sales are plmeting fees are going up

[aubreyclay56]

time to get rid of the store too bad ebay is getting so greedy with fees ,anyone else experiancing falling sales with no proffits

[pierrelebel]

"Many who sell on eBay today lived through the last postal strike......Each of  them knows what to do..."

Many of us have been in the mail order business well before eBay and e-commerce.  You are right: we know what to do:

stop advertising and selling several days prior to work stoppage.

[ypdc_dennis]

July 2 is the first day the union can go on strike or the first day Canada Post can lock them out.

Since that's a Saturday on a long weekend, I don't expect any serious action from either side until Monday, July 4.

-..-

Last time:

June 3, 2011 - daily rotating strikes began.
Mail got through, usually with very little delay, because mail volumes were way down.

June 14, 2011 - lockout began.
NO mail moment, complete shutdown. I put my selling on vacation since the alternatives (FedEx / UPS / etc) were not a good shipping fit for me.

June 27, 2011 - back to work legislation passed
Delivery slower than usual for a a couple of weeks as Canada Post played catch up (mail that was trapped in the system plus several weeks of mail that people had been waiting to send out).

-..-

[recped]

---

@pierrelebel wrote:

"Many who sell on eBay today lived through the last postal strike......Each of  them knows what to do..."

Many of us have been in the mail order business well before eBay and e-commerce.  You are right: we know what to do:

stop advertising and selling several days prior to work stoppage.

---

Make alternate arrangements!

Maybe not possible if you sell 2 items per week, but if you only sell 2 item per week shutting down during a postal strike isn't much of a burden.

[goldnideas]

My first low, only 1 sale in 8 days, never happened before, usually I have couple of transactions per day. My ebay fees is triple-digit. It is time to rethink business. 

[davenjan2000]

I thought it was just me... I was doing very well this year, then about 2 weeks ago, sales took an abrupt nose-dive. Not sure if it has anything to do with the eBay.ca currency migration, but that is the only thing I can think of with regards to search visibility, etc.

[pjcdn2005]

I don't know what the cause is either but many sellers have commented on how slow it is...some in Canada and some in the U.S.  My May sales seem slower than usual as well but I haven't made any currency changes as most of my listings were already listed on .com.

[davenjan2000]

I am in the thick of my migration to .com with about 50% complete. It's much more labour intensive than I thought it would be, but the migration tool is a big help once you get used to it. I am also using it as an opportunity to review my listings and standardize things a bit better. 

My thinking was that all those endings and new listings were wreaking havoc with my search visibility, but if other sellers to the south are also feeling it, then it might be market forces, issues with the platform, or the nice weather.

Just gotta keep pluggin' away... 

[femmefan1946]

I haven't noticed much of a difference. Buyers are unlikely to worry about an impending lockout  (because it would be a lockout, the workers don't want to miss paycheques which they will if they strike).

The Liberal government is a little less likely to order striking workers back than the Cons, but they will be listening to the Big Shippers like banks who are still sending out a lot of paper notices.

But the move to parcels over letters is something both sides must be aware of.

DH and I were discussing it, and like some of you we had noticed that a lot of our parcels actually do arrive on Saturdays. We think a sensible arrangement would be to move to alternate day home/office delivery but six days a week. Perhaps stick with five days for office areas as opposed to commercial areas that include factories and shops.

I really doubt most homeowners would notice that they don't see the carrier every day.  And there should be enough work for carriers to end the worry about layoffs.

Toss in domestic parcel delivery on the 'off' days and six day commercial parcel delivery.

[momcqueen]

I wouldn't care if my lettermail delivery fell to once a week so long as I didn't have to wait even a minute longer than necessary for my parcels (incoming and outgoing) to be delivered.