Last night at eBay Live US 2021, Jamie Iannone announced that new eBay Best Offer features are being worked on that will delight most eBay sellers.
The first of the new eBay Best Offer Features will be payments. No more unpaid items. The intention is that when a buyer submits a Best Offer that they’ll also be required to put a payment method on file. If you, the seller, accepts their Offer then the deal will be done them and there. This will put Best Offers on a par with Buy It Now where a buyer can’t commit to buy without paying.
There is also an intention to roll out a similar payment method for auctions, although this will come later down the line. Expect to see payment on Best Offers earlier rather than later.
Another question from the sellers was around previous buyers. It was suggested that there should be a flag when an offer is made indicating if it was a previous customer that had purchased from you in the past. This is a great idea as if you know it’s a returning customer you might be more willing to accept a slightly cheeky offer than if it’s a brand new customer trying it on. Jamie loved this suggestion and has passed it down the line to engineering and is hopeful the feature might roll out by the end of 2021.
It’s likely that eBay are only able to introduce this immediate payment feature for Best Offers because they now control the payment process through eBay payments (although back before they sold PayPal they could have done it then!). It’s a long time coming as the one thing sellers really hate is their stock being allocated to a sale but the item remaining unpaid so they haven’t turned a profit and can’t ship the item. The new eBay Best Offer Features should put an and to this and when immediate payment for auctions rolls out it will mean that when a buyer makes a bid, Buy It Now, or Offer on eBay then you’ve not only got a sale… you’ve got paid!
2 Responses
Would be great if they could get best offer working on variation listings!
I took best offer off most listings some time ago. Unless ebay can make it work better alongside the multibuy discounts, I’d not put it back on. Too many potential buyers see the 4+ multibuy discount price, which might be 20% off, then send a best offer for that price, just for 1 of the item. Then you’ve got to tell them no and why. But they don’t listen and put a counter offer for in for the 3+ price, then the 2+ price, before finally paying the correct price or storming off in a huff.
If ebay could put an automatically decline option in for quantity of 1, that’d be a start and I don’t think it would technically be a hard thing to do. If they could put in an automatic redirect for it was quantities of 2, 3 or 4, saying “a multibuy discount is already available for this quantity and the price is…” that’d be even better.