eBay

treasure.hunter.d · ‎06-28-2014

So bright and early today I am online preparing to take advantage of the latest promotion. I don't like auction style listings but hey, they're free right.

Oh wait, not so fast there Sparky, not so free after all.

Turns out that because I want to use the scheduling feature, that was free prior to my opening a store, I now have to pay 10 cents a pop for scheduled listings. I called Ebay support and was told specifically that because I now have a store the scheduling feature is no longer free to me. People who do not pay for a store can schedule auction style listings in the promo for free but I can''t.

So to sum up. Ebay has bullied me into opening a store so that i can maintain some semblance of the number of free listings I had previously and now I am paying them an extra $15 per month for that privilege but they have take away a free service that i used extensively the cost of which now will pretty much outweigh any benefit I see from having a store and paying for it.

Auction listings suck to start with for my genre of items but if you're going to use auction style you have to have them ending at a very specific window time frame to get any success at all from them and now, in order to achieve that, I have to pay.

Just another item in a long list of stupidity from Ebay!

reallynicestamps · ‎06-28-2014

Except.

All your items I checked are Buy It Now/ Fixed Price.

To me, that means opening and closing times are irrelevant. They stay open until someone somewhere in the world, no matter his time zone, buys.

What happens when you list an auction?

If you use a PC, Turbo Lister apparently gives free delayed start times.

mr.elmwood · ‎06-28-2014

"you have to have them ending at a very specific window"

That is yesterday's thinking. Most of my sales happen after midnight. with auctions, they either bid or do not. With the rising usage of mobile devices, people bid any time, any where. Tied to a PC is old tech.

.
.
.

treasure.hunter.d · ‎06-28-2014

@reallynicestamps wrote:
Except.
All your items I checked are Buy It Now/ Fixed Price.
To me, that means opening and closing times are irrelevant. They stay open until someone somewhere in the world, no matter his time zone, buys.

What happens when you list an auction?

If you use a PC, Turbo Lister apparently gives free delayed start times.

Correct as I do not like listing in Auction Format as it is generally not successful for the genre of items I sell. That being said, I will take advantage of free listings when given the opportunity however they will not be free at 10 cents/per.

I have tried using Turbo Lister on numerous occasions and every time it ends with me throwing up my hands in disgust. It is clunky, slow and prone to quits randomly. As someone who used to write application code for a living I can say without reservation that it is a completely junk piece of software!

The bottom line here is that if I wasn't paying for a store I could schedule for free. That makes absolutely no sense. I bit the bullet and subscribed to a store to try and maintain some level of "workable" free listings and now will incur charges where I had none previously.

As far as the success of auctions being tied to starting/ending at specific times, as far as I can tell, from the latest info, that still holds true. The only caveat to that is that now we are being told that the most successful auction sales are now "1 bid" affairs where the opening bid is the selling price you would want for the item anyway. talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Why would anyone wait a week to bid on your item if they can buy it from someone on the spot? Sure, if you have a unique item that no one else has that will work but that is the exception rather than the norm. On the other hand you can put a BIN price in but with a 30% spread now on that whi in their right mind is going to overpay by 30% rather than wait a week to get something.

It's a mess plain and simple and just another instance where Ebay is nickel and diming us to death.

mr.elmwood · ‎06-28-2014

@treasure.hunter.d wrote:
@reallynicestamps wrote:
Except.
All your items I checked are Buy It Now/ Fixed Price.
To me, that means opening and closing times are irrelevant. They stay open until someone somewhere in the world, no matter his time zone, buys.

What happens when you list an auction?

If you use a PC, Turbo Lister apparently gives free delayed start times.
Correct as I do not like listing in Auction Format as it is generally not successful for the genre of items I sell. That being said, I will take advantage of free listings when given the opportunity however they will not be free at 10 cents/per.

I have tried using Turbo Lister on numerous occasions and every time it ends with me throwing up my hands in disgust. It is clunky, slow and prone to quits randomly. As someone who used to write application code for a living I can say without reservation that it is a completely junk piece of software!

The bottom line here is that if I wasn't paying for a store I could schedule for free. That makes absolutely no sense. I bit the bullet and subscribed to a store to try and maintain some level of "workable" free listings and now will incur charges where I had none previously.

As far as the success of auctions being tied to starting/ending at specific times, as far as I can tell, from the latest info, that still holds true. The only caveat to that is that now we are being told that the most successful auction sales are now "1 bid" affairs where the opening bid is the selling price you would want for the item anyway. talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Why would anyone wait a week to bid on your item if they can buy it from someone on the spot? Sure, if you have a unique item that no one else has that will work but that is the exception rather than the norm. On the other hand you can put a BIN price in but with a 30% spread now on that whi in their right mind is going to overpay by 30% rather than wait a week to get something.

It's a mess plain and simple and just another instance where Ebay is nickel and diming us to death.

That is what they want you to do. My view is that the gulf between stores and non-store people will widen I have already seen the difference. I am getting all sorts of promos as a store owner. Flexibility to list far above my allotted 500.

You only have 67 items listed. I assume you have a basic store. Ideally, you should have 200 BIN store widgets, plus, many more utilizing the promos. The more you list, the more you will sell, generally.

I "think" that you are not seeing the benefits. I "think" that is because you do not have enough listed. You are railing at the system, but, you are not using the system optimally.

The last two weeks I made $250 off of widgets I could not sell at any price, yet, sold them at auction listed at the least I would accept.

My concept of starting and ending times is this: with promos, I list for exposure, then re-list aiming at days and times I want to end on and at. I am gradually building up an inventory of auction widgets that I bulk list when a promo comes on.

My 500 free listings are now boosted to around 650. I treat auctions as a short term, discount, BIN.

.
.
.

pocomocomputing · ‎06-28-2014

@reallynicestamps wrote:
Except.
All your items I checked are Buy It Now/ Fixed Price.
To me, that means opening and closing times are irrelevant. They stay open until someone somewhere in the world, no matter his time zone, buys.

What happens when you list an auction?

If you use a PC, Turbo Lister apparently gives free delayed start times.

TL does not give delayed start times other than manually uploading at the time you want them to start. You can create/relist lisitng and place in the TL Upload queue and then at the desired time you want, manually upload the listings into eBay. You have to be available to upload at the desired time.

Turbo Lister allows you to schedule listings in the Upload queue in TL. When uploaded, TL transfers these scheduled listings into the eBay online scheduled listing. Schedule fees are charged if a store and are free for a non-store.

You do not need to use TL and the Upload queue to hold listings to manually start at a later time. The same can be done with eBay Scheduled listing. Just schedule a listing(s) 2-3 weeks in the future and then at the desired time, bulk edit the scheduled listing and change the start time start immediately. No fees will apply. You need to be at your computer at the desired time to change the scheduled listing. It takes a few minutes to do the change.

No schedule fees are charged for holding listings in the scheduled listing on eBay. Only when eBay start the listing at the scheduled time does a schedule fee get charged.

Sellers have been using this trick to hold listings in the schedule queue and manually starting them to avoid schedule fees for years.

treasure.hunter.d · ‎06-29-2014

@mr.elmwood wrote:
You only have 67 items listed.

I generally have about 3 times that many listed and as many had just ended I was about to relist when I discovered the fee for scheduling.

I hear what you are saying about dumping items that aren't moving and I get it but my main gripe, that whole point for this thread initially, was that it is completely backwards to charge store subscribers to use the scheduling feature when non-store people can get it for free! Second, and I believe valid point, is that Ebay is getting really good at nickel and diming us.

Anyway, I guess it doesn't really matter as Ebay is not going to change their policy to anything even remotely something resembling fair and ethical so whatever!

nuvistors · ‎06-29-2014

you have to have them ending at a very specific window time frame to get any success

___

Which time zone are you using ? Do you favor bidders in the east or the west ?

Do bidders from Africa buy at different times.

rose-dee · ‎06-29-2014

treasure.hunter.d wrote:

mr.elmwood wrote:

You only have 67 items listed.

I generally have about 3 times that many listed and as many had just ended I was about to relist when I discovered the fee for scheduling.

If you have a basic store, remember that you can list your allotted 150 on eBay.ca plus another 150 on eBay.com, so up to 300/month, plus any promos that come along. Not too bad compared to non-store sellers. Also, I have to say that from my own experience, having the other perks associated with a store are almost worth the monthly cost in themselves. I especially rely on the Omniture stats as a guide to what and how to list.

Listing on .com does mean a little bit of sleight-of-hand where shipping details are concerned, and you have to use flat rate, but if you're able to take advantage of those listings you can effectively offset the cost of paying for scheduling when promos come up. Lately, many of the promos have been multi-format offers anyway (auction, FP, FP with BIN), so you could cherry-pick what you want to use.

Actually, I agree with Mr. E -- I don't think scheduled times are as important as they used to be. It's now really more a matter of convenience for the seller. Do what 'poco' suggests and pick a date/time that you think is good, set up your listings and save them until the time comes, then list. About 9 or 10pm eastern is probably just about right for most of North America, and isn't a terribly inconvenient time to be at your computer to hit the "list now" button.

mr.elmwood · ‎06-29-2014

I sell to the USA, which includes armed forces bases in Europe and worldwide, Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, states of California and Hawaii, Guam, and the Northern Marianas Islands.

How many time zones is that? Hum, 16 time zones and the International Date Line. That is just for considering the United States. OOPS! I forgot Diego Garcia. Might as well make that 24 time zones.

I sell quite a bit to Kazakhstan. They are, like 14 hours and a day ahead, so, if I want to catch yer basic Kazakhstanian after he has had dinner and watched Jeopardy, I should start and end my auctions when? I should start them tomorrow to end yesterday?

.
.
.