eBay confirmed a bug that is hampering sellers from making offers in the app to would-be buyers this week. On Monday, a seller reported that when they went to make offers, the
eBay mobile app forced it to enter a percentage instead a dollar amount. "So if for example I have an item listed for $9 and I want to do an offer of $7, I legitimately *can't* anymore, as I can only do like 22% to get to $6.93 or something."
The seller called it an annoying change that made it harder to make offers.
eBay explains seller-initiated offers as follows: "When buyers show interest in your product but haven't yet completed the transaction, you can target them with an offer. The Offers to Buyers tool in Seller Hub enables you to start the negotiation process with interested buyers, and can help you improve your conversion rate."
On Tuesday, another seller started a thread to report the same issue and said it would result in them making fewer offers, since they would wait until they had access to their computer before using the feature rather than making offers on their mobile device:
"When I try to send offers now using the app, its trying to get me to send bulk offers as a certain percent off of my price. Even if I try to only send one offer on one item its only allowing me to put in a percent amount.
"This is very frustrating because I like to send offers individually and will base my offer on how many views/watchers the item has and then take off an amount of the price of the item based on that. I don't want to have to try and calculate what percent that will be then go back and type in the percent off I want to send.
"This change has made me send less offers because I will now wait until I can get to my computer in order to send offers the way I always have. I really hope this change isn't permanent or I can opt out somehow because I will be sending less offers throughout the day and only when I have access to my computer."
An
eBay moderator confirmed on Wednesday that it had (inadvertently) introduced the bug with the latest update to the mobile app and said it would be fixed in the next update, though they didn't say when eBay would roll out the next update, and eBay has yet to add the glitch to the pinned thread on the eBay Technical Issues board. The clock is ticking for sellers to reach holiday shoppers in time to get orders delivered in time for Christmas.
eBay Glitch Hampers Sellers from Making Offers This Week
by: COVID-19 
by: toolguy