So is it me or does anyone else find it annoying when people Mark their ebay items with a best offer option and either they barely move off of their price or they just ignore you altogether and don’t even respond to the offer?
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I agree, one of the most annoying things ever.
$45 or Best offer
Your offer: $44.00
Your offer has been declined 
.
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It may be annoying, but it’s an effective tactic for getting more views and encouraging sales. If someone who really wants the card sees that there are several pending offers, they are more likely to buy the card at full than risk losing it. Of course, that also depends on how ridiculous the asking price is.
I see it as a 2 way street honestly, for the seller it can become overwhelming receiving lowball offers for a $15 card (going price), so they can either ignore or just decline. I myself post items as low as possible but STILL receive offers that just don’t suit the going market price. Its all really factors for a seller.
For the buyer, it can be annoying when their offer gets declined, but think about it, it really depends on what you are wanting to buy. Realistically speaking on a low budget card you can’t really expect more than cents to $1 off a card. On higher end cards there is WAY more wiggle room.
Just my 2 cents.
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I can understand that especially for larger sellers and ebay stores , but why not just post it as and auction with a reserve or just post it buy it now only and just sit on it until someone bites at price you’re asking. When I see that best offer button that tells me that the seller is willing to negotiate. It’s a waste of time when I could have gone and found something else comparable. Personally I think it’s as insulting as a low ball offer (in a selling situation) when you offer someone a fair offer and they only move a dollar or in some cases LESS!
Auctions involve risk, and reserves are usually a huge turnoff for bidders. As I said before, adding a best offer option boosts interest whether or not the seller is actually open to negotiate. Not trying to defend the tactic, but from personal experience of having my offers sit and eventually lose out to someone buying at full, it works.
Oh I know what you’re saying and like I said I can see how it does work. I guess I’ll share my experience that actually spurred the post. I work in a machine shop and recently we have been having a lot of interns and young guys come in here and naturally they don’t have any tools and I’m not about to let some kid borrow my 300 dollar digital micrometers! So good old ebay to the rescue first post I see looks like a clean mic non carbide faces and non friction thimble this thing is the magikarp of measuring tools lol he’s asking 80 I offer 50. Yea I hit him a little hard but mind you this is a budget type tool. They come back with 79.50 a day later, so I come up to 60 thinking I may have insulted the guy. He then declined my offer. This is what I’m talking about. Just annoying that’s all 
As a buyer I’ve never encountered a seller who was unwilling to accept a reasonable offer. I guess the iffy word is ‘reasonable’, that probably means different things to different people.
As a seller, though, I’ve received way more lowball offers than reasonable ones. I used to have the patience to respond with an offer that I’d deem acceptable, but I’ve found that usually the lowballers don’t want to come up to meet you, or they don’t even respond, so now I do ignore offers frequently.
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I like it, if its done in the same way I do mine. Half the time its an auction I have had up for a while, an obscure or less desirable card, when I get a decent offer, its gone. I hate auto-decline when its 5% or less, why even OBO at that point. Also cannot stand people sending lowball offers and explaining how its only worth X and why I should accept it.
I had a guy best offer me once, which was a lowball, and his reasoning was “I’ve seen one sell in the past for this price”…
I responded “Sorry, the seller probably didn’t know the full value of it then, too low for me”.
Which got the response “Value is subjective, Go F*** Yourself”
Lol.
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I get annoyed by it. Price: $100 Offer: $25 Declined I would have accepted $70
Buyer: Why even put up a best offer if you’re going to decline it.
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That or its not even the same card. Had someone insist that a 1st edition was worth the same as non. Make me a reasonable offer, hell sometimes up to 25% off and I will, at the very least, COUNTER. Because that’s how offers work, a slight lowball as a starter offer is fair (slight) and we go from there. If we can’t make a deal, we can’t make a deal.
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Best offer for life, lowball offers are either ignored or on a few of my listings I have auto decline. It allows me to sometimes get more for my item or if someone makes several offers I can give them a slight discount for purchasing more. Some people don’t budge much but usually when best offer is available they will take 10-25% less.
For me, it depends on whether the card I’m offering on is already the cheapest. If the lowest of ten copies has OBO and doesn’t want to budge much more, I respect that.
That said, my favorite is when you make a reasonable offer, they reject without explanation, so you wait a year and it’s still unsold. You try again, it’s ignored. Wait another year. Last go! Rejected.
I have two items like this on my watched list. Haha
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I used to do the same for a short while. When I got a low-ball I just responded it wasn’t (nearly as much as) what I had hoped for. Nowadays I just ignore the low-ball offers all together… And by low-ball I mean offers of 2 euros when it’s advertised as 20 for example…
I’m also annoying when I see lowball offers on other people’s auctions when I know it’s worth 20x as much. Of course you can’t see offers on eBay, but on marktplaats (Dutch site similar to ebay) you can. Just yesterday I saw two people having a ‘bidding war’ (more like an argue while drinking tea in comparison to a war 
) by bidding 2 → 4 → 5 → 5.50 → etc. for an item that’s worth around 75-125… Although I wasn’t even interested in it since I already had one, I just placed a bit of 40 so the seller isn’t bothered by those idiots anymore… If I would have won it for that price I would just re-sell it for a higher price; I was outbid to 50 by someone else though, so I’m glad someone bids in more reasonable amounts now…
Greetz,
Quuador
Yep, extremely annoying. Why bother with a BO if you’re not going to allow much room for negotiations.
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Often I’ll put a Best Offer if I’m not sure of the proper retail value or if there’s a lot of competition and it might be listed for a while when prices could drop.
Whenever I get the question, “why auto decline when you have a best offer” I always say I do that so I don’t waste the customers time waiting for my denial. This way they can can immediately re-offer or move on with their search.
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Awesome guys I’m glad I’m not alone on this one! Gotta say like a couple of you mentioned I love the people who message you with “oh it’s not worth what you want” well then take a hike jack!
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I have never sold a card but purchared quite a few from multiple sites. The buy out option I feel is good for the buyer as it has enablise me to purchase multiple items well below what I would value as cost price. However I have also received many messages from sellers saying my offer which on most occasions is market value is “high balling” them. Its part of the economy and we take it as such.
Auto decline is fine, the problem I think is some set it too high.
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