I've been using Best Offer for years, probably from the first week it was available, with real and surprisingly consistent success. Here are my own thoughts (and advice, for anyone interested) on the subject of Best Offer, gained from many years of experimenting and using it in different ways:
- Use Best Offer strategically: Most of the issues 'mj' has cited -- nasty customers, ridiculously lowball offers, rude messages, personal insults, etc. -- can be avoided by not using Best Offer as a substitute discount system on a wide variety (or all) of listings, especially not those of lower value. ("Low value" is hard to define, but basically anything below the median of a seller's offerings). I don't believe that's its best use or original purpose. I see Best Offer as a "special feature" tool.
- The optics are part of the game: Using Best Offer non-selectively may ultimately generate sales, but will also in my view make a seller's store look like a fire-sale that can be taken advantage of, inevitably attracting bottom feeders (I know I've said this before). It will also tend to invite insult and abuse, or at the very least, frustration and waste of time for the seller. This defeats the whole point of Best Offer, and actually takes focus away from the items you really want to direct attention to.
- So, I'd say use Best Offer in a strategic way to highlight feature items. These are the items I really want to sell and that in my experience are more likely to attract serious buyers who will make reasonable (or at least feasible) offers. One such sale makes up for a whole lot of wasted haggling over $20 transactions.
- In all the years I've used Best Offer on such items (usually valued over about $200), I've never failed to sell at what I considered a reasonable price within a few weeks, sometimes within a few days, occasionally even within a few hours. I've never, in all those years, had an outrageously low offer, or one I felt I couldn't work with, either by immediate acceptance or counter-offer. Mosty the offers are within 80% of the BIN price.
- Provides buyers with an opportunity to have input into pricing: I like to think of Best Offer as a sort of slow auction. I don't see it as reflective of being unable to price my items properly, but as a signal to buyers that I'm willing to be flexible. On items that are of higher value and/or in higher demand there is more "wiggle room" to accommodate a buyer, which makes the transaction more likely to be a successful one for both buyer and seller. Best Offer gives buyers a chance to feel they're participating in the buy-sell process on a pricey item. And a buyer who feels they've negotiated a good price on such an item will be less likely to find things to complain about.
- I would not use auto-decline or auto-accept. As convenient as those features may seem, they have three drawbacks. First, they make no sense on the items I prefer to use Best Offer for. I want to engage personally with a buyer making an offer on, say, a $300 item.
Secondly, and more importantly, if Best Offer is used widely by a seller, for items of lower value as well as higher, it can defeat the benefit of Best Offer by creating a string of "declines" on lesser items. This not only reflects poorly on the seller generally, but may deter serious buyers a seller would hope would make an offer on more important items. As a buyer, I review the Best Offer history of sellers carefully before making an offer, and usually bypass anyone with a history of too many declines.
Lastly, auto-decline can actually work against the seller in getting the best price possible, especially if a less than scrupulous buyer sees the seller has a history of declines. I've seen this complaint reported by a number of sellers over the years. Some buyers, knowing they're dealing with a computer and not a person, will "fish" until they hit the seller's rock-bottom acceptance price on try #3, rather than simply making their best offer the first time around. I think this may particularly be a problem on lower-priced items, another reason not to use Best Offer indiscriminately.
- Best Offer can help attract more sales: I've found this is true. In fact, sometimes I'll leave an offer pending on an item, and occasionally it will attract a better offer or someone who will use the BIN. Pending offers are prominently advertised by eBay on listings (and -- if I recall, also in searches), which can only help. I see that in itself as one of the key features of Best Offer, a kind of oblique free advertising. Even if a curious buyer only takes a look, they may end up browsing and buying something else from my store.
- Counteroffers can work: Again, because I use Best Offer selectively, usually on higher-priced items, I've found that a well-considered counteroffer can make a sale that might otherwise be unpalatable to me. My approach is to leave any poor offer pending for a while to see if it attracts another buyer. If not, I subtract the buyer's offer from my BIN price and offer to split the difference in my counteroffer. This is almost always successful. Nonetheless, by using Best Offer only on particular items, I rarely have to resort to a counteroffer.
- Best Offer may work better for some categories than others: I've always suspected this may be true, but of course there's no way to confirm it. For anyone just starting to use Best Offer, choose a handful of your most attractive items to try it out first, rather than putting it on across the board. If you want to generate even more exposure, run an item-wide discount sale (say 10% off), along with a few Best Offer items.
I'm a solid fan of Best Offer, it's been extremely successful for me, has caused virtually no issues in terms of customer relations (or my nerves). It's helped make some of my best sales and happiest buyers over the years. EBay has tweaked Best Offer a little bit over the past decade, but really not that much compared to some of its other features, so it remains a core eBay feature. I do believe however, that it's something which has to be used with precision and strategy, and which takes time to master, like any good tool.
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