Is eBay Encouraging Lowball Offers? New Offer Button Test Raises Questions

eBay is testing changes to how the Best Offer button appears on some Buy It Now listings, displaying default suggested offer amounts to buyers before they submit an offer. While the feature may be intended to streamline negotiations, some sellers worry it could encourage low offers and anchor buyers to lower starting prices.

Users began noticing the updates across the eBay app this week, though it may also be being tested across the desktop experience for some buyers as well.

Previously, the button just said "make offer" and if the buyer clicked or tapped it, they would be presented with a field to type in the dollar amount they wanted to offer.

Now the button says "offer $x" with the dollar amount predetermined by eBay.

Make Offer Button Gone

All of a sudden instead of a Make An Offer button on listings, the button now reads "Offer $95", for example. What changed? Is this something im my settings that changed? How do I get it back to the way it was previously?

New Offer Button

is this something new? I was looking at postcards and saw this offer $5 depending on the prices it had different offer amounts for each postcard and is it just on postcards?

Here's what it looks like on the Android app:

In this example, an item with a Buy It Now price of $120 is shown with a default offer of $108. If you tap the offer button, it defaults to that $108 but then also has options to tap for $102 and $114.

Alarmingly, eBay has also added a note in bold letters that says: Similar items sold for $11.99 - $15.00, which is sure to be confusing to buyers at the very least and may set very unrealistic expectations leading to lowball offers and additional margin erosion pressure on the seller.

The buyer can still manually enter a different amount, but at least on the app, it is not a very intuitive process - there is no visual indication to show you that you have to tap the amount first to bring up the keyboard so you can enter the number you want.

Strangely, on lower dollar value items, it appears that eBay's default is to round up - suggesting a higher offer than the actual Buy It Now price.

Users are discussing this apparent quirk or glitch on Reddit, wondering who programmed it this way and why that was even allowed into production.

Why is it asking to offer more than what seller is asking? Kinda idiotic

How is that even coded into the app? Why would anyone offer more than the price...so stupid.

Yeah I saw one that was an $8 item and it said “offer $8” lol but yours is even crazier.

And buyers are reporting other strange issues with Offers this week, which may or may not be related to this test.

For example, one community forum regular shared their experience trying to purchase an item after receiving a Seller Initiated Offer - they accepted and agreed upon the lower price, but ended up buying the full Buy It Now at checkout.

Confusing message from ebay.

Shopping for a Dyson vacuum to replace one I broke last night.

Listed at $200. Seller offered it at $190.

I declined and made a counter-offer of $175. Then I receive this message from ebay...

I went ahead an clicked on "finish this purchase" only to find out that I just bought it for $200.

Did I misunderstand that message from ebay?

Others chimed in to say they had also experienced this same scenario as both a buyer and a seller and believed it to be a glitch or big in eBay's code that causes the "finish your purchase" button in that message to incorrectly take the user to the original item page at full price rather than to Offer page.

To make matters even more confusing, the original poster said several hours after completing the purchase at the full price, they received a noticed they still had an item in their shopping cart - and it was this item at the lower agreed upon Offer price.

Tonight, several hours later I get a notification that I have something in my shopping cart.

I click on the cart and I get this. What a mess!

Luckily they were dealing with an understanding seller who had no problem refunding the difference to match the Offer price, but that's hardly an acceptable solution since some sellers may not be so amenable.

What do you think of eBay's new Offer button test and have you seen any other recent glitches or problems with Offers? Let us know in the comments below!