Question for Ebay veterans

[J.McMurry]

I've done 3-4 "best offer" on Ebay and I've always gotten a response of declined or accepted. My question is, is it proper etiquette for the seller to just never respond and let the time run out?

How do you sellers on the board handle "best offers"?

[ibuysportsephemera]

I set limits so that I only receive offers that I am willing to consider. Before eBay allowed us to set limits, I always responded, even if I thought that an offer was unreasonable.

Jeff

[bcbgcbrcb]

I agree with Jeff that a response should be sent regardless of the offer. I have made a couple of best offers and not received an answer from the seller and the 48 hour time limit ultimately expired. Now, you don't know if the seller was on vacation, etc. and you are limited to only a couple of best offers per item.

[GoldenAge50s]

I NEVER use the Auto Response on BO's. No matter how ridiculous the offer, I figure I have nothing to lose & everything to gain by responding & making a counter-offer.

[ibuysportsephemera]

I never had a reasonable counter offer accepted, which is why I stopped wasting my time with ridiculous offers. I leave plenty of room for reasonable negotiations in my limits.

Jeff

[Jim VB]

No offer, of any amount, should be considered so unreasonable that it's not worth a response. Auto-response is fine, as long as it declines the offer, and doesn't just ignore it.

Common human decency says you can take two seconds to say "no thank you." Ignoring an offer sinks below that level.


By the same token, no seller should be obligated to counter offer if they deem the original too low.

[drc]

It's proper for the seller to respond to inquiries, with a pressing of the decline button counting as a response. It's good business sense, and good for business, to respond to people cutiously, if very briefly. I don't see anything wrong with setting the function to automatically decline offers that are too low.

As a seller, when I got an offer I'd sincerely consider it, and accepted a few offers that I thought were fair but lower than I hoped for. I once declined a BIN offer on an autographed football jersey with team LOA. When I put later put the jersey in eBay auction it sold for less than the BIN offer. There's a lesson in there somewhere, perhaps about seller expectations.

[JamesGallo]

I wonder how much volume people do, I have over 1600 items on ebay. If I have something up for 1000 and people offer me 1 or even 100 it is pretty unreasonable and I find it somewhat insulting. Therefore why does that deserve any type of response.

That being said I have increased my use of the auto decline a great deal and as soon as I get a stupid low offer I will put in an auto decline.

I try as much as possible to respond to all offers. I generally find that counter offeres are generally either not responded to or declined.

James G

[wondo]

I do not use auto response, figuring that any dialog is better than none. As I get more and more jaded to silly offers, I will perhaps change my mind. Since I am one of those idiots that has a good percentage of items up at very aggressive prices (like the euphanism?) I expect some perceived value descrepency. That is not what I consider a silly offer.

I always try to respond with a counter (almost never decline) but sometimes I screw up and miss some correspondence.

James G. is correct that most counters are met with silence, so being professional and polite sometimes gets you a kick in the ass when the other side does not exhibit the same propensity.

[HRBAKER]

I see both sides of this. However when I see very "aggressive" (yes I like the euphanism) pricing on a card I assume the seller is looking for a guppie and most likely won't respond favorably to a "reasonable" offer so I just move on.
Unless you are dealing with a true rarity, patience is very rarely not rewarded.

[Butch7999]

We've made a few reasonable "best offers" for a few items listed with an insanely high BIN price and a BO option. Never once gotten the courtesy of any reply, let alone a reasonable counter-offer.

[J.McMurry]

Thanks for all the great responses which have brought up Two more questions:

1. I can understand not wanting to reply to a $1 offer on a $1k item,but cant you set the auto reply to kick in if an offer is below a certain amount so that you dont have to spend any time responding yourself?

2. what is the general concensus on what constitutes a ridiculous offer? is it 50% of the BIN? 40? 30?

[HRBAKER]

2. what is the general concensus on what constitutes a ridiculous offer? is it 50% of the BIN? 40? 30?

I guess that depends how riduculous the Buy It Now price is, right?

[Leon]

I've done 3-4 "best offer" on Ebay and I've always gotten a response of declined or accepted. My question is, is it proper etiquette for the seller to just never respond and let the time run out?

How do you sellers on the board handle "best offers"?


I don't use best offers in my few sales (I don't sell a lot on ebay anymore). I do make a fair amount of offers and have had mixed results. I try not to make insulting offers but usually offer around 70-75% of the asking BIN. Most folks have responded, some favorably and some not so.... I think a decent offer (anywhere over 50%) should at least be responded to....it can't hurt. :eek:

[wondo]

2. what is the general concensus on what constitutes a ridiculous offer? is it 50% of the BIN? 40? 30?

I guess that depends how riduculous the Buy It Now price is, right?

Well said. :)

I don't believe there is a level that constitutes ridiculous; that's why ebay has the tools in place to manage offers. I think it works fairly well. For me it also depends on the item. A less common piece will usually have a higher threshold. For example, a George Burke photo vs. a Rollie Fingers rookie card.

Remember, this is pretty much a free market with supply and demand establishing the pricing level. Use the tools, be polite, and transactions will transact. Just my .02

[Matt]

Ridiculous offers don't have to do with what the BIN is. If by some price guide, be it VCP, SMR, Beckett, etc. the card is booked at X, as long as the offer is at least 50% of X I wouldn't call it ridiculous. You have to allow for the possibility that the buyer only has SMR in front of them and even though SMR may severly undervalue the card compared to past sales, the buyer may be making a reasonable offer using the info they have in front of them. Now, if you get a $200 offer on an SGC 40 CJ WoJo (I did last night :) ) then it would seem the buyer is just hoping you click "accept" by accident.

[HRBAKER]

If a card is priced @ 250% of the avg. of the last three sales for the same card in the same grade, then a 40% offer may not be ridiculous to anyone but the seller. If the same card was priced @ 125% of such, then IMO a 40% offer would be ridiculous. In that instance I think it does have to do directly with how ridiculous the BIN price is. Having said all that, anyone is entitled to try to sell their goods for any price they want. IMO, if they want to "lead" the market very aggressively they should have some thick skin.

[Matt]

maybe its semantics...

yup - we're in agreement.

[tbob]

I have no problem with making an offer of 75-80% if I feel the BIN is a little high. The only problem is that, obviously, if you really want the card you worry someone will come in and BIN it before you hear back from the seller, but that's the chance you take.
Not suprisingly I have had good success on reasonable offers submitted to Net54 sellers. :)

[Misunderestimated]

I've taken to using the BIN/Best Offer quite a bit when I sell... I try to respond to every offer I get although I think I have been remiss on occassion, especially on offers right before the item closes.
What I like most about the process is that: (1) I don't have to worry about selling something for a lot less than I want to and; (2) I can list an item for a month.
Also eBay's percentage is lower than an auction ....

As a buyer I've done pretty well when I do make offers -- at least in getting counter-offers.