as I thought all best offers were to be submitted via the Best Offer button in the listing.  I assume this button also pops up when no Best Offer option is in the listing, but I haven't tested it. 

_______________________________________________________________________

The reason for the question is a message that a prospective buyer sent me about one of my items.  We negotiated a price through eBay's messaging system after all 3 of his offers were used up.  When we settled on a price and he sent a message that said:

  I’ll accept your offer. Can you do me a favor though. Can you please relist the book at your price of $X as a buy it now (with no offers). Then I’ll send you a message from that listing and send me an offer for $Y and I’ll buy it now.

I had never encountered such a request, so I messaged him back and asked if there was any reason he wanted the listing structured in such a way.  His response was "I prefer for the sale to not be shown on GPA".

At that point, I came here to ask the question but didn't get a definitive response.  I wrote him back telling him:

I've relisted the item. You'll notice there's still a Best Offer option. I gave it some thought. I'm a big supporter of GPA. I don't know for sure if having on offer submitted through a message on a listing without a Best Offer option gets reported to GPA or not, but trying to circumvent the prices reported from Ebay to GPA doesn't make me feel very comfortable. I'd like for this transaction to be 100% above board. As such, I apologize, but I can't comply with your request.

If this fact means you no longer want the item, so be it. There will be no hard feelings, but I wanted to explain my reasoning. If you do still want it, feel free to submit your offer and we'll go from there.

Thank you. 

He wrote back and told me it was fine, he submitted the agreed upon offer and I accepted.  The transaction is proceeding normally.  But I'm still curious as I don't know for sure...would buying an item the way the buyer suggested really keep the price from being reported to GPA?

 

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. 

I have done ebay deals via ebay email and had the agreed offer sent to me or relisted with a buy it now that was agreed upon. I see no problem with that and the deal is still within ebay. When the new thing when an offer could be started and sent by the seller to an individual GPA was picking up the sell as if it sold at the buy it now price. I know this because I had visual confirmation with the serial number on GPA versus what I paid. That was back in Aug. 2017 so I do not know if it is still busted. watchcount.com also recorded it at the BIN price.

[WoWitHurts]

9 minutes ago, thunsicker said:

There was discussion about this recently.  At least I think this is the same deal.  @gpanalysis can you let us know how this works?

 

[Turtle]

6 minutes ago, WoWitHurts said:

I have done ebay deals via ebay email and had the agreed offer sent to me or relisted with a buy it now that was agreed upon. I see no problem with that and the deal is still within ebay. When the new thing when an offer could be started and sent by the seller to an individual GPA was picking up the sell as if it sold at the buy it now price. I know this because I had visual confirmation with the serial number on GPA versus what I paid. That was back in Aug. 2017 so I do not know if it is still busted. watchcount.com also recorded it at the BIN price.

This was my initial worry...some form of price manipulation. 

For example, if you listed something as a Buy It Now with no best offer for $200, I send a message and offer $100, you accept via the in-message option, does the $100 sale get reported as $200 to GPA?

[WoWitHurts]

15 minutes ago, Turtle said:

This was my initial worry...some form of price manipulation. 

For example, if you listed something as a Buy It Now with no best offer for $200, I send a message and offer $100, you accept via the in-message option, does the $100 sale get reported as $200 to GPA?

That was my observation last year.  I don't know if it has been fixed. Unless it is a 4-5 figure sale I wouldn't even sweat it. GPA misses plenty of sales on ebay because of how people list and what verbiage they use  that the number of one or dozens of unreported sales is mostly irrelevant. Not having ComicLink as a source of data is massive shortcoming to only using GPA. But I get your concern. 

[Turtle]

11 minutes ago, WoWitHurts said:

That was my observation last year.  I don't know if it has been fixed. Unless it is a 4-5 figure sale I wouldn't even sweat it. GPA misses plenty of sales on ebay because of how people list and what verbiage they use  that the number of one or dozens of unreported sales is mostly irrelevant. Not having ComicLink as a source of data is massive shortcoming to only using GPA. But I get your concern. 

It's a 5-digit sale.

[WoWitHurts]

1 minute ago, Turtle said:

It's a 5-digit sale.

Then hold to your preference as a BIN or whatever and if buyer is that uptight about GPA then he can just move along.  I don't like GPA but don't go out of my way to stick it to them they must have hurt his puppy or something.

[CKinTO]

Not to state the obvious, but I’m assuming the buyer didn’t want the lower offer price to be shown on GPA because he wants the price of his book now that he owns it to be “valued higher”. As I’ve heard from many dealers, everyone wants a deal when buying, but wants everyone else to pay high so their book is worth more!

I remember that other thread, hopefully GPA fixed it before or will do so now.

[RockMyAmadeus]

1 hour ago, Turtle said:

Truth be told, I may have misspoke.  Not really sure.  Details below.

For a little more background, I had a book listed as a Buy It Now with a Best Offer system enabled.

Someone messages me through eBay and says "Will you take $100 for it" (as an example). 

When I go to reply, there is a button that says something to the effect of "send an offer".  This was my first time seeing this on ebay as I thought all best offers were to be submitted via the Best Offer button in the listing.  I assume this button also pops up when no Best Offer option is in the listing, but I haven't tested it. 

_______________________________________________________________________

The reason for the question is a message that a prospective buyer sent me about one of my items.  We negotiated a price through eBay's messaging system after all 3 of his offers were used up.  When we settled on a price and he sent a message that said:

  I’ll accept your offer. Can you do me a favor though. Can you please relist the book at your price of $X as a buy it now (with no offers). Then I’ll send you a message from that listing and send me an offer for $Y and I’ll buy it now.

I had never encountered such a request, so I messaged him back and asked if there was any reason he wanted the listing structured in such a way.  His response was "I prefer for the sale to not be shown on GPA".

At that point, I came here to ask the question but didn't get a definitive response.  I wrote him back telling him:

I've relisted the item. You'll notice there's still a Best Offer option. I gave it some thought. I'm a big supporter of GPA. I don't know for sure if having on offer submitted through a message on a listing without a Best Offer option gets reported to GPA or not, but trying to circumvent the prices reported from Ebay to GPA doesn't make me feel very comfortable. I'd like for this transaction to be 100% above board. As such, I apologize, but I can't comply with your request.

If this fact means you no longer want the item, so be it. There will be no hard feelings, but I wanted to explain my reasoning. If you do still want it, feel free to submit your offer and we'll go from there.

Thank you. 

He wrote back and told me it was fine, he submitted the agreed upon offer and I accepted.  The transaction is proceeding normally.  But I'm still curious as I don't know for sure...would buying an item the way the buyer suggested really keep the price from being reported to GPA?

 

If you made it this far, thanks for sticking with me. 

It's an official eBay program, and works just like any other transaction within eBay. It's weird, and I don't think I've used it more than once, because I wouldn't just send an unsolicited offer to someone, but it does work, and it is official.

But I can't help you with whether or not it gets reported to GPA. I would imagine, if it shows up as a completed listing, then the answer is yes. But the buyer's e-mail raises red flags.

There are, as you know, all sorts of people who like to game the system for their advantage, and having a "low sale" for something reflected on GPA is something that some people don't want, especially if they want to flip it. That sounds like this might be the case here...?

The other possible explanation...and this happens...is that he was concerned that if you relisted it with a BIN, someone else might come along before he could see it, or you could respond, and "scoop" him. I've had that situation with buyers before, where perhaps the listing had ended, and they ask if I can relist at the price we both agreed to....I always tell them no, to go ahead and just submit that as a Best Offer, because listing at the negotiated lower price might bring someone else out of the woodwork to buy it instantly, and then you have a real hassle on your hands. 

Either scenario sounds plausible, really. Could be he just was afraid of getting scooped.

[RockMyAmadeus]

1 hour ago, Turtle said:

It's a 5-digit sale.

Drek.

[RockMyAmadeus]

 

[Turtle]

1 hour ago, RockMyAmadeus said:

Drek.

With the sleuths we have here on the boards, anyone who wanted to know what the book is and the rough price point could have figured it out with only half the information given here.  I'm just trying to keep it a little discreet as the buyer may be wanting to keep it somewhat private, which I have no problem with. 

[Turtle]

1 hour ago, CKinTO said:

Not to state the obvious, but I’m assuming the buyer didn’t want the lower offer price to be shown on GPA because he wants the price of his book now that he owns it to be “valued higher”. As I’ve heard from many dealers, everyone wants a deal when buying, but wants everyone else to pay high so their book is worth more!

I remember that other thread, hopefully GPA fixed it before or will do so now.

Yes, this is the price manipulation mentioned earlier.