eBay "make an offer" option

Ebay slams every one of my auctions with a best offer. This is done against my will after I have written my auctions. I waste over a day each week correcting their "helpful changes". Every time my auctions turn over I get hit by bottom feeders. They are not welcome. If an auction has been running for several days the seller has had ample time to make the sale to look like what they want. Any offer 50% of listed price is automatically refused by ebay and is a waste of your time. 70 to 75% may have a chance. good luck.

 

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I don’t understand. I’ve sold only a few items on eBay, and I have a choice as to the terms and type of auction. How does eBay force you to sell items according to terms you never agreed to?

 

I know that the auction reads the way I want it and posts the way they want it. I'll waste the time necessary to talk to a live person eventually. Do an ebay search for "tozh" you will see that every auction that read no offers free shipping yesterday will roll over and read offers accepted today. Some will also change my free shipping to $3.50 shipping. It's a tremendous waste of time. I'm headed over there now to waste my evening fixing their actions.

 

Wow. I can’t believe eBay can automatically change terms like that.

 

I would never low ball an item someone is selling. If the item price is double what I think it's worth I won't bother making an offer. I agree that making a ridiculously low offer is insulting to the seller.

 

Seller: "I know this is nice, but I don't know how much anyone will pay for it; let's list it for, oh, double what I hope to get, and see if I get lucky. If I'm getting offers for 30%, 40%, and 50% of the asking price, I'll take 50%. If somebody buys it outright, yay!"

Not that I know anybody who would use that stupid strategy when listing items. <whistles nonchalantly>

 

I won't do business with sellers that use that strategy. How would any serious collector trust anything they sell. IMO, consistently setting reasonable, fair prices will build your reputation as an honest seller and bring back repeat customers.

 

Fair enough, but this also means that you miss sellers that are reasonable, fair and honest, but not knowledgeable enough on the item they're selling to determine a fair price -- which can sometimes work to your advantage.

 

I didn't vote because the option "sometimes" was not available.

I have bought coins with "Make an offer" several times and failed to do so several times. I think in the ancient coin section of eBay if buy-it-now is combined with make-an-offer it is most common that the buy-it-now is significantly higher than they require. I would expect at the very least 20% off and more likely 30%-40% off, or more. Some sellers list ancient coins such that 60% of the buy-it-now price is realistic and some greedier sellers list ancient coins such that much less than 60% would be realistic. It is hard to want to make an offer of only 1/4 of a buy it now price, so I just skip over items priced far too high.

However, if 60% is realistic and the most you want to pay and you offer 60% you will probably get an unwanted counteroffer at 80%. So, I sometimes use the comment space to say I really think my price is a good price and I do not intend to go higher, so please simply accept or decline my offer. That works often enough. Yesterday I got a coin in the mail that was buy-it-now at $125 and I offered $70 with that comment and the seller, who really does know the value of that coin type, accepted.

Had he countered with, say, $90, I might have countered with $71 just to take the opportunity to say I meant it and it is fine with me if he declines. That approach has sometimes been accepted. Had he then declined my $71 offer that would have been fine. If the seller wants more than I want to pay (which is always lower than "retail"), I can always step away and spend my money on some other coin among the tens of thousands of coins on the market. There is no shortage of coins I'd like to have!

I imagine if someone would buy a coin at, say, 60%, they might offer 40% and prepare for a back-and-forth negotiation. That's another approach with its own logic. Who knows? It might be accepted at 40% (unlikely, I think) and the buyer might do better than the hoped-for 60%. But, for me, that approach wastes too much time of mine and the seller's. I don't offer unless I think I would be getting a very good price and the seller might well accept.

 

I think these statements reflect that you collect modern coins rather than ancient. There are indeed ancient coin sellers who will accept what you would consider lowball offers, in part because the value of an ancient coin is not as set in stone as, say, US coins. There isn't a blue book or gray sheet. There are also ancient coin sellers who knowingly inflate their prices to 1000% of what most knowledgable collectors would consider reasonable, and then lower the price by 70% in an attempt to make it look like a bargain. Knowledge is power though and an apparently "lowball" offer in such instances is very appropriate and sometimes accepted.

 

This is the case with world coins as well.

I never look at what percentage I'm offering if I feel the buy it now is overinflated. I just try and make a fair offer, and if I can, provide justification. The worst they can do is say no. I may be lowballing based on the asking price, but I let them know I'm a serious buyer and am offering what I feel is a fair price.

 

I use it regularly. If I see something that I really want and think that I will miss it is I don't BiN then I BiN. Some sellers will accept offers but these are often between 90-95% of the BiN. You learn what to expect from certain sellers.

I had a case recently where a seller I have bought from regularly has bough an entire collection. He is listing the coins with a BiN and "Best Offer" without having done any research (many of the emperors were incorrectly identified etc.). The BiN prices were simply his best guess of getting his money back quickly. I initially made a "BestOffer" on two coins at about 60-70% of the BiN, which were accepted immediately. He continued to list coins and I offered between 50-60% on a further five coins, all offers were accepted. His BiN were below retail, my offers were therefore well below retail. For many of his coins the BiN was above what I would have considered retail (every coin was prices at one of £25, 30 or £40).

I was not the only one doing this. I missed out on a few coins that have since turned up in dealer inventory (at many times the BiN price let alone the BestOffer price) and have sold.

Sometimes it works well for me quite often it doesn't. I don't really care if someone rejects a lowball offer from me. They often come back with a counteroffer.

 

I don't know if our know-it-all posters ever post anything over on the US or bullion sections of Coin Talk or if their mission in life is to show how much they don't know about ancient coins. Somewhere along the way, eBay decided to waste everyone's time by encouraging people to start their auctions at a totally unrealistic level rather than to rely on multiple bidders running up the prices to a level fair to both parties. If they charged professional listers who rarely sell anything, perhaps we would be spared all those uncleaned rejects and fakes looking for a buyer who knows less about the subject than they do. There was a time that many coins started at 1 cent and were seen by enough people that there was no danger of the coin selling low. Now, it is not unusual to see coins not worth the postage charge so I, for one, spend a lot less time looking for coins and miss the good ones.

In the beginning eBay was billed as a place to bring together buyers and sellers but now we have a good place to find professional merchant listers in place of people cleaning out the attic.

I would like to see an option for listings that counted down from a start price until someone bought the one of a kind item. This would not work for stocked merchandise like new USB drives but would be fine for ancient coins or other one of a kind used items. A seller could always buy his own lot and pay eBay their fee if he did not want to sell at that level.

 

I did that on purpose. I figured so many people would click the sometimes button that the results would be virtually meaningless. I found “usually” and “rarely” to be more instructive categories. But I’m not writing a study. The results are interesting to me though.

 

You can already do it, albeit by hand.

Start with a BIN listing, and just cut the price at intervals. If my email from eBay is any indication, eBay emails anybody who's looked at your listing, not just people who are "watching" it, whenever the price drops.

I've looked at listings that turned out to be overpriced, and gotten email a few days later that the price had dropped to something attractive. Sometimes I've bought as a result.

 

True statement.

Weird Al eBay song always good for a laugh. For those of you who have not heard it- enjoy.

 

Well. Ebay is a different animal completely from all other venues. In the 'old days' it used to be 'pay to play', in other words to list an item for sale it cost you money. That meant that you needed to know a little bit about what you were selling. If it cost you several dollars or so to list a coin you really had to price it carefully because otherwise you would lose a lot of money very quickly listing over-priced coins. Now of course it is just the opposite. Anyone can list a coin for whatever price they wish and completely for free. There is absolutely no risk to the seller or to Ebay. The risk is entirely borne by the buyer.

I think just about everything has been said about this already. My suggestion would be that if anyone is looking at an Ebay item with BIN attributes to just offer what you are willing to pay and nothing else (maybe even less). There are some legitimate sellers there, but few that know pricing (or maybe they are playing the game, its just a new way of doing business perhaps).

 

People selling hundred dollar items and shipping expect to dicker. People selling $5 start items and offering free shipping do not. At present I am establishing a base value for a category of tokens. Accepting less than my base price destroys that value. I'm not really thrilled with any offer even one that is higher than my start. Several of my $5 start tokens have sold for more than $80. Frequently they bring ten to twenty dollars.

 

I could hardly believe this when it was posted. Last Friday for the first time in along time I put up an item for auction with a low opening bid. Today I checked to see how it was going and they had, without my knowledge or permission, added "Make an offer". That makes it seem to be worth less than the opening bid and guarantees it won't be treated like a real auction. I closed it.

I find it amazing eBay would do that! It really happened! Is it worth my while to try to navigate their site to figure out how to complain? Is there the tiniest chance they would change this unacceptable behavior?

 

Anyone can make an offer on any auction. They message you with an offer and you can reply to the message with a buy it now price just for that person. This just makes it easier for someone to submit an offer - since it comes in and notifies you of an offer instead of it just being a message.

You can always decline an offer (or offer a counter) if you don't like it. Or even just ignore it.