Add Option, MAKE A OFFER with BUY NOW

[marschenegger]

There are not enough buyers on this site to make Best Offer feasible. Anyhow, it's a tool of the inept seller, i.e., someone who doesn't know what they want for their items or someone who automatically overprices. I don't think eBid should cater to the lowest common denominator. I'd rather keep the current system of having sellers list at the price they want. It keeps the up-front prices more realistic and will attract more buyers over the long haul.

In using Best Offer at FleaBay, I found it to be not very useful. Most buyers don't make offers, and the few who do are not serious about it. I get more sales from genuine auctions and from fixed price listings. A fixed price listing with a Best Offer option isn't really a fixed price listing, is it? I emphasize the word "fixed".

[marschenegger]

Over there one can set boundaries to auto-reject or auto-accept offers, while leaving other offers to be decided upon manually. This seems like a good system, however I would expand it to include an Offer system for auction format listings, so instead of a Buy Now price there is only the starting bid and an Offer button (if the seller wants to add it), buyers can privately make their offers to Buy Now while the listing is still active. How many times have you seen people asking a seller what they would sell for now in auction format listings?

What on Earth is the point of having Best Offer with the auction format? In auctions, the price is supposed to be bid up, not down. The starting price of an auction is the minimum reserve. An auctioneer who takes offers on the side is essentially corrupt. The Best Offer option, by definition, should apply only to fixed-price listings.

...But for high-value or generally rare stuff best offer is almost a neccesity, it's so hard to place a value on really rare items, sometimes I am struggling to find even one price to compare, seriously...

For items without easily defined predetermined values, using a Best Offer option makes no sense whatsoever. The buyer will have no idea what it is worth, and all they DO know is that they want it for less than your asking price because your price will be seen as the upper limit of what that item could ever achieve. Thus using a Best Offer option in this example is preposterous. It just makes the buyer haggle and you're losing potential revenue by offering it. Really rare expensive items should be sold preferably in an auction format where interested buyers have to compete, raising the price rather than lowering it.

Multiple item buyers already get a discount. It is called combined shipping. By my experience, people who want bulk discounts for buying numerous items are just resellers looking for inventory and I don't cater to them.

[sidthelamp]

What on Earth is the point of having Best Offer with the auction format? In auctions, the price is supposed to be bid up, not down. The starting price of an auction is the minimum reserve. An auctioneer who takes offers on the side is essentially corrupt. The Best Offer option, by definition, should only apply to fixed-price listings.

have to agree with all you say there,

had a guy offer a price on a BIN last night, " ere mate ill do £xx.00 on yer lamp" i replied no thanks.

[marschenegger]

Mostly it is a high opening bid with a buy now that is pretty close to the opening bid.

Or it is a low opening bid with a high reserve and if there is a buy now it is usually if not close to the reserve it is identical.

Limitations are just plain limiting.

What a load of twaddle. Maybe that's how you do business, but some of us sellers are actually trying to sell stuff, in which case I, like many others, follow Ken's advice and price items fairly at the lowest price that is deemed acceptable. I have had plenty of success without a haggling option. Maybe I'm doing something right? Maybe buyers are not as dumb as you presuppose them to be. Maybe buyers can and will sort through the reams of overpriced dross to find the good deals and the hidden gems. What's wrong with pricing your inventory fairly? Don't you have a hot clue what your items are worth? Even if this is so, the price you choose doesn't have to be set in stone. You can always re-list later at a lower price if you think you overpriced something.

I think greed is the underlying factor behind some sellers' desire to have a haggling option. With this option, they KNOW that they can OVERPRICE everything and force buyers to haggle while making the occasional killer sale at the full asking price. It's those lucrative sales with huge profits that motivate certain sellers. That's really what this debate is all about. Some sellers just want the OPTION of having a selling tool that lets them try to put one over on a certain kind of buyer, i.e., that person who has more money than sense and who HAS to buy something. If you depend on buyers like that to make your living, I pity you.

[sidthelamp]

eg. i know one seller on feebay who sells one or two comsumables as me he also buys of the same manufacture as me, his BINs on these items are 300% mark up with best offer, when he does sell on best offer he nets 225-250 percent he operates a sort of reverse undercut whitch screws the honest sellers working on a margin and he decives his buyers by using best offer into thinking they have bought a bargin,

[kedo]

I think greed is the underlying factor behind some sellers' desire to have a haggling option. With this option, they KNOW that they can OVERPRICE everything and force buyers to haggle while making the occasional killer sale at the full asking price. It's those lucrative sales with huge profits that motivate certain sellers. That's really what this debate is all about. Some sellers just want the OPTION of having a selling tool that lets them try to put one over on a certain kind of buyer, i.e., that person who has more money than sense and who HAS to buy something. If you depend on buyers like that to make your living, I pity you.

I think you have very little understanding of what motivates other sellers.

[jandjsales]

I think greed is the underlying factor behind some sellers' desire to have a haggling option. With this option, they KNOW that they can OVERPRICE everything and force buyers to haggle while making the occasional killer sale at the full asking price. It's those lucrative sales with huge profits that motivate certain sellers. That's really what this debate is all about. Some sellers just want the OPTION of having a selling tool that lets them try to put one over on a certain kind of buyer, i.e., that person who has more money than sense and who HAS to buy something. If you depend on buyers like that to make your living, I pity you.

I know precisely what my items are worth. I price them accordingly. However, I would like for a buyer to have the option to ASK me if I would take a dollar or so less for an item then to lose the sale. That's what these sites are all about...MAKING A SALE. My experience with the "Other" auction site that offers "Make an Offer" has been nothing but tremendous. I have had only one offer that was not serious. The time that it took me to deal with that nonsense was with a click of a button.

With the economy being in the state that it is in, I am out to sell my items, not hold on to them forever. I have made multiple sales almost everyday on the other site based on make an offer alone when, in fact, I have only made maybe four buy it now sales in two months.

The only reason I looked for an alternative to Ebaaa was due to their fees. It's not about OVERPRICING items and FORCING buyers to haggle with you. It's about open communication and settling for a fair and reasonable price that is suitable to both you and the buyer.

I have grown up around Flea Markets all my life and my experience has been that the first question out of a buyers mouth is "will you take X amount for this". The seller considers this option and answers Yes or No. No harm no foul.

As soon as these AUCTION sites started offering a Buy It Now option they changed it's dynamics. Now sellers have a "retail, Flea Market, Garage Sale" type atmosphere and should be able to have the tools to except an offer for less or decline.

[marschenegger]

...
As soon as these AUCTION sites started offering a Buy It Now option they changed it's dynamics. Now sellers have a "retail, Flea Market, Garage Sale" type atmosphere and should be able to have the tools to except an offer for less or decline.

I don't agree that eBid has a flea market or garage sale type atmosphere. There are enough sellers here who want to sell things only at a predetermined price and who will wait to get that price. I am one of them. I don't want to unload all of my collectables at hugely discounted prices just for the sake of getting some quick cash. If eBid wants to change the format and give sellers the Best Offer tool, fine, that's their decision, but I don't see a vast majority of sellers who want it. Notwithstanding whatever eBid chooses to do, my opinion does not change. I will abide by the rules of the site as long as they are reasonable. I think Best Offer is a bad idea because higher up-front prices do not attract buyers. Would Walmart be as powerful in retail sales if they priced everything really high but gave shoppers the option to haggle? I doubt it. Walmart is successful for having lower overall set prices that attract customers who want a good price without the haggling. And so I see eBid as shopping environment, not as a venue for sellers who want to liquidate large volumes of inventory at any price. No doubt, there are sellers here with different visions of how they want to conduct their businesses, and they will disagree over certain matters like haggling. Some only look at their personal needs while others try to look at the big picture for the overall health of the site. I see haggling as good for some sellers, bad for the site as a whole.

[theweaverboy]

What a load of twaddle.

You have plenty of success with just doing BIN, as do I, but SIMPLE fact people love to haggle. Granted winning a bid in the last second is much more fun. A Best-Offer just allows for flexibility.

Pssst check my FB.

My handle is "theweaverboy" through cyberspace. In May of 2007 I had almost 200 on feeBay, and over there I have over 1900 currently, and the majority of it selling of course. Since 1999 have you even broken 1000 in selling or even overall?

As for pricing fairly & sellers that want a best-offer OPTION being greedy...WHO ARE YOU FOOLING?! This is business. In business there is always room for negotiations. A profit margin it a very fair thing for sellers to have if they want to stay in business.

As for the people with too much money that overspend what do you care? You are not them, so it is really none of you concern.

This site has to do something to improve sales. Why not an "optional" upgrade that is economical and relatively easy compared to the rest.

As for limitations being limiting... They are. I wouldn't tell anyone how they "have to" set up a listing. There are pros and cons to every style. If asked I would give them suggestions, but I would tell them what they must do. Just because I do things certain way doesn't mean that anyone else has to. There is no eCommerce dogma that everyone has to follow.

Overall health of the site? Well let’s think on this. People do business in various types of ways and products. Shouldn't we try to include everyone? They or there products will attract more, and more people over here would improve the average of sales.

[marschenegger]

You have plenty of success with just doing BIN, as do I, but SIMPLE fact people love to haggle. Granted winning a bid in the last second is much more fun. A Best-Offer just allows for flexibility.

I respectfully disagree. There is no shortage of sellers offering similar items and buyers like to shop around for the best up-front price.

Pssst check my FB.

My handle is "theweaverboy" through cyberspace. In May of 2007 I had almost 200 on feeBay, and over there I have over 1900 currently, and the majority of it selling of course. Since 1999 have you even broken 1000 in selling or even overall?

Actually, yes I have, just not with one screen name. But I understand that my opinions are meaningless if I don't have a rating of at least 1000 (boo hoo for me, lol).

As for pricing fairly & sellers that want a best-offer OPTION being greedy...WHO ARE YOU FOOLING?! This is business. In business there is always room for negotiations. A profit margin it a very fair thing for sellers to have if they want to stay in business.

Yes, I love profits too. Just for clarification, I did not say ALL sellers who want Best Offer are motivated by greed. Just some. Sidthelamp gave the perfect example of one in an earlier post

As for the people with too much money that overspend what do you care? You are not them, so it is really none of you concern.

Ruh-roh! Sounds like I hit a nerve. Must be getting too close to the truth.

This site has to do something to improve sales. Why not an "optional" upgrade that is economical and relatively easy compared to the rest.

Well, I did explain why I thought it would be a bad idea. You're free to ignore any supported opinion that does not mesh perfectly with your own.

As for limitations being limiting... They are. I wouldn't tell anyone how they "have to" set up a listing. There are pros and cons to every style. If asked I would give them suggestions, but I would tell them what they must do. Just because I do things certain way doesn't mean that anyone else has to. There is no eCommerce dogma that everyone has to follow.

You WOULD tell people what to do? Sounds about right. You have been lobbying for Best Offer for several months, even resorting to sending PMs to members to get them to support you.

Overall health of the site? Well let’s think on this. People do business in various types of ways and products. Shouldn't we try to include everyone? They or there products will attract more, and more people over here would improve the average of sales.

I guess you have not heard of the saying "You can please some of the people some of the time, but...". How does the rest of that go? Fact of the matter is that eBid can't be everything to everyone. No matter what the site does, there will always be someone who is unhappy. I am quite happy with the way the site is, but I agree that it can be better. I don't agree that that adding endless options makes the site better. Are we trying to create a better site than Feebay or are we just trying to make a Gargantuan mess like the one FeeBay has become? Better does not necessarily mean bigger. I think eBid is already better than FeeBay in many ways. The feedback system is better here, for one. So is the fee structure. If sales is the only yardstick you use to measure success, then it's no surprise that you will want to do anything and everything if there's even the faintest possibility that it may increase sales, but increasing sales does not guarantee increasing profits if you're going to lobby for something that drives down revenues for the average seller.

I'm not going to stand in the way of eBid importing the Best Offer option. If they want to do it, so be it. I can take it or leave it. I just find that there are many people who want eBid to be another feeBay clone for the obvious reason that they want the best of both worlds, i.e., they want volume sales without the fees. That's simply not realistic.