eBay Best Offer for sellers: auto-accept, auto-decline and sending offers to watchers
Best Offer lets buyers negotiate — and with the right settings, eBay handles most offers for you. Here’s how it works, from eBay’s seller guides.
Adding Best Offer to a listing
In the advanced listing tool, go to Pricing, turn Allow offers on, and optionally add:
- a Minimum offer amount — offers below it are declined automatically;
- an Auto accept amount — offers at or above it are accepted automatically.
Buyers can’t see your limits. Offers between the two come to you to decide.
“Auto accept amount” error?
eBay requires the auto-accept amount to be below your Buy It Now price. If you see an error about it, check that first — lower the amount, or remove it.
Where Best Offer isn’t available
- If your listing is an auction with a Buy It Now price, offers aren’t available.
- Best Offer can’t be added to auction-style listings in cell phones, motors, real estate, tablets and tickets.
Responding to an offer
eBay emails you, and offers appear in Seller Hub → Active listings with offers. You have 24 hours to:
- accept (which ends the listing);
- counteroffer — your counter must be lower than your Buy It Now price but higher than the buyer’s offer;
- decline; or
- let it expire after 24 hours (or when the listing ends).
Offers from repeat buyers — anyone who bought more than one order from you in the past two years — are marked so you can prioritize them.
An open offer doesn’t lock the item: someone else can still buy it, and unaccepted offers are cancelled when it sells.
Sending offers to interested buyers
Separately from Best Offer, you can send a private discount to buyers who are watching an item or have it in their cart:
- In Seller Hub Active Listings, use the Send offers-eligible filter, then send offers one by one or in bulk.
- The minimum discount is 5%, and offers apply to the item price only, not shipping.
- Listings need a Buy It Now option; auctions aren’t eligible.
- You can choose to send the same offer automatically to future interested buyers. eBay Store subscribers can also create rule-based automatic offers by category, price range and condition.
- You can’t send one to a buyer who already made you a Best Offer.
Mind your margin
Before discounting, check what you’ll keep after eBay’s fees — and any ad fees if the buyer first found you through Promoted Listings. Use the eBay fee calculator and see eBay Promoted Listings fees.