best offer annoyance- LOL

[picardcreative]

I have been selling on ebay for years- mostly just some cool stuff I find and I know if I list it as an auction I might get good bucks- Just got super lucky and made like $2,000 selling my son’s pokemon card collection 😉 Of course he got all the money- while i did the work LOL but, it was a blast and i am now a pokemon card expert- ha ha
I am primarily an ETSY seller but after listening to you guys forever, I got pumped up to sell on ebay- so just opened a store- anyway, that is not really why I am here – 😉

BEST OFFER- Ugghhh- I am normally a very patient and understanding seller- not much gets me riled up-
BUT OMG best offer- I can’t believe the offers I get- how do ya’ll deal with it- I know I should not take it personally, but it is a big time waster (having to decline- counter offer etc.)
Most often- I get best offers that are 1/4 of my asking price- really? LOL I do a lot research before I price my items and I think my prices are good-

I am thinking of turning off the Best Offer- in the past when I did not have it check marked- I would get a message from a reasonable person asking for a small discount-

i know you guys have best offer on a lot of listings- what is your experience? with as many items as you have- how do you keep it from being a time suck?

thanks- you guys are awesome- thank you for all you do
paula

[MDC Galleries & Fine Art]

Hey.. I have a suggestion that will take a lot of this issue away. Especially since you say you research your items and know fairly well the pricing structure. There is a setting on your store that you can set that will apply to your “make an Offer”. It allows you to set it as either a percentage or a specific dollar amount of the amount you will take. That means any offer that comes in at too low of the price listed will “automatically” be declined and Ebay will send the one who offered that low price an e-mail [which you can customize with your own words if I can remember correctly] saying their offer is to low.

So in your case if you know your market, research and pricing is really spot on and the best you would do on any of your items is say 35% off then set it to automatically decline any offer lower than 35% off your listed price. So a $20 listed item will automatically reject any offers lower than $13.00. You will never even hear or know about them.

If a buyer really wants it he can make another offer and come up and try again. If still too low, he will get another auto rejection notice. Eventually they get the idea and either jump up to a decent offer or just go away. In that case you will never be bothered by any low offers even coming in to you.

There are some pro’s and con’s to this as Ryanne has mentioned way back but a good tool if you are pretty sure of your prices. In some of our cases we at times may take a real low offer so we keep that option open to us. I have an item right now at $2,500 dollars. I got it for free, I would take $500 or less for it [80% off] so using the auto rejection system isn’t for me.

BTW you can do it on individual listings.

Hope this helps or provides you with an alternative to getting stressful emails all the time.

mike at MDC Galleries in Atlanta

[picardcreative]

great idea Mike- thanks for that- I did see the option but never used it- yes, I will do that onn items in which i have some wiggle room-

i get your point about the high priced item you have- i do think i will use the individual item feature-

thank you for reminding me of that option –
paula

[phil]

I add the Make Offer option on many of my listings. If the listing is something of a commodity I just list it at the going rate since the price is pretty much set. But if it’s something without many comps or even the only one ever listed I take Ryanne’s advice and start high and add Make Offer.
I also make frequent use of auto decline. When I list I ask myself “what offer would be so low it would piss me off?” and typically set the auto decline about 10% higher than that. Sometimes the low baller comes back with an offer that exceeds the threshold, then I can counter or accept a reasonable offer. But in the meantime I’m not annoyed with the unreasonable offers. I hate hearing the eBay notification chime only open the message and see a crap offer.

[Terri]

What kind of stuff do you have in your store?

I agree with Phil that pricing high with best offer is a great strategy for testing the market when you have something unusual or without a decent number of comps.

Personally, I really don’t understand the best offer strategy for run of the mill items and clothing, although I know many successful sellers use it.

[Ryanne]

i agree that putting make offer on lower dollar, bread n butter items is not what we like to do. i tend to put Make Offer on higher dollar stuff that i’m getting a great profit on no matter what.

[picardcreative]

Thank you guys for the input- I guess I did not think the whole strategy through-
but, yes, now it makes sense

I have mostly bread and butter stuff- once in a while i get something pretty cool-
I will take off the best offer for anything less than $30 ish-
and use it for higher priced items and definitely use the auto reject-

I only have 16 items listed right now- I appreciate you guys taking the time to help- I am trying to work out my little errors and such before I list a bunch of stuff- 😉 it is easy to fix/tweek 16 items- LOL

I will mention though- when I do get an interesting item that seems to be in pretty good demand- I put it on auction- I find I get a little more money on it- Like I had a pokemon card that I saw was going for around $99 (it was a shining raichu) I almost priced it as a buy it now for $99 but decided to put it in an auction- I ended up getting $150 for it-
woo hoo

thanks again 😉
paula

[Author]

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