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Accepted proposal on eBay messaging, with suggestion to seller to send a private offer
Hello,
I’m writing here because eBay’s office hours are over and I’ll only be able to contact them again tomorrow morning.
Today I noticed an interesting listing, without the Make an Offer button, so I thought I’d use eBay messaging and send the seller a possible offer. The seller, after a short exchange to arrive at a mutually agreed price, suggested a price plus shipping that seemed reasonable to me; I immediately sent my OK, also recommending the use of an additional box to protect the item. The seller expressed his OK and said he would get to work looking for the box. When he asked me which payment method I would use, I explained that I prefer PayPal, which I always use safely.
At that point, since the original listing didn’t have the button to make an offer, I explained how he could send me a custom offer that I would confirm.
In my recommendation, I suggested indicating that the offer was reserved and entering a very high, unacceptable price, so that we would still be able to close the deal. This, since: we had already agreed on the price, I would have proposed exactly the agreed price, he would have accepted and closed the deal.
Unfortunately, after a few hours the seller wrote to me saying he’d made a mess, entering a price that was too low and that he hadn’t been able to send a custom offer, but the worst part is that another user clearly clicked on and used the offer that, in our shared intention, was meant to be reserved for me.
As soon as I saw his email (in compliance with the policies, we did not exchange phone numbers or any further contact details), I wrote to him that the price was lower but the offer was still unavailable. He confirmed the mistake and was willing to understand how to correct it. I wrote asking him to contact the user and warn him that the offer was reserved, and to notify eBay to find out how the correction could be made.
I don’t know if I can attach the emails as support, but I thought I could take a screenshot and simply black out the parts where personal references or references to the offer or the seller appear.
Tomorrow I’ll contact eBay, and the seller will too (I hope he has already warned the other user), but I wanted to know whether anyone has had a similar (bad) experience.
Thanks
Best regards
sika700
Mentore3 years agoHello,
unfortunately you can’t create "reserved" listings... so what the seller did was just plain inexperience and let’s say you’ve also put them in a tough spot... meaning that whoever bought that item has every right to receive it, and if it is cancelled they could leave the seller a negative review.
I think this was a very clumsy move... it would have been enough to edit the listing by adding the purchase offer...
Best regards.