When a seller comes back with a different price, and how to answer it.
A seller who is willing to move but not as far as you asked will answer your offer with a price of their own. That is a counter-offer, and it puts the negotiation back on your side of the table.
The red badge appears on your account menu, and the negotiation moves to Waiting for you on the Pending tab of your Offers list. Nothing is emailed, so the badge is the signal to watch.
Open it and you will see the seller's figure, the whole history of the negotiation so far, and 24 hours on the clock.
Doing nothing is a fourth answer, and rarely the one you want: after 24 hours the offer expires on its own and the turn is spent.
This is the rule that makes a negotiation converge rather than go in circles. Your counter to a seller must be below their counter — you can come up from your original offer, but you cannot go back down past what they have just asked for. Their counter to you is always above your offer and below the listing price.
Each round therefore narrows the gap. If the seller's figure is already the lowest you would consider, countering is not the move — accepting is.
A counter is an offer, and it spends one of your three turns exactly like your first one did. Sending it also closes the seller's offer automatically — you cannot counter and keep their price on the table as a fallback.
That is worth pausing on. If the seller has countered at a price you would accept, and you counter once more hoping to shave a little off, you have given up the price you had. They are free to decline and offer nothing further.
Three offers from you and three counters from them, per item, counting everything ever sent on that listing. A realistic negotiation therefore looks like: your offer, their counter, your counter, their counter, your last offer, their last counter — and then someone has to accept or walk away.
When your turns are gone the item does not close to you. You can still buy it at its listed price; you simply cannot negotiate on it again.
A seller is under no obligation to reply, and silence is a legitimate no. Your offer expires after 24 hours and the turn is used, but the listing is unaffected — if you still want the item, it is there at the asking price.