Irritating Ebay Offers

I have had this happen to me lately as well.

Maybe there is a setting to automatically shoot an offer to anyone who clicks on an item.

That changed a few months ago. Sellers were allowed to make an unsolicited offer to users who had simply viewed an item for a particular (very short) amount of time. However, what really has changed the volume of offers is a new seller setting that allows you to automatically make that discount offer when the system detects it, without any human intervention from the seller. Many sellers have now set their Buy It Now listings to automatically spam offers of -5% discounts to all shoppers who view their listings.

As a variety hunter, this drives me nuts, because I very rapidly view hundreds of listings daily, looking for a needle in a haystack. Now I get spammed relentlessly.



Not to my knowledge—and I have done research on that because it's so annoying. The most irritating part is that is swamps out notifications that I have been outbid in an auction, and drowns out legitimate offers from coins that I have saved to favorites. I don't imagine that ebay would allow you to selectively block those unsolicited offers, because to them, that is a feature of the platform.

According to various sources, between 50-65% of ebay stock is held in mutual funds and ETFs. By definition, those shareholders think nothing specific about literally anything that ebay does. They might not even know they own ebay stock in particular.

The shareholder stewards at those mutual funds and ETFs might have an opinion on various issues, but a tiny percentage of scammy behavior isn't going to make their radar. They are going to worry about dividends, growth, ESG, carbon footprint, and their remuneration. Not necessarily in that order. =P

The board might care, if it affected their remuneration, which it almost certainly doesn't unless the SEC or DOJ gives them a poke about consumer fraud exceeding the acceptable threshold. Unless it makes headlines or produces a social media splash, I would say they would be disinterested at best and unaware at worst.

This doesn't sound encouraging. Lowball counteroffers it is.

I've received these offers also....usually on items that I had no intentions on buying anyhow, either I was comparing with similar item I have, or seeing why the seller had it priced insanely high..........

The board exists to generate TSR. They approve of anything that helps achieve that goal.


Bingo. Customer outrage only matters if it impacts TSR. They run a marketplace that generates revenues; buyers and sellers within that marketplace are secondary concerns at best, and both are fungible. Coins and people like us are only a small part of Ebay.