Terrible idea and they didn't even warn me in advance. I have always used the 30 day fixed price and renewed the items if and when I wanted. Today I noticed 6 of my items had been renewed and the duration was changed to Good Til Canceled. I thought I had made a mistake when re-listing, so I ended the listings and tried to re-list using the 30 day fixed but it's no longer available! Ebay is trying to make it harder for sellers to avoid listing/insertion fees by having them renew automatically. Now you have to end/cancel your listing early to avoid the auto renew and the fees associated with renewing. I would imagine this is a nightmare for high volume sellers?
I have always taken advantage of the free listing offers Ebay sends me. Most months I have 50-100 items listed and I renew every 30 days based on the number of free listings I have available. My cost of doing business on Ebay (as a small seller) will no longer be profitable If all of my listings automatically renew. Ebay has gotten so greedy! I will probably quit selling on Ebay and just keep my account open to make purchases. I have found it's more profitable to sell on Etsy anyway. I have included a copy of the update below.
Here’s the update:
Hey eBay sellers, this is Harry, VP of Seller Experience at eBay. As you read in the 2019 Early Seller Update, we are moving all Fixed Price listings to Good ‘Til Cancelled (GTC). As a reminder, this change does not apply to auctions. We’re making this change because we have seen that GTC listings offer more sales opportunities than any other fixed price duration. Over time, GTC listings keep and grow watchers, sales history, and SEO authority as they maintain the same item ID and URL for the life of the listing. We believe all of the above improves the ability for buyers to discover items on eBay, which thereby improves the likelihood of a sale.
We’re aware of concerns some of you may have around managing GTC listings. Today in the Seller Hub Active listings page, you can see the start date of each of your listings. You can also sort by the start date to see, for example, your oldest listing at the top. With the start date, you can determine how long a listing has been active – but, currently, this requires you to do some math. By the end of March, we’ll do the math for you and will show you the number of days each listing has been active. Today, sellers can also sort active listings by end date or time left. For GTC listings, end date indicates the next date of renewal, and time left indicates the time left until renewal. Just as you do today, you can start, end, or relist your items at any time you choose.
All sellers may also take advantage of the out-of-stock feature, which allows you to effectively pause the availability of the item to buyers by setting the listing quantity to zero. This comes in handy if you want to keep all the benefits mentioned above (same item ID and URL, watchers, sales history and SEO benefits) while either your item is out-of-stock or you need a vacation. When you are ready to sell the item again, simply update the quantity back to a positive number. You can also use our bulk editing tools to update multiple listings at once.
We’re also aware of concerns about the 30 day auto-renewal period not syncing with monthly billing cycles. We’re looking into this. Thank you for your patience.
We always want to create the best experience we possibly can for our sellers. That’s why your feedback is so important to us. We look forward to continuing our partnership with you to improve your sales velocity and build a better marketplace.
