Good Til Cancelled

[164nc]

Greetings All:

I see from the new seller update preview, all fixed price items will have the duration of Good Til Cancelled, renewing automatically every 30 days & will be counted as one of the 50 free listings.

I mostly sell items from downsizing, items no longer needed, unwanted gifts, etc. ... very low level selling, but I can have 50 or so items listed at a time, however. If selling an item, say winter boots, I would usually just keep relisting & if the item did not sell around April I would just let it age off and offer it again sometime in the fall.

Now w/ the new GTC it will require me to cancel an item before it can renew so I don't go over the 50 item free because the items relist themselves even if I don't want to sell it at that time. This new GTC feature is touted as a good thing, but it doesn't seem that way to me, more like a hardship because now I have to monitor end times. Am I missing something here?

[stickboy1974]

Sorry to anyone who had read this reposting on other threads, but I want people to understand what GTC can cost them.

The GTC option is good for 30 days.  I hope I have the following dates right as I did it on the fly.

I do not have a store, so  I only get 50 items a month. Whichever ones I post on the first day of July will get "renewed" on the July 31.  So those items will be taken off my listing allotment or if I have none left, I end up paying 35 cents per listing.

Then the items I had posted on the second day of July will then end on the first day of August will then get "renewed" on August 31st.

Yes, I do realize that not all months have 31 days, but in a way that could make it even harder to keep track of which items will end up costing you listings or money as items you had listed on January 30th will renew on March first and then again on March 31st.

So now instead of listing 50 items, I will end up listing less items so as to save some for the "renewals"

[points13]

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@stickboy1974 wrote:

Sorry to anyone who had read this reposting on other threads, but I want people to understand what GTC can cost them.

The GTC option is good for 30 days.  I hope I have the following dates right as I did it on the fly.

I do not have a store, so  I only get 50 items a month. Whichever ones I post on the first day of July will get "renewed" on the July 31.  So those items will be taken off my listing allotment or if I have none left, I end up paying 35 cents per listing.

Then the items I had posted on the second day of July will then end on the first day of August will then get "renewed" on August 31st.

Yes, I do realize that not all months have 31 days, but in a way that could make it even harder to keep track of which items will end up costing you listings or money as items you had listed on January 30th will renew on March first and then again on March 31st.

So now instead of listing 50 items, I will end up listing less items so as to save some for the "renewals"

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Yes this is what I was getting at. You well have to monitor this closely or you will get hit eventually as  the dates on your listings change month to month. Lots of sellers already probably have lots of listings starting at the end of the month from using up listings before they expire or the beginning of the next waiting for the new allotment. These will be first at risk.

My guess is we will see posts in April from sellers that have paid 50,100 or thousands of relisting fee's unknowingly.

everything I have ending before the start I will hold and start in the middle of the month. 

[hotspotauctions]

I don't relist anything. If it does not sell in 30 days, then it is not in demand, and not worth the hassle. 

[mam98031]

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@hotspotauctions wrote:

I don't relist anything. If it does not sell in 30 days, then it is not in demand, and not worth the hassle. 

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That doesn't hold true for me and at least a few other sellers that I know.

[164nc]

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@hotspotauctions wrote:

I don't relist anything. If it does not sell in 30 days, then it is not in demand, and not worth the hassle. 

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This does not hold true for me also, and had I given up on some of my slower selling items I would have given up a lot of money.

[tproffitt]

I used to have all of my listings as good til cancelled (GTC) because I thought it saved me time and energy from having to relist every 30 days.  What I saw at that time was that with GTC every time the items relisted, they showed up lower in the search.  A new fresh listing may show up on page one but a GTC relist would end up on page 3 or 4 and drop lower with each auto relist.  I eventually took every listing to 30 days so I could manually relist to see if it changed the showing in the search.  I found that by manually relisting, the item appeared in the first few pages again and I often sell items that have been in inventory for a while, on a manual relist.  

What I am getting at is this, I feel Ebay, by requiring all fixed price listings to be GTC, ensure that only the fresh new listings will be at the top of the search and can't be manipulated by a manual relist.  By doing this mandatory GTC on all fixed price listings, those that have 500+ items in their store will see sales take a dip because older stock will eventually end up on page 8+ on a GTC relist.

Some have pointed out that a lot of sales take place in the last 12 hours of a fixed price listing so ending early is not the answer.  I am going to look at ending batches, randomly around the second week after a relist, then relisting manually to see if anything changes within the search.   Unlike many sellers, I sell to those that would be looking or searching a generalized topic like "Vintage T shirt" (1.5 million listed) or "Vintage men's Suit" (30,000 listed) so appearing higher in the search is more vital to me than say someone who sells sports cards (1964 Pete Rose PSA 9...2 listed) or comic books (Fantastic four #48 CGC 9.0...3 listed) for example.  At least with those two examples, people would search for a more detailed item listing, eliminating many items that didn't fit the potential buyer's desired item.

Anybody else have thoughts on this?

[antiquesbee2012]

The petition has been removed.

[roth_penn]

I feel the exact same way. Ending and relisting is going to be more work than just relisting. This scam is making me seriously consider leaving eBay after years of selling and buying. 😞

[mam98031]

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@roth_penn wrote:
I feel the exact same way. Ending and relisting is going to be more work than just relisting. This scam is making me seriously consider leaving eBay after years of selling and buying. 😞

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If you were to plan to just relist a 30 day FP listing, then it would be less work as the GTC takes care of that for you.

Describe what you feel will negatively affect you with this change and maybe some of us can give you ways to work within the system that will work for you.

[164nc]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@roth_penn wrote:
I feel the exact same way. Ending and relisting is going to be more work than just relisting. This scam is making me seriously consider leaving eBay after years of selling and buying. 😞

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If you were to plan to just relist a 30 day FP listing, then it would be less work as the GTC takes care of that for you.

Describe what you feel will negatively affect you with this change and maybe some of us can give you ways to work within the system that will work for you.

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GTC does take care of that for you, sure ... and if your not carefully monitoring end times of your monthly allotments, some of which have 31 days, your going to have fees due because they automatically roll over non stop until cancelled.  Some smaller sellers could be elderly, homemakers w/ kids, etc., one health or family emergency where ebay selling gets put on the way back burner could cause catastrophic fees due. 

[mam98031]

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@164nc wrote:

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@roth_penn wrote:
I feel the exact same way. Ending and relisting is going to be more work than just relisting. This scam is making me seriously consider leaving eBay after years of selling and buying. 😞

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If you were to plan to just relist a 30 day FP listing, then it would be less work as the GTC takes care of that for you.

Describe what you feel will negatively affect you with this change and maybe some of us can give you ways to work within the system that will work for you.

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GTC does take care of that for you, sure ... and if your not carefully monitoring end times of your monthly allotments, some of which have 31 days, your going to have fees due because they automatically roll over non stop until cancelled.  Some smaller sellers could be elderly, homemakers w/ kids, etc., one health or family emergency where ebay selling gets put on the way back burner could cause catastrophic fees due. 

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Ebay is considering options right now for what some sellers perceive the 31 day issue as being "catastrophic".  It is a bit overblown however.  There are certain things you can do that will not allow this to even affect a listing for a couple of YEARS or better.  Simply don't post the first week or the last week of any month.  

Doing that will buy you plenty of time for Ebay to work through whatever it is they are working through to address this issue for some sellers.

For myself, I've been selling for many years and I've used GTC listings for a very long time.  I don't list all on one day.  I list as I find time throughout the month.  As many sellers do.  I've never ran into this 31 day issue to a point that I even noticed the difference in my monthly bill.  My bills are pretty consistent.  

[elitegeek79]

I couldn't find the petition still. I feel very frustrated-like there must be some way we can all join together and let the right people at eBay know that this is unacceptable.  I wonder if they have ever listened to sellers about their policies....