Best Offer – Auto Accept/Decline

[ssmantua]

Do you use this functionality in your BO? whats your experience?

I have heard that if buyer include any message then by design, it will not auto accept offer, have you experienced that?

For hands off non-emotional BO approach, would following work?

BIN BO price 45, free shipping.
Auto accept @ 39
Auto decline @ 38.99

would you implement this in majority of your BO listings?

thoughts?

[eCommerce411.us]

If you truly want non-emotional (what I call avoiding head-games) don’t use auto accept. Instead, use min to accept. $39 in your example and this should be your price your willing accept. Then you have 48 hrs to wait for other offers or accept the offer. Never counter on your highest offer or on an only offer. Think about it. Why counter if you get an offer that meets your minimum?

[T-Satt]

eComm: So you don’t use the auto-accept, just the auto-decline? Then if you get an offer, you wait 48 hours before you accept to see if you get higher offers?

So in ssmantua’s example, you would have a $45 listing price, with a $39 auto-decline?

[eCommerce411.us]

Correct. In a sense, the minimum $ that I would consider a BO is what I would sell it for. Everything below would be considered low offers and I wouldn’t even be notified of them. Every offer and counter has a minimum of 48 hours to respond. If the item doesn’t have many views, I generally won’t wait the full 48 hours waiting for another offer.

I use BO on new items that I’m unsure of it’s price or order listings that consistently have high views month-over month. In the later, it’s the final step before I reduce the actual price.

[T-Satt]

Got it. We use Best Offer with Auto-Decline (floor) on just about everything. Listing price is based on the best we think we can get for it, with a floor that would be the lowest we would want at this point, so similar to you.

I’m going to go back to the Auto-Accept (ceiling) as well. I notice that we get a quicker payment and turnaround if the buyer gets the auto-acceptance notification while they are on the listing, so that they can pay right then. Sometimes the floor and ceiling are the same if we are getting into low priced items. For items that have a wider range I might go $49 list, $35 ceiling, $25 floor.

[Clarity]

As a buyer, my issue with auto decline is that I don’t get an idea of what price the seller is willing to accept. Plus you only get 3 chances to make an offer. I had one item that I was trying to buy and I made a couple of offers that were declined, my last offer was $1 off and it was declined too. Very frustating experience.

So as a seller, I do not use auto decline. It gives me a chance to counter so the buyer has some idea of what I am willing to accept as a discount.

[eCommerce411.us]

Look at it from the seller standpoint. Seller has a lot of things going on everyday and automating anything to saves you time you take advantage of. The buyer has only one thing on their mind. Buying that item. My view is the first offer is always a low ball offer and when automatically declined, reinforces this to the buyer. Kind of a proverbial slap on the hand. The second offer is a more serous offer and if automatically declined, still is not what the seller is willing to let it go at. The third offer should be the maximum the buyer is willing pay. As a buyer, if you missed it by $1. That is $1 too short and just let it go.

[T-Satt]

I agree. For lower end items like clothing, I have to accept offers to stay competitive, but there is a limit to that as well, and since I need high volume, I have to automate. And I notice that by them getting automatic feedback, they are willing to offer again, rather than have to wait…where they may buy from someone else.

[T-Satt]

For us, we have had buyers that had offers lower than what we would expect (usually 40% of asking price or less) that will contact us via messages to ask for our lowest accepted offer. When we had the floor turned off, we would get lots of low offers, and the time to respond and counter was not worth it. I see that during relisting too, where offers that were 50% or more off were auto rejected. Plus, we see many times where we “walked them up” to a price we would accept. Meaning they tried the 50% off offer, were automatically declined, then they made a reasonable offer we would expect.

It all depends on where the auto-decline is set. I would agree, that if I was offering say 20% off for clothing and it was auto-declined, that is getting too tight for that category.

[eCommerce411.us]

I’m comfortable with my method because it is unemotional (as best as it can be). I don’t worry about payment because I have UIA set to kick in after 4 days. Either they pay or they don’t. No sense in worrying about it until the 4th day.

A few weeks ago, had I used auto accept on BO, I would have been out $225. I had a minimum to accept offers set at $175. The item was listed at $675 (no clue as to its value) Within 24 hours I had 4 offers. From $200 to $400. Within 36 hours I had 2 more still under the $400 mark. For the next 24 hours I worked with counters getting the other 5 offers above the $400 mark. They all declined. In the end, and within 6 hours expiration, I accepted the $400 offer.

[T-Satt]

In that case, I would agree with a floor and no ceiling. The range is too high to have an auto accept (unless you auto accept at say $550).

So you can auto reject below the floor, auto accept above a certain ceiling, and haggle in the middle.

Funny thing. I just started turning the auto accept on today during relisting…and one just purchased and paid via the auto-accept. Shirt was $25, floor of $15, ceiling of $20. Offered $20, auto-accepted and paid all at once. I didn’t have to get involved at all.

[ssmantua]

T-Satt, Do you have best offer on majority of your items? If so, if you want to automate, why not set your ceiling and floor at the same price? For example for your $25 shirt, how about setting $20 ceiling and floor? This way, if somebody wants to pay the full price for that shirt, they will pay $25 but $20 is still a good deal and you don’t have to be involved at all.

What would be a concern with this setup?

[T-Satt]

I do best offer on all listings. For items that are lower value, that is exactly what I do…putting the ceiling and floor at the same price. I don’t have any concerns with this, especially if I do free shipping.

[Amatino]

I’m with T-Satt. I work out the minimum I will take and not feel upset about, and the maximum I would feel I’d gotten a good deal with, and create those autos. Then if an offer comes in between the two, I get to think about it. Sometimes I’m hungry for a sale and accept quickly, other times I tend to wait a bit. Seems to be a cross between how much I want a sale and how much I think the item is worth. If I think it’s a lowball, even though it’s above my minimum, I’ll counter.

I started with auto-decline when I got some really rude offers. $3 on a $12.95 item and $5 on a $50 item. Rather than getting pissed, I just worked out what I would consider a reasonable minimum, and put an auto on it. That way, I don’t even know about the rude offers and only have to weigh in on the middle ground. I’ve had quite a few auto-accepts go through and they’ve all resulted in almost-immediate payment, so that’s very encouraging.

Using your example, eC411, I often set about 85-90% as my auto-accept, so I’d have put $600 up for auto accept. You’d still have been working the middle ground to get your $400s, but I’m sure you wouldn’t have minded someone pipping those $400s with a $600 auto sale! 😉

[Retro Treasures WV]

I’ll give you a bit of devil’s advocate here. For the time it takes me to set a floor and ceiling during listing, I could afford to take the time to decline two offers for that item. Multiply that across how many items I have in inventory and I am spending a lot of tinme creating custom min and max amounts that I could just spend countering or declining offers. I would easily be ahead in time just dealing with offers.

And really, dealing with offers if part of the fun that keeps ebay personal rather than just being a sterile Amazon FBA “job”.

[ssmantua]

T-Satt, Do you have best offer on majority of your items? If so, if you want to automate, why not set your ceiling and floor at the same price? For example for your $25 shirt, how about setting $20 ceiling and floor? This way, if somebody wants to pay the full price for that shirt, they will pay $25 but $20 is still a good deal and you don’t have to be involved at all.

What would be a concern with this setup?

[Dirk]

I am doing best offer on almost all my listings, I set the auto accept at a price I am happy with but I don’t do an auto decline. So far this has worked pretty well I have had a few people make offers just under my minimum so it has allowed me to then message them and negotiate a price.

I don’t mind auto accept to save time but I don’t want to auto decline and lose a prospect.

[Amatino]

Retro, I can set my auto’s in less time than it would take you to READ the offer! LOL

Honestly, it’s a click and a number. When I’m doing my research, I have an asking figure in mind. Then I wing what I would be happy to accept. So, research an item, **decide to price it at $39.99, paid $2.50, price range is $25 – $50 on solds, I’d feel happy to get $25, so that’s my minimum.** Mental time taken from ** to ** is about 3 seconds. At the pricing section of my listing, check the Auto box, type $25 into auto-decline, guesstimate $30 for auto-accept, time taken about 5 seconds.

It’s really that fast.

If you were to go back and ADD autos into listings, it would take you quite a while, but I’ve been doing it as I’m listing, so it’s a matter of seconds.

[Author]

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