The Yak Shack Forum

Why do sellers put Best Offer on their auctions if they don't want to respond to an offer or if they're willing to accept only a dollar off the BIN price?  Over the past couple of months, I have made reasonable offers on several Best Offers, only to have them expire with no action by the seller.  I could understand if the offer was half of the BIN, but my offers were within the ballpark.  I guess it's too much trouble for a seller to hit the "decline" button or try to negotiate a different price. >:()

I love "Best Offer", but I admit I don't reply at all to some - typically those offers that are half the price I'm asking.  The majority of the time I don't immediately accept I put in a counter offer.  BTW I LOVE Counteroffer AND the fact that the buyer has more than one chance to make an offer.

What I personally hate is someone who puts in a lowball offer, I counteroffer, and I get another lowball offer (that's barely higher than the first offer).  Negotiation is one thing, but if I take the time to put in a counteroffer the second offer should be relatively CLOSE to the counteroffer.

Also keep in mind that offers are only good for 48 hours - sometimes I don't have email access and completely miss replying to the offer.

With me its still getting used to the program, as sometimes I will see a best offer and think "hmmm, thats not a bad offer, lets wait a day and see if I get any better offers before I accept" and then me spacing out and forgetting about it happens.  Possibly ebay needs to set up some sort of warning for the seller to let them know that "you have an offer expiring in an hour", or a reminder email that you can set up.  Possibly they have some of this and I am really an idiot. :)  I agree though, the best offer program is evolving into a nice little system, with the counteroffers and being able to negotiate back and forth more, I have used it as a buyer quite a bit, and absolutely love it.  The "lowballers" will never make any sense to me at all, its a waste of everyones time, however I think ebay is fixing that as you can now select to "automatically decline" anything under a certain dollar amount, so that is nice.    As for some sellers not willing to accept anything accept a dollar under the "BIN" price, I sometimes have that mindset with certain cards, and unless I know the buyer and have a good relationship with them, or if the buyer is new and buying a handful of other cards, I am a little more "stingy" with certain "best offer" cards.   So, after all my babbling, I guess I am saying that if I have done this to you for any reason, I am sorry :)

I got gazumped on a best offer for a matter of $0.20  :o I offered the BIN price but this was to include postage to the UK. The accepted offer was lower than mine, but with postage, was 20 cents more. I have never been offered a counteroffer  :(

Zach, eBay does not offer a reminder service for sellers for the Best Offer program.  I agree that would be really useful.  I've occasionally listed auctions with Best Offer and love the automatic decline.  And no, you've never forgotten any offer I've made. :)

What I don't understand is the seller who puts Best Offer on an auction when he or she obviously doesn't want to negotiate the price.  If they don't want to sell an item for less than the BIN, that's great, but don't add Best Offer to it. ::)  It doesn't make sense to have a $50 item, a buyer offers $40 or $45, and then the seller rejects it or ignores it without a counteroffer.

I don't understand that either...  Both those offers are reasonable for a $50 item...

I've had the same experiences with the best offer system.  I even had a seller once ban me from bidding on all his auctions as a result of an offer i made on a card of his, which he let expire; i suppose he was offended by the offer, but it was a fair one based on other auctions for the same card (his BIN price was almost double than what it normally should have been.)

I hate it when I encounter moody sellers, but i've found many good ones also!

My experience as a seller Best Offer sucks!!! >:()
All it opens you up for is people making stupid  :ebay: offers and I can well believe that many go unanswered! ::)
My two penneth >:D

I agree that you sometimes get stupid offers, however, sometimes you can negotiate to get a price that both seller and buyer are happy with, which is the whole point of this feature. As a seller and buyer who has used this feature, I can say that I have had a pretty good experience overall. I try to have the courtesy of declining a poor offer rather than ignoring it - for me, it's plain rude to ignore people, regardless of the perceived stupidity of the offer.

If you don't want stupid offers, then use the auction/BIN format. Easy.

Didnt have the time or the inclination to bother with declining the stupid offers and after a week of having them on my items I GOT RID
Its like anything in life - if constructed and followed through by intelligent people it runs smoothly but add a couple of entities containing less than a brain cell each and it ruins it for everyone

I don't find that going to "My Ebay" page and clicking on the option to view offers takes that much time. A quick skim of the offers made, and a subsequent clicking of the "reject offer" button takes a few seconds. I understand though, that some sellers may have many auctions to skim, however, if you use this feature, surely you should be prepared to take the time to evaluate the subsequent offers. Again, if you don't have the time, don't use it. I know I've made some reasonable offers to sellers who have not bothered to reply. In most cases, I've never bothered to buy from them again.

If you don't like receiving "stupid" offers, then don't use it. It's unfair for the buyers who have taken the time to make the offer. Sure, there are some outrageous offers made. But it's not much of an effort to say no.

A seller never has to deal with ridiculous offers.  Like Zach said, there's now a feature that allows sellers to set a minimum amount that they will consider for an offer.  Anything below that minimum receives an automatic decline.  So, if a seller has a $20 BIN and doesn't want to consider offers below $15, he or she can set the auto decline accordingly.

That's a great addition to this feature.

Even if you consider an offer to be ridiculous, the one or two seconds it takes to decline an offer isn't much of your time.

No, I think it's just a bit dissappointing when you get an email from ebay which you think is a serious deal and someone has offered you 10p for something.

This has actually happened to me... ::)

So I don't use best offer any more. I did actually have a few serious best offers in the short time I used it but I think overall it's not worth the hassle for me. I didn't know that the service had been upgraded so you could automatically decline stupid offers (another one I got - £100 for a platform 9 and 3/4 card :rofl:), this would make me consider using the best offer system again!

Sorry Roz... what was I thinking? 0:)

It wasn't worth more than £50 >:D

I've used Best Offer a few times in the past, i like it, especially the part where it's FREE. I just received an offer for a Devil's Snare for $55, no need to get upset about that or anything, I just find it amusing :P, made me smile really lol

$55.00...That's ridiculous...would you take $56 instead ?????????????...Mo

What i see is that almost everytime the best offer option is combined with an overprized BIN. I know a rare card (not Potter) which has the highest bid in all auctions before with $300. A seller had a $750 BIN and i offered $280 with best offer. Declined, he told me not to sell below $600. Some weeks or months later (can't remember exactly) i won it from an other seller in an auction for $215.

If i think, a card has a value of $50, i offer that. Or if i'm only willing to pay that price, why not offering, not interesting that the value may be higher. It's not interesting for me that seller combines it with a BIN of $300 when i think, it's only worth $100. The BINs are mostly ridiculous ...

But i agree to Roz, GBP100 for the Platform was not worth the offer, ridiculous too ...

I completely agree.  I always give fair offers based on previous auctions, but in my experience sellers who exaggerate their BIN prices don't seem to care about selling their items at realistic prices.  The one I ran into previously was just like that; it was a good thing though, I eventually bought another one for much less than my offer!

I allways email the seller to ask what they consider a fair offer if it is within a few % points of what I consider the item to be worth then I will make a offer if it above I wont  :ebay:

De Orc  ;D

Ps only had one bad response and that was on a gold coin the seller was adament he wanted the buy it noew price LOL no idea why he had a best offer up.

i don't use the best offer just because i  never really know what to offer and would hate to insult someone because i like to get cards at bargain prices except of course the ones that i really want .

Why do sellers ask for best offers if they don't intend to reply to them  >:().  I put in a reasonable (IMO) offer two days ago and the seller has just let it expire  >:().  At least have the decency to decline it  >:()

Rant over  ;D

Email the seller - sometimes I don't get an email & sometimes I don't have time to respond before it ends/expires

You've got two offers left - make sure they're going to be around to respond to it & try again.

I personally like the counteroffer option - that should have been done at the start of the "Best Offer" program...

Unfortunately I don't  :(.  When I placed the Best Offer I had a warning come up that said this was my one and only offer - maybe the seller can select one offer only.  For this reason I put in a very high offer (£20 over the highest sold price recently).  I am even more cross now as the seller has dropped the BIN price of the bear to within £15 of what I offered without even bothering to contact me.  I know I could just BIN but to be honest I am not sure if I trust the seller anymore and with an item this expensive I am not going to risk it.  It finishes soon so I will see if it sells at all.

It's not just you Sharon - I've only ever had one offer when I've used the 'Best Offer' facility on ebay.
Maybe the seller can set how many offers they will allow per ebay ID, but I was always under the impression that ebay set it, not the person selling. :-\

Doesn't sound like the seller knows what they're doing over this auction either - I don't blame you for being careful Sharon! ;)

My Best Offer is set by Ebay and not me...far as I can see you get one shot and one shot only to make an offer..I guess this stops all the  idiots in the world, from putting in 10 offers on the same product and raising the level $5 at a time...my problem is that I've seen sellers use a counter offer but can't seem to find that feature in my stores...but still looking...maybe because I got the basic stores feature instead of the super duper one ????

It must be country specific then because ebay US allows 3 best offers.  And I sure wasn't allowed to set a number up so it's ebay who sets it.
Another possible country specific item - ebay US allows three options for best offers - accept, counteroffer, and decline.  And I have basic stores also.

Has anyone tried logging into another country site or the regular ebay.com site to see if it changes based on which country's site you're logged into?  I've logged into ebay.uk & ebay.ca when I have issues with ebay.com.

I use Ebay UK and have made a second offer after the first was declined.

I think you can only do a second offer for the same item, if the seller has done a fresh listing for it rather than just relisting from the original auction ... if that made sense? :-\
I've only ever been able to do one offer, so I'll try it from the .com site and see if it let's me do another. ;)

Good idea but it doesn't work :(.  As Tialessa says I think it is country specific but specific to the seller.  This auction was a UK one so maybe we just don't have that option here.  In the past I have got Graham to put in another offer for me and we have gotten around it that way.  I am not at all sure about these best offer options, they just don't seem to work for me  :(

Sorry for the double post but something interesting has just happened  ^-^.  The bear didn't sell and has been re-listed.  I have put in the same Best Offer as before (I know I said I wouldn't but couldn't stop myself) but this time it said the seller can accept, decline or counter offer!  I wonder if this is only available on re-listed items?

I made the second offer on the same listing after the first offer was declined.  It was a dutch auction and multiple boxes available.
The listing was from a US seller.