@zhongjai wrote:
Many E-bay sellers offers "Best Offer Purchases".
I think this is better than auction sometimes since you don't have to compete with other buyers.
How does one know what the best offer to give so there is chance of seller accepting the offer ?
How much lower can I offer from the original price listing ?
Thanks
Sadly, a lot of very nice buyers, who would turn out to be excellent current and future customers, are paying the price for the fact that there are far too many what I like to call "arm-chair" dealers on Ebay.
I spend a huge amount of time, more than any other portion of my small business takes, sourcing, acquiring etc interesting items to sell. I list them for sale, always after doing research if I am not entirely familiar with the item, to make sure that my asking price is reasonable. I used to add "Best Offer" to all of my listings as being a reasonable sort I have always felt that I never wanted to lose a sale over a couple of pennies. Unfortunately, far too often I would get horrendous "Low-ball" offers from these "arm-chair" dealers who are too lazy to go out and source their own products and prefer to troll Ebay bothering hard working dealers with ridiculous offers so that they can take the items and re-sell them without putting any work into it at all.
The end result is that I very rarely use "Best Offer" any more and I am sure that i am missing the odd sale because of it but quite honestly, as much as it pains me to miss even 1 sale, the frustration from having to deal with the low-ball offers, and the motivation behind them, is just too enfuriating.
Here is what I would suggest if you are looking at an item that has the "Best Offer" feature enabled or even if it doesn't and you are just a little out of your budget at the asking price.. For the items that don't have "Best Offer" enabled see below for mention of a new feature that sellers have access to that allows them to send offers through messages.
1) Always accompany your offer with a polite message to the seller outside of the offer process. Explain that you like the item and are really interested in it and are not a re-seller looking to cash in on his hard work.
2) When you see sales in stores they generally offer 10, 15, 25 % off and rarely (legitimately anyway) anything more than that. Depending on the value of the item you need to decide what is a fair discount to seek, If the item is $25 asking for a $25% discount is probably just going to anger the seller but if the item is $100 then 25% could very likely be a viable option.
Ask yourself what you would do in the seller's shoes.
3) If the seller does not accept your first offer maintain the dialog outside of the offer process and see if you can discuss where both of you can walk away happy..
There is a new feature that allows sellers to send offers from the "Messages" portion of your account so it's quite easy now for a seller to offer you a price once you have discussed it and everyone is happy. Most sellers I have talked to, and myself included, love this feature so please do take advantage of it by opening that dialog with the seller.
To sum up just remember that in most cases, large corporate accounts and gigantic faceless chinese resellers aside, you are dealing with a human being on the other end of your negotiation and as such treat them with the respect that you would want to be treated with yourself. Keeping that in mind, along with my other suggestions, I think you can probably walk away happy from just about any buying situation as well as having a happy seller who will be looking forward to dealing with you again.
I hope this helps.
Cheers,
thD
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