eBay said it’s planning to enhance offer-management tools to give sellers more insight into and control over their seller-initiated offers. The news came as sellers grew frustrated that their items were selling for less than their list price due to inadvertently being opted in to an automated-offer setting.
eBay Seller Initiated Offers (SIO) have been popular with sellers who are willing to offer discounts on their listings. But as we recently reported, some sellers were perplexed as to why their listings were selling for less than they had listed them for without having sent their buyers an offer.
On April 10th, eBay pinned an announcement at the top of the Selling section of its discussion boards about “Seller Initiated Offer automation.” It told sellers they were always in control of their offers – “eBay does not adjust prices or send offers unless you’ve set them up” – and it said “Automation is optional.”
“If you’re using ‘Send Offer’ for the first time, you’ll see an option to automate future offers to save you time. Whichever setting you choose will be saved the next time you send an offer. You can opt out anytime,” eBay said. It’s clear from reading sellers’ posts about the issue that it had been unclear to them that the box was automatically checked and they would have to check the box (if they even noticed it) in order to opt out of the feature.
eBay did not post the announcement on the Seller Announcement Board (nor did it respond to any posts where sellers had reported the issue as far as we could see), compounding confusion that peaked in March.
In its April 10th post on the Selling board, eBay said it was always listening to seller feedback and working on improvements. “In the coming weeks and months, we’ll be enhancing eBay’s offer management tools to give you even more visibility, control, and insights into your offers” – a possible clue that it may make the automated offers feature opt-in when creating an offer instead of opt-out.
Sellers can send Best Offers, lasting 48 hours, to watched listings. However, the form is poorly constructed, with no apparent sorting capability and no access to the Custom Label (SKU). It is so difficult for sellers to select listings for best offers that it is easier to send a minimal best offer to watchers of all eligible listings. Buyer best offers last only 24 hours and often expire on weekends or because eBay is slow sending email notifications. When a Best Offer expires it is difficult to reach potential buyers with acceptable offers through the eBay non-communication system. Unfortunately, having recently posted a Best Offer does not automatically make potential buyers eligible to receive seller best offers. I estimate that eBay Best Offer loses at least 10 percent of potential buyers who might have purchased if sellers could contact potential buyers directly.
I hope they give us the ability to mass turn off automatic offers. Right now you have turn listings off one by one. I have 904 listing out of 3000 sending automatic offers. How long would it take me to edit 904 listings. It should be as easy to turn off as it is to turn on.
How many of these offers are are based on fake watchers?
I look up items solely for the purpose of determining pricing and the category most likely to sell the item. I have no intention of buying any of these items. I do not watch any items. I have all notifications turned off. Yet eBay keeps telling the sellers of these items to me offers simply because I looked at the item.