eBay Charged Full Price Despite Accepted Offer

Has this ever happened to you - a buyer makes an offer for a lower price on your eBay listing, and you accept it - but then the buyer pays the full price? That's what happened to EcommerceBytes reader "smallstuff" as he reported on Ecommerce EKG:

"Had an item listed at $566 but was not selling. I received an offer of $350 and accepted it. The customer was billed the original price and requested the order be canceled. How can that happen?"

Smallstuff provided us with an update - after he accepted the cancellation, it was automatically relisted (his default setting). He reduced the price to $350 and informed the buyer, who purchased the item. "I am not any money and I maintained good relations with this (new to me) customer," he said.

There are a lot of threads on the eBay boards about prices changing after offers, but they often involved international transactions that muddied the issue, with suggestions the instances were caused by currency exchange or Value Added Tax issues.

But we found one thread titled, "Buyers Paying Full Price Instead of Accepting Offer" that suggested a possible answer to the smallstuff's question as to how it happened in his case: poor design rather than a glitch.

The original poster in the thread from 2023 said he knew how it happened, but not why, writing in part:

"Buyer makes me an offer > I counter their offer > Buyer pays full price.

"I understand the logistics. Buyer needs to ACCEPT my offer. If they click "Buy It Now" or "Add To Cart" they're paying asking price and by-passing the offer/discount."

While smallstuff accepted (and didn't counter) the offer, it seems the same logic applies - the buyer failed to click on the correct link when purchasing the item, clicking on the Buy It Now link instead of the accepted offer link.

One of the people responding to that 2023 thread said something similar had happened to them as a buyer:

"I have just done this. I reviewed the offer I'd been sent but the problem is that that page seems to have a "buy now" button on it. So I'm on an offer page with a great big button saying buy now, which is what I want to do but it does it at the original price which was hidden on the screen."

They wondered if it was a deliberate design choice made by eBay, writing, "a system designed to fail - deliberate?"

The next time you either accept an offer from a seller (or a seller accepts your offer), take screenshots of the offer page (ideally both on your desktop and mobile device) and let us know what you see. Is it too easy for buyers to purchase at the original list price instead of the lower, accepted-offer price?

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