Good Til Cancelled HUGE Negative Effect

[the_boatwiser]

Sales off, period and not a little but A LOT!  ebay can make up any stupid reason why "they" determined it best for me to have GTC listings rather than my 5 day Buy It Now listings, but they are wrong.  I have been selling here for over 20 years and have fine tuned my selling practices.  The silver bullet for me WAS a 5 day Buy It Now with immediate payment required.  This gave me a NEWLY LISTED boost along with an ENDING SOON boost all within a 5 day rotation with guaranteed received payment. 

GTC is useless to me.  It gives buyers no urgency to make a purchase if they do not see that the listing has an end date.  I tried a few 5 day auctions and guess what - I had no pays, had to wait to get my final value fee back and wasted a listing.  I do not have extra time to HOPE buyers will pay and that is why I only used the Buy It Now 5 day w/ immediate payment.   With that scenario I could ship right away because everything was paid for right away.  A win win for me, ebay and the buyer.  A fast sale with fast delivery to the buyer and fast income to me and ebay.

Is there a flaw in that model?

Auctions may work for high volume sellers that do this for a living with nickel and dime items from god knows where, but not for me.  I will continue to use my 50 free listings and that will be it.  I have scaled way back my personal hunt for specialty, hard to find items that I sold here which will only hurt ebay in the long run. Buyers will loose interest in ebay if the only things they can find here are dollar store items or Wally World items that they can get right down the street.

Wonder who the rocket scientist was with a 50 cent degree that came up with this lame decision?

Dumb move ebay.

[myangelandmyprincess]

It still shows an end date.  It will “end” in 30 days and then automatically relist. So it will be at ending soonest search near as they get near 30 days 

[davewearsredsox]

With so many asking the same question as yourself and experiencing the same results, I question if that degree cost 50 cents.... Maybe no degree at all..... 

I have never seen a business **bleep** of there customer base such as this site... NEVER.... Yet they choose not to listen and that seems par for the course.

No doubt a head scratcher.....

[myangelandmyprincess]

As a buyer I can definitely see the benefit of good til cancelled for a seller.   I keep things in my watch list until I can afford them.  Often times that is over 30 days.  And often times when it’s not a good til cancelled listing I forget to go through my ended stuff to check for items relisted.  Sometimes I’ll go check and see it was relisted but the seller gave up eventually when it didn’t sell and I missed the relists because I didn’t check my ended listings in my watch list.  But with good til cancelled it never leaves me watch list on the listed stuff so I’m more likely to remember it and buy it 

[vonandron]

The listing does NOT show an end date!  It says good till sold or cancelled.  This brilliant move by eBay has removed any sense of urgency for buyers.  For the first time since 2005 I have had ZERO sales in the past two weeks.  

[the_boatwiser]

There is no end or start date shown for GTC listings.  You must be looking at your own listings and be signed in to your account.  Even if it did show these,  what urgency to a buyer does a never ending listing have - none.  I also do not need someone to relist MY items automatically as I can do that myself when I think its best.  This way I can determine, or used to be able to determine the end date. 

[davewearsredsox]

Von - 

Question for you... Are you surprised that this has negatively impacted you? Seems like the prediction of thousands is coming true and from big and small sellers alike. At least that is what is being posted in this forum...

Again head scratcher - BRILLIANCE IN DISGUISE!

[myangelandmyprincess]

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@vonandron wrote:

The listing does NOT show an end date!  It says good till sold or cancelled.  This brilliant move by eBay has removed any sense of urgency for buyers.  For the first time since 2005 I have had ZERO sales in the past two weeks.  

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That’s what your listings show for you as a seller when looking at your listings.  All the items I have in my watch list show an end date and some are clearly good til cancelled because they’ve renewed on my watch list since I originally started watching   When I look at my own listings yes I see live til sold or cancelled but on the my watch list as a buyer all items showing times for ending 

[myangelandmyprincess]

Buy it now listings have never given me a sense of urgency to buy   Auctions have but not buy it now 

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

Other sites where listings are effectively GTC don't show ending dates, they're just "there".

The only difference is, they don't charge a listing fee every 30 days. But that affects sellers, not buyers.

[mypostingid15]

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@the_boatwiser wrote:

There is no end or start date shown for GTC listings.  You must be looking at your own listings and be signed in to your account.  Even if it did show these,  what urgency to a buyer does a never ending listing have - none.  I also do not need someone to relist MY items automatically as I can do that myself when I think its best.  This way I can determine, or used to be able to determine the end date. 

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I've been selling and buying online since I was a baby, never gave any attention to urgency, I don't buy based on urgency, I buy what I want or need, sometimes based on scarcity but never because the item is ending soon.

[futuretomorrow]

@the_boatwiser 

When I add one of your items to my watch list it shows an end date. 

[pburn]

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@the_boatwiser wrote:

There is no end or start date shown for GTC listings.

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All the listings on my Watchlist, Wishlist, and the several other lists I've created all show an end date.

[the_boatwiser]

So a buyer needs to add the item to a wish/watch list to find out when it ends?  That's not very proactive if a buyer is surfing around having to add things to some list to find out when it ends.  The old Buy It Now listings had it right there for everyone to see without taking an additional step - seems ridiculous.

[myangelandmyprincess]

Buy it now hasn’t shown the time ending on the listing itself in a while     If you search ending soonest the times show up in search