If you are selling an item with a fixed price, as part of the listing process you can choose the Best Offer option. With Best Offer, you give buyers a chance to negotiate with you on price. It’s used mostly for high-price items such as cars, boats, and jewelry. Each Best Offer is good for up to 48 hours. A Best Offer is binding, just like any other bid. There is no charge to use Best Offer but it does have some limitations and restrictions.

After you receive a Best Offer, you can do one of the following:

• Accept the Best Offer and end the listing.

• Decline the Best Offer. You can explain your reasons to the buyer if you want to.

• Respond with a counteroffer. If the buyer doesn’t respond within a reasonable amount of time, you can let the counteroffer expire.

• Let the offer expire after 48 hours or when the listing ends, whichever comes first.

You can even set the Best Offer system to automatically accept or decline offers based on price limits you set.

Learn the basics and key concepts of the Best Offer option:

• Who can use Best Offer

• How to add Best Offer to your listing

• Responding to offers individually

• Responding to offers automatically

• Multiple-item listings

• Counteroffers

• Shipping costs and Best Offer

• Best Offer on eBay Motors

Who can use Best Offer

Limitations

Best Offer is available for listings using the Fixed Price and Classified Ad formats, and in eBay Motors. Best Offer is not available for auction-style listings. Best Offer is not available in every category.

Note: If Best Offer is not shown as an option on the listing page, this means it is not available in the category you’ve chosen for your item.

Seller requirements

• To sell with and accept Best Offers on listings, you must have a Feedback Score of 10. (If you have a PayPal account and accept PayPal as a payment method on the listing, your feedback rating only needs to be 5 or more.) Or, you must be ID Verified .

• To create a Best Offer listing with a quantity of two or more items, you must have a Feedback Score of 30 or more, and be a registered user for at least 14 days (or be ID Verified).

How to add Best Offer to your listing

Completing the listing form

Responding to offers individually

You’ll be notified by email if an offer comes in, and the offer will be shown on your Offer History page in My eBay. You have up to 48 hours to respond or the offer is automatically declined.

To view your offers:

To customize the "Selling" view by adding an "Offers" column:

Responding to offers automatically

If you expect multiple offers, or you have a price range that you’ll accept for your item, you can respond to offers automatically. The Best Offer system will automatically accept or decline offers outside of price limits you set. (See the red arrow in the illustration below). Buyers will not know that you have set these limits, and you can change your price limits at any time, as long as the listing is still active.

In some cases, you can’t respond to offers automatically:

• When you’ve put an item on sale using Markdown Manager

• When the buyer included terms in the offer

• When you don’t see the automatic response option on your listing form

Setting price limits for automatic response

• The upper limit price must be lower than the Buy It Now price.

• If you get an offer at or above your upper limit, the Best Offer system automatically sends an email to you and the buyer saying that the offer has been accepted. This means the item has sold, and the buyer will be directed to pay you.

  • Example: Your Buy It Now price for your car is $20,000, you know you’d take $18,000, and you know you’d never take less than $16,000. You can set both price limits. The Best Offer system will automatically decline any offer less than $16,000 and accept the first offer of $18,000 or more. You will need to respond individually to any offers between $16,000 and $18,000.

• If you get an offer below your lower limit, the system automatically sends an email to the buyer declining the offer. The buyer may submit a higher offer, or you may send a counteroffer.

You also can set just one of the limits to respond automatically, as in the following examples:

• Set the upper limit: Your Buy It Now price for your car is $20,000. You know you would take $16,000. You can set the upper limit to $16,000. The first buyer to offer any amount from $16,000 to $20,000 automatically wins the item. You then respond individually to offers below $16,000. -

• Set the lower limit: Your Buy It Now price for your car is $20,000. You know you would never take less than $16,000. You can set the lower limit to $16,000. The system will automatically decline all offers below $16,000. You then respond individually to any offers at or above $16,000.

Multiple-item listings

If you are selling two or more identical items in a single listing, buyers can make an offer for all, some, or only one of the items in the listing.

• For example, if you are selling four of an item and the Buy It Now price is $25 each, the buyer can make a Best Offer for all four items at $80.

After you accept a Best Offer on a multiple-item listing, if more of the items remain in the listing, the same buyer can make an offer on all, some, or one of the remaining items.

As soon as all of the items have been sold, either through Best Offer or Buy It Now, the listing is immediately closed and any further offers are automatically declined.

Counteroffers

• If you decline an offer, and the buyer is eligible to make more offers, you can send that buyer an offer that’s higher than the declined offer but lower than your Buy It Now price.

• If you make a counteroffer and the buyer does not respond to it within 48 hours or before the listing ends, whichever comes first, the counteroffer automatically expires.

Shipping costs and Best Offer

For listings where you have specified shipping costs for the item, the Best Offer price includes only the listed item. For listings where you asked buyers to contact you about shipping, buyers may choose to include shipping in their offer price.

Best Offer on eBay Motors

Best Offer is an option available for Buy it Now listings in all eBay Motors categories and for Best Offer Only items in the Cars & Trucks, Motorcycles, Powersports, and Other Vehicles categories. Only vehicles listed locally accept Best Offers.