OT: Ridiculous eBay offers

[Birdbats]

Last night, I listed a sweet Kirby Puckett game-used bat on eBay, signed by the late HOFer. In my e-mail this morning, I had a message asking "Would you accept $200?" I'm sure many of you have had this happen, so I wanted to throw this out there for fun. What are some of the most ridiculous (yet apparently serious) offers you've received for items you listed on eBay?

[BULBUS]

I think that my prices on Ebay are fair, but I still get offers 75% or more off my price. I either don't even respond or I'll reply "No thanks." I won't even counter offer those low offers.

And when I use the Best Offer option, I'll set it up so those low ballers are automatically rejected.

-Chris

[ivo610]

Someone offered me $200 shipped for a pair of game issued Lebron all star shoes that rarely sold uner $1,000 on ebay at the time. Its not even worth responding to these people because you know they arent going to come close matching what you want. More often than not though, i am tempted to reply with a vulgar rant.

[BoneRubbedBat]

Will e-Bay's system let you counteroffer with an amount higher than the original BIN price?

[mbenga28]

the really annoying ones are not those who submit lowball offers, but those who send you a message, "hello I am from China nice jersey perhaps we can do a trade" and they offer a bench player or issued item.

[jetersbatboy]

I got one of these offers this morning. It was like 95% less then my asking price. My asking price is on the higher side, but I don't expect it to sell at it.

[hrvatwill]

Some people do it just to be a smart aleck. I had a friend tell me that he was going to offer $30 for the game used Roberto Clemente jersey that was listed by Mears on ebay a few weeks ago for about an hour. While this may have been amusing to him, I'm sure it irritated the seller to no end (if he actually went through with it).

[5kRunner]

I hate when I get one of these low offers, counteroffer and tell the offeror this is the lowest I'm willing to accept right now. Just to have the offeror send me another offer for slightly higher than their first one. Stop wasting my time!

[xpress34]

I think that my prices on Ebay are fair, but I still get offers 75% or more off my price. I either don't even respond or I'll reply "No thanks." I won't even counter offer those low offers.

And when I use the Best Offer option, I'll set it up so those low ballers are automatically rejected.

-Chris

Chris -

I do the same thing with the Best Offer 'threshold'... but I also set the threshold to automatically accept offers over a certain amount. That way I have my 'what I'd like to get' (BIN), my 'what I'd accept' (auto accept threshold), my 'are you kidding' (auto reject threshold) and then there is the 'grey area' between the Auto accept and auto reject where I can consider the offer or make a counter-offer. Then I don't have to even deal with the DAs (and I don't mean District Attorneys) who offer $1 or whatever... I don't even see their offers or get an eMail unless I open the auction and look at the 'offer sheet'.

I have also had stupidly low ball offers from other eBay SELLERS who are selling the same or similar item. I go to their auction and lowball them right back and then they actually counter (like my example below) with an offer that's just a few dollars less than their BIN. And they don't seem to get that the offer came from the Seller they just tried to lowball???

As a rule of thumb, when I am going to make an offer - the MINIMUM I will start at is 50% of BIN, usually closer to 60% - 75% of BIN.

What irritates me is a guy has an item for say BIN $399. I offer say $250. He comes back with a counter or $389. REALLY? At that point I make no other offers. Why not just reject my offer? I've had many sellers contact me after their auction ends to see if I'd still make the same deal because their item didn't sell and I was the ONLY offer.

The other one that irritates me is guy has a BIN of again, say $399. You make an offer (of ANY amount) below his BIN. You get a rejection with a note to the effect, "The BIN is the lowest we are willing to go on this item, etc."... the why the hell did you put a BEST OFFER option in your auction?!

Ah, the fun, the fun...

All the best -

Chris

[allstarsplus]

Jeff - I have 2 stories of complete opposite sides of the equation on ridiculous offer w/ a message, and then awesome offer w/ a message.

So I have one of the marked Barry Bonds balls from his 700th HR game at a BIN at $7,300 w/ Best Offer. So this is what I typically get.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...m=200150226442
22jeff( 310) US $3.99 You automatically declined Jan-13-09 22:06:45 PST90638-1402 Buyer message: to bad Barry was such a jerk. i would have made a real offer. jeff-

Then on the opposite side of the equation, I just put up over the weekend this sweet Randy Johnson ball from his 300 Win game at $995 and I got a Best Offer for $985 which I accepted and he paid for already and then I got the following note: Thank you for making this historic baseball available at such a reasonable asking price!

http://cgi.ebay.com/Randy-Johnson-Au...item2eaa571a09