An offer sets a line under the price, and that line only ever moves upwards.
Where the window opens, and which account it speaks for
There are two ways in, and they open the same window:
The window is titled “MAKE AN OFFER”, and while it reads the terms of the negotiation it says so: “Reading the negotiation terms…”. Nothing can be sent until that read comes back — an offer sent against terms we have not read is an offer sent blind.
The account is named on screen even when there is only one. With a single usable account, you read its name followed by “the offer will go out from this account”. With several, a “From” dropdown appears, restricted to the accounts that can actually act.This is not decoration. Without a named account, our servers would take “the first usable account” and the offer would be recorded at Vestiaire under a name nobody chose. On a marketplace where an offer is irreversible, that is not a detail.
The offer, from the click to the payment
What the window reads before it lets you type
An offer needs two bounds: a minimum you may not go under, and a maximum. REGA looks for them in three places, in this order, and stops at the first one that actually answers.The source of the floor is written on screen, and it is not decorative. A bound handed over by the marketplace and a bound we worked out ourselves do not carry the same weight, so they are not written the same way.
- Served by the marketplace: “Minimum offer accepted by Vestiaire:
{min}.” - Worked out here: “Vestiaire did not state its minimum;
{min}is derived from the observed rule (−30 %). An offer just below it may be refused.”
Two bounds, and the room you are allowed to move in between them.
“Vestiaire gives neither a minimum nor a maximum for this item, and nothing lets us derive them. Nothing has been sent: a guessed offer would burn one of your attempts.”In that state there is no input field at all. That is the point: there is nothing to type into, so there is nothing to get wrong.
The upper bound is Vestiaire’s, not ours
The maximum shown is the one the marketplace publishes, and failing that the listed price of the item. It is not a cap set by REGA. The product arms no price cap anywhere, on either marketplace, and it is not going to: visibility replaces the constraint. The figures behind that choice are on Money.The floor, and the rule behind it
Vestiaire does not publish its formula. We measured it.- On large amounts the floor served by the marketplace is 70.000 % of the listed price — measured at €1,225 on an item listed at €1,750, and at 70.000 % across 25 listings.
- On small amounts it drifts up to about 74 %, and rounding explains that on its own: it is a round-up to the whole euro. Measured: an item at €23 gives a floor of €17 — that is 73.9 %, exactly the top of the range we observed.
That calculation is done in whole numbers, never in decimals. On the €23 item, a decimal calculation would land on €16 instead of €17 — and one euro under the floor is a complete refusal, not a near miss. The difference between 16 and 17 is the difference between an offer and a wasted attempt.
How the two bounds are rounded on screen
The floor rounds up, the ceiling rounds down — each towards the inside of the interval. It is the only direction in which rounding cannot make you cross a bound. The case that taught us this: on an item listed at €126, the exact floor is €88.20. Showing €88 on the slider looks harmless, and it is not — €88 is under the minimum, Vestiaire refuses it, and the refusal consumes one of your attempts on that item. The window therefore offers €89. The listed price of the item, at the top of the window next to its title, is rounded to the nearest euro instead. That one is a label, not a bound — while the two figures printed under the slider are the bounds themselves, each rounded inwards.Why the bounds sometimes go quiet
This is the trap of the whole page, and it is worth reading slowly. The first source — the marketplace’s opening terms — answers “a negotiation already exists” and stops giving anything the moment a negotiation is open on the item. We saw it happen three times in our measurements. In other words: it goes silent exactly when the floor has just moved, which is exactly when you need it. The second source closes that hole without one extra request: the bounds were already travelling inside the live negotiation’s answer, and were simply being thrown away. That is also the only source that knows how many offers you have left.Whole euros, and nothing else
The amount leaves in whole euros. There is no cents field, and there is no half-euro on the slider.Enter deliberately does not send. Sending on Enter would send the number as you typed it — before it was rounded and clamped — which is precisely the number that can sit one euro under the floor. One keystroke, one wasted attempt. So Enter confirms the value, and the button sends it.The suggestions Vestiaire itself proposes
When the marketplace supplies suggested amounts, the window opens on the one it recommends; failing that, on the first one; failing that, on nothing at all. Each suggestion is a button carrying the amount itself, in euros — that is what you read, and that is what you click. Vestiaire’s own wording for it — “−10 %” and the like — travels with it untouched and appears only when you hover the button with a mouse. We do not relabel someone else’s offer terms, and we do not put their label where the figure that will be sent belongs.No default amount is ever invented. A default sitting on the floor would lowball on your behalf, on a gesture that cannot be undone. A default sitting at the full price would be an empty offer. Where the marketplace suggests nothing, the field opens empty and waits for you.
The floor rises to your amount, and never comes back down
This is the single most expensive fact on this page. After an offer, the minimum accepted on that item becomes your own amount. Measured twice on real items:
The consequence is blunt: offering at −15 % permanently forbids going to −30 % later. Whoever wants the floor has to aim for it on the first try.
The window says so above the button, before the gesture, not after it:
“The minimum rises permanently to your amount: after an offer at −10 %, you can no longer go down to −30 %. Aim right the first time.”And, on the same screen, the other half of the arithmetic:
“Your offer covers the item only. Shipping and fees are added at payment time, and the gap is not fixed — the basket total is what counts.”
How many offers you have left on an item
The number of offers is capped per item by the marketplace. That count is served only by the live negotiation — so it only exists once a first offer has been made.- Before any offer, the count is unknown, and that is the normal case, not a fault. “Nothing” is not “zero”: treating it as zero would grey out the button on every item nobody has ever negotiated.
- Once known: “You have
{n}offer(s) left on this item.” - At the end of the line: “You have no offers left on this item — the number is capped per item.”
What the cap actually is, we do not know. The marketplace does not publish it, and we hold exactly one measured observation: 2 offers left after an accepted offer of €161 on an item listed at €189 (−14.8 %), valid for 24 hours. We would rather write that than round it into a rule.
Sending: one click, and the one guardrail left
The window sends on one click, and does not ask you a second time. That is deliberate: the second confirmation this window used to show claimed a consequence that does not exist — that an accepted offer commits the purchase. It does not, and a confirmation stating something false is worse than no confirmation at all. The guardrail that remains is narrow and precise: you cannot send the same amount twice. The marketplace would accept the second send, and it would consume one of your attempts for nothing. The button refuses to send in eight situations:
The window carries two buttons: “Close”, and the one that sends — which reads “Make an offer”, then “Sending…” while the offer is in flight.
An offer never touches your Vestiaire basket, and never takes the buying lock: it talks to the negotiation and to nothing else. You can offer on one item while a purchase is being prepared on another. What the basket does hold, and why it is global to the whole account, is covered in Buying on Vestiaire.
What happens the moment you send
A refusal from Vestiaire is not a breakdown of REGA, and our own server deliberately refuses to dress it as one: it answers the window the same way whether the marketplace said yes or no, and carries the marketplace’s verdict inside that answer. So the window reads what the marketplace actually said, never merely the fact that an answer came back — the second of those would announce “offer sent” over a refusal.
Two things happen on their own after a send, and both matter:
- On a refusal, the bounds are read again immediately. A refusal very often means the floor moved between the moment the window opened and the moment you clicked.
- On a success, the bounds are read again too. The floor has just risen to your amount, and one attempt has just been spent — the window shows you the new state rather than the state you decided in.
The offer is recorded here after it has gone out, never before. Recording it first would show you a proposal the seller never received. And re-offering on the same item overwrites the previous line and reopens the follow-up: the marketplace only ever holds one live negotiation per item.
Accepted, refused, countered
Three things can come back from the seller: an acceptance, a refusal, or a counter-offer. Each step of a negotiation — from either side — comes with a message the marketplace writes itself.When the offer is accepted
The window stops offering a field and shows three sentences instead:
“Your offer on this item was accepted.”
“It stays valid until {date}.”
“Careful: an accepted offer does not reserve the item — it stays on sale for everyone until you pay.”
Buying at the accepted price requires nothing special: the negotiated amount travels down to the basket on its own. Measured on a real negotiation: an offer accepted at €34 gave a basket showing €34 for the items — and a total of €38.90.
That gap is the point of the next warning.
When it is refused, or countered
A counter-offer from the seller changes the current price of the negotiation. What REGA asked for and what the marketplace now holds can differ — and it is the marketplace that is right. Outside the window, the item panel keeps summing the state up in one line: “Price{price} · minimum offer {min}”.
What we cannot do yet is show you a counter-offer, or the closing of a negotiation, on a screen. That is written out in full at the bottom of this page.
What the seller sees — and what we cannot tell you
We can describe our side of a negotiation to the euro. The seller’s side, we cannot, and we would rather say so than describe a screen we have never seen.What we know
A negotiation moves in three kinds of step — an offer, an acceptance, a refusal — each of which can come from the buyer or from the seller, each carrying a message written by Vestiaire itself.
What we do not know
What the seller’s screen or notification looks like when your offer lands. We hold no capture of the seller’s side, so this guide describes none.
How long an untreated offer stays open
Unknown. The only deadline we have measured is the one on an accepted offer: 24 hours. For an offer nobody has answered yet, we have no figure, and we will not invent one.
How often offers get accepted
Unknown. No acceptance rate is tracked anywhere in the product. Anyone quoting you one would be quoting a feeling.
Our tips
1 · Aim for the floor on the first try
1 · Aim for the floor on the first try
An offer becomes the floor. There is no probing, no testing the water, no going back down. On the item measured, an offer at €1,488 turned a €1,225 floor into a €1,488 floor for good.The move: decide your amount before you open the window, and if you want the floor, take the floor the marketplace serves — the one shown as “Minimum offer accepted by Vestiaire”.
2 · Read the “From” account before every single offer
2 · Read the “From” account before every single offer
The account named in the window is the one Vestiaire will record the offer under — and it is the window’s own choice, not the panel’s. The window opens on the first usable account, whatever account is selected on the panel behind it.The move: with more than one account, re-read the dropdown inside the window just before you click. It costs a second, and it is the only moment you can still change your mind.
3 · Check that the account can buy before a hunting session
3 · Check that the account can buy before a hunting session
A Vestiaire connection can be valid for browsing and refused on the buying pages — measured on two real sessions. An account that cannot buy is also an account whose accepted offer you will not be able to honour within its 24 hours.The move: run the “Check” button on the account you are about to use, and insist on “Connected — this account can buy.” See Your Vestiaire accounts.
4 · Budget above your offer, never at it
4 · Budget above your offer, never at it
Your offer covers the item alone. The measured gaps run from +€4.90 to +€66.52, and destination is what drives them.The move: on anything shipping outside the EU, decide your amount from the basket total you accept, not from the price on the card.
5 · Treat an acceptance as a countdown, not a reservation
5 · Treat an acceptance as a countdown, not a reservation
The acceptance is valid 24 hours, and during those 24 hours the item is on sale to everyone, at its normal price, for anyone who pays first.The move: pay the same day. If the account is not ready to pay, sort that out before you offer, not after the acceptance.
6 · Do not re-send an offer that “could not be recorded”
6 · Do not re-send an offer that “could not be recorded”
That sentence means the offer left. Our record of it did not. Those are two different failures, and only one of them has consequences for your money.The move: on that sentence, stop. Reopen the window later if you want to see the state: the bounds are read afresh every time, and they will tell you the truth.
7 · Take the marketplace's suggestion seriously
7 · Take the marketplace's suggestion seriously
The suggested amounts, and the recommended one among them, are Vestiaire’s own. They are the closest thing to a signal about what this seller is likely to accept — nothing inside REGA knows more than that.The move: if there is a recommended suggestion, that is the amount the window opens on. Changing it is a decision; keeping it is one too.
8 · Offer from an item panel, not from memory
8 · Offer from an item panel, not from memory
The floor can have moved since you last looked at the listing — your own offers move it, and so does anyone else’s negotiation.The move: always go through the window, always let it finish “Reading the negotiation terms…”, and read the floor it comes back with.
What surprises people
An accepted offer does not take the item off the market
An accepted offer does not take the item off the market
It is the first thing everyone gets wrong. An acceptance here is a price, valid 24 hours — not a hold on the item. The listing stays up, and stays winnable by anyone who pays before you do.
The floor is not a percentage you choose
The floor is not a percentage you choose
It is served by the marketplace, and where the marketplace stays silent it is derived from 70 % of the price rounded up to the whole euro. Neither of the two is negotiable, and neither depends on which account you offer from.
“No offers left” and “we do not know how many are left” look nothing alike
“No offers left” and “we do not know how many are left” look nothing alike
Before your first offer on an item, the count simply does not exist — the marketplace only reports it once a negotiation is open. The window shows nothing rather than a zero, because a zero would block a button that should be perfectly clickable.
Pressing Enter does not send the offer
Pressing Enter does not send the offer
It validates what you typed, and the clamping between the two bounds happens at that moment. It is the one keystroke where doing less is safer.
The bounds go missing exactly when they matter most
The bounds go missing exactly when they matter most
The marketplace’s opening terms stop answering as soon as a negotiation exists on the item — that is, right after the floor has moved. The live negotiation fills the gap, at no extra cost, but it explains why the source line under the field can change between two visits to the same item.
The window names the account even when you own exactly one
The window names the account even when you own exactly one
Redundant, on purpose. The alternative is an offer recorded under whichever account happened to be first in a list — which is fine ninety-nine times and unforgivable once.
Offering does not put anything in your basket
Offering does not put anything in your basket
An offer and a purchase preparation are two separate gestures that happen to sit on the same panel. Only the second one touches the Vestiaire basket — and it empties it first.
Two offers of the same amount are refused before they leave
Two offers of the same amount are refused before they leave
Vestiaire would happily accept the second one and count it. The window refuses it here, where it costs nothing.
What making an offer does not do yet
We would rather write it here than let you find out halfway through a negotiation.No automatic offers
Nothing in REGA sends an offer on its own — no rule, no schedule, no “offer −30 % on everything this filter finds”. Every offer comes from a click of yours, on an amount you set. This is a decision, not a missing piece: an irreversible gesture on somebody else’s money does not belong to a loop.
No “Your offers” screen
There is no page listing the offers you have made. One message still points at one — “it will not show up in your offers” — and that sentence is, for now, pointing at a screen that does not exist. The record is kept; it is simply not shown anywhere yet.
No reading of your offers from the marketplace
Vestiaire does not hand us a buyer’s list of negotiations, so even a future screen could only show what REGA itself recorded — and an offer that failed to record would be missing from it.
A closed negotiation is not shown
Refused, expired, closed: the state exists on our side, and no screen reads it today. What you get instead is the window’s own re-read of the bounds when you reopen it.
A counter-offer is not surfaced
If the seller comes back with a price of their own, the marketplace holds it and it is the one that counts — but no screen in REGA shows it to you yet, and no notification goes out.
No price cap, deliberately
The upper bound in the window is Vestiaire’s, not a guardrail of ours. No cap is armed on this marketplace, on purpose: the product shows you the numbers instead of deciding for you.
One thing this window will never do is guess. Where the marketplace gives no minimum and no rule applies, there is no field, no slider and no default amount — only the sentence explaining why nothing was sent. A believable number would cost you an attempt, and attempts on an item are capped.
Where to go next
Your Vestiaire accounts
Which account can offer, why a connection can be half valid, and the 30 days a session lasts.
Buying on Vestiaire
What an accepted offer actually costs once shipping and the marketplace’s fees are in the basket.
The Vestiaire screen
Where the detections are, and the panel the offer window opens from.
The marketplace, and how it differs
Why there is no birth to catch here, and what a single shared watch means.
Money
Caps, totals actually debited, and everything that can spend without you.
When something refuses
Every refusal sentence in the product, and the gesture that unblocks it.