Had to turn off best offer
Summary: electronicifycanada shares their experience of dealing with scammers on eBay who send lowball offers and later claim items sent via lettermail without tracking didn't arrive. They advise removing the 'best offer' option to mitigate such scams. msau4301 suggests blocking potential scammers and advises keeping 'best offer' for higher-ticket items with tracking. rocketscollectibles recounts a similar experience with scammers, noting that some scams may be premeditated. femmefan1946 highlights eBay's feature for setting automatic acceptance and refusal limits for offers, which can prevent sellers from seeing lowball offers. flipistics and thevillage1955 mention avoiding the 'best offer' feature, either by blocking unsubstantial buyers or only using it selectively. brettjet38 provides information about setting up automatic responses on eBay to handle offers according to predefined price thresholds.
I normally sell cheaper items that get sent lettermail without tracking and I get a few lowball offers for half price. I usually ignore them but lately I had a couple happen and the buyers spammed me. I kept ignoring it and they eventually bought my items just to scam me and claim they didn't arrive.
Now I removed best offer from all my listings cause I realize buyers will do this if you don't accept their lowball offers. I suggest others who do lettermail consider the same.
Scammers are ruining it for everyone.
brettjet38
·3 years agoAutomatic responses to Best Offer
If you set up automatic responses in your listing, we can accept or decline a Best Offer for you, based on the price limits you select. Buyers won't know your limits, but the upper limit must be below your Buy It Now price.
Here's how automatic responses work:
You can't use automatic responses when:
https://www.ebay.ca/help/selling/listings/selling-buy-now/adding-best-offer-listing?id=4144&st=3&pos=2&query=Adding%20Best%20Offer%20to%20your%20listing%20and%20sending%20offers%20to%20buyers&intent=best%20offer&lucenceai=lucenceai&docId=HELP1043
thevillage1955
·3 years agoAs soon as I get a ridiculous offer I will block the buyer. Don't waste my time.
flipistics
·3 years agoI rarely use best offer, especially in my lettermail store. I feel like if your items are priced appropriately there shouldn't be a need to. Once in a while I'll have someone contact me with an acceptable offer and I'll turn it on for that one item at the agreed upon price. I do send out offers to watchers on a daily basis though. I find that highly effective and mostly trouble-free.
femmefan1946
·3 years agoApparentlymany sellers have not noticed that we can set parameters on Best Offers.
If you are asking $100 and would consider an offer of $90, you can set that to automatically be accepted.
If you would be annoyed by an offer of $80 you can set that to automatically give the customer a polite refusal of any offer of $80 or less. You never see the lowball offer and the customer gets a polite letter of refusal from eBay.
I'm assuming the letter is polite since customers come back, often several times to keep trying. We can see these failed offers when the customer makes an acceptable offer.
The parameters can be a penny apart.
Or there can be a gap which notifies the seller of the Offer, that is higher than Unacceptable and lower that automatically Accepted. Then the seller can consider how long the item has been hanging about, and the customer's feedback before accepting or refusing.
So if Best Offer makes sales for you, but nitwittery annoys you, try setting parameters.
femmefan1946
·3 years agoIt should be noted that on Fixed Price listings with Immediate Payment Required, accepting a Best Offer will negate the IPR.
rocketscollectibles
·3 years agoI don't have a lot of INR personally but i had this exact same situation hapenning a few weeks ago. Buyer sent a 50-60% offer and i counter offered with a note in it about my counter offer being a fair price. He accepted and ended claiming INR. Pretty sure it was premeditated. Some people making scams personal, like a vengence. Another INR i experienced was from an order the buyer asked to cancel but it was already shipped so i could not, you know those are not coincidental
msau4301
·3 years agoYes, it's sad we have to worry about scammers, not just here, they're everywhere (I don't even answer the phone anymore unless I know the number).
Though there was probably not much time between the spam messages with lowball offers, if someone is giving you bad vibes you could block them and at least they won't be able to buy your item (and turn around and make a claim). And it will keep them from trying again at the very least. People that lowball items already low priced with free shipping should automatically be a red flag (in my opinion anyways), how cheap does someone have to be. Maybe keep the offers off the lower priced items but still allow it on higher ticket items that you send with tracking.