Bring Back The Old Markdown Manager

[thriftscorechic]

I just want to be another voice to let eBay know how much the change in markdown manager is hurting us. I have been unable to put anything on sale for the past 2 days and my sales are literally in the dumps when I was used to making around $200 every day. This is absolutely devastating for us and I'm sure it is the same for many other families that rely on eBay to make a living. PLEASE CHANGE IT BACK. Since the change I have sold nothing and received no offers on any of my Buy It Now items. I am only selling things on auction. Do I change everything to auction? Well I don't have much time because rent is due and auctions take 5 days, and people don't always pay right away. I have also been lowering prices but it's not helping. I'm not just writing to complain about my particular situation, I'm writing because I know there are many other people in the same situation as me. Many people are wondering if eBay is literally trying to drive its sellers away. Is eBay trying to starve us? I absolutely hate the idea of the 14-day rule, it takes so much power out of the seller's hands. We alread complied with "free returns", now this? I've been with eBay for 10 years, if I had the money and the means I'd jump ship because of this change. But instead I'm just clinging on for dear life hoping I don't end up homeless next week. Please for the love of God bring back the old markdown manager and let us put sales on so that we can eat this summer.

[bostonsgarden]

Almost wish I didn't read your post, just raised my anxiety about it all a lil more ...it'll be a Catch 22 where your dammed either way...So you have to offer free returns to get a trs badge which'll clearly increase your returns (increased profit loss or cost of doind business as the reps say) and then you'll be punished with a 4% penalty if your return rates are higher... what in the??? Sad that ebay seems to have the same ethics as yahoo news

[oem-xcellence2]

That's correct and in the 17 years I've been on Ebay my return rates have never been high at all.  Suddenly in 2018 it's an issue.  I've never been on these community boards except in the last year to comment at all because some policies I had disagreements.  They made so much progress by getting rid of feedback as a primary measuring tool because it's too subjective.  Returns can be subjective also which is why I be I believe it's a terrible measuring tool because it only tracks if people open a return not what happens afterwards.  

People may close the return, they may have not read the listing properly and many times they  don't return it, yet you'll be punished for it no matter what.  Try working with the sellers to create better policies.  There's no way a seller with a large degree of experience would have ever endorsed this restriction on sales.   A leader needs to take charge of the company and not let their legal department dictate it. 

[caspianpearl]

I cannot wrap my head around the logic. And this has been introduced in the summer when traditionally every thing goes on sale...discount sales drive business during this season.

I have one sale going that started in mid June...I keep wasting my time trying to start new markdowns..and every thing gets SKIPPED. Its so frustrating

[sports_pinz_plus]

I'd like to know who was the knuckle head that signed off on the test case to begin this way of markdowning things down?  They should have included 2 weeks priot to June 25th the officlal start of this horror story where we're all  getting "skipped price".   So now we wait for the engineers fix (right) or 14 days from June 25th.   That a boy eBay - not.

Restriction of free trade is my take on this !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[oem-xcellence2]

It's not broken according to them this is the way they've been ordered to set it up. I thought you could use the order discount feature or other sales programs that they have but none of those worked for me at all. As for now, we're stuck with this. When I first heard about this I though that it was for a newly listed item that had never been in your Ebay Store which would make far more sense to me because you can setup 30 day listings to renew. After June 25 the I couldn't believe how bad it was when I found out the details.

People with faster moving inventory can longer benefit from running a sale on 3, 5, and 10 day listings. I think a better rule or solution is to have it where you can't use discounts of more than 30% because if you're doing it more than that it's highly likely you're playing games with prices. I have to admit that when I first started I did things like that but everyone knew that the price was artificially inflated to run the sale. That could solve this problem without having to implement all of these stifling rules.

[pb*bikes]

I went for $1500 a day avg, to 250 and 190 so far. I am going to spend the holiday adjusting prices yet again but I suspect were not being seen on internationals as those have slowed before this.  I dont know if its best to spend all of our selling time constantly adjusting and workarounds or just put all energy elsewhere.   Its best spending our time on the same growing path we were on, more inventory listing , keeping customers happy and dialing in our listings. There is no time for that now.

[gstroh]

After unsuccessfullly trying to create a sale for 2 days,  called ebay and found out I have to wait 14 day to put an item on sale. For 2 years the first of each month I put old itemsinto a clearance section. Now there is no way to starta sale on the 1st.  (UNless I used gtc listings, which I don't use).....So I tried the discount  thing instead, but had to put my whole shop on discount. And the banner showing the discount is at the bottom, way at the bottom of the page. NOONE will see it.Why is Oscar Meyer Hot dogs selling at the top, and my shop banner, buy 3, get 30% off is buried. I am so frustrated. Having my business practices controlled this way. It's obvious the banner should be at the top.   I might be selling items.

I'm so sad and depressed, old markdown manager worked.

[frenchblueshutters]

This is Ridiculous.. This was My Sole Living... I have Not Had a Single Sale since they took down the Markdown Manager. Not One. Not One Question. NOTHING... I was Making a Living for the Last 8 Years, But Have Not Been Able to Save Any Money in Savings, But Have Made My Bills and Bought Groceries, and Bought New Stock. I always Ran 10% off Sales all the Time on Certain Dollar amounts and Buyer Loved seeing the Red Slash. I NEVER Marked things Way up and Cut Them Drastically.. I Have an Anchor Store and Did 7 Day Lisitngs. My Call To Customer Support I was Told Give it Time to Level Out and Run Sales Every 14 Days. On 7 Day Listings That Does Not Work at all. They are "New" Every 7 Days and This Past week I didn't even Make My Anchor Store Fees, Let alone Grocery Money and Rent.. I Make sometimes $1000 Week sometimes More Some times a Little Less But That is an Average. This Past Week I Have Made $000000 ZERO...That is a 1000% LESS.. I Bought New Merch Mid June with any Excess I Had, Not Knowing I Should Have Held onto EVERY Penny I Could. One Customer Service Rep Told Me a Work Around with Markdown Manager, Said If I Ran a No Limit Order Storewide at 10% Off Total Order.. My Buyers wouldnt See The Red Slash BUT they Would see, The 10% off any Order in My Store.. So I Took the Time to do it... GUESS WHAT. I Never Could Find it. Finally I Scrolled all the Way to Very Bottom of the Listing Page and There it was.. WHAT Buyer if they Don't see it with the Price and Picture at the TOP of the Page is Going to Scroll all the Way to the Bottom of the Page to see they CAN Get a Discount... Obviously NO BODY Saw it with No Sales in a Week. I Was Absolutely INSULTED.. I AM WITH ALL OF YOU Worrying about Rent, Utilities,  and Food.. I AM NOT A HOBBY SELLER...PLEASE POWERS THAT BE BRING BACK the MARKDOWN MANAGER and Give Store Owners the Right to Run Sales as They See Fit. This New Policy is NOT a Good One and Hurts Many More Than it Helps. 

[youngandreckless]

Why was this new policy created and implented? It destroys the seller platform. Hurt sales which in return hurts EBAY? What is the purpose of the 14 day cooling period? WIll it be reversed??

[coniferclothingcompany]

Tyler@Ebay

[oem-xcellence2]

We have to keep pressure on them to reverse it.  They can probably afford to lose a lot more money than most of us could stand just to show that they have the power and authority.  My problem is that they seem to be trying to implement nearly impossible to enforce policies at a more aggressive rate than I've ever seen.  They tried to get people to remove watermarks in their listing after endorsing it and encouraging it for nearly as long as they've been in existence.  They would have suffered tremendous losses in business if they removed the listings that had them.  They backed down on that one and may other overreaching policies.    

I've head that they do pay attention to what goes on in these forums and I'm going to keep calling them until they change this because I won't be able to sustain the business if my revenue drops because of this which it has started to and will continue too if it's left in place.

[bostonsgarden]

I agree again with OEM, I'm going to call every day about it and get other sellers in my area to do the same, I've also reached out to a few of the big time youtube Ebay seller channels and most there agree its very bad for our businesses& theirs. It can be changed like when they made it so if you had the "Best Offer" option you weren't allowed to put the item(s) on sale, that idea didn't last long either.

Something else just happened to my account that's strange, I woke up to find 25 of my listings no longer had the Best Offer on them?! I always add that to all my fixed price listings.

[oem-xcellence2]

There are so many other ways to address this than the way they did.  They could at first notified the people in the categories in which this is taking place the potential issues with the kind of sales they run.  After that they could have limited their sales to at the most 25-30% in the categories where this abuse is taking place in the most.  I ran 50% off sales when I first started and everyone including me knew the prices were inflated because of the sale that would take place.  I stopped doing that because I found it was better to be deal straight forward with people and my sales rose and were more steady.   My rule now is if I have to discount something more than 20% then I need to lower the price on it.  So my pricing is now pretty close to being competitive on the majority of items that I sell.

This "Punish Everyone"  because we're afraid of a lawsuit more likely made them a bigger target than if they made some moderate changes to deal with the issued on a more focused scale.  For eBay to implement a policy like this shows how disconnected the are from their sellers.  Their trying to escalate our fees at an unprecedented rate in a variety of ways in the last year.   If they would work with this sellers through cooperation not forced obedience I'm certain that the company could get back on track and grow but I see no evidence of that happening in the near future.

P.S. I will not do free returns becuse the merchandise I sell varies greatly on dimension and weight.  The vast majority of returns I haven't had many people complain about paying return shipping charges when they changed their mine or purchased the wrong item, it seems fair to them.  My feedback rating has been 98% or higher on Ebay for the last 16 or so years I've been on it.  I believe the free returns policy was contrived to make people drop their TRS status so they they could bring in more revenue.  Don't put it past them, they've shown themselves to be number crunchers not leaders.

[oem-xcellence2]

Keep the pressure on them I specifically ask for the selling tools department when I call.  You'll find out a lot of the people that work there are Ebay sellers too and they don't agree with the rule either.  I'm going to call them 2-3 times a week until this stop this policy because I know it will be devastating to my business if it stays in place.  Circuit City made a huge mistake when they fired all of their experienced sales people and replaced them with hourly workers.  That mistake by itself didn't take them out but it was a series of miscalculations and apathy to the marketplace and that was the pivoting point that took them down.  Ebay is showing an equal or higher amount of apathy to their sellers right now. I think this policy is just as dangerous otherwise I wouldn't be wasting my time posting about it.  I'm not normally a person the would even visit these forums but their policies have never been this egregious in my opinion.