Oh, the joys of Best Offer on Ebay.

ailey

It's great to see that various people are getting offers above the auction prices. I've been finding it totally different. I changed all my items to Auction with Best Offer as most of my items used to be Buy it Now and some had Best Offer. The BOs were always below the BIN price which is what I expected but, with the Auction, I would have expected people to offer above the auction price but it's actually been the other way. My offers so far have all been way below the starting price of the auction. One item, for example, was starting at £8.99 and I received an offer of £4. I counter offered for £5.99 and it was refused. The only reason I changed from BIN to Auction was because of the 30 day change so that I could still list for 7 and 10 days.

RFW

soolin wrote: »

The same thing happens at real auctions, I was at an auction a month ago when something went unsold at £12, today the item was re offered, shot past £12 and ended up at £28.

When I had a b&m auction house it was a three auctions and it was either sent back to a vendor or banished to a box on a pallet where at some point we'd sell the pallet. Moving an item from one shelf to another usually did the trick. The Ebay equivalent is changing words in the title, sometimes just rearranging them.
So
"Five year old green widget" may not sell but "Widget: Green, five years old" might.


Obviously try and change words where you can but it's surprising how little a tweak can make a big difference. It can also make Ebay search algorithm think it's a different item so it would get a boost in search.

ThinkingOfLinking

I don't charge postage due to poor DSRs previously for charging the exact stamp price, and that was BEFORE eBay began charging fees on it.


Anyway, I had an item worth several times what I started it at, starting at £5. Some joker offered me £2 which wouldn't even have covered the £3 postage, let alone the fees. I explained this and they said I was being unreasonable and that I should have accepted their offer, as apparently that's the point of offering that facility.

MovingForwards

From a buyer's point of view.
There was a pair of shoe boots I liked the look of £7.99 plus p&p, it was 'best offer' or auction, I offered £5 plus p&p and got rejected, no bids on them.
They got relisted for £4.99....

So it's not only buyers who are strange!

forgotmyname

Been to some strange auctions recently where items sell for as little as £1 +vat.

Prices start high and drop until someone bids, I jumped in at £3 and was told I was too eager but almost bought the item from a carboot for £18 previously so £3 was a bargain.

Nobody else bid, so I got the item, following week they had more and the price dropped to £1 and then rose to between £4 and £8. So jumping in can sometimes save your money.


But sellers on ebay can be strange. Seller had some cameras for sale but listed the lenses separately, seemed odd but I only wanted one lens.
I bid and won one and another buyer bought the other items, problem was he now had a camera and no lens to fit to it.

Seller cancelled the sale as item damaged or missing, I declined and said you have 5 others and I was the first to bid/win. I left appropriate feedback and low stars then they sent sob messages being a new seller and my feedback was hurting their sales. Replied send me my item...

Why would you split an item thats mostly useless without it? Just good timing I found them for sale in the first place. Used ones are rare or sold fitted to a camera.

NBLondon

forgotmyname wrote: »

But sellers on ebay can be strange. Seller had some cameras for sale but listed the lenses separately, seemed odd but I only wanted one lens.
I bid and won one and another buyer bought the other items, problem was he now had a camera and no lens to fit to it.
<snip>
Why would you split an item thats mostly useless without it? Just good timing I found them for sale in the first place. Used ones are rare or sold fitted to a camera.

If we're talking about SLRs and film cameras - it wasn't uncommon to sell a camera body and lenses separately. Enthusiasts would have multiple lenses for one camera and might well change the body and keep the lenses - if it's a specialist lens, it's worth more than the rest of the camera. And of course, people will have replaced a film SLR with a Digital SLR - kept the lenses.

forgotmyname

No not SLR and film camera's. These were CCTV cams with no lenses as standard. So totally useless without a lense.

Older units also so the lenses were worth more than the camera's. Auto focus ones which had special connectors.

So the buyer of the camera would have had no lense and it would have cost more than the camera to buy a new lense or wait for one to appear on ebay without a camera. These were rare, surprised they popped up not fixed to the camera.

My cams had manual focus lenses, but all the circuitry to fix the auto focus.

gemini12

People are weird. I regularly have offers above the star price but we had a real shop many years ago and our mantra if something wasnt selling was dust it move it and put the price UP. It was amazing how often that worked.:o