eBay Best Offer: Ask for a Discount

Recently, Free Money Finance posted about How to Ask for and Get a Discount at a Chain Store. Earlier this month, I applied a similar concept to eBay when filling out my china to 12 complete place settings.

Prior to this purchase, I had no successful experiences using eBay’s best offer feature.

To complete my set, I needed 3 dinner plates, 2 salad plates, 4 bread and butter plates, and 4 teacups and saucers. I already knew that my ideal price for picking these pieces up would be to pay half of what Replacements Ltd has them listed for on their website. I also knew that since I wanted to purchase several items rather than just one, I was going to be a lot more successful asking for a discount.

First step was to find a seller that offered all of these items and offered the best offer feature.

Second step is to wait until the day that at least one of the auctions will be ending. All of these auctions were the store style auctions so they last for 30 days at a time rather than the normal 7 days. Sellers hate to have an auction end with no sale so waiting until the last minute will make them more likely to accept your offer.

Third step is to email the seller and ask for the discount. I told the seller which pieces and what quantities I wanted along with what price I wanted to pay. An hour or two later I had received a response from the seller that if I placed my offers at those prices they would be accepted and shortly after that I had won all of the pieces I wanted at the price I wanted. The seller even gave me a better combined shipping rate than they had listed in their description and the china was on my doorstep in 3 days.

So, any time an eBay seller offers best offer and you’re considering buying multiple items from them shoot them an email and ask for a discount.

Featured in Festival of Frugality.

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