If someone gives you a ridiculous offer do you have to respond?

[musicyouneed]

If someone gives you a ridiculous offer do you have to respond?  I didn't realize I have that on.   I didn't have it on, can a buyer just send me an offer it I do not accept them or have it listed as accepting offers.   I don't really want to respond.  Have ended the listing and will be relisting it later as I had to update it anyways.

[ericsells75]

you can set it to automatically decline offers below a certain threshold when creating your listing. I always reply personally but sometime the offers are pretty ridiculous I admit. I like to reply with a counter offer, you never know they may just be testing the water or hoping you click the wrong button 🙂

[femmefan1946]

Your choices are:

Accept.

Decline.

Counter-offer.

Ignore.

And you can set your parameters to automatically accept offers above a certain amount or reject them below a certain amount.

Politely. -- Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

Just counter and play hardball just as much as them. Those types of offers make it a lot easier to read the buyer, because someone hoping to catch a steal on an item will just reject your counter. If they keep coming back, it becomes really clear that they actually want the item, and you don't have to give them as much flexibility with the price.

Ironically, it's the people who give reasonable offers off the bat that are harder to read, and end up getting better deals. If someone offers something reasonable, you actually have something to lose by countering, so you become less likely to not accept. Someone offering something unreasonable puts you in a no-lose situation by playing hardball yourself, and if they want the item, it probably ends up selling for a higher amount to them than if they were just reasonable off the bat.

(This is of course assuming your items are priced in line with the total shipped cost of similar items. If it's a case where your item is overpriced, that's a different thing entirely.)

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

I agree with what you said. Usually it's the reasonable offers that gains the most. For example, let's say someone made an offer of 70% of my listed price. I spend more time thinking about whether to counter or just accept and take the 70%, and my decision is usually based on whether it's a newly listed item or something that I had bee trying to sell for a long time. I usually counter if it's really new, and just accept if it's an old-ish item as long as I don't actually end up losing money on it.

Low ball offers I look at their feedback history. If they tend to send negatives to other sellers, then I put them on BBL and ignore their offer by letting it expire (and secretly hope that someone else will buy the item during the pending offer period lol). If their feedback history is good, then I counter at 80-90% of listed price and see how it goes. Sometimes they end up accepting my counter offer lol, so for me that's a win too.

[musicyouneed]

Thanks everyone.  I chose to ignore.  When someone offers $2 on a $15 item to me it is an insult.  I didn't know that I had put best offer as I never do that and if I did I would set a limit.  

It reminds me of a story.  I had a table at a flea market and I had a leather wallet for $5, this lady kept coming by and offering me $2 and I kept saying No.  Near the end of the sale, I raised the price to $7 and she came back and said you raised the price and I said yes, this way you can offer me $5 and I will accept it.  She bought the wallet for $5.00 as it was leather and worth a lot more than $5.00.

[retroman_studios]

If eBay's system determines that either the item hasn't sold or the category average is lower than your price or if the moon is rising over Rigal 3, they automatically add Best Offer.

In their eyes, they want it sold. To them it matters not the price, they don't pay for inventory.

So when I do put items up I allow best offer but usually setup my limits and auto declines as I don't like low ballers. In my book it's no different than someone looking to buy an expensive car and they kick the tires thinking if they convince the owner it's a heap of junky rust they can take it for a song and sell it for huge profits.

[ricarmic]

For an offer like you received I ignore them.

In my world not only is one faced with the most likely wasted haggling time, one is also likely faced with  much higher risk of not as described problems afterward. (Same concept as one is likely to get more complaints from someone who paid .99c for an item).

I also agree that reasonable offers are hard to predict and I would also say that people that make reasonable offers that are just a bit below what I would have said is my "best price" are more likely to be accepted by me....

[teenytrinkets]

I typically set my lowest price limits to avoid lowballers, but sometimes i forget. Those lowballers get ignored. It's the ultimate eff-u to these idiots! Don't engage!

[richardcm]

When I used to sell at swap meets or personal garage sales and get lowball offers, I would just counteroffer higher than my asking price and raise it for each ridiculous offer. The low baller would say I was crazy raising the price in the counter offer and I would just reply it was as crazy as their lowball offers. If they really upset me I would just say it was no longer for sale even if I got a reasonable offer from them later in the day. Many times the item was sold by the time they came back! I always thought if there was interest by one lowballer, the item might be of interest to others.

On eBay I rarely used Best Offer because the price I had was usually researched and a fair price and shipping. If no interest, I would review price eventually and make adjustments. I felt that Best Offer means I did not research the item and price well enough. Most sellers pad the price on Best Offer to allow for lower offers. Makes no sense to me.

I also felt that if any listing had a Best Offer then low ballers would think any of my listings could be lowballed by sending an eBay message. Nope!

[jbooter]

I think it's importaant to remember that sometimes people are going to receive what they feel are "low ball offers" but in reality you may just have your listing priced far too high. I see that all the time in sports cards. Guy selling a non-rookie of Wayne Gretzky for over $2.5K, like come on!! Posts that have rediculous listing prices deserve low-bal offers. It's just part of the Ebay game.

[clemowbooks]

ZOMBIE THREAD FROM 2020

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

People think that buyer engagement boosts your best match placement. Anecdotally, I think that it must be true based on what I have seen. So the way to look at lowball offers is that they are helping you market your item by boosting your placement.

The best way to handle it is to either turn on auto-accept/decline, because lowballers will usually shoot 5 quick low offers. Or, reply back with a reverse low ball. Example, they offer $5 on a $20 item, you offer back $19. 

I find that low ballers are much easier to negotiate with. If someone offers me $15 on a $20, and I am happy with $15, I have to then choose whether the risk of them walking away is worth countering $17 or $18. I could counter $17 or $18, and they could change their mind. Where as, if someone offers me $5 on a $20 item, even if they come up to $15 by the third or fourth offer, it because extremely obvious that they really want the item so it's easier to take the risk and not give them your true "best price". They are much easier to read. As in, if someone has come up from asking for 75 percent off to being willing to accept only 25 percent off, they would probably buy the item at full price and just want to see what kind of deal they can get. 

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

This is true to, it's why it is important to look things up if you have a stale item you receive an offer on. I have had low percentage offers that I have accepted because I realize that an item has been sitting for a while, and while it may have been a competitive price 6 months ago, there are now better offers.

But this goes both ways. There are genuine lowball offers and there are sellers who have items priced that aren't in line with market value. 

[reallynicestamps]

Whay does anyone even see these lowball offers?

If you have a firm idea of the price you would be content with, set up parameters to reject any Offer below that.

The customer gets a polite notice from eBay that encourages them to try again. In my experience most do.

We can also set up an Accept parameter, so that decent offers get an immediate acceptance which encourages an Immediate Payment.

And the Accept/Reject can be a penny apart.

[zee-chan-jpn-books]

I don't set auto decline because I will go read the low baller's feedback left to others. If they left a ridiculous amount of negs to other sellers, I'll block them and let the offer sit till expiry.

[reallynicestamps]

@zee-chan-jpn-books- But if the offer is too low to accept, why bother to read the feedback?

The Reject parameter automatically refuses the offer. If the customer comes back with a more reasonable offer (eg Reject is $10 /Accept is $20 second offer is $15) then you can look at FB.

Basically the Reject/Accept allows the customer to haggle without bothering the seller with lowballs that would be rejected.

But the Message from eBay is polite and encouraging enough to keep them coming back.

[ilikehockeyjerseys]

It is good to be proactive, but I think this is overkill.

As another post pointed out, you're not going to sell to them regardless because they are unlikely to make a fair offer.

At a certain point, for a large number of low priced transactions, you can't really weed out all the bad actors - but 99+ percent of buyers are good buyers with zero issues, so you reach a point where you have to weigh all the time wasted with scouting feedback over a lower priced item vs the actual odds of there being an issue that could have been avoided by viewing their feedback. 

For an item above a certain price point, sure always look at the feedback.

[38e_avenue]

It depends on the offer. I got a $75 offer for a $500 item. I did not accept, I did not reject, I did not counteroffer. I just added the buyer to my ban-list and did wait the offer to expire (less than 24 hours.)    

Other day I got a $20 offer for a $30 dollar item. I did counteroffer for $25. The item sold. Before I counteroffer, I always CAREFULLY check the feedback the buyer left to other sellers. I recently refused a reasonable offer, because the buyer recently left several "item never received" negative feedback.  

[brettjet38]

ZOMBIE THREAD FROM 2020