Ebay buyer PMs to offer on item not on'best offer'

TraySelect

A rookie question ... I can't find an answer on ebay.

I'm a private seller and have a item currently up that isn't listed as 'best offer'.

A buyer has PM'd me to ask if I'd take an offer on an item. There are 25 watchers, and no current bids, on it.

Can a seller accept an offer on an item that's not been listed as 'best offer'?

if they do, how would a buyer be invoiced for it if the seller ended a sale because an offer was accepted?

thanks for any help and sorry this is such a dumb Q

doug.doug

Hi That happened to me recently and eventually found a solution. Fairly new to giving advice on here , so bear with me. I'm sure if I am wrong someone more knowledgeable than myself, which wouldn't be hard, says different. 
Firstly 25 watchers is a lot, you have decide whether the offer is good enough, or wait until end of bidding. I didnt have that dilemma. My item was bidding only, no offers were not offered. Buyer bid a price that I was satisfied with, but as he had already bid I was unable to amend listing to make offer. So after a lot of research I discovered that because he had made the bid, I could cancel the listing on ebay which If I recall correctly had a dropdown list that gave reason as sell to highest bidder. I clicked on that and ebay did the rest regarding invoicing that person.
Hope that helps a little, but like I said at start 25 is a lot of watchers.

km1500

have you tried editing your listing and turning on the offers slider. not sure if you are able to but it might be worth a look.

otherwise you could ask him to bid the full amount and end the listing early using the option 'sell to the highest bidder'. You then send him an invoice with a discount for the difference between what he offered and the listing amount

TraySelect

@km1500 and @doug.doug - really helpful replies, thank you. 

From what I can see on ebay, the listing could be edited to say 'allow offers' so that option would work for anyone needing to know. 

In any event, I decided against accepting the offer, doug.doug's point about the number of watchers was on the mark.

I never tick 'allow offers' on listings to save having to deal with the to-and-fro of comms from buyers so this was a first.

thanks again.

Spoonie_Turtle

TraySelect said:

I never tick 'allow offers' on listings to save having to deal with the to-and-fro of comms from buyers so this was a first.

thanks again.

In the 'contact seller' options it actually says something like 'trying to negotiate a price?  Send the seller an offer' - even on listings without Best Offer option enabled *facepalm*

FFHillbilly

is there not a "send offer" button in the top right of the message?

Inexplicably I seem to get offer in a message all the time, despite having offers on the item, and I just reply by sending an offer to them

jon81uk

TraySelect said:

@km1500 and @doug.doug - really helpful replies, thank you. 

From what I can see on ebay, the listing could be edited to say 'allow offers' so that option would work for anyone needing to know. 

In any event, I decided against accepting the offer, doug.doug's point about the number of watchers was on the mark.

I never tick 'allow offers' on listings to save having to deal with the to-and-fro of comms from buyers so this was a first.

thanks again.

If you tick allow offers it saves dealing with the to-and-fro. You can set the minimum offer you will accept and then eBay auto-declines anything under that. For other offers it just asks if you want to accept or counter. It stops the messages like you got with buyers making offers and the to-and-from via messages.

I add it to some items with the minimum offer being a bit more than the starting bid on most of my items. So if I list for £10 starting bid for example I might allow offers over £12. Then if there isn't many watchers I'll decide if the offer is worth it. Can also set it to auto accept offers over a certain amount.