My eBay pet peeve - Sellers with Best Offer Options who don't want to negotiate 1 1

[Not A Clone]

23 minutes ago, Brock said:

I had a buyer offer me more than the BIN once.

Needless to say, I accepted his offer.

I wish there were more like that...

No doubt! Should have counter offered lower to see if he would continue to go higher! 

[Not A Clone]

I had a book that once sold for $100 & is currently around $65. I went ahead and posted it for $99 OBO. I had an auto reject & auto accept amount set. The buyer smartly started low, saw that it was on auto reject & then proceeded to keep bidding in $5 increments hoping to find an auto accept & he did. Good for him. Saved me the hassle of countering & I got FMV out of it. Never hurts to try. If the price seems way higher than it should be I always assume they will take way less. If the starting price is very close to GPA, I assume there isn't as much wiggle room. When I bought my ASM #1, I believe I offered $500 less than his BIN price. He countered, I countered & we ended up meeting in the middle. He took $250 less than his BIN. 

[stock_rotation]

4 hours ago, Pontoon said:

Do you ask for 70% off the BIN if the book is already priced at the bottom end of FMV if not lower?

Sorry, my language was sloppy and unclear. I offer around 70% OF the BIN, so if a book is $100, I offer $70, expecting the seller to meet me at $85, which is what I'm willing to pay. As far as FMV, I have a pretty good feel for what the books I'm seeking are worth, so I try not to insult a seller by asking them for the shirt off their back. If it's a fair price I just buy it. Using your previous example, I'm not going to bother offering you $25 for a $34 book, just so you can counter at $30. My time (not to mention the potential for missing out on a book) is worth more than $4.

If I see a book I want, but there's too large a gap between what I would pay vs what they ask, I just bookmark it and keep an eye on it to see who's right. If it's been around a while, I'll toss an offer out and see what happens. There was a book I was interested in that had a BIN of $65 which I watched for about 6 months. I sent an offer of $30 expecting to pay around $45 (which is what I considered FMV), and was surprised and delighted when they accepted $30 with no counteroffer. That doesn't happen too often!

[Kevin76]

4 minutes ago, stock_rotation said:

Sorry, my language was sloppy and unclear. I offer around 70% OF the BIN, so if a book is $100, I offer $70, expecting the seller to meet me at $85, which is what I'm willing to pay. As far as FMV, I have a pretty good feel for what the books I'm seeking are worth, so I try not to insult a seller by asking them for the shirt off their back. If it's a fair price I just buy it. Using your previous example, I'm not going to bother offering you $25 for a $34 book, just so you can counter at $30. My time (not to mention the potential for missing out on a book) is worth more than $4.

If I see a book I want, but there's too large a gap between what I would pay vs what they ask, I just bookmark it and keep an eye on it to see who's right. If it's been around a while, I'll toss an offer out and see what happens. There was a book I was interested in that had a BIN of $65 which I watched for about 6 months. I sent an offer of $30 expecting to pay around $45 (which is what I considered FMV), and was surprised and delighted when they accepted $30 with no counteroffer. That doesn't happen too often!

He accepted because he had the book for 6 months and just wanted to get rid of it.  

goldenapplecomics has BIN or BO on thier stuff and will counter offer back with only $1-3 off the listed price, I messaged them and said "Why even bother with a BO?  They just blocked me.  

[Ride the Tiger]

Really just move on to another seller if you're not happy. No need to get yourself upset over a comic. Plenty of sellers out there that will negotiate with you. Take your time and find them.

[DavidTheDavid]

4 hours ago, blazingbob said:

I'm amazed that this thread even got started since I can't tell how many threads I've read or responded to where buyers are complaining about pricing and not wanting to negotiate.

They want the price they want to pay and expect me the seller to know it.

I'm not sure how I'm supposed to know that price because there are those out there that don't like to haggle or talk.

They just want to see "their" price.  

 

FWIW, I appreciate you sharing your insights. I value building good relationships with dealers and want to be the sort of buyer that sellers feel good selling to. 

[slg343]

Ebay does auto best offer without asking.  I don't feel like changing it all the time so i just set my price and auto reject offer that are not close to my asking.

Edited August 21, 2018 by slg343

[RockMyAmadeus]

3 hours ago, slg343 said:

Ebay does auto best offer without asking.  I don't feel like changing it all the time so i just set my price and auto reject offer that are not close to my asking.

That's just bizarre. And they charge you if you don't want it...?

Silly eBay.

Is there going to come a time when eBay dictates the prices you can ask for your items?

Seems to be the next logical step. "Our records show that that X-Men #37 has a market value of $20. Your asking price of $60 is much too high. Here, we'll fix it for you."

[01TheDude]

6 hours ago, slg343 said:

Ebay does auto best offer without asking.  I don't feel like changing it all the time so i just set my price and auto reject offer that are not close to my asking.

Ugh -- just listed something new and they forced me to make it a best offer or charge me a fee to list. That is not offering a free listing-- that is forcing me to sell the way that suits them. I am concerned that at some point they may just start charging me for all the older listings I have that do not have any offer option. I did not want to accept offers at all. So I had to raise my price and make the accept offer price slightly lower than my original planned price.

This is nonsense. Who is the clown at ebay who thinks this is a great idea? Oh-- and to add insult to injury-- they try to also force you to lower your price every X number of days until it reaches a certain number. You have to unclick that default AND then deny it when adding the listing. If they start to force that on me, that is it-- I am out. I'm not terribly happy about this forcing a best offer on me either.

[fett]

Many thanks for this info gents. I've been buying off ebay for along time and didn't know they had started enforcing this insane rule on sellers. My take was always " if you don't want to take best offers, then why have it set up that way?" Do any of your  auction descriptions inform potential buyers about this limitation? 

[ADAMANTIUM]

ebay did it to me today....

I got 10 watchers on an item, and I got an email informing me, "hey, we added best offer! Now your item has more of a chance to sell!"

Well Duh  I mean I guess so ha, crazy ebay..... I had just turned all mine to BIN, so that I wouldn't have to "keep checking" to see if I had any offers  

[slg343]

10 hours ago, 01TheDude said:

Ugh -- just listed something new and they forced me to make it a best offer or charge me a fee to list. That is not offering a free listing-- that is forcing me to sell the way that suits them. I am concerned that at some point they may just start charging me for all the older listings I have that do not have any offer option. I did not want to accept offers at all. So I had to raise my price and make the accept offer price slightly lower than my original planned price.

This is nonsense. Who is the clown at ebay who thinks this is a great idea? Oh-- and to add insult to injury-- they try to also force you to lower your price every X number of days until it reaches a certain number. You have to unclick that default AND then deny it when adding the listing. If they start to force that on me, that is it-- I am out. I'm not terribly happy about this forcing a best offer on me either.

I imagine same person that told me yesterday that email confirmation that a submitted a form they say never arrived isn't valid because it could be doctored WTF.  And out $200 because seller just tossed my items in box to return them.

[justafan]

To prevent this issue from surprising me I always use best offer but configure the auto-decline at a price I will begin considering offers and specify an automatically accept price at one that I would take in a heartbeat yet still below my ask.

On the flip side:

It can be difficult not to low ball sellers that have jacked up prices.  I figure that if your offer is in line with the market price, even if lowball compared to the seller's ask, it really shouldn't be considered a lowball offer and you should feel confident in offering a FMV price even if it is less than 50% of the seller's ask.

And you never know.  I made an offer on an item priced around $100 for $40 and they accepted.  The FMV for it on ebay was between  $35 and $45.  So in this case the seller could have listed it at $60 but still accepted it at $40.  Perhaps they were fishing for someone to just buy it at $100 or make an offer closer to $100 but were perfectly willing to accept it at FMV.  So I have no problem offering less than 50% of the ask if my offer is more in line with current FMV prices.  Psychologically it may have helped them avoid real lowballers but that also means they get less bites.  Even if they were asking $50 I probably still would have offered $40.  Perhaps if I offered $30 I could have squeezed them down to 35 but I'm not trying to flip or waste time for $5 when I'm ok with $40. I don't fool myself either thinking I "saved" $60 on that purchase.  That book's ask was inflated for a reason but we agreed at a FMV price.

[SteppinRazor]

On 8/21/2018 at 5:55 AM, 01TheDude said:

 

This is nonsense. Who is the clown at ebay who thinks this is a great idea? Oh-- and to add insult to injury-- they try to also force you to lower your price every X number of days until it reaches a certain number. You have to unclick that default AND then deny it when adding the listing. If they start to force that on me, that is it-- I am out. I'm not terribly happy about this forcing a best offer on me either.

It is a great idea.  Just for ebay, not sellers.

What choice do you have, though?

[boomtown]

Here's a new one, I send in a best offer at 10% off, a price the seller had constantly accepted on most of his completed BINs. He declined without comment and then raised the BIN price by 17.5%.

[1Cool]

24 minutes ago, boomtown said:

Here's a new one, I send in a best offer at 10% off, a price the seller had constantly accepted on most of his completed BINs. He declined without comment and then raised the BIN price by 17.5%.

I've done that a couple times.  An offer made me look at current prices and I noticed the prices seemed to have jumped so I declined the offer and moved the price up to reflect current prices.  It didn't make the potential buyer too happy but until the book is sold I can always raise the price if I want.  Was the 17.5% increase justified based on sold prices?

[boomtown]

23 minutes ago, 1Cool said:

I've done that a couple times.  An offer made me look at current prices and I noticed the prices seemed to have jumped so I declined the offer and moved the price up to reflect current prices.  It didn't make the potential buyer too happy but until the book is sold I can always raise the price if I want.  Was the 17.5% increase justified based on sold prices?

I think it was a little under priced to start with. They probably looked at some of the other sky high asking prices and thought they were low. It's still not a bad price (especially with the 10% E-Bay Bucks offer going on today), but it was annoying enough for me to just wait for the next copy to come up.

[1Cool]

36 minutes ago, boomtown said:

I think it was a little under priced to start with. They probably looked at some of the other sky high asking prices and thought they were low. It's still not a bad price (especially with the 10% E-Bay Bucks offer going on today), but it was annoying enough for me to just wait for the next copy to come up.

So it was under priced (and a steal with 10% E-Bay Bucks) but you had to try for the 10% of extra savings.  I don't necessarily blame you but it's the game you play when you ask for an offer on a great deal (ie get a little greedy).  The two times I raise the price I sold the book that same day at the higher price so I was not too worried about off one buyer.  I learned that lesson the hard way that sometimes it's just best to grab the steal when they pop up.

[RockMyAmadeus]

Making an offer is a GREAT way to have a seller check a price that he/she wouldn't normally have done. If the item is underpriced....buy it. Don't try and haggle..just buy it.

I've had books that people tried to haggle, and I saw it was selling for quite a bit more than my ask...they get mad, and my response is "you should have bought it while you had the chance."

And I've also sold books that had become underpriced, and the buyer wisely bought it outright, instead of trying for an even better deal.

Oops.

[boomtown]

2 hours ago, 1Cool said:

So it was under priced (and a steal with 10% E-Bay Bucks) but you had to try for the 10% of extra savings.  I don't necessarily blame you but it's the game you play when you ask for an offer on a great deal (ie get a little greedy).  The two times I raise the price I sold the book that same day at the higher price so I was not too worried about off one buyer.  I learned that lesson the hard way that sometimes it's just best to grab the steal when they pop up.

It's a book that comes along regularly, so, as I said, a little under priced wasn't going to make me go out and buy it. The 10% off was the best offer I made yesterday. The 10% E-Bay Bucks showed up in my email today. If I had noticed the book today, at it's original price, I'd probably have BIN it using the Ebay Bucks deal. The book sat for 29 days at it's price, probably not considered a steal even with discounts. No hard feelings on my side, another will come along, I just hadn't seen that particular move before.