eBay Testing Price Match Post-Sale Offers Feature, Sellers Face Continued Discounting Pressure
UPDATE 6-7-2024
1 month and over 260 seller comments later, eBay staff have finally confirmed this was a test that has since ended.
UPDATE 5-23-2024
It's been over 2 weeks and sellers still have no additional information about this post-sale offer feature, despite eBay community staff "poking, prodding, and shaking hands with anyone and everyone" internally to get some answers.
With over 250 responses on the post so far, it's clear there are many questions and concerns about how this feature works and what impact it will have on sellers.
It's also clear that sellers are growing increasingly impatient with the lack of transparency about changes on the platform and that these comms failures are causing significant harm to seller morale and goodwill for eBay.
UPDATE 5-7-2024
Another seller shared a screenshot that shows this test has been occurring since at least April and in the desktop version, the seller does have the option to decline the request while that option was not presented to other sellers who experienced this test on the iOS app.
Another seller is reporting that this was being tested on the desktop site as well. In this case, the seller has a cancellation option that did not appear on the iOS app.
The buyer stated that they found a better price after purchasing the item as well. I am including the screenshot with the appropriate redactions. Please note that this transaction is from April 8th 2024
It appears that when buyers are presented this option, eBay allows them to basically send an offer with the cancellation request and we can see in this instance, the buyer's note reveals it wasn't an apples to apples comparison of the exact same product but that they had mistakenly believed the item came with additional accessories that it did not.
That likely means there is no price comparison actually being made by any automated systems or suggestions from eBay, this is simply a way for buyers to make a post-sale offer by entering a lower price they'd rather pay after already agreeing to buy the item at the seller's advertised price.
For those who wonder why eBay may be testing this feature now, we may need to look no further than eBay's recent quarterly financial reports where they have projected a return to Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) growth by Q3 or Q4 of this year.
Liz Morton
eBay defines GMV as: the total value of all paid transactions between users on our platforms during the applicable period inclusive of shipping fees and taxes.
Once an order is paid for, it counts as the total amount that was initially paid including tax and shipping - regardless of whether the order is subsequently partially or fully refunded.
This is where the timing of the offer may be important and why eBay may desire to try to move discount and offer negotiations to a post-sale rather than pre-sale model in certain situations.
For example, let's say a seller lists an item at a price that would result in a total with shipping and tax of $100.
If the buyer makes an offer that would bring that total down to $75 before purchasing, the seller agrees, and then they complete the sale and pay that agreed upon price - eBay counts $75 in GMV.
However, if the buyer purchases at $100, pays $100, then does a cancellation request with a post-sale offer for $75 that the seller accepts and processes a partial refund for the difference - eBay still gets to count $100 for GMV.
And if that seller does not accept the offer, cancels the order with a full refund, and the buyer goes on to purchase the same item from another seller for $75? eBay gets to count both the $100 sale and the $75 sale in GMV.
So with eBay's definition of GMV in mind, we can see how if a company was concerned about meeting forecasts they've given to Wall Street to show GMV growth in the very near feature, there could be an incentive for them to try to find ways to shuffle these numbers around.
I've reached out to eBay to try to get more details about this feature and will update as soon as any information is available.
eBay appears to be testing a new price matching feature that may allow sellers to save orders from cancellation, for a price.
The new feature was spotted by an eBay community member who noticed a new workflow after receiving a buyer initiated cancellation request with the reason "found a better price" - previously the seller would only have the option to accept or not accept the request, but the new feature now also gives the option to price match and agree to sell the item at a lower price.
I hope this message finds you all well. Today an interesting thing occurred on the app that has never happened to me before. I am going to write this in point-form.
I sell an item to a buyer
Buyer immediately requests to cancel sale after payment
I open the app to proceed with cancellation and a pop-up window from eBay shows up that must be completed.
The pop-up says that the buyer was shown a better deal and that the buyer wanted to cancel because they ‘found a better price’. I am given two options to proceed. Either cancel the sale, or refund the buyer the difference and continue with the sale.
I choose ‘agree to new terms of sale’ and eBay automatically refunded the buyer a portion of the sale so that my price matches the other sellers price.
I have sold 11,000 items on eBay and I’ve never seen this before. Has eBay rolled out some kind of price match guarantee or something? Today was the first time I have ever seen this.
eBay has had a Best Price Guarantee for years for price matching against competing marketplaces like Amazon, Best Buy, HomeDepot, Target, and Walmart but this is the first time I've ever seen a price match feature specifically pitting eBay items against each other.
Notably, with the previous program eBay funded the matching but in this program it comes directly out of the seller's pocket.
The seller, wilsonharborsales, went on to explain what he saw when agreeing to price match - basically it looks like it turns it into an "offer" from the buyer and since the order was already paid for, the difference is processed as a refund to bring the total price down to the price being matched.
Once I clicked on ‘continue with sale and refund the buyer the difference’, another screen popped up showing exactly how much money the buyer was going to be refunded. On this screen you confirm the refund amount...
...Here is an after-the-fact email eBay sent me stating that they have refunded the difference in order to price match the other seller.
Other sellers joined in the discussion with some very important questions, like how is eBay making sure that the items they are suggesting for price matching really are the same item, in similar condition and that it is factoring all costs including shipping in to the total price to match.
I have to wonder if the buyer truly "found a better price" or ebay went "hey look, here's the same thing but a better price" when they made payment.
We've all seen how well (sarcasm) that's worked throughout the years:
Failed eBay catalog linking different items to the same product page, different lots, different versions, etc
Failed eBay price recommendations that compare nice quality brands to $3 junk from China
Etcetera.
I just wonder if they were truly the same item with similar terms.
If a seller offers a lower price but charges shipping would it be shown to a buyer that originally purchases an item with free shipping, for example?
One seller may charge a buck or two more, but offer free returns. One may offer a low flat ship cost and bake part of shipping into item cost. So many factors here.
I'm discouraged by what @wilsonharborsales said how they can't even see the price difference until they click through to the next screen after they acknowledge wanting to give a discount.
It's also important to note there was no option to decline the request - the seller could only either agree to cancel the order or agree to provide a partial refund in the amount needed to match the supposedly lower price to keep the order active.
Both sellers in the community who said they've encountered this new experience confirmed that they did not have the option to decline the request and keep the order active at the already agreed upon sold price.
I was not given the option to decline the request. I could either accept the cancellation or accept the new terms of sale and refund the buyer the difference.
...they said found at lower price and I had 2 options. Match the price or Cancel. If I would have matched, I would have lost money, so I didn't read into it any further as that wasn't going to happen.
That is a huge departure from the currently still stated policy on cancellations which allowed sellers to deny these requests. This change could pose major problems for sellers who use fulfillment services or larger sellers with their own warehouse operations which may not be able to easily accommodate these requests.
For those who use external bookkeeping or shipping programs, this change could pose an issue as well as some software may have difficulty importing the order if it appears to be cancelled or refunded.
Another issue with this is that the order will not import into my shipping software and needs to be manually entered. I believe the shipping software sees the item as being cancelled or refunded, so it will not import. I need to manually import this sale to the shipping software and then manually scan the tracking details into eBay.
While it may be useful to have this option to try to save an order from cancellation, many sellers will also be concerned that it will simply encourage buyers to cancel in hopes of being offered a discount and that it will accelerate race to the bottom pricing wars at a time when they are already facing extreme pressure to discount on other fronts, such as shipping.
Liz Morton
Have you seen this new Price Match feature in action and if so, what do you think? Let us know in the comments below!
