Alex, this is how eBay handles offers on auction-style listings. This is straight from their help page. I included a link to the page below.

If you have an auction-style listing with the best offer option, bear in mind that:

If you receive a bid
Current offers and counteroffers will be declined automatically, and buyers won’t be able to make any additional offers on your item
If you had received an offer that was higher than the current bid, the buyer who made the offer will need to place a bid, as their offer was declined when the first bid was placed
If a bidder retracts their bid, the best offer feature will be re-enabled

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/l...xt=DEFAULT_BUYER&lucenceai=lucenceai


Basically, if the item has no bids and you make an offer, the offer is valid until either the seller declines or a bid is placed. If you attempt to make an offer on an item that already has a bid, the offer is automatically declined. You would have to place a bid at that point. If any and all bidders retract their bids, any offers made on the item become valid again until a new bid is placed. Of course, in this case, the buyer and seller are circumventing this whole process by ending the auction early and making the deal offline, which cheats all the watchers out of the item and cheats eBay out of their final value fee. Evidently, they are making so much money that they don't care.

BrianH

Brian H