What is wrong about March 2019 seller update changing fixed price listings to good until canceled?

[ikey121]

When are the duration choices for fixed price listings coming back?  Please let Ebay know that you want a choice to choose "good until canceled", not be forced into it.   It sounds good... until you figure out that you're going to be charged insertion fees on all your listings over the free 50 per month if you don't have a store.   So, if we received additional promotional listings during any given month, when the 30 day, good until canceled, fixed price listings auto renew, we will be charged insertion fees for all the listings that have rolled over that exceed the 50 free or don't happen to hit a promotion at the exact time they roll over!  That's a lot of money.  Money, I personally can't afford.  Stores are also impacted by this.

I have been selling on ebay since 2002.  I figured out that fixed price listings work better for me than auctions.  I refuse to start an auction with a lower price than I am willing to take for an item.  I start an auction with the price I would be happy to accept!  Add to that,  the 30% more that Ebay requires for buy it now, and you make your item very unappealing!   I would rather donate my items before I sell them for less money than they're worth, or worth to me in time and effort and final value fees.  Selling with Ebay has to be worth the time to research, list, package, and mail.  It takes a lot of time to even get one package out the door, which I am very happy to do, considering I sold it for what I was asking for it. I do not have a store, nor do I sell multiple items in single listings.  I sell items that are my only, or only lot of 1 per listing.  The good until canceled does not benefit me, and I am positive I am not alone.  I don't sell multiples,. The "out of stock" part of the "talk it up part" of this change, does nothing for sellers that are just trying to sell their own previously owned items to help with the family income.  We're not big time, we can't afford this change.  Please sellers let Ebay know that you're not happy about this.  Maybe, just maybe, they'll listen!  We had the choice before to choose good until canceled.  Please bring back that CHOICE. 

A lot of people won't play the auction game, and I don't blame them.   Personally, if I want to buy something, I usually want to buy it when I hit the button to purchase it.

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[ikey121]

When are the duration choices for fixed price listings coming back?  Please let Ebay know that you want a choice to choose "good until canceled", not be forced into it.   It sounds good... until you figure out that you're going to be charged insertion fees on all your listings over the free 50 per month if you don't have a store.   So, if we received additional promotional listings during any given month, when the 30 day, good until canceled, fixed price listings auto renew, we will be charged insertion fees for all the listings that have rolled over that exceed the 50 free or don't happen to hit a promotion at the exact time they roll over!  That's a lot of money.  Money, I personally can't afford.  Stores are also impacted by this.

I have been selling on ebay since 2002.  I figured out that fixed price listings work better for me than auctions.  I refuse to start an auction with a lower price than I am willing to take for an item.  I start an auction with the price I would be happy to accept!  Add to that,  the 30% more that Ebay requires for buy it now, and you make your item very unappealing!   I would rather donate my items before I sell them for less money than they're worth, or worth to me in time and effort and final value fees.  Selling with Ebay has to be worth the time to research, list, package, and mail.  It takes a lot of time to even get one package out the door, which I am very happy to do, considering I sold it for what I was asking for it. I do not have a store, nor do I sell multiple items in single listings.  I sell items that are my only, or only lot of 1 per listing.  The good until canceled does not benefit me, and I am positive I am not alone.  I don't sell multiples,. The "out of stock" part of the "talk it up part" of this change, does nothing for sellers that are just trying to sell their own previously owned items to help with the family income.  We're not big time, we can't afford this change.  Please sellers let Ebay know that you're not happy about this.  Maybe, just maybe, they'll listen!  We had the choice before to choose good until canceled.  Please bring back that CHOICE. 

A lot of people won't play the auction game, and I don't blame them.   Personally, if I want to buy something, I usually want to buy it when I hit the button to purchase it.

[ikey121]

You're very welcome! Thank you for taking the time to write too!   We're talking, I hope they're listening.

[jz-5682]

We can start an auction at any price we want to. It doesn't have to be .99 cents. I got suckered into that when eBay suggested, "Start your auction at .99 cents to attract more bidders." Yeah right. NOT!

I have started to do more auctions, tho I hate the extra work of relisting them every 7 or 10 days. But I had more than my allotted free fixed items, so I thought I'd try auctioning some off.  I figured I can't sell it if no one sees it. I have also, like others, had people who win and never pay - that doesn't happen to me with fixed price items. I also almost always have just ONE bidder. But I am selling things. 

Now, this Good Til Cancelled is gonna take some getting used to, as I also have just one of most listings - not multiples. As long as I don't list more than my free allotment each month it should work. And when they offer me "Get 500 (or 1,000) free listings," I'll just have to say, "No Thank You." 

[mikeyd1270]

I'm with most of you who do not like this, I have a 250 store and roll over a few listings every month. I always have some cheap **bleep** that can be relisted but I try and save the available store space for more valuable items to sell. If at the end of the month I have a few listings left over I just used them on some unsold cheap stuff. I will not be able to do that now. Now any marginal listing of low dollar value will automatically renew unless I actively cancel it. This is bad in several ways for me. I used the unsold listings as a place to store them until I could review the listing for why it did not sell.

As for just watching for when listings end, that's rather insulting to tell people who have 10 to 50  listings ending every day. Yeah sometimes there aren't any, sometimes 1 or 5. Having to go look every day to make sure some low profit items do not get relisted is going eat up a lot of time. Now figure that I assist in managing 3 different stores and over 1500 listings atm. I am going to waste hours a day doing something that was managed nicely before by a simple setting without using any of my time and cost ebay  nothing. With the amount of money me and my partners have been sending ebay and pp, I am quite disappointed with all the changes that hurt us from making money for ourselves.

Changes should benefit BOTH sides, not just one side.

How many of you sellers have noticed wild swings in your sales the last few months. Ask why.

[suebar98]

I have been an Ebay seller since 1999 & I also like to have control of my auctions. I feel that the buy it now is the better of the choices to sell items.  I keep within my 50 per month for budget reasons. Not happy at all Ebay, for forcing the GTC on buy it now  . I will be cutting my auctions in half to be sure I keep the cost down in my budget. Not sure what else to do. Its too bad somebody in a back office somewhere came up with this "Brilliant" idea. It is surely making many long time  sellers mad  . I agree Ebay need to reconsider this greedy change. 

[finatp]

So true. This new good until cancel policy would be taking money from me to relist anything after the 50 free listings. I can not afford this option being on a fixed income raising a 25 year old autistic daughter full time. This was my income which I will not be able to afford to use. They need to switch back so we are not charged for automatic relisting.

[funfashion2005]

You can NO LONGER change it back to 30 days. Good til canceled is the ONLY option as of 3/18.

I totally agree- it is only helping ebay- not sellers!  😞

[quayvar]

I am right there with you, and completely agree. Unfortunately, I don't have confidence that ebay will make any wise decisions though so won't hold my breath 😞

[ethel6770]

I have a store and am very disappointed with this change.  My product are fixed price and sell best on a ten day cycle.  They normally are selling at the end of the ten day cycle.  I have a beautiful rhythm set and poof....

Called to ask questions but received the text book answers when asked to move to another human in the chain of command I was placed on hold for 29 minutes when they disconnected.  Whoops...they called back and placed me on hold again for 22 minutes when I was disconnected again.  I did receive an email stating that the care about me!  Hahahahaha.

  The new fees that I will be charged by not following their plan will make my store subscription not worthy.  I want to know what they are willing to do because I am under subscription until November of this year.  I cannot afford this.  I had even begun paying for some advertising but will need to stop that immediately.  What a shame!

[twnpopcards]

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@ky-thrill wrote:

E-Bay was founded on the basis of selling one-off collectibles.  Some of us have been around that long.

E-Bay's problem is an identity crisis; do they want sellers of collectibles who have quantity of 1 (much of this stuff not on Amazon) or do they want to cater to drop shippers and Chinese sellers with quantities of 100?

If E-Bay is only going to have one method to sell, then they must chose to cut one side of the business loose or the other.  The same model doesn't work best for both.

I can't believe that we are living in the year 2019, with all the technology we have, yet incompetent morons who run businesses haven't figures out they can leave all the options there for their customers to use, at no additional cost to them.  We have computers that can process millions of calculations per second, but we can't have a drop box to choose GTC or 30-days.  E-Bay management is a joke!

Or if E-Bay wants to ramrod their customers into only one way of selling; spin-off E-Bay Collectibles.  All collectible categories go there, and people wanting to sell fidget spinners or generic bras by the hundreds, can continue doing so on regular E-Bay.

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The current CEO has had a love affair with China even before he was given the CEO position.  He constantly has stated that China is Ebays future and has done all he can think of to make this reality. Ebay has set up many partnerships with China, Chinese cities and some Chinese businesses and has put a lot of their resources into helping the Chinese sell on Ebay.  They do not brag about all these partnerships, in fact they usually try to downplay them as much as possible, but if you do a Deep Dive search on Google you can find many articles about these alliances being formed including a campus where they train the Chinese to sell on Ebay.  If Ebay put anywhere near the amount of money they spend on China in the US , i believe that Ebay would be in a lot better shape than it is now.

[tried$true]

I totally agree.... they make tons of money off of sellers already.... We should have the option to choose how long we want a fixed listing to run....To help us sell our items....I think not!!! To help put more listing fees in their pocket!!!

Always changing things and not always in the best interest of the seller...Without us they have no sales!!!!!

[tried$true]

I totally agree.... they have changed things so much over the last few years that do not benefit us...And I also did not sign up for these changes when I opened my store either....They continue to **bleep** all of us sellers off!!!

[tried$true]

Well said bluegrasscomics..... I am a small time collectibles, antiques and what ever I can get a buck for seller and have been around here selling on Ebay since 2002.....I agree...leave us be to determine what type of time frame works for us...stop bleeding the little guys we are the ones who got you up and running from the beginning!

[richn49]

There's something that hasn't been mentioned here. If I list just 50 items they won't roll over free on any month with 31 days. Months with 28 days will also throw this 30 day renewal out of sync.

[mamakacz55]

I won't list using action and I cannot afford the cost of Ebays new automatic relist till sold.I will find another avenue for selling.There are free sites out there.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

This has been mentioned in a number of threads, and in both ebay's Update to the original announcement and the update to the update address this issue.