Interesting article on eBay offer negotiations

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by jayshum

I'm not sure what common sense has to do with what time you submit an offer. The seller usually has 48 hours to respond to so (aside from what this research is trying to show), I'm not sure why it makes any difference what time the offer is sent.

Rest assured, after letting me go for 48 hours before responding, or more likely no response at all, I will never again buy anything from that seller.

[jayshum]

Originally Posted by jingram058

Rest assured, after letting me go for 48 hours before responding, or more likely no response at all, I will never again buy anything from that seller.

Sure, if they never respond then I can see not buying from a seller, but I don't have a problem submitting an offer late at night and not getting a response for a day or so. A lot of people selling on eBay are also working full time jobs and may not be able to respond right away.

[raulus]

Some interesting takes on here, particularly for people who have been willing to express an opinion regarding ratios and percentages. I'll share a sale from just 2 days ago on eBay, and the negotiation that occurred.

I had a nice little PSA-graded Mays exhibit for sale, not real common for the grade, with a couple of recent sales on eBay at that grade. One recent sale at $360, and another at $357. Knowing that everyone loves to play the game and feel like they got a deal by talking me down, I priced it slightly above this level at $390, and included the possibility to make offers. Can't remember where I set the automatic rejection level, but it was probably around $330 or $340. I figure anything below that, it's not worth even trying to counter.

Couple of days ago, I received an offer at $350. It looks like his first few offers were autorejected, as he had just 2 offers left. For those of you doing the math at home, this is a 10.25% discount off of the asking price. So for some who expect a bigger discount when making offers, I suppose this would have been aggravating.

Knowing that he and I probably weren't far apart, but wanting to get right up to where the last few sales had occurred, I countered within about 30 mins at $360.

He accepted, and I shipped it off to him yesterday. If he had countered at $355, would I have accepted? Probably? I guess we'll never know, since he didn't try. I suspect he decided that $5 wasn't enough to bother arguing about, although other buyers have certainly haggled with me back and forth with offers over such small pricing differences in the past.

In many ways, the whole thing seemed a lot less exciting than most of the comments on this thread. But maybe it's because my asking price wasn't much more than comps, and I was happy to come down to comps, whereas the buyer was happy to come up to comps after probing me at a little below comps, and in spite of a couple of autorejections.

In the end, no one got banned, and I was happy with the sale. With any luck, the buyer will be happy with his purchase, at least once it gets there after going through the authentication process.

[Vintagedeputy]

This post and article are timely for me. I am a reseller on eBay and was just today laughing about a best offer that I received.

I have an unusual item with no comps listed for $49.95. The item has been listed for less than 24 hours and I’ve had five views. Today someone offered me $25. That’s a 50% offer. I countered with $35 and a nice message saying thank you for your offer, I’ll be happy to meet you in the middle at $35. Now that’s really not in the middle and it’s giving more for the buyer and less for me but I was willing to take $35.

They countered my offer of $35 and went up three bucks to $28. I have a hard time believing they think that three dollar bump is really going to win the item for them when their initial offer was at 50% of my asking price. Lowballers really seem to not want to win the item sometimes.

ETA - 5 minutes after I posted this someone offered me $45 for the item and I took it.

[vintagerookies51]

I must be getting offers from different people than y’all. I routinely get offers that are just ridiculous, like sub-$3000 for a decent 1933 Goudey Ruth. When I see that notification on my phone, I don’t even bother going into the app to reject it. I always list mine at quite a bit more than I’m willing to take for it since I know people will haggle no matter how fair the starting price is, so I usually have a pretty sizable percentage I’m willing to go down. But when I get goofy offers like that, I don’t bother acknowledging them. I suppose I could set up automatic rejections, but sometimes it’s entertaining seeing what people will offer.

[nwobhm]

Originally Posted by vintagerookies51

I must be getting offers from different people than y’all. I routinely get offers that are just ridiculous, like sub-$3000 for a decent 1933 Goudey Ruth. When I see that notification on my phone, I don’t even bother going into the app to reject it. I always list mine at quite a bit more than I’m willing to take for it since I know people will haggle no matter how fair the starting price is, so I usually have a pretty sizable percentage I’m willing to go down. But when I get goofy offers like that, I don’t bother acknowledging them. I suppose I could set up automatic rejections, but sometimes it’s entertaining seeing what people will offer.

Or counter back with a # you will accept…. You admit you over priced it yet there is an issue with a low offer. It cuts both ways.

[vintagerookies51]

Originally Posted by nwobhm

Or counter back with a # you will accept…. You admit you over priced it yet there is an issue with a low offer. It cuts both ways.

Big difference between listing it at $6750 with the anticipation of negotiating down to a fairish market price of $6000, and getting offers for less than half of that.

[bnorth]

Just noticed a weird one on eBay. Yesterday I was searching for Wade Boggs bats and found one I don't have. At this point that is a fairly rare occurrence. The bat was a little more than I wanted to pay and didn't have an OBO so I bookmarked it hoping the seller would send me an offer.

I just logged into eBay and sure enough the owner of the bat sent me an offer and it was an amount I would pay. So I hit the Review Offer link to buy it. Turns out the seller sent me the offer(12% discount) and then within minutes somehow ended the listing and relisted the bat so the offer was no good now.

So F them I will wait and buy the same model the next time it shows up for sale from someone else. I don't care enough about my collection to buy from low level trash. I guess they could be one of those people that if you don't accept their offer in 5 minutes they can't mentally handle it and have to withdraw their offer.

[nwobhm]

Originally Posted by vintagerookies51

Big difference between listing it at $6750 with the anticipation of negotiating down to a fairish market price of $6000, and getting offers for less than half of that.

Or it’s not worth $6,000.

A card I wanted hit ebay yesterday. $70. It’s worth $30. Many sales to justify that price too. In fact the RC doesn’t sell as high as this particular 2nd year card. As expected, seller is ignoring my offer and it expires shortly. When it does I won’t ever make another offer. Had he responded with a counter and a simple note saying “sorry I can’t go that low” I may have offered $40 and then let it sit for a couple months before offering again.

[raulus]

Originally Posted by vintagerookies51

I must be getting offers from different people than y’all. I routinely get offers that are just ridiculous, like sub-$3000 for a decent 1933 Goudey Ruth. When I see that notification on my phone, I don’t even bother going into the app to reject it. I always list mine at quite a bit more than I’m willing to take for it since I know people will haggle no matter how fair the starting price is, so I usually have a pretty sizable percentage I’m willing to go down. But when I get goofy offers like that, I don’t bother acknowledging them. I suppose I could set up automatic rejections, but sometimes it’s entertaining seeing what people will offer.

I’d definitely go with autorejections. Either that or be okay with getting notifications for every silly offer.

I also don’t have any Ruth playing days cards for sale. The last Ruth I sold went for $25 a few months ago.