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New ebay BO feature

Maybe I havent been paying attention, but has anyone else noticed how long the new Best Offer feature on auctions has been available? Been seeing a bunch of these come up and from what I have seen, people are putting a minimum bid on the auction at the highest possible price and then when you make an offer, almost every one of them is saying the minimum bid is the lowest they would take. I mean honestly, you think I would offer more than the minimum bid that has been sitting there for 6 days without the first bid on it?

Also, to include in the rant. Guy puts item up (regular listing, not auction) for $300 or BO, I offer $250, he declines offer, doesnt send a counter and raises price to $325 or best offer. Listing goes unsold.

IT IS ALWAYS CHEAPER TO NOT SELL ON EBAY

Comments

  • Loyalty32Loyalty32 Posts: 497 ✭✭✭

    That last one annoys me. (Making a reasonable offer and then having the price raised)

  • Dpeck100Dpeck100 Posts: 10,910 ✭✭✭✭✭
    edited December 11, 2018 12:58PM

    I started a thread about it a few months ago and someone said it had been there for a few prior. Two weeks ago I listed some items and it defaulted to this and it may be that sellers are just going with it.

    I recently won a card in an auction that had the best offer option and I submitted it a little above the opening price and won it for my offer.

  • craig44craig44 Posts: 10,384 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I hate it when people have a BO option and dont want to negotiate. likewise, when I sell, I expect a negotiation and usually will not accept the first offer made to me. I would rather negotiate further, but sometimes, buyers just give up after the first offer is given. oh well.

    George Brett, Bobby Orr and Terry Bradshaw.

  • @JRFinest said:
    Ebay is automatically changing listings to this. The sellers are getting blindsided. They get a we changed your listings to .... email ,and the items are auto changed.

    So when throwing out offers. Keep in mind the seller might not have set the auction up that way originally.

    Yes, this has happened to me several times. And it’s such a pain to have to go back to my listings and change this back. If I do it on the app, I always get an error message when I try to change it back. It’s like eBay is intentionally making it hard to undo this.

  • countdouglascountdouglas Posts: 2,271 ✭✭✭✭✭

    The BO feature added to an auction appears to me to be targeted at people who routinely snipe.

    I'm not going to wade into whether or not sniping really saves anyone money, as everyone seems to firmly have made up their minds on the topic.

    However, eBay has the data, and I'm sure on many sold items, the top snipe, or even "nuclear snipe", if you will, ends up being well above what the hammer price comes in at. Also, both the seller and eBay have to wait until the end of the auctions for the sale to occur. This appears to be an attempt to allow people the opportunity to offer their best "snipe bid" earlier in an attempt to out-snipe the snipers, and to generate more churn on eBay inventory as sales are completed more quickly. This will likely induce more visits to the eBay platform if all (or most) items, even auctions, are now BO. There will be an urgency to always be checking for new listings that are posted of your desired items, and instead of setting a snipe and waiting 7 days or whatever, you're more inclined to bid against no one but yourself to make a BO in hopes that it's accepted, and you snagged the item before other eyeballs with deeper pockets spot it, or multiple bids start coming in on the item.

    Just my take.

  • countdouglascountdouglas Posts: 2,271 ✭✭✭✭✭

    I should add that I believe the BO feature added to auctions is not with idea of true negotiations to occur, but to allow someone to come in with an offer above the minimum, perhaps well above the minimum, in order to "snipe" the item before anyone else. This is especially true of the seller did not intend for the best offer feature to be added. Most probably don't want to be inundated with emails and offers, but if someone fires off a dollar amount that gets their attention, then perhaps they're willing to talk.

  • waxman2745waxman2745 Posts: 717 ✭✭✭

    Is this a tactic by ebay to allow sellers to have a reserve? If a buyer bids higher than the reserve, will the auction automatically end and they win the item?

    Man, do I miss the days of auction-style listings starting at $0.99 and the item ends up wherever it lands after 7 days.

    Adam
    buying O-Pee-Chee (OPC) baseball
  • saucywombatsaucywombat Posts: 1,221 ✭✭✭

    @countdouglas said:
    The BO feature added to an auction appears to me to be targeted at people who routinely snipe.

    I'm not going to wade into whether or not sniping really saves anyone money, as everyone seems to firmly have made up their minds on the topic.

    However, eBay has the data, and I'm sure on many sold items, the top snipe, or even "nuclear snipe", if you will, ends up being well above what the hammer price comes in at. Also, both the seller and eBay have to wait until the end of the auctions for the sale to occur. This appears to be an attempt to allow people the opportunity to offer their best "snipe bid" earlier in an attempt to out-snipe the snipers, and to generate more churn on eBay inventory as sales are completed more quickly. This will likely induce more visits to the eBay platform if all (or most) items, even auctions, are now BO. There will be an urgency to always be checking for new listings that are posted of your desired items, and instead of setting a snipe and waiting 7 days or whatever, you're more inclined to bid against no one but yourself to make a BO in hopes that it's accepted, and you snagged the item before other eyeballs with deeper pockets spot it, or multiple bids start coming in on the item.

    Just my take.

    Good take.

    I'd add, specifically targeted at people who email sellers "to end auction early" for $xxx.xx. Further to make sellers feel like they have no reason to remove a listing upon these types of requests.

    Always looking for 1993-1999 Baseball Finest Refractors and1994 Football Finest Refractors.
    saucywombat@hotmail.com
  • lawyer05lawyer05 Posts: 2,131 ✭✭✭✭

    ebay MAKES you put the offer feature or else the listing is not free, it sucks... i know

  • lawyer05lawyer05 Posts: 2,131 ✭✭✭✭

    @JRFinest said:
    Ebay is automatically changing listings to this. The sellers are getting blindsided. They get a we changed your listings to .... email ,and the items are auto changed.

    So when throwing out offers. Keep in mind the seller might not have set the auction up that way originally.

    if they dont change it then you end up paying for insertion fees that otherwise would be free

  • countdouglascountdouglas Posts: 2,271 ✭✭✭✭✭

    @lawyer05 said:
    ebay MAKES you put the offer feature or else the listing is not free, it sucks... i know

    I believe they make you do that because eBay sees an opportunity to suck a little more money from the snipers, and a lot sooner in relation to when the item was listed. They recognized an inefficiency, and are trying to resolve that.

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