Interesting article on eBay offer negotiations

[Smanzari]

Originally Posted by raulus

Is a slow response from the seller a good thing or a bad thing?

For me, Bad Thing - I'm not much on countering, so pretty much decline like 70% of offers. If its a really bad offer, I decline it right before I go to bed around 12-1a, hoping the buyer doesn't see it and moves on

[Lobo Aullando]

"Take a slow response as a good sign rather than a bad sign," said Krajbich. "Don't get discouraged. Don't think that the seller is lazy or just dragging you along."

Or – just hear me out – they were out of town. That's been 100% of such occurrences for me.

(The auto-reject threshold feature is pretty good at weeding out, too.)

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by Lobo Aullando

Or – just hear me out – they were out of town. That's been 100% of such occurrences for me.

(The auto-reject threshold feature is pretty good at weeding out, too.)

Was auto-rejection available in 2012/13 when this data was from?

[Lobo Aullando]

Personally, I don't recall seeing it a decade ago. I have an increasingly bad case of Internet Brain, though.

Originally Posted by jayshum

Was auto-rejection available in 2012/13 when this data was from?

The study does use another dataset from 2020-23*:

The preexisting data from eBay indicate that most sellers (62%) do not use automatic thresholds. In the subset of data that we analyzed, 17% used only rejection thresholds, 5.4% used only acceptance thresholds, and 15.7% used both thresholds. To examine the effect of seller experience on automatic threshold use, we looked at the number of best-offer listings created by each seller (dating back to 2008). The relation between seller experience and threshold usage was quadratic—both inexperienced and highly experienced sellers used thresholds more than medium-experience sellers. While these results do not rule out that sellers have plans, the low rate of automatic thresholds suggests that sellers prefer to evaluate offers as they arrive.

I guess a lot of folks have the patience to deal with people who offer 30% of current market.


* - On a re-read, there's yet another dataset, and the quote doesn't relate to the 2020-23 one.

[nwobhm]

Originally Posted by Lobo Aullando

I guess a lot of folks have the patience to deal with people who offer 30% of current market.

An offer can be rejected/countered. A polite reply many times brings the potential buyer up to an acceptable price point. A rude response can chase them off forever.

[Gorditadogg]

Originally Posted by nwobhm

An offer can be rejected/countered. A polite reply many times brings the potential buyer up to an acceptable price point. A rude response can chase them off forever.

True

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

[Balticfox]

Originally Posted by Lobo Aullando

I guess a lot of folks have the patience to deal with people who offer 30% of current market.

A reasonable offset to sellers who list at 3X the current "market".

[jingram058]

A couple of eBay points, from someone who has bought AND sold there since 1998, with 100 percent feedback:

If I, as buyer, make you an offer and you refuse to answer within several hours, then you as the seller are off the island. If you are away on vacation, then inform eBay of such. It isn't hard.

If you decline, so be it, I will move on.

If you're truly interested in selling, you will pay attention to your listings.

I don't worry about hurt feelings when it comes to best offers. If you don't like my offer, fine, let me know and I will move on, untethered to your listing.

[Eric72]

Originally Posted by jingram058

A couple of eBay points, from someone who has bought AND sold there since 1998, with 100 percent feedback:

If I, as buyer, make you an offer and you refuse to answer within several hours, then you as the seller are off the island. If you are away on vacation, then inform eBay of such. It isn't hard.

If you decline, so be it, I will move on.

If you're truly interested in selling, you will pay attention to your listings.

I don't worry about hurt feelings when it comes to best offers. If you don't like my offer, fine, let me know and I will move on, untethered to your listing.

Define "several hours." If you send an offer at 10 p.m. and the seller doesn't respond until the morning, are they off the island?

[raulus]

Originally Posted by jingram058

If I, as buyer, make you an offer and you refuse to answer within several hours, then you as the seller are off the island. If you are away on vacation, then inform eBay of such. It isn't hard.

I'm pretty sure the "away on vacation" setting is only available to sellers who pay extra to have a "store".