using ebay

[Norbydog]

I have seen the "Submit an Offer" as well. I haven't won anything with it, but each time I submitted an offer that was too low, I have received an e-nail back explaining what they spent for it, or about how much they are expecting.

I see it much like when someone puts a For Sale sign in a car, and when you inquire, they always seem to ask "How much will you give me for it?". Buyer starts low, seller starts high, and meet in the middle.

[michael steinrok]

I'm going to look for that in other places to thanks

[GlassMan]

I sell a large volume of stained glass supplies on eBay and I often include the "best offer" option on my listings.

As long as a person is reasonable about an offer I have no problem accepting them and I really like it when someone is polite in making their offer. Sometimes I get a lower than expected offer on an item and it comes with an apology in case they offended me. I always have to reply back explaining that I don't take offense at such things.

However, whenever an offer is too low I do feel that I must accompany the decline with a politely worded explanation. It seems rude to me not to give them a reason why I turned them down.

I've only ever had one truly negative experience with the entire "best offer" process. I was selling a brand new glass saw that retails normally for $374.95 by mail-order and I was asking $345.75. Now I pay $289 for them at wholesale, so the profit is okay, but not incredible. A potential buyer put in an offer of only $150 stating that he knew merchants marked things up 200% and I'd better give him the saw at a fair price. I naturally declined his offer and explained that my profit margins are nowhere near what he expected and that I would in fact be losing over $100 on such a sale. He then replied back to me "Well if you aren't going to accept offers why do you give the best offer option?" I was quite frankly shocked. The rest of his reply to me continued to berate me for refusing to sell the saw to him at "the best offer he was willing to make." He had come to the conclusion that "best offer" meant that I would sell items at whatever a buyer wanted to pay.

I've also purchased a few things using the "best offer" feature and it's worked well.

As long as sellers start off at a reasonable price, and buyers don't expect to purchase at below the wholesale cost then it works okay. But there is one thing that I don't like about the system. If a buyer makes you an offer and you decline it, there is no way to make a counter-offer to the client. And once an offer is declined, that user can't make another offer on that item again. So it really makes it nearly impossible to do true negotiations.