Ina Steiner EcommerceBytes Blog
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by Ina Steiner, Editor of EcommerceBytes.com
Tue Dec 16 2025 23:23:30

Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?

By: Ina Steiner

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eBay encourages sellers to send offers to "interested buyers," but an eBay moderator recently acknowledged it no longer shares how it determines what makes a buyer "interested" in a seller's listing. The topic came up in a thread where a seller theorized eBay had broadened the definition and was sending seller-initiated offers (SIOs) to buyers even when they had merely viewed an item once - in contrast to when eBay limited SIOs to buyers who were either watching a listing or had placed the item in their cart. "We see posts all the time, of buyers being sick of receiving these offers," the original poster wrote.

Seller "wastingtime101" tagged the moderator in a comment on the thread and asked for an updated list of conditions that determined "interested buyers," which eBay had displayed before it was removed about 2 or 3 years ago:

About interested buyers:
Your offers get sent to interested buyers who satisfy a number of conditions, including:
- They haven't received an offer from you for the same listing previously
- They haven't purchased the same item from you previously
- They're watching your item
- They've had the item in their shopping cart for a period of time
- They've viewed your listing multiple times
- They're a buyer in good standing on eBay

The moderator replied:

"There's not really a published list of what is considered an Interested Buyer, even internally anymore. The best and most in-depth info we can share on this can be found here in this help page. But even there it's pretty light on specifics. Looking at the list in your screenshot, I would say that logically those factors are all pretty relevant still.  But there can always be caveats and exceptions as well."

eBay introduced seller-initiated offers as a pilot program in the fall of 2018 and expanded it in 2019. It's the flip-side of Best Offers, which are buyer-initiated offers for listings where the seller has enabled the feature. The SIO feature was generally well received, but as the original poster in the thread said, buyers are getting annoyed by receiving them. In another example, a buyer wrote on Reddit last December:

"When I have an item I want to sell I check other similar items to see what they are selling for and see if I can get more information for my item. I don't favorite it at all. Just read through the description and details. Quite a few times now I get sent offers from that seller. Is there a way to turn off this feature? It makes me think I'm getting an offer on my item."

In addition, sellers often click on listings as part of their research. As one seller recently noted in a Letter to the Editor about eBay changes to ad attribution coming next month: "I click on a hundred or more ads a week researching prices, checking ads for information I might not know, etc."). Sellers conducting research are likely to be annoyed by receiving offers to purchase items they peruse.

Here are relevant excerpts from eBay's help page on best offers and sending offers to buyers:

Sending offers to interested buyers
If a buyer shows interest in your item (watching your item or adding it to their cart, for example), you can send them special offers individually or in bulk. If the buyer accepts, the item will continue to be available for purchase until the buyer successfully completes payment.

Offers will be sent to the 30 most recent interested buyers (for example, people watching your items or who have added your items to their cart). Each offer is valid for 96 hours or until the listing is sold, whichever comes first. With a single item listing, the first buyer to accept and successfully complete payment gets the deal. With a multiple quantity listing, buyers can continue to use the offer until all items in the listing are sold or the offer expires.

How many interested buyers receive automatically sent offers?
If you have more than 30 interested buyers for your item, we start by sending 30 offers. We continue to send up to 30 offers every 48 hours until all interested buyers receive the offer.

Are seller-initiated offers too broad, and are they proving to be irritating to you as a buyer or seller? Why the secrecy?



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Perminate Link for Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?   Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?

by: etectra This user has validated their user name.

Wed Dec 17 11:22:03 2025

Was not this all part of eBay's strategy of moving away from 30 days listings to Good Till Cancelled (GTC) listings so they could better manipulate buyers and sellers?

With 30 day listings buyers knew the item would end at a given date and no longer be for sale. They might check the item from time to time to see if the price went down during the remaining time, but this was a race against other buyers discovering the lowered price first and buying the item. There was a sense of at least some urgency to buying the item.

Converting to GTC meant eBay could con the seller to continually spending more money in the form of store subscriptions, insertion fees, promotional fees and other fees by creating the false sense that buyers were interested in the items and the only reason they did not sell was due to the seller.

The other major reason was that they would make insertion fees from sellers who were unable to cancel listings before they auto renewed for another 30 days due to the seller exceeding their limit of listings with free insertions for the month.

I research the comps on many items and get offers for item I only viewed, but have no interest in ever purchasing. I do not watch any items. I also get such offers if I put one of the items in my cart to see what the total will be and forget to close that browser tab. That is going to cause the seller of this item to falsely think there is interest in the item and manually make even lower offers than eBay's automated offer based on someone solely looking at the item. That is going to cause the seller to spend more money on eBay.

eBay tries to manipulate buyers by displaying the number of watchers on an item to try to encourage them to buy the item before anyone else. But some buyers know if they watch the item they may receive a personal offer for the item at a lower price so they ignore the number of watchers. Other buyers may take the offer because they know the seller may be making offers to other buyers.

Strange how when I occasionally end all my listings for a period of time none of these "watchers" eBay claims I have contacts me to ask if they are still available. I've had only two people during all of 2025 ask if a formerly listed item is still available.

So how many of these watchers are actually eBay bots? You can pay people to create watchers on your items so you can only imagine what eBay could do with billions in cash and tens of thousands of employees and contractors they employee.

Would you also put it past eBay's call centers, contractors and eBay bots from running a click ad scam network? After all, the people that run eBay have repeatedly shown they have zero conscience and a great majority of their income is from scamming their users due to the declining number of users.

Perminate Link for Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?   Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?

by: Shanna This user has validated their user name.

Wed Dec 17 15:45:07 2025

I get offers all the time on items I click on to research pricing for my items. Never liking or adding to a watch list, just popping in to look at their condition vs mine.

Perminate Link for Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?   Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?

by: Snapped This user has validated their user name.

Wed Dec 17 17:36:11 2025

Here’s a thought - why not give a potential buyer a mechanism which they can use to indicate they are an ‘interested’ buyer themself?

You know, let them say so using their own decision to do so.  

Perminate Link for Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?   Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?

by: CBW This user has validated their user name.

Thu Dec 18 10:23:12 2025

The real problem is that buyers expect to get offers now so they don't buy until they get an offer they like. It no longer functions as a nudge to buy it functions as a wait and see. There is no urgency to buy when buyers can play the offer lotto.  

Perminate Link for Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?   Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?

This user has validated their user name. by: RKTOYS

Sun Dec 21 17:01:26 2025

I don't think eBay makes a decision without maximizing tge amount of chaos that it can cause.

Perminate Link for Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?   Why the Secrecy about eBay 'Interested Buyers'?

by: ssusannss This user has validated their user name.

Mon Dec 22 10:27:34 2025

I get a bit miffed when I get offers on things I merely looked at. I keep researching ways to turn that off but not finding a way to do that on my phone.



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