"Best Offer" on Ebay

[Robert Brummitt]

What bugs me is the "Reserve not met".
Just tell us what you want?! Don't play games! Don't be a used car sales person. If the starting bid is $125 and you have a Reserve Not Met flag. Just say instead starting bid is $200 and let the buyer decide if they want to bid or not.
Grrr.

[Corran]

I love best offer! Most of my best purchases were a complete surprise when I simply offered a low price, but just above what might be considered an "insulting" low-ball and they took it with no counter-offer.

I also love bidding on reserve auctions. They almost never go as high as other similar items in my experience. Many, many times I have "won" a reserve auction that didn't hit the reserve but was given a "second-chance" offer, which I took. I can remember several instances where I bought something this way, and later sold it at a significant profit. Just a couple weeks ago I scored a Schneider G-Claron 150mm in a Copal Press for just over $50! Talk about a deal.

I sell a lot on ebay, and 99% of the time I set a BIN price of about 10% over the lowest auctions ended recently for the item, which is usually 10% less than the average seller is asking BIN. Often I'll have 20% or so sell within a day, usually the rest follow in a week or two, except summertime is slow (which is why I do much of my purchasing in the summer). I always have a "best offer" on my auctions, and if they are within 10-15% of my price I try to negotiate with them directly. I have up-sold more items and accessories many times this way.

Learn the system and what people generally do and it's very easy to manipulate to your advantage.

[Two23]

I just bought a tailboard camera using "best offer." BIN was $650, and I offered $550. It was immediately accepted. Made me think I should have offered $500. I think I did OK though, it looks like a nice camera with holders.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...=STRK:MEWNX:IT


Kent in SD

[jp]

In the past week, I've done very reasonable best offers on 4 different things. Not a single seller responded.

They let them expire instead of counteroffering, accepting, or declining. It's a sucky way for them to decrease auction activity by preventing me from bidding on it for 48 hours.

Despite my past favorable experiences with it, I think there's a whole big new breed of sellers who offer a best offer but are ignorant to use it. I wish I could nick their feedback for not responding to a best offer.

[lightingguru]

"Problem is, the seller has 48 hours to decide."

I agree, 48 hours is way too long. I feel that when someone makes an offer it should be put up or shut up time in a timely manner.

Ebay does this so sellers that do not watch there store on weekends can respond to offers