Sigh, even the MIA picture compensation is of little to no value....

[ricarmic]

I got my MIA pictures email today.

I have an anchor store on .COM, so that's $299.99 US$ plus HST each month.

This means I get 20,000 GTC listings and 2,000 Auctions if I list the max on each site.

I am running just over 3,800 listings (if you go look you'll see zero right now because I'm on eBay holiday and they are hidden).

Between the listings and auctions on both .COM and .CA I use about 4,000 GTC and 250 Auctions a month, which is 25% or less of each maximum.

So an extra 500 free listings has no value to me (with a whole 10 days to use them).

Whilst I finished cutting the lawn I tried to come up with a non eBay analogy to this. I finally figured out it is like a mistake happening in a bar: the bartender apologizes and offers to pour you some extra beer or wine. However they pour you 15 oz of beer or wine but sadly your glass only holds 10 oz. For any beer/wine drinkers of course beer or wine on the floor is blasphemy, so to is it really to offer something that has no value to the recipient.

I would be interested to know what % of stores actually benefit from this, one would have to run close to the listing limit all the time for this to be of use. Theoretically this would probably benefit the "smaller" stores more-so over the larger ones, and of course it is the larger stores that are more impacted because they have more items impacted.

My current guess is that I have 400-500 affected items (I can't run the scan against my holiday hidden items). I know it is at least 280. That would take me 25-35 hours to fix. At ON minimum wage that's $420 assuming 30 hours.

I am supposed to get the insertion fees back, but I didn't pay any to start with because they are all covered under the store subscription, unless I get the 6c I pay for listing in a 2nd category that's somewhere around $18, or do I get 10% of my store fee back because about 10% of my items were impacted? that's $30? @happy_pigeon

Really this is an embarrassing end to the whole MIA pictures issue.

I've been selling here for 19 years now, and those who read here regularly know I don't often complain, but I get asked by folks all the time if they should start selling on eBay.

What should I say? 

[hlmacdon]

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@ricarmic wrote:

Really this is an embarrassing end to the whole MIA pictures issue.

I've been selling here for 19 years now, and those who read here regularly know I don't often complain, but I get asked by folks all the time if they should start selling on eBay.

What should I say? 

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That ebay is like Uber without the tips. It is a channel, not a business.

[happy_pigeon]

I just want to pop in to say that I have shared your valid points with the team who organized the compensation efforts.

[snoopwiz]

A bit sad that it actually took a "team" to come up with that. Thank goodness though that sellers were acknowledged as the "backbone of eBay" (quote) from the email I received  yesterday.   I can't imagine what the compensation offer may have been if we were merely the "spleen of eBay"   

[silverpinups]

I had 40-50 listings with image issues (I had 840 in total) and never received a compensation email from eBay. I still invested an entire weekend fixing them and I know I'll never get that time back.

I was also one of the first to alert eBay CS about the problem. 

I guess the smaller sellers don't count.....

[widgetc]

“I just want to pop in to say that I have shared your valid points with the team who organized the compensation efforts.”

It took a team to organize a trivial offer that is a gross insult to sellers?

I have a little under 2000 listings. The number of pictures varies from 1 to 12. I have no idea which are missing pictures. I can’t replace the images without rescanning which is a huge job for big lots of stamps. This will cost me sales.

My compensation 500 “free” listings! Let’s see…for my $60 per month subscription I get 1000 fixed price listings on .ca and 1000 on .com plus 500 auctions in my category on each site. So 3000 listings for $60.00. So I get $10.00 worth of “free” listings for damage that would take months of work to fix! And to add insult to injury eBay would make more money on the sales from the extra listings.

Reasonable compensation would be a couple of years of free store subscription or perhaps 50,000+ free listings to use any time in the next 5 years.

eBay you messed up big time! Offer something that reflects that!

[momcqueen]

The message from Ms Stairs says that ebay credited back insertion fees on the listings that were affected. Has anyone seen evidence of this? I have no credits for anything on my bill from last month and there's nothing reflected yet for this month either. 

Also, I Activated the Offer when it first showed up in Messages but due to a glitch it failed to do so. Haw haw. I notice this two days later so I've now lost opportunity due to another glitch to actually use the compensation for the glitch. 

[momcqueen]

The letterMy invoice from July; the 'discount' is my TRS reduction. July was not a month for sales that knocked my socks off

[lady.stark]

I agree with everyone that this compensation offer is an insult! A free month of store fees would have been much better! I'm currently on vacation and don't have the time and the desire to list more. As always, eBay thinks about their pockets and not in the interest of sellers.

[ricarmic]

Hi, I also tried to see if anything came back, but alas I've traditionally had a hard time figuring out what is all in the discounts/credits! I have too many transactions each month (3000+ 6c 2nd category listing fees each month on top of all the regular stuff so I have too many transactions to view en-masse so all I have is the summary stuff).

So I took an extra hard look at this, a good exercise:

In a normal month for me I have discounts/credits for:

-TRS

-reimbursement for promoted items sold (usually doesn't match the by month amount because the store month and actual month are different I believe)

-returned etc items fees etc

-the listing fees waived because I have a store

Here's the details from last month with my comments in brackets at the right side:

(everything below is US$)

================================================

New fees

Insertion fees $183.77  (these are the 6c each for 2nd category)

Advanced listing upgrade fees $4.18  (these are for scheduled listings)

Final value fees $367.38

Subscription and onetime fees $338.93  (anchor store)

Promoted listing fees $8.31 (promoted listings fees, normally 10%, low results lately)

Subtotal $902.57

Discounts and credits

Discounts- $32.79  (this is 10% TRS discount)

Credits-  $21.18  (this is all from 3 cancelled,refunded etc transactions FVF)

Subtotal- $53.97

Total due $849.85

Promotional savings 

Insertion fees- $252.97 (includes the waived fees I save by having a store)

Final value fees- $0.29 (don't know what that is, likely one of the promotions)

Total Saved** - $253.26

=================================================

I haven't received the promoted listings $8.13 rebate yet, it will be on next months.

So it appears, if I was to have received any insertion fees rebates it will be in the $252.97. It is in the normal range, insertion fee rebates were $241 for June, so if anything it what I got would be $10 or so. 

[momcqueen]

I don't think any credits were issued. If they had been on my invoice, there would be a specific line for it. I recall someone saying here that they CALLED Customer Service and complained and got the insertion fees credited or refunded, is that what we're all expected to do?

Also, did I miss the memo where ebay told me which listings of mine that they ruined? As the responsibility lies with ebay for the mistake, the very least they could do is save me the time trying to figure out which listings will now require 30 minutes each of my time to fix. If I'm lucky. I saved the photos but they're somewhere in my collection of 100,000 pictures. 

[ricarmic]

I agree I don't think any have showed up yet either.

Even when they do, I don't expect it to be much.

I did call and was told I had to wait to get the blanket one that was coming......such as it is.

[widgetc]

"As always, eBay thinks about their pockets and not in the interest of sellers"

Yes...but a free month of store fees would still be an insult. Checking all the listings I have and fixing the ones that are bad would take  a couple of months of 40 hour weeks.

This is why turbolister which gave off line backup should not be phased out as is being done.

I had planned to continue with eBay as I have for the next 5  years and then over a few years wind down and end.

With TL going and such shabby compensation offered for their major disruption I will start my wind down now.

[momcqueen]

I've run the program recommended in another thread and it identified the 50 listings of mine that lost all but one of their photos. (There were 55 items with only one photo but five were placeholders of stock images that I threw quickly in there to save time.)

The listings affected are random except in that they renewed between June 19 and June 22. Assuming it will take me 20 minutes each time (I said 30 minutes in another thread but let's be optimistic, shall we?) to find the photos I took of these items, edited and kept in my large and unorganized bank of photo archives, this translates to 16.6 hours of solid work. Assuming my time is worth at least minimum wage, that's almost $200 lost. 

I have a migraine now. I'm going to take a nap while I contemplate this mess. 

When news of this problem first surfaced on the boards, I was optimistic that ebay would find a way to fix what was wrecked. I mean, we all know nothing posted online ever REALLY disappears, right? And then they said nothing about it which reinforced my theory it couldn't have been a big deal. But that was then and this was now. Now I have 50 listings that were wrecked and it's going to take me FOREVER to get them fixed and for what? So that ebay can, "Oopsie, sorry!" again? Um. No.

My head hurts. 

Talk to y'all later. 

[msmaggie060]

I use Turbo Lister to list and even though my listings were not affected by the GTC problem, back in May sometime I lost a lot of my photos when I went to relist my items one day. I have no idea where they disappeared to, here one day, gone the next. It has taken me until now to get approx. 300+ listings redone, my items have anywhere from 4 to 12 photos each. I use Photoshop Elements and wore out another mouse (plus my arm) straightening and cropping all those photos.

I feel sorry for all of you who have to retake or find all the photos again. I chose to retake mine, I have over 12,000 photos I’d have to search through and I knew some older listings would benefit from updated photos. No compensation for me either of course.

[ricarmic]

I'm "lucky" because I've always written the associated pictures on the item "container" (envelope or box) so to fix this I'd have to go find the item and it would tell me which pictures belonged to it.

I've also organized my picture inventory (120,000) by 1,000s and which 1,000 is identified on the item. (current item would have R120 0428-32 written on it... meaning pictures 0428-32 in the 120th directory of 1,000 pictures).

Even so, I'm looking at 10 minuteish timeframe per item to fix them still.

[msmaggie060]

Ric, that’s a great idea and if I wasn’t so lazy busy I would just rename my photos in Photoshop to match my item number (MPN) that is on 90% of my items!

[snoopwiz]

Fact. Some sellers phoned in to customer service (Anchor store "enhanced reps") and were given a one month credit, value approx $300 Canadian. And at least one I know of also was credited with the HST associated with the store.

Now the "offer" is for a severely dented, expired tin of weasel food, value estimated at anywhere from $10 to $30.  Must look into selling my "backbone stock" as I had no idea it was of such little value. 

[kawartha-ephemera]

Ricarmic wrote:
I've also organized my picture inventory (120,000) by 1,000s and which 1,000 is identified on the item. (current item would have R120 0428-32 written on it... meaning pictures 0428-32 in the 120th directory of 1,000 pictures).

I organize photos in much the same way... place a unique alphanumeric identifier in the listing's "custom field" and then name the listing photos PC1234a, PC1234b, PC1234c etc. This makes it easy to find a listing's photos.

The drawback to this method is if I want to search for photos by subject, geography, theme etc I cannot.

To get around this I started adding tags to the primary photo file but doing so adds another step and even more time to the listing process. Maybe someday I'll get around to tagging all my photos eBay and personal... one can always dream... haha