Insertion Fees paid on ahead

[ulfesharpe]

I had unlimited free listings (or I had a huge number that it seemed unlimited, I can't remember) and now I've only have 250 p/ month just like when I started 10 years ago — and Ebay is charging insertion fees before the listings even sell. Isn't that nice?

Can someone tell me when did these changes came about? It seems I've missed yet another fantastic seller update somewhere back.

[ulfesharpe]

Thank you I will @pjcdn2005 

[lacemaker3]

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@ulfesharpe wrote:

@lacemaker3 

Wow. In fact I went back to check and Gallery Plus was on on every listing! But I know I never selected it bc I relisted them all in bulk.

So is this a new trick from ebay to squeeze more money from us — gallery plus being on by default and you have to de-select it?????

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@ulfesharpe,

@pjcdn2005  made some good comments ... I had forgotten about Gallery Plus being free in some categories. That is why it was on by default, they do that in the categories where it is free. Also, I missed that it costs differently for a fixed-price listing (like yours, at $1.00) compared to an auction ($0.35).

That makes it much less likely that the fee was for Gallery Plus, even though it was on. But gallery plus for auctions, and the insertion fee for second category, or listings in excess of 250 in the calendar month, are the only insertion fees that cost $0.35, so it has to be one of those. But maybe being charged in error.

By any chance, do you end your fixed-price listings early, and relist them? With only 9 listings currently, and one sold this month, it seems  unlikely that you could have used all your 250 free-insertion-fee listings, but that's the only other option. I did see that you have ended several listings this month, which have not been relisted and don't show up under completed because they didn't end organically.

Can you check your account and see how many of your 250 free-insertion-fee listings you have used, and how many you have left?

[lacemaker3]

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@ulfesharpe wrote:

They are insertion fees...

 
...

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@ulfesharpe, were those the only listings you were charged this fee for?

I noticed that those 4 listings were ended and relisted yesterday. Those are the new item numbers.

Another thought/question: do you also list on any other eBay sites, other than ebay.com?

[ulfesharpe]

Indeed, I regularly relist items with no views or no followers in bulk , to pump them up in the feed (my followers will see them on top), so 0.35 is the extra after the 250 listings were over. But i was doing that in previous months too and this was the first time it was charged. Which means i won't be doing this again that often...

And I also list in Bonanza -- it's automated, the listings there are in sync with Ebay's. Does that count as listings here?!

@lacemaker3 

[lacemaker3]

@ulfesharpe

Bonanza is not an eBay website, so copying listings there doesn't count.

Did you confirm that you did go over the 250 listings, then? It sounds like you did. I suppose this must have been the first time you went over the 250 limit.

I'm not really sure that ending and relisting them gives you a boost, though, because eBay is still sorting them by their original listing dates in the newly-listed sort. I highlighted the latest relisting dates for some of your listings (the 4 listings that you just relisted yesterday are in red, 2 earlier ones are in blue), and you can see how they are being sorted:

[reallynicestamps]

Shipping as a gift means you are encouraging the customer to smuggle in the pen.

US residents have an $800  duty free allowance, so it isn't even useful to them.

When you encourage criminal actions, your customer is more likely to be a criminal - or of a criminal mind.

And if they are happy to cheat their government,they will be equally happy to cheat you.

You have two errors on your listings, either of which could lead to problems in future. Putting them in smaller print and in grey rather than black doesn't mean they will go unnoticed

[ulfesharpe]

@reallynicestamps 

Not sure I'm following you —

Private Sale means you're not a store but an individual — it's only there to signify that I am normally unable to do replacements, repairs. It is especially useful when you sell fountain pens (which I usually avoid doing because buyers can be picky) but in fact it is has no legal value especially on an international site that has it's own rules. It's in grey and small letters because it's not very important not because I'm trying to disguise some sort of mandatory disclaimer.

But what I really don't get is your "shipping as gift etc", "encouraging smuggling" comment... Are you deducing this from the "private sale" footnote? Again, that's not what it means and it has absolutely nothing to do with shipping terms. 

[ulfesharpe]

@lacemaker3 — that was a lot of work! I had noticed that not everything that is relisted appears in the feeds, so your investigation was quite elucidative. Thanks!

I will have to rethink my strategy, I usually have 50 listings and was doing bulk actions to get more views from repeat buyers — a good percentage of my sales are to collectors with specific search tags so I get some more views/watches from their feeds. I'm still forced to promote listings to get decent exposure so I'm not really interested in paying extra for it.  

[ulfesharpe]

@reallynicestamps 

(30 minutes later...) Ohhh I see now! It's there all right in 1 listing. ahahah that was a crazy ideia when I was a little desperate for cash... I was pretty convinced I had removed it after that moment of folly, that's why I wasn't following your remarks. You know, to make a new listing I always click on "sell a similar item" and I edit a previous description so sometimes I miss a few details. It wasn't even for this pen..

Okay, you are absolutely right, my bad — I will remove it asap. Thank you for bringing it up 🙏

[reallynicestamps]

You have this on your listing. Same size letters- but in grey rather than black.

Private Sale. No returns, no replacements
Shipping as g i f t

While you can have a No Returns policy you cannot have a No Refunds policy.

And the buyer is entitled to demand a refund using the Money Back Guarantee rather than a replacement, especially since it is faster and more likely to be satisfactory.

If you cannot do repairs, say "I cannot do repairs".

It's actually better to say nothing, since a normal sale would not be of an item that requires repairs.

Imports that are gifts normally have a higher duty free allowance than commercial imports.

For example, here in Canada my duty free allowance for Portugal (and the EU) is $20, but if my auntie in Napoli sent me a gift, the duty free allowance would be $60.

Marking sales as gifts is cheating on import fees.

It is illegal.

It's in grey and small letters because it's not very important

It's very important.

There is no honest reason to try to hide it.

Edited to add:  thank you for correcting this. (Message24)

[ulfesharpe]

@reallynicestamps 

To me it's less important than the other info, so it's greyed out. 

And it's not hidden. It's there, you've seen it and so did the rest of the world. It's got nothing to do with dishonesty.

I'm actually removing that info in future listings, it's an text inheritance from older listings and it doesn't make sense any more. There might have been a motive why i put it there like that years ago. I don't remember. I used to spend a lot of time on Ebay but after continuous degradation of selling conditions here (rising costs, more rules, monopoly of processes, etc) it lost my full attention. 

I don't mean to sound rude or anything, but I have no interest in becoming a specialised seller, I'm simply a collector who occasionally sells pencils to buy more pencils. For that reason, I liked it better when Ebay was like a garage sale at a worldwide scale. 

[ulfesharpe]

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@nobody*s_perfect wrote:

You're on the discussion board for the US site. The policies (such as fees and number of free insertions) might be completely different for sellers who are based in Portugal.

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I am registered on the US site. There is no ebay.pt. It's the same basic rules and fees. Only difference is in FVF, which includes an international fee if buyer if is outside the US + country VAT + "smart" exchange rate (it is higher when you're paying them and lower when they're paying you)

[ulfesharpe]

Thank you all!