Adding Best Offer to your listing and sending offers to buyers

Adding best offer to your listing increases your chances of a successful sale. You can set your preferences to automatically accept or decline offers of a certain amount, and use the counteroffer feature to negotiate with prospective buyers.

How to add Best Offer to your listings

If you have an auction-style listing with Best Offer, bear in mind that:

• If you receive a bid, current offers and counteroffers will be declined automatically and buyers won't be able to make any additional offers on your item
• If a bidder retracts their bid, the Best Offer feature will be re-enabled
• If you received an offer that was higher than the current bid, the buyer who made the offer will have to place a bid
• This option isn't available in these categories: Mobile Phones, Motors, Property, Tablets and Tickets

How to accept a Best Offer

When a buyer makes you a Best Offer, we'll email you to let you know. You can also see any offers you've received in My eBay's Active - opens in new window or tab section and in Seller Hub within Active listings with offers - opens in new window or tab.

After receiving an offer, you have 24 hours to choose how to respond. You can:

• Accept the Best Offer and end the listing
• Respond with a counteroffer
• Let the offer expire. This will happen automatically after 24 hours or when the listing ends, whichever comes first
• Decline the offer

In most cases, when using the Best Offer option in a listing, buyers are required to make immediate payment. However, some buyers may be asked to confirm their payment and shipping details when they're making an offer.

If you're happy to accept offers from all buyers, without immediate payment, go to your Buyer Management settings and uncheck the box next to Buyer Payment Requirements.

How to make a counteroffer

When you make a counteroffer, your response should be lower than the Buy It Now price, but higher than the offer you received.

You can respond directly to the potential buyer from the message we send you letting you know about the buyer's Best Offer.

You might receive offers from multiple buyers, and it's fine to make counteroffers on all of them. Each counteroffer expires after 24 hours, and whoever accepts your counteroffer first wins.

Automatic responses to Best Offer

If you set up automatic responses in your listing, we can accept or decline a Best Offer for you, based on the price limits you select. Buyers won't know your limits, but the upper limit must be below your Buy It Now price.

Here's how automatic responses work:

• When you get an offer at, or above, your upper limit, we automatically send an email to you and the buyer saying that you've accepted and the buyer should pay
• When you get an offer below your lower limit, we automatically send an email to the buyer declining the offer. The buyer can submit a higher bid or you can send a counteroffer. Buyers can make up to three offers per item in most categories
• When you get an offer somewhere between your price limits, we'll send you a message and you'll have to decide how to respond

You can't use automatic responses when:

• You've put an item on sale using the Sale event tool in Discounts Manager
• The buyer included additional terms in the offer that you'll need to review first
• The option doesn't appear when you are creating your listing – not all categories allow for automatic responses

Accepting a Best Offer when the buyer clicked on one of your Promoted Listings Standard ads

If you accept a Best Offer from a buyer who clicked on one of your Promoted Listings Standard ads within the last 30 days, you'll be charged an ad fee based on the final total sale amount (including item price, postage, taxes, and any other applicable fees).

If the ad rate displayed for the Best Offer is not your current ad rate, the buyer may have clicked on your ad within the last 30 days prior to you making ad rate edits.

Example: Within the last 30 days, a buyer clicked on an ad that you created with a 15% ad rate. After this click, you updated the ad rate to 8%. When you receive a Best Offer from that buyer, you see a 15% ad rate displayed instead of your current ad rate of 8%. This is due to your ad rate being 15% at the time the buyer clicked on your ad.

The ad rate you're charged may be different than the ad rate displayed for a Best Offer if:

• The buyer clicked on your ad again before purchasing or placed a different offer for the same item. In this case, the ad rate selected closest to the time of sale will be applied
• Your ad was clicked before any ad rate changes were made 
• The item being purchased is a Halo Item where the ad rate is based on the settings at the time of the sale 
• The buyer purchases a different promoted item of yours

Learn more about Promoted Listings Standard.

Sending offers to interested buyers

If a buyer shows interest in your item (watching your item or adding it to their cart, for example), you can send them special offers. Here's how:

1. Go to My eBay Selling - opens in new window or tab or Seller Hub Active - opens in new window or tab.
2. Select Send offer beside the eligible item (or Eligible to send offers, if you're using Seller Hub).
   • Not all listings are eligible. Eligibility is determined by a number of factors, including age of listing, listing format, and rules that manage the number of offers buyers receive
   • Items must be in the buyer's basket for at least 2 days to send an offer
3. Select an offer price.
   • The amount must be at least 5% less than the Buy It Now price
   • Postage will not be included in this price
4. Add a message to buyers.
5. Select Send offer to buyers.

Sending offers in bulk

You can also send an offer for multiple listings at once using Seller Hub. Here's how:

1. Go to Seller Hub Active - opens in new window or tab.
2. Select Send Offers - Eligible to see your eligible listings.
3. Select the listings you want to send an offer on and select Send Offers.
4. Select a Percent off discount(e.g 10%). This discount will apply to all the listings you selected.
   • With tiered offer discounts, the discount percentage must be at least 5% less than the Buy It Now price
   • Add a message
   • Select Send offers

Offers will be sent to the 30 most recent interested buyers (people watching your items or who have added your items to their basket). Each offer is valid for 96 hours or until the listing is sold, whichever comes first. With a single item listing, the first buyer to accept the offer gets the item. With a multiple quantity listing, buyers can continue to avail of the offer until all items in the listing are sold or the offer expires.

Automatically send offers

You can save time by enabling offers to be sent automatically to buyers interested in your current listings . You can change the settings for your automatic offers by going to active listings - opens in new window or tab and selecting any items that are eligible for offers, even if they don't have interested buyers yet. To be eligible, the items must be Buy-It-Now and not sold out.

To turn on automated offers:

1. Go to Active listings - opens in new window or tab.
2. Select eligible items.
3. From the Sell it faster dropdown above your items list, select Send offers.
4. In the pop-up, toggle on Send automated offers.

Select View Offer settings to manage your automation setting.

Here you'll be able to:

• Enable or disable offers from being sent automatically
• Adjust the automatic offer amount
• Turn on or off counteroffers
• Change your message

To turn off automatic seller initiated offers

1. Go to Seller Hub.
2. In the Search section, select the All statuses dropdown and filter for "With offers sending automatically".
3. Select Search.
4. Select View offer settings.
5. Select the > symbol next to Automatically send offers.
6. Set the blue switch next to Automatically send offers to Off.
7. Select Done.
8. Select Update offer settings.

Advanced offer automation for Shop subscribers 

eBay Shop subscribers can now set up rule-based automatic offers. Instead of manually opting listings into automatic offers, you can select the criteria for what listings to include and set the offer terms. We'll automatically send your offer to eligible buyers who show an interest in listings that fit your criteria—including any new listings you create. You can set how long your automatic offers will run, for a maximum of 150 days.

Here's how to create and manage your rules for automatic offers:

1. Go to Buyer Groups on your Seller Hub Marketing tab.
2. Select Send Automatic Offers.
3. Choose the inventory to include, set your price range, and name your buyer group.
4. Select Update offer settings.

To turn off an automatic offer rule:

1. Go to Buyer Groups on your Seller Hub Marketing tab.
2. Select the rule(s) you'd like to turn off.
3. Select Delete.

Frequently asked questions about automatic offers

 

Responding to counteroffers from buyers

Buyers can respond to your offer with a counteroffer. If a buyer sends you a counteroffer, you'll receive an email and a message in My eBay. (You'll also receive a notification on your phone, if you've installed the eBay app and enabled notifications.) Select Respond now in this message to view the counteroffer. You can then choose to Accept offer, Decline offer, or Make counteroffer. You and the buyer can send a maximum of 3 counteroffers each.

You can also monitor offers and counteroffers in Seller Hub Active - opens in new window or tab or My eBay active - opens in new window or tab.

Sending a custom offer using the "Reply with offer" button

If a buyer sends you a question about an item you have listed in a fixed-priced format, you'll have the option to reply with an offer. If you've already replied to the buyer but wish to make them an offer, you can find the Reply with offer button in your first message to them. 

The offer you send can be for more or less than the Buy It Now price, and you can send a buyer up to 3 offers. Each offer is valid for 96 hours or until the listing is sold, whichever comes first.

The option to reply with an offer is available to all sellers, whether you use Best Offer in your listing or not. However, this feature is unavailable on auction or multi-variation listings, and in the Motor Vehicle category.

If you're accepting Best Offers on a listing, you can send custom offers on that same listing to buyers who ask questions, unless the buyer has already sent a Best Offer. If a buyer sends a Best Offer, the Reply with offer button won't be available, but you can send them a counteroffer.