Buyers making lowball offers

[3islanders]

This is a Thing, I guess, is it....?

I don' t have "best offer" on my listings -- have just never bothered with it.  I rarely list much but suddenly in 2 days I've had 2 offers anyway.  One person wanted multiple items and offered 80% of the value, which I guess isn't awful, although I'm not in a big hurry and hope to get the asking prices... BUT, he also wanted free shipping to the States.  I  might have considered his offer otherwise, but shipping would be $24!!  I told him that and haven't heard back.

Then someone else messaged asking for a similar discount for an item that's already somewhat below what others have sold for.  He's a poor student putting himself through school, etc.

I don't HAVE the "make offer" option!  These are clutter-cleanout listings, so maybe at some point I'll be willing to give stuff away to get rid of it, but like I said, hoping to get asking prices for now.  If this happens to any of you, are you tempted to sell or do you always decline?  Do you wonder if you're being greedy and maybe are losing your chance to sell if you don't accept?

If you did decide to accept an offer, do you have to cancel the current listing and re-list, or can you add best-offer to it?

If it's several items, I'm assuming you'd have to cancel and re-list as a lot?  

Without the offer option, the first message I got sounded like a request to buy outside of eBay somehow.  

Anyway, just interested in people's thoughts. 

[momcqueen]

You can add Best Offer to any GTC by revision an existing listing. I think also to a 30-day BIN although there might be a limit to it depending on how close you are to expiration, I don't recall anymore. Mine are all GTC.

I hear what you are saying loud and clear. For 3.5 years I stood staunchly opposed to OBO... so like you I would get messages with offers anyway. Usually quite rude. Those messages take longer to respond to than an actual Best Offer.

With Best Offer you can set auto-decline and auto-accept parameters so that you are never bothered with offers that you would not entertain.

Like today: item is already marked down 60 per cent... with free shipping.... and a buyer offers $10 which doesn't even cover the cost of postage. Yesterday too, I had this occur on another item marked down 50 per cent. Don't get me started on low-ball offers.....

[momcqueen]

"Do you wonder if you're being greedy and maybe are losing your chance to sell if you don't accept?"

No, I never wonder if I'm being greedy but, yes, the people who make insulting offers are not the ones to consider a fair counter-offer. They want it for next-to-nothing or not at all. You don't have to sell anything to those types. The less someone pays for something, the less likely they are to be happy with it. It's a thing. I want my buyers to want what I'm selling enough to pay a decent amount because I only sell decent things, well packaged, photographed and described. It's not junk and I won't price it as such and for that I offer no apologies ever.

Stick to your guns. 

There are countless stories here of items that fetched asking price immediately after some Cheap Skate insulted the seller with a 'I'll give you $5 for it and you can thank me now' message. 

[thestuffofchris]

I have had that a few times, and each time I either considered the offer reasonable enough or haggled to what I considered a more acceptable price. I just add Best Offer to the listing and set the auto-accept price to their offer, so they just have to make the offer and it automatically accepts it.

Because what I sell is just unwanted items from my personal collections, I am more likely to consider offers. I'm not here to make a profit or anything like that so my outlook is probably a bit different. I actually enjoy selling on eBay (shocker!), so if I can make a few bucks as I get rid of some of my unwanted clutter, I'm happy.

[momcqueen]

Because OBO has been such a sore point for me, here are two threads I created that I can share, for background on it. They had fairly good responses from ebay Community. Varied perspectives.

http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Is-MAKE-AN-OFFER-always-so-insulting/m-p/344158/highlight... and 

http://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/More-Musings-on-Make-an-Offer/m-p/365363/highlight/true#M...

[pjcdn2005]

I rarely use best offer but still get offers every once in a while. If I am willing to accept less than the bin price for thst item I will accept the offer or make a counter offer.  If I have no desire to sell at a lower price I thank them for the offer but say that the current price is firm or something like that. Some people disappear and some buy the item at full price.  

You shouldn't feel obligated to take the offer or even counter but I think that it is a good idea to always reply politely.

[femmefan1946]

First off, according to eBay, offers do NOT include shipping.

I would guess the reasoning is that the shipping fee does not go in the seller's pocket so she can't very well reduce it.

I have had a couple of offers on dress patterns recently, which I sell with Free Shipping. My response was a polite note saying that my price included Air Mail shipping from Canada and was firm. Both patterns sold at full asking*. YMMV.

Because I use Free Shipping so much and Calculated Shipping on most of my dotCA listings, I don't add Best Offer to my listings.

I do add Notes to my Selling lists with the date I first uploaded the lot, which gives me an idea if this is something fresh or something approaching deadstock. Notes can only be seen by the seller and a great tool for me.

I agree that anyone who is rude or gives a sob story is going to get short shrift.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jZ3k2xA1Wcw

*I put LOTS of pretty stamps on the packets. Smoke and mirrors.

[pjcdn2005]

I agree,  telling me a sob story guarantees that they won't be getting any deals from me.  Perhaps I would feel differently if I was selling 'necessities'.

[momcqueen]

If there was ever a category to win the most-ever prize for Poor Me stories, it's Toys & Hobbies. Most often, in the form of: "My child really needs this rare article that only you in the world have but I'm only willing to spend $5 including postage. Can you help?"

[momcqueen]

(And, having four children of my own, that's probably the worst plea for mercy.)

[zee-chan]

I have a reverse sob story. Years ago a buyer complained that she never received her $10 shipping included item. I was not familiar with the eBay rules back then and I told the buyer that I can't refund her because she chose letter post with no tracking. She went on and on until I said I was just a student selling my own used items and I can't afford to refund her, the next day she said she found the item at the bottom of the mailbox and didn't need a refund anymore...... I don't even remember if INR was a thing back then but if it exists I guess I'd be out the $10 and quit selling then...

[3islanders]

Thanks for the comments, all.

Like 'thestuffofchris', I'm also hoping to get rid of some clutter, so I am torn between "Yes, just give me a few bucks and pay for the postage and you can have it", and wanting to get as much as I can out of the clutter items to fund other hobbies.

None of my items are BIN or GTC -- just regular auctions.

I think what makes me hesitate on accepting is the fact that I thoroughly looked through completed listings before deciding on asking prices.  So I know these items have sold for more, or more or less the same, recently.

I read those other threads... seems like people have lots of "fun" with stupid offers. 

Is there any consensus or general opinion on what DOES constitute a good offer? -- what percent of the asking price? 

[momcqueen]

It would be impossible to say what 'percentage' of the asking price would constitute a 'good' offer versus a 'bad' one.

Some sellers charge too much, period. I may be among them but I don't apologize for it because I offer very good post-purchase Customer Service and a solid knowledge base on the items I sell so there's more at stake than just an item tossed in the mail and forgotten. Buyers get 12 quality photos and a thoughtful item description on which to base their choice. and a guarantee it's an authentic toy sourced from authorized dealers and collectors around the world. Not counterfeits or knock-offs.

Other sellers like yourself spend time researching fair market value and price accordingly. Stick to your guns. I mean it. It's your stuff, you don't need to entertain anyone's offer to sell it for less. 'Thank you for your kind offer (even if it wasn't) but I'm not entertaining offers on this item at this time.' 

Logically, a potential buyer should know better than to offer $5 on an item listed for $357 with postage included but they still do. And then they come back for more on another listing when you say no to the first. 

If you are considering adding OBO to your BIN or GTC, you have to develop a thick skin. This is the most difficult part for me. I try always to behave in the most professional manner that I may but sometimes I want to reply with my actual thought and I did once and it was a HUGE mistake. Before I knew it, I was locked into a battle of (dim)wits with a person of limited intelligence but a wide array of obscene emojis and curse words. 

[momcqueen]

And I suspect you're right, there is s some 'fun' involved too for the buyers making crazy lowball offers. I was once offered payment in bottle caps or something. 

[3islanders]

And I suspect you're right, there is s some 'fun' involved too for the buyers making crazy lowball offers. I was once offered payment in bottle caps or something. 

Haha.  This makes me want to try lowballing some sellers to make up for their use of Global Shipping (whole other rant, there...).  Never know, it might work!

Yeah, I don't think I'll bother with Best Offer.  I just don't want to spend the time on it.  It takes long enough to list items when you have to find boxes and weigh and measure stuff "just in case it sells"... I just want to list things, and if they sell, get them on their way and if they don't, re-list, and not spend any more time on it.   Like buddy the other night who wanted the free shipping and wasted some of my time while I dug out the stuff and re-boxed and re-weighed etc. to see how much the shipping would be.  Knowing he wouldn't be willing to pay for it.

I did just send them polite "not at this time" type messages. 

I suspect that some day, if the much-needed Clutter Purge really comes into effect, I will be willing to take anything that pays for the postage!  Trouble is, most of the clutter probably costs too much to ship (thanks, Canada Post).

[thestuffofchris]

I rarely use Best Offer; not because of low offers, but because I rarely get offers in the first place. I've even had items sell at full price when Best Offer was available. It seems the buyer base for what I've been selling would rather just get what they want now rather than deal with the more time-consuming offer process.

Of course, everyone has different experiences with Best Offer. This is just mine.

[momcqueen]

Oh, I agree. Even through I added OBO to 90 per cent of my listings in the fall, more than half of my Sold items have sold at the BIN price because those are people who don't want to dicker and, probably more importantly, don't want to wait around to play nickel-and-dime games. 

Make an Offer appeals to the bargain-seekers, and those folks who get a thrill from haggling. 

As much as I like a bargain, I feel demeaned as a buyer if I have to negotiate a price. I find it to be unbecoming and uncouth, like dining at a restaurant with someone who complains to the server about every aspect of their meal. Yucky. 

Not that I don't appreciate the Offers that resulted in a sale. Most accomplished by me deciding to accept a semi-reasonable first offer, a lesser number by the buyer accepted a counter offer. Most of the time, my counter-offer is a wasted effort. That buyer wants it for the price they first set or not at all. There have been a few who went back and forth by a dollar at a time. This is where the auto-decline setting is your friend. Some people just don't get it. If the item is listed at $90 with postage included and is already on markdown for 30 per cent less, a second offer of $11.50 isn't going to be declined any less fast than the first offer at $10. 

But I admit I'm much more inclined to accept lower offers than I'd like in the week leading up to my seller fees being due. 

So if you want to lob lowball offers out there, do it right at the end and smack in the middle of the month. When sellers may be feeling the pinch of last month's fees due. That's my strategic buyer's advice of the day. 

[femmefan1946]

So I know these items have sold for more, or more or less the same, recently.

The other part of "recently' which buyers don't easily see is 'eventually'.

We get a notice when GTC items have been unsold for 16 months. Doesn't bother a bookseller like me, since my stock can be held in four bookcases and five cardboard boxes, but for someone who is contemplating whether or not to rent a second storage unit, that could make a difference.

[Anonymous]

If he cannot accept the asking prices plus wanted free shipping, I would ignore him.  It is not worth it.

I had a female buyer last week wanting 4 magazines and asking if she will get a discount if combined plus free shipping.  Those 4 magazines weigh heavy around $20.00 by Expedited as they are over 1kg and she excepted free shipping and after figuring it out with what I would have to pay the eBay final value fees, PayPal fees, plus transaction on each item plus what I have to pay for shipping which is around $20.00 and I would come down to nearly nothing to show for and it is like I am giving away 3 magazines for FREE and I told her no.  To my surprise, she paid full asking price plus shipping costs. Of course it includes a tracking number to protect myself.

[momcqueen]

That's a pleasant ending to an unpleasant start.

I think it goes without saying that buyers have no concept of the actual cost of doing business here. None whatsoever. Not the fees to eBay. Not the fees to PayPal. Not the actual cost of postage. And certainly not the time invested in getting an item listed.

Who can blame them? It's not like there's a Guide to Understanding Your EBay Seller out there. As a buyer, I had no idea until I found myself selling. We learn the hard way.