Sending offers

[cyberdan]

I have been selling on feeBay for 19 years and just noticed the MAKE OFFER button on my active listing page. (I guess being cooped up for so long gives me time to look at different things on the ebay site)

What this does is let me offer a lower price to people who have added "watch" to my listings. I clicked on the MAKE OFFER button and up popped 14 listings that have a total of 22 watchers. Problem is these are all Buy-it-now listings that roll over forever. I have no idea when someone has started watching.

Many times, when I sell something, I will look up the same item to see what the going price is. I will then add them to my watch list. I have never received an "offer" from any of those sellers.

Has anyone ever used this? Any luck getting extra sales?

 

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[Diver_Down]

I have used it with success. But the system is flawed. eBay only allows the seller to send a single offer per unique buyer once and only once. So if you have a BIN that relists automatically and the going rate for the item was $500, you then extend an offer of $475 to a watcher and they don't accept. You will never be able to extend another offer even if the market conditions change (say the going rate is $450). You can update the listing's BIN price to reflect the market conditions, but you will never be able to extend another offer to an old time watcher.

I usually make watchers aware of the flaw in a message attached to the offer. It has worked in the past, but I use it sparingly such that I will wait until I have a few watchers that are eligible for an offer and send them all at once. I let each one know that I'm extending the offer for 24 hours to X number of interested buyers and the first one to take advantage of the offer gets the item.

More often, I list my BIN listings with make an offer setting parameters to decline any that don't meet a threshold. You won't even see the offers that don't meet your minimum. I recently had a member of TNet (same handle here as the eBay profile) send me a disparaging message asking why I won't accept his offer. I explained to him that I don't even see the offers. He then proceeded to give me a lecture on coin collecting (as if my 40 years wasn't adequate). I politely thanked him and then put his ID on my blocked list. He knows who he is and I won't sell to him on TNet either.