Annoyed now.....!

donteatthat

I'm selling a fairly large item on ebay and the auction started last night.
It's a baby travel system package, with a number of accessories, and there is a buy it now price, plus I have a modest reserve in place. There are bids in place, not as high as the reserve but if someone is close by the time the auction ends I will lower the reserve.
What is driving me nuts is that I have already had a number of people contact me asking me to give them my best price, end the auction early and they will collect the item asap, and someone abroad who is practically begging me to arrange a courier for her despite the listing stating quite clearly telling her it is local pick up only unless the buyer sends a courier. This means nothing to her and she has emailed me 3 times asking me to do it for her.
One woman has gotten quite shirty when I pointed out there was a buy it now price if she wanted to end the auction early as doing her a deal wasn't fair on the people who had placed bids in good faith.
Is this normal for ebay these days? I don't usually bother with it unless needs must. Blimey I'm not sure I can cope with a week of this!!

Crowqueen

If you have bids let the auction run, but sometimes some people feel there's no harm in asking. In other circumstances I'd like to have that much interest, though the overseas buyer would concern me.

I'd close out to a decent offer provided there weren't bids, but it's up to you.

It's not typical to get so many offers but I don't begrudge people the right to at least ask. You can always say no.

macfly

I see it the same way as the OP. All my items are BIN, but if they are there for more than a few days I get silly offers by email. The harm in asking is the time taken to reject these offers.

hermum

Don't let a buyer arrange a courier, if you're happy for a courier to collect, price it up & add it to the listing, if you can now.
You will be responsible for packing, staying in to wait & then if anything goes wrong then the courier won't deal with you.
Baby items are apparently an often scammed category on ebay at the moment.
Personally I would want local collection only & really try & get cash on collection.

bylromarha

Yes, it's normal for good items.

You have a week of it to come. Have a standard reply ready to go which you can cut and paste.

macfly

Who is sayong don't ask any questions? The point is about silly offers.

suited-aces

Sold a ps3, bids were at 160 at that stage (started at 150), got a message "il colect it saturday 120".

Johnnyy_Boy

I recently sold an old Nintendo game (from 80's) which I knew was going to get a good price.
Put it on for £75 as an auction and within minutes was flooded with offers to buy it now.
In the end I had to edit the item to advise people to stop emailing me with offers. Got to a point where I just ignored them.
None of the offers reached the final £410 paid :T

porto_bello

This scenario can be quite annoying, but you might find it generates a surprisingly high price in the long run. I once had a painting on sale for £30 and had two people repeatedly emailing me to buy it now for the starting price, then progressively offering more. I refused all offers and the two went on to have a bidding war, pushing the sale price just north of £150. A month or so later, someone else listed a similarly sized painting, by the same artist and it sold for £24.

Crowqueen

I once had a buyer offering me £5 for an unboxed set of tarot cards I thought I was just going to give away for opening bid. The amount some of my card collection actually fetched makes me think that maybe I was too hasty to accept the offer, but a definite sale is better than declining a reasonable offer and letting people bid.

However, once there's a bid, there's no reason not to let the auction run. You can always tell interested parties to bid what they're prepared to pay and maybe get it for less.

I do think you have to put some effort into selling on eBay - you usually do reap the rewards for doing so.

shaun_from_Africa

There are bids in place, not as high as the reserve but if someone is close by the time the auction ends I will lower the reserve.

Don't forget that if you do this you still won't be guaranteed to have a bid that exceeds the new reserve.
When you lower the reserve, the current high bid is also lowered automatically so that will be 1 bid increment below the new reserve.