Why, might you ask?

Well, from a seller’s perspective, particularly one that runs a small store, I do kind of agree with mmarple. In communications to sellers, eBay makes a big production of saying that you have the option to opt out of best offers, but then TURNS AROUND AND ENCOURAGES BUYERS TO MAKE OFFERS AFTER THEY HAVE VIEWED A LISTING, EVEN IF THERE IS NO OPTION. It’s pretty insulting, and another in a loooong line of examples of treating sellers like garbage.

What makes this extra annoying is that you as a buyer may think you are eBay’s customer, but you are not. We the sellers are eBay’s customers. They make most of their money by collecting a very large fee (typically 10-13% out of each sale) from the sellers who use eBay as a platform to sell their wares. This is on top of subscription fees, promotion fees, and all kinds of other nickel and diming that is not visible to buyers, And the sellers paying those fees are already typically making very slim margins, usually 20% or less, BEFORE the fee, particularly if they are smaller sellers or sellers of specialty goods.

Under this arrangement, all eBay’s ONLY incentive is facilitating as many sales as possible. Why? Because ANY commission money they get is pure profit for virtually no work. Say a seller lists an item for $100. eBay doesn’t care if you manage to hagglethe seller down, say, $10. Why? Because the way they look at it, they just made $9 instead of $0 off a buyer who could save 50 cents by going to Amazon or Etsy. In the meantime, if the seller has to eat the remainder of the difference. So if the item cost the seller $80, after eBay’s $9 fee and your $10 discount, the seller is now making only a buck instead of $10 off the sale. They just lost 90% of their profit! And you know what eBay’s attitude is? “Not our problem. Don’t like it? Dell elsewhere.”

The other thing I’ve noticed about hagglers is that they are FAR, FAR more likely to complain, abuse the returns process, or engage in feedback extortion than folks who just pay the price. As a matter of fact, literally EVERY time I’ve had a buyer return an empty box, a different item, or something they’ve clearly damaged through misuse, it’s been someone who first tried to haggle the price. I simply don’t want to deal with that kind of buyer.

You know why? Because eBay will still force me to refund those shady buyers, no matter what! As far as they are concerned, as long as there is a tracking number showing a package came back to me, they consider it proof that the item was returned. And oh, did I mention that, to add insult to injury, I also have to pay the return postage for the privilege of receiving a fraudulent return!?

And do you know the reason they do this? Because they don’t want “alienate” bad buyers. Like I said, all they care about is generating on-platform sales and receiving their commission from their sellers. I literally was told this directly by a former executive at eBay!

So yeah, haggling is DEFINITELY a sore point.

Seems a bit low, especially given inflation and if there is more than one person completing the job. Commercial companies noawadays do 130-140 per person per hour.