eBay

vip-marketplace · ‎03-08-2019

Hey guys!

I have about 5,000 fixed price listings with a 30 days duration.

At the end of every month, all listings end and I relist them with updated description (if anything changed in the month) and quantity. I sell on multiple platforms and this is my way of clearing out of stock items among others.

I will no longer be able to do that now that all fixed price listings have to be GTC (Good Till Cancelled).

I was told by an eBay rep there was a simple solution:

Use auction style listings with Buy it Now option set at my fixed price and with a duration of 30 days.

Would that work? Does it cost the same to list in auction style as in fixed price?

Will people looking to buy immediatly (fixed price instead of auction) find my listings?

Thanks!

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎03-08-2019

@vip-marketplace

There are several discussions on the go but this one should give you a few answers and it's the shortest of the lot. I feel your pain and I have quite a lot less active listings at any one time.

https://community.ebay.ca/t5/Seller-Central/Do-you-think-that-GTC-works-against-you/m-p/404428#M9470...

-Lotz

pocomocomputing · ‎03-08-2019

@vip-marketplace wrote:
Hey guys!

I have about 5,000 fixed price listings with a 30 days duration.

At the end of every month, all listings end and I relist them with updated description (if anything changed in the month) and quantity. I sell on multiple platforms and this is my way of clearing out of stock items among others.

I will no longer be able to do that now that all fixed price listings have to be GTC (Good Till Cancelled).

I was told by an eBay rep there was a simple solution:
Use auction style listings with Buy it Now option set at my fixed price and with a duration of 30 days.

Would that work? Does it cost the same to list in auction style as in fixed price?
Will people looking to buy immediately (fixed price instead of auction) find my listings?

Thanks!

You got misinformation from the eBay representative. Auction listings have durations of 1,3,5,7 or 10 days. The 1 and 3 days have surcharges for using these shorter durations. Buy It Now is an option for auctions but duration is the auction duration, not 30 days.

Using Buy It Now option on and auction requires that the Buy It Now Price has to 30% higher than the Auction start price. An interested buyers will probably not want to pay the difference and will opt for the lower auction price and wait for auction to end and hope they win. Or most likely simply ignore your listings because they want it immediately, not maybe in 10 days when auction ends. There is also a fee for using the Buy It Now option for store owners.

Also the number of free auctions for a store level per month is much less than the BIN free listings amount. And free auction listings is only available in certain categories.

https://www.ebay.ca/pages/help/sell/storefees.html

Given your volume of listings, the advice given by the eBay rep was very poor advice. In fact, it was just plain dumb.

zee-chan-jpn-books · ‎03-08-2019

Unfortunately, the only “fix” I could think of is to mark your calendar and manually end those listings yourself every month... I’m definitely not a fan of the new change either.

pjcdn2005 · ‎03-08-2019

I agree with poco, the cs rep gave you it bad advice and inaccurate info.

I do think that the gtc change is going to make it more complicated for sellers with a lot of listings that they want to rotate.

If you have any multi quantity listings the amount available should stay up to date when the listing renews so if you started with 3 and sold 1, the renewed listing will show that there are 2 available.

reallynicestamps · ‎03-08-2019

@vip-marketplace

At the end of every month, all listings end and I relist them with updated description (if anything changed in the month) and quantity.

For the moment, I will ignore that you have your listings on several platforms, which would have an impact on your schedule.

I agree that moving to manual changes are going to be your only hope.

But I'm assuming that you are doing that anyway ("with updated description") on a single day each month.

My suggestion would be to change ending dates so that some of your listings are ending every day.

That would mean putting your listings into Closing Time order and ending those you want to change. * You would then be relisting about 165-170 listings a day, instead of 5000 once a month.

The advantages are a slightly less boring task daily instead of a very boring task once a month, and better placement in Cassini Search.

The general opinion on the Cassini Search is that it gives higher placement to items that are newly listed or about to end, which means with 5000 listings all opening and closing on the same dates, you have a long lull mid-month.

No one really knows all the ins and outs of Cassini, but that one does seem to be a widespread belief.

*You may also find it useful to occasionally put them into alphabetical order, which works really well for spotting duplicated listings.

vip-marketplace · ‎03-08-2019

This is ridiculous that we would have to do that manually!

Is there a lot of push-back about this? Is there any hope they may change their mind?

reallynicestamps · ‎03-08-2019

I thought you said you were already reviewing your listings at the end of each 30 day period? When eBay ends them?

If you are there is no difference, you are just scheduling your time to make sure you don't miss the Day 29 Hour 23 deadline.

If you are not, the listings will automatically relist, without needing any oversight.

It would be a change without a difference.

vip-marketplace · ‎03-08-2019

Yeah but it's not that easy for me to make 100% sure I'll have access to a computer etc. at the right time. I am often out for a few days and before I didn't worry that much about it. I would simply relist all my inventory when I got back sometimes 3-4 days after my previous listings had ended. Now I have to plan my schedule around this at that time of the month.

Also, cancelling ~5k listing manually can't be fun. I hope it can be done relatively fast.