Ebay 'Best Offer' Option. Does it work for you?

swingaloo

I've always just run and auction and never bothered with Best Offer or Buy it Now. Recently I was searching and found a lot of sellers who list everything with a Best Offer option. 

So I decided to give it a try on one or two of my items.  I usually start my auctions at the price I am happy to let an item go for to avoid the risk of something going for 99p at the end if it hasn't had a bid. When listing with a Best Offer I assumed buyers may offer slightly less than the asking price ie- I list for 8.99, they may offer 7.99 so I have priced accordingly. I have found it works well and I have had instant sales rather than waiting a week but I'm confused as to how people view making offers. I have had items listed at 5.75 and been offered 4.50 but on the other hand I have had 2 items which were listed at 4.50 and the same buyer offered £6 on each of them.
Just curious, if you use Best Offer do you find buyers usually make an offer less or more than your asking price?

subjecttocontract

My experience = It really depends on the item & the seller:
* If I'm buying I know roughly what the item is expected to sell for and if it's buy it now price is significantly less I might offer a bit more to secure the item.
* Alternatively if the item is overpriced I'll offer a bit less and hope it's accepted.
* Some sellers expect to only get offers above the asking price, others will take offers below. 
* Buyers with non UK backgrounds will nearly always offer less.

soolin

swingaloo said:

I've always just run and auction and never bothered with Best Offer or Buy it Now. Recently I was searching and found a lot of sellers who list everything with a Best Offer option. 

So I decided to give it a try on one or two of my items.  I usually start my auctions at the price I am happy to let an item go for to avoid the risk of something going for 99p at the end if it hasn't had a bid. When listing with a Best Offer I assumed buyers may offer slightly less than the asking price ie- I list for 8.99, they may offer 7.99 so I have priced accordingly. I have found it works well and I have had instant sales rather than waiting a week but I'm confused as to how people view making offers. I have had items listed at 5.75 and been offered 4.50 but on the other hand I have had 2 items which were listed at 4.50 and the same buyer offered £6 on each of them.
Just curious, if you use Best Offer do you find buyers usually make an offer less or more than your asking price?

I rarely do auctions auctions any more as my BINs do a lot better, and I always have Best Offer enabled and do get a fair few offers, some daft which I counter offer and some good enough to accept.

If I do an auction then I never use best offer as I find in the majority of cases people offer the start price or less- rarely going more than a small percentage over start price.

I never do an auction with a BIN enabled- as it costs extra and I find BIN on its own works easily as well if not better.

ButterCheese

Best offer is ok if the item is fairly standard and it's obvious how much it's worth. Also the seller will be bombarded with low offers that you'll have to keep declining. If a seller offered this option, it always makes me think they have no idea of its value, therefore I'm reluctant to even make an offer as I'm pretty sure they'll decline it. Private sellers often have an inflated idea of how much an item is worth, compared to what people are actually willing to pay

Spoonie_Turtle

As a buyer it really depends on the item and the price.  If it's something I really want and it's reasonably priced I may offer a little bit above the starting price to try and ensure I get it.  Or recently I used the option to try and get an item quickly as the auction ended after the time I needed the type of item I was looking for.  (It worked, paid slightly above starting in the end - offered the start price, seller countered with slightly above, I accepted and it arrived well in the so everyone's happy.)

Sometimes if there are lots of the same type of item I'll use the option to try to get one a little cheaper, or again just offering the starting price to try and get *that one*.

It all depends.  It's a useful feature.  And as far as I'm aware sellers can set it to automatically decline offers before a certain amount so they don't have to deal with lots of ridiculous lowball offers.

Pollycat

ButterCheese said:

Best offer is ok if the item is fairly standard and it's obvious how much it's worth. Also the seller will be bombarded with low offers that you'll have to keep declining. If a seller offered this option, it always makes me think they have no idea of its value, therefore I'm reluctant to even make an offer as I'm pretty sure they'll decline it. Private sellers often have an inflated idea of how much an item is worth, compared to what people are actually willing to pay

As mentioned above, you can put a minimum amount that you're willing to consider.
Any offer under that amount is automatically declined.

If I do offer 'best offer' I usually consider offers 20% below the opening bid price.
I price my item accordingly.
 

PocketWatchMan

ButterCheese said:

Best offer is ok if the item is fairly standard and it's obvious how much it's worth. Also the seller will be bombarded with low offers that you'll have to keep declining. If a seller offered this option, it always makes me think they have no idea of its value, therefore I'm reluctant to even make an offer as I'm pretty sure they'll decline it. Private sellers often have an inflated idea of how much an item is worth, compared to what people are actually willing to pay

As mentioned by a poster above, you don't have to manually decline any offers if you don't want to.

Yes, I certainly have noticed over the years, every so often you will get a percentage of clowns offer a few pathetic £ for an item priced in 3-figures. However. they have given me useful information. They have given me the information, that they are somebody whom I want nowhere near my sales in the future, so I simply block accordingly.

The real issue seems to be, ebay modifying my listings of their own accord, and inputting their own minimum offer amount in. The past few days when I went to revise some of my listings, ebay had decided to put in a figure of £3.00 in the field to accept offers over a minimum amount. I have had to revise this multiple times now, with all my listings, because after making the necessary revisions, ebay did it again a few hours later.