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,

reallynicestamps · ‎02-26-2019

The listing duration for all fixed price listings will be Good 'Til Cancelled

This seems to be causing a lot of angst and anguish on the dotCOM Boards.

Since I tend to use GTC anyway I don't see the problems.

I'm not clear how this is any advantage:

If your listing reaches a quantity of zero, we will show it as out-of-stock to buyers.

Why show anything at all that is out of stock and therefore cannot be purchased? Just close it. It's plugging up Search and eating bits and bytes on the browser farm.

mrdutch1001 · ‎02-26-2019

For those of us sellers who do not have a store and don't necessarily list the same items every month, and don't necessarily wish to have 30 day listings and/or longer than 30 day listings, this

"The listing duration for all fixed price listings will be Good 'Til Cancelled"

is very concerning. For myself, this change means that every time I list any items in fixed price format, I will have to manually end all listings at a more desirable duration, or I will have to change all my listings back to auction format to totally avoid the hassle of GTC in fixed price format. Either way, I will find my own work around for this change to fixed price listings.

kawartha-ephemera · ‎02-26-2019

I'm not among those who are in an uproar over this change but for those of us not used to managing GTC listings it is a major change. I'll have to come up with a new approah towards managing numbers of listings per month .

The change in theory should help to get listings found in google and all of the other search engines out there .... that is a plus when listings are left to run I guess. That said I'm doubtful this will benefit ooak listings enough to offset the dropoff in Cassini search placement when listings run on for month after month.

msmaggie060 · ‎02-26-2019

I am concerned that this is going to cost me more money. GTC listings turn over every 30 days, but some months are 31 days and that means that once or twice a year I will have to pay for extra months listings.

i would love it if store costs were lower or at least if there was a choice of being able to use the 250 auction listings as GTC since I very rarely use auctions. They just don’t work any more, at least for my items.

ayatcg · ‎02-26-2019

This is very concerning for someone that sells TCG stuff.

Me and all my competition (premium/ anchor stores) will be concerned as well.

The reason is we have products in our unsold inventory, that we cycle through. thus giving us a chance to make a better judgement when to sell them. But if you make all of our products GTC, this does not allow us to cycle through our inventory. Thus created MORE work for us resellers: near the end of the month MANUALLY unlisting all the products, and relisting the ones we may think that will sell. In that case it might not even be worth it to have the store on ebay.

Might as well just sell on a different platform like TCGplayer. It all depends on the card game trend.

Unless you create another 2k or 5k store I dont see a work around.

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎02-26-2019

"The listing duration for all fixed price listings will be Good 'Til Cancelled" NOT COOL!!!!!

I stopped using GTC over 2 years ago. I like to cycle in my 250 at MY discretion and any listings over the 250 are the .10 listings to get the best bang for my buck. The other thing in using 30 day I HAD the option to update prices as I chose to and edit if I felt it was required. Forcing this on us is NOT an improvement and will just additional grief for sellers. If I had the option to move to a store with 500 listings it might be workable but jumping from 250 to 1000 is large of a leap of faith and monthly expense, especially for sellers that have limited room for inventory. As for listing items using Auction Format that became a lost cause ages ago for my particular items.

-Lots

momcqueen · ‎02-26-2019

Send Offers to Watchers bears deeper consideration. That’s interesting.

When will ebay start telling us how many users have our items in their carts like other marketplaces?

momcqueen · ‎02-26-2019

Also what’s this: ‘final value fee cap changes’, please? The link is dead.

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎02-26-2019

2019 Early Seller Update

"With Good 'Til Cancelled listings you can take advantage of the out of stock feature. If your listing reaches a quantity of zero, we will show it as out-of-stock to buyers. By using out-of-sock, your listing will retain its purchase and search history, so that when you replenish your stock, buyers can easily find your listing. Learn more about the out-of-stock feature."

How does this affect people that don't sell socks?

My apologies to anyone offended with my attempt to add a touch of humour but that's pasted directly from the eBay page. I did not make it up!!

-Lotz

kawartha-ephemera · ‎02-26-2019

@lotzofuniquegoodies wrote:
"The listing duration for all fixed price listings will be Good 'Til Cancelled" NOT COOL!!!!!

I stopped using GTC over 2 years ago. I like to cycle in my 250 at MY discretion and any listings over the 250 are the .10 listings to get the best bang for my buck. The other thing in using 30 day I HAD the option to update prices as I chose to and edit if I felt it was required. Forcing this on us is NOT an improvement and will just additional grief for sellers. If I had the option to move to a store with 500 listings it might be workable but jumping from 250 to 1000 is large of a leap of faith and monthly expense, especially for sellers that have limited room for inventory. As for listing items using Auction Format that became a lost cause ages ago for my particular items.

-Lots

I really do not relish the idea of trying to keep tabs on GTC listings hitting their 30 or 60 day anniversaries either.

A less than optimum solution would be to start all our lisings on the same day thus having them all hit their 30 day anniversary on the same day. Even then they would no doubt invariably need to be ended on an inconvenient day. Kind of fouls up things, it would be sort of like having to stick around home to milk the cows ...

kawartha-ephemera · ‎02-26-2019

Oh yes "out of sock" kind of fits in with the early sneak peek spring update theme lol.

lotzofuniquegoodies · ‎02-27-2019

There is a small possibility for someone that is comfortable using Bulk Edit they could edit that way. But when your inventory is "UNIQUE" it's not a simple straight forward procedure?

-Lotz

2nd-time-around-jewelry · ‎02-27-2019

I am really upset that we are being forced to use this new listing format of GTC. I have no interest in using it. Looks like we no longer have control of our listings. The reason I have a store is to control the amount of items I sell, when I want to sell them & the format that I want to use. I am afraid that somehow I will end up being charged extra fees without my control. EBay should spend their time & energy fixing all the glitches we sellers have to deal with & not screwing with the way we sell.

forester_studios · ‎02-27-2019

The listing duration for all fixed price listings will be Good 'Til Cancelled.

This is a really bad idea! I like the flexibility of having listings on the number of days I choose. Sometimes I list items at 5 or 10 days to motivate buyers to make a purchase. Often 30 day listings attract watchers, but not necessarily timely sales.

Taking control away from sellers on how long to list an item is just wrong! If I pay the insertion fee - I should be able to choose how long the listing runs. Choice is GOOD and fundamental in a Democracy.

Having listings automatically roll over with a new set of listing fees appears to be nothing more than a cash grab by ebay. I'm a senior on a fixed income and can't always afford to relist everything every month. So now I will be forced to manualy end listings every 29 days to manage my ebay budget.

This is a BAD idea. I enjoy selling here, but now it will be more time managing relists and less time listing new items.

reallynicestamps · ‎02-27-2019

My ambition is to have something opening (Newly Listed ) and something closing (About to Close) every day.

The idea being that if a customer uses one of those Searches, which I believe are also criteria in the Cassini algorithm, she may also click on the link to my Store.

With 1000 listings, that means every day I have 33 listings opening or closing.

So one of my daily tasks is to look at my Active Listings, mostly GTC, to see if there is anything that should be ended, because it has been around too long or has had too many *views.

Here's a question I haven't seen addressed.

Occasionally we get Free Listing promotions, usually over 100 listings which are sometimes Auctions, and unaffected, but just as often Fixed Price.

If those FP listings are going to be GTC, we will really have to pay attention on Day 29 to remove those listings that we have decided not to carry in our normal stock.

Gosh.

Paranoia time. I got a promotion for 1000 listings which ends on March 4 (I think) which would be after the new policy starts.

Now I have been uploading them over the past few days as 30 day listings-- but it would be nice to be assured that they will not automatically relist.

More to the point, I would like to be assured that new Free Listing promotions will be restricted to 30 days, since, in my opinion, many sellers use these promotions to list almost unsaleable junk

Cui bono?

*It's Fixed Price. If 100 customers viewed it and didn't buy it, there is a problem. Ending those listings puts them into my Unsold List for up to 90 days.

ypdc_dennis · ‎02-27-2019

@reallynicestamps wrote:
... Paranoia time. I got a promotion for 1000 listings which ends on March 4 (I think) which would be after the new policy starts.
Now I have been uploading them over the past few days as 30 day listings-- but it would be nice to be assured that they will not automatically relist.

New policy starts mid-March.

They won't relist:

Existing fixed price listings that are not Good 'Til Cancelled will continue until they sell or end at their specified duration.

imbuzzy · ‎02-27-2019

@momcqueen wrote:
Also what’s this: ‘final value fee cap changes’, please? The link is dead.

I doubt that we were supposed to see that. It's not on the desktop version of the update, just the mobile version.

IMHO I've witnessed far worse seller updates, but this is just an "update preview" of what's to come and that dead link is a blatant hint.

There's already a petition against the GTC on the .com boards that as I type is 11 pages deep.

I'd like to know if store subscribers in Canada will get the Terapeak software for free as is mentioned in the .com update preview. I found it quite useful (though quite expensive) when I subscribed to it many years ago.

tryubik-useonlyasdirected · ‎02-27-2019

What's up with the new forced Good 'Til Cancelled Listings? There is a reason some of my listings are 30 day (or 7 or 10). How am I supposed to track objects that I don't want renewed? (Especially given possible insertion fee charges?)

So this means as a store owner I will have to cap listings at the set 250 store amount. If there is no way to only insert listings once then I cannot take a chance something will auto-renew and cannot "top-up" promotions or targeted "extras".

And don't GTC listings drop to the bottom of the search results?

@imbuzzythanks for the hat tip on the dot com GTC petition.

Can we make a dot CA petition for this as well?