Custom Offers

Overview

Some sales don't fit a fixed listing price. A translator quotes by word count, a consultant by project scope, a designer by the brief. Custom offers let a seller agree a price with a buyer in the messaging thread, then send a payable offer right inside the conversation. The buyer taps Accept & Pay and checks out - no need to create a separate public listing at a special price.

• Private pricing: the offer is only visible to that buyer in the conversation
• One-click payment: accepting the offer takes the buyer straight to secure checkout
• Real orders: a paid offer becomes a normal order with the usual payout, receipts, and emails

How Custom Offers Work

Sending an Offer (Sellers)

From inside a conversation about one of your listings:

Accepting an Offer (Buyers)

The buyer sees the offer card in the same conversation and clicks Accept & Pay. That opens secure checkout for the offered amount (plus delivery when the item ships, see below). Once paid, the card updates to Paid and the order is created automatically.

Paying Several Offers in One Checkout

When your store has the shopping cart turned on, the offer card gets a second button, Add to cart. A buyer who collected offers from several sellers (a venue, a caterer and a DJ for one event, say) adds each one to the cart and pays them all in a single checkout. Every seller is paid their own share, exactly as with any other cart order.

• Accept & Pay stays on the card. It is still the quickest way to pay one offer on its own.
• An offer in the cart stays open until it is paid. If the seller withdraws it, or the buyer pays it from the chat instead, it leaves the cart and the buyer is told why.
• The price in the cart is always the price on the offer. The buyer can remove an offer from the cart, but cannot change its quantity.
• Coupon codes cannot be used on an order that includes an offer, so a discount never cuts the price a seller agreed to.

After Payment

A paid offer behaves exactly like any other sale:

• It appears in the buyer's My Orders and the seller's My Sales.
• The seller is paid out the offered amount minus the marketplace commission and, unless the marketplace pays it, the payment processing fee.
• If the marketplace charges a buyer service fee, it is added on top of the offered amount. The buyer sees it on the offer before paying, and the seller's payout is not affected.
• Both parties receive the standard confirmation emails.
• If the listing tracks stock or has an event date, those are handled just like a normal purchase.
• Offers cannot be sent on a listing that tracks stock per option (sizes, colours): an offer does not say which option it is for, so there is no stock to check or reduce. The buyer purchases from the listing page instead.

Offers on Items That Ship

An offer follows the shipping setting of the listing it was made on. When your store has shipping turned on and the listing's type is shippable, a paid offer is handled exactly like a normal purchase of that listing at the agreed price.

• The buyer pays delivery on top of the offer, using your normal flat rate or the listing's own shipping price. The offer card shows the delivery charge before the buyer pays, and the free-shipping threshold applies as usual.
• The buyer enters their delivery address at checkout, so the seller knows where to send it and can create a shipping label from the order.
• The seller's payout is held until the order is shipped (and confirmed by the buyer, if you use buyer delivery confirmation). Ship-by deadlines and their automatic refunds apply too.
• If your store keeps the shipping fee, the delivery charge goes to the store, as on any other order.

When Offers Are Available