eBay

tyler@ebay · ‎02-26-2019

As we work on building a banner year in 2019 we want to further simplify the listing process and strategically focus effort where we feel it will bring you business and make us more competitive in the e-commerce landscape. Read about the specific changes to listing format and catalogue adoption here and here and let us know your questions below, we’ll be here to address them and work on getting you answers!

Tyler,

forester_studios · ‎03-01-2019

OK - So I can send offers to a few watchers. But how do I adjust prices down if they are continually relisting? When I could run 5 or10 day listings I could "test the waters" so to speak by quickly seeing what items got more interest. Now that option will be gone. Having LESS control on my ebay business is not more.

I know I will have to adjust to these changes, but sorry to say I still see no real benefit here. Time will tell.

mcrlmn · ‎03-01-2019

I listed 20+ new items today.
This morning I read eBay's message regarding changes, but didn't expect any change today.
Fortunately, about half way through listing the new items, I noticed the default duration was set at 'Good 'Til Cancelled'.
I manually selected '30 days' from the drop down menu.
I went back to check the listings I created earlier this morning.
The change must have come into effect about noon EST, as my earlier new listings, that I hadn't checked, were all '30 days' as I've always assumed and prefer.
Typically, I could use more than my monthly store allotment of 250 'Buy it now', and auto relisting would ensure unwanted costs.
I am constantly listing new items, the less appealing items relegated to auction when their listings expire.
My sales don't justify a premium store fee, and I need the flexibility.
Hopefully the duration drop down menu will remain in spite of eBay's need to pursue 'Good 'Til Cancelled'.
It's not for everybody.

tryubik-useonlyasdirected · ‎03-02-2019

An interesting article from @clu3 over on the dot com:

This article was on Tambay, February 21st regarding the GTC roll out in Australia.

https://tamebay.com/2019/02/will-ebay-force-sellers-use-ebay-gtc-instead-short-durations.html

In that article it states, "eBay told UK sellers that they would be fined 10p every time an eBay GTC listing renewed without a sale" !!! "Due to seller outrage, the fines were eventually scrapped before they kicked in."

eBay themselves keep track of how long an item has been listed, and mythically punish the listing as they see fit, yet they don't let a seller know how long the item has been listed to keep track of their own inventory?

And all this at the same roll-out of overpriced "Promotions"?

turkwhip · ‎03-02-2019

This is a bad update for a lot of people... say goodbye to big stores eBay!

So the way I understand this is you are going to charge an insertion fee every 30 days for your 'Good Til Cancelled' listings (which is all the listings now). So if I have a store with 250 free listings every month, THAT number becomes my cap. My previous cap of over a thousand... no longer matters. Why you ask? If I have a store with a thousand listings in it, only 250 of those will be free to list. Well, I can't afford to get hit with a bill of 750 times $0.20 every single month. That's $150 of new charges your applying. That's $1,800.00 every year in NEW charges. Big stores will cut those numbers down to 250. Then they will start to think... "Wait a minute, I'm paying $20 a month for this store and my cap is 250? That's no longer making sense to me. Goodbye eBay." This scales up and down for ALL sizes of stores on eBay. For most (if not all stores) you will be charging more in fees than they are ever make in profit.

You better rethink and change this fast or you WILL lose a LOT of stores. You can not charge running costs like this and pretend to have high caps for stores. I pity the massive stores that don't notice this item and are hit with a multi-thousand dollar bill in the first month.

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-02-2019

@turkwhip

Sorry, I don’t understand what you mean. You said that you have 250 free listings every month so you must have a basic store. But you said that you will be losing your cap of 1000 items. How would you even have a cap of 1000 items when your store limit for fixed price listings is 250? I don’t understand your premise of how a store will suddenly lose 750 listings when those listings weren’t a part of their store package to begin with.

reallynicestamps · ‎03-02-2019

@turkwhip

You do know there are larger Stores available right?

https://pages.ebay.ca/seller-centre/selling/ebay-stores.html#packages-pricing

The 1000 "free" listings are $74.95 a month, not $120.

And your current Basic Store can have additional "free" Auction listings (your current Store could have 250 Auction listings in addition to your 250 "free" Fixed Price listings).
And most sellers don't realize that they can have an equal number on dotCOM without further charges. So that's 1000 listings with a Basic $24.95 Store.

tryubik-useonlyasdirected · ‎03-02-2019

@reallynicestamps

And most sellers don't realize that they can have an equal number on dotCOM without further charges. So that's 1000 listings with a Basic $24.95 Store.

What do you mean? A seller can post 250 different listings on eBayCOM and eBayCA without inuring charges for 250 listings? Or do they have to be the same 250 on each site?

** leans in closer for a better understanding **

tryubik-useonlyasdirected · ‎03-02-2019

NEVERMIND - FIGURED IT OUT

kawartha-ephemera · ‎03-02-2019

@tryubik-useonlyasdirected wrote:
@reallynicestamps

And most sellers don't realize that they can have an equal number on dotCOM without further charges. So that's 1000 listings with a Basic $24.95 Store.

What do you mean? A seller can post 250 different listings on eBayCOM and eBayCA without inuring charges for 250 listings? Or do they have to be the same 250 on each site?

** leans in closer for a better understanding **

OK .... here goes, I will try to make some sense of this for you.

Whatever level of store you subscribe to , or even if you have no store subscription at all, there are two separate sources of listing availability ... ebay.ca and ebay.com.

Now, if you were for instance a basic store subscriber on ebay.ca that subscription provides 250 free listings every month. However, that same subscription also makes you eligible for 250 free listings over on ebay.com meaning the basic store subscription provides in total the ability to list 500 unique listings every month. No extra fees will be incurred. Any of the extra auction listings that ebay attaches to the subscription behave in exactly the same manner on both sites.

Here is the link to the ebay.com seller hub https://ebay.com/sh/ovw

Give it a try, you will probably be asked to logon, do so, scroll down until you locate the Promotional Offers pane. Read the info presented there carefully and you will find an allotment of free listings ready to be used.

turkwhip · ‎03-02-2019

I don't think you quite understand. The number of listings is in no way related to the number of free insertions you have. I have a cap of over 1000 listings, but I have much less free insertions. (I actually don't have the "basic" store, but the one level lower. I actually have a free listing max of 100, with a listing cap of over one thousand.) But to use the example I gave: If you had a listing cap of one thousand, yet only had 250 free insertions, you're kinda screw'd. Because if you actually went all the way to your listing cap of one thousand, you would be 750 listings over your free insertion cap every month. That's a lot of extra expense. Make sense?

turkwhip · ‎03-02-2019

And... it's doing it right now. (Not the middle of April like they said!!!!) Today I have had a reduction in the number of free listings by 13. Yet I have not posted anything new! WHAT HAPPENED TO THE MIDDLE OF APRIL eBay!!!! Liars!!

tryubik-useonlyasdirected · ‎03-02-2019

@kawartha-ephemera Thanks I figured it out. Did a bunch of logging in and out then found an old @pierrelebel thread. The forums godfather explained the day

ypdc_dennis · ‎03-04-2019

@tryubik-useonlyasdirected wrote:
This article was on Tambay, February 21st regarding the GTC roll out in Australia.
https://tamebay.com/2019/02/will-ebay-force-sellers-use-ebay-gtc-instead-short-durations.html
In that article it states, "eBay told UK sellers that they would be fined 10p every time an eBay GTC listing renewed without a sale" !!! "Due to seller outrage, the fines were eventually scrapped before they kicked in."

Misleading -- that 2015 ebay UK proposal was only for GTC listings that had no sales in the previous 18 months. However, the outrage at a fine instead of just ending the listing for the seller to review/revise was quite justified.

---

From the article:

Moving entirely to GTC listings will inevitably lead to old listings that never attract a sale. There’s no easy way for sellers to monitor their inventory and, as just about every veteran seller will tell you, they have a c rap shelf somewhere in their warehouse with inventory that sits gathering dust and never shifts. If sellers can’t monitor how long a listing has been live without a sale then they’ll never review their listings.

eBay could solve this – perhaps triggering a notification every time an eBay GTC is about to relist without a sale (potentially triggering a listing fee) or they could set (or give sellers the option to set) how many times a GTC can renew without a sale before it automatically comes to an end.

-..-

momcqueen · ‎03-04-2019

eBay already does that: there’s a 16-month note on all stale listings. ‘Sixteen months without a sale; please revise’. It’s impossible to miss or ignore.