Tired of eBay suggesting I send a discount offer on an Item I just listed...
instead of one that's been in my inventory for a year! Better yet, let ME decided what and when I want to offer a discount on one of my items.
Seriously , I am sort of tired of it. I just listed three items and ebay is telling me to send an offer on something that's been up for 15 minutes, yet items I have that have been up for over a year, I can't send offers on. Makes no sense what so ever.
While we are at it, I am also tired of eBay constantly telling me to promote my store (ie spend more money) to sponsor a listing (ie spend more money) and advertise (ie spend more money). I already pay for a store that does very little for me. I can't afford to spend more on the platform considering I am already losing money on every listing as I am selling at less than my cost on most items and I have to pay eBay commission. I lose on shipping too as many times I under estimate what I should be charging for shipping in order to compete. I can't (another eBay suggestion) afford to ship for free! I may as well give everything away to charity then.
In addition, I am constantly being harangued to reduce my shipping times. I live in a rural area and my post office closes at 2:30 pm. Earlier on Saturdays. I have health issues. If I don't feel well and can't get out of my hose before the post office closes, I am not going to risk a bad rating because I put same day shipping on my listings. Not happening eBay!
I have been on this site with one of my accounts for 20 years this year. I started selling in 2006. Did I get a happy anniversary note? Nope. Do I get anything but more hassle and less service? Nope. Do I get anything helpful? Nope. What I do get is difficulty when I need to contact ebay. And with AI that's getting harder and harder to do.
I have read many of these comments/questions and it appears that eBay isn't even interested in answering them. Not surprising. Many companies are making it harder and harder to contact them, especially if you are like me and have no social media accounts.
I sure wish eBay supported their sellers better, after all we are where they make their money. It's not the buyers that get charged.
inhawaii
·8 months agoTired of eBay suggesting I send a discount offer on an Item I just listed...
This is what I would do if I were you ... ignore the suggestion.
meme6253
·8 months agoI agree they don't even give it a chance to try & sell at your own suggested price,Everything is discount it. I wish are cost of selling could be discounted.
flp
·8 months agoI live in a rural area as well but am on a main road. My mail carrier comes right to my door (actually in my garage) to pick up packages. In fact, one winter day, she walked from the road bc there was too much snow for her to get in. ) Works great for me. Is this a possibility for you?
fivekatzantiques
OP8 months agoNo. I have a secure property and it's gated. I don't have anyway to know when they would be there. THat is not really an option. I am not changing my shipping times. This is another example of eBay catering to the buyer rather than supporting the seller.
Another example is the fact that sellers have no way to leave negative feedback for a buyer, so they can act with impunity. I had a buyer send me an offer of $15 on a listed item priced at $75. That was an insult so all I could do was block them. I am not going to be a party to that kind of transaction but it's the atmosphere that eBay has cultivated. They feel nothing is off the table.
luckythewinner
·8 months agoThis is another example of eBay catering to the buyer rather than supporting the seller.
eBay caters to eBay.
Often when eBay caters to eBay, it also caters to buyers.
Occasionally when eBay caters to eBay, it also caters to sellers.
simply-the-best-for-you
·8 months agoYes, they're annoying. But there isn't much you can do about it. Just ignore the suggestions. 2 day handling IS perfectly reasonable & you're perfectly ok to keep it at that. I do.
gurlcat
·8 months agoThe Community is not manned by eBay employees, only fellow sellers and buyers.
fivekatzantiques
OP8 months agoI understand that, but there has to be someone, somewhere within the company that goes through this stuff..
They can't totally ignore it..
mtgraves7984
·8 months ago@fivekatzantiques
Sure they can. Just like you'll train yourself to totally ignore 'things'. Sometimes ignorance truly is bliss. Godspeed.
fivekatzantiques
OP8 months agoYea well that's not going to happen - lol.
Thanks.
jonathanbrightlight
·8 months agoSo you have an easy solution fully within your control, yet you are refusing to do it, and would rather complain without any way to effect change? Interesting.
gurlcat
·8 months agoThe OP was replying to mtgraves who didn't actually offer a suggestion.
jonathanbrightlight
·8 months agoThe comment by mtgraves included the solution: ignore it.
fivekatzantiques
OP8 months agoFunny how instead of understanding someone view you criticize it. Just because it seems like a solution to you, it may not work for me.
dhbookds
·8 months agoI think that's is the point...........not everything works for everyone. Those suggestions "may" help others.......should they discontinue them simply because you don't want to deal with them?
gurlcat
·8 months ago@fivekatzantiques To be fair, I have misophonia so I understand what it's like to be unable to "just ignore" something, although in my case it it sounds. I once abandoned my shopping cart in a grocery store because of all the noises giving me a panic attack, and I have near-homicidal feelings about my neighbor who I call "Leaf Blower Guy". I think he has his own neurosis, OCD. -Runs that leaf blower at least 3 days a week for at least 3 hours, despite having a rather small yard. I am a useless bundle of nerves the whole time.
Anyway maybe you have a hard time ignoring visual cues. If so, I sympathize, honestly. But like I said in a previous reply, eBay will probably never stop showing those suggestions at the top of your listings. They are just programmed to show "something" to everyone. Seriously even if a seller did 100% of everything perfectly the way eBay prefers, I guarantee the program would still think of something to suggest.
So just know you can ignore them in the sense that there is nothing important there, nothing you NEED to read. Once you understand that, you may find it easier to just scroll past them every time. Try "exposure therapy" -log out then back in 10 times fast, scrolling past those suggestion boxes fast each time, to get used to it.
hartungcards
·8 months ago"...there has to be someone, somewhere within the company that goes through this stuff."
This person is located in "the back office."
gurlcat
·8 months ago@fivekatzantiques If you are getting prompts to send offers it's because the item has accumulated 1 or more watcher (a buyer who put the item on their Watching list).
The reason you don't have watchers on your very old listings is because nobody is seeing them in search results. eBay considers listings over 30 days old as "stale" and de-prioritizes them in search results. -To be clear, it IS possible to find all your listings, but the old ones are just so far from Page 1 that most buyers won't go that far.
You can end the old listings and then 'sell similar' them, to make them brand new, with new item numbers and everything.
I would give more precise instructions but I am tired of putting so much effort into trying to help someone, only to find out they just wanted to complain, not find solutions.
fivekatzantiques
OP8 months agoThanks. I never thought of ending and reselling. Thanks, I may have to follow up on that.
I understand the follower thing is the trigger, but seriously it would be better for the sellers if they used a different trigger, ie..age of listing or something to say send an offer.
I complain because I just hope that someday in some universe eBay will see things like this and say, duh, yea we have been idiots, let's fix this. I do the same thing when I have to call a large company. They can't fix something if they don't know it's broken.
gurlcat
·8 months agoThink about what you're saying there.
An old listing with no watchers. They suggest you send an offer. An offer TO WHOM?
boomersbiz46
·8 months agoYou are right on with your comments..... everyday I end about 5-10 old listings, reword them, switch my pictures around and the relist the item.(sell similar). Sometimes I add items to my old stale listings and that usually prompts some interest. I sell back issue magazines, old children's books plus a lot of other collectibles, and if I bundle them with similar items, I usually sell them. (Not always, LOL). Then they go to the Rescue Mission in our area.
I always have to remember that there are several types of buyers out there... Collectors and Resellers.The collectors always send a nice FB telling me they have been looking for that old book as they had it from their childhood...means a lot to them. The resellers are happy to find a good lot to help them in THEIR business. I have been doing this for many years and trying to downsize my collections. It is hard to part with some things but happy that someone else found a treasure.
Just my words of wisdom to help others.
gurlcat
·8 months ago@fivekatzantiques Are you saying ebay sends you emails about your handling time? I have never heard of them doing that, and I have been reading posts here for years.
How long IS your handling time?
fivekatzantiques
OP8 months agoMy handling time is two days.
I get blue blocks above my listings that have "Helpful' Suggestions such as "Reduce handling time by one day" or "Promote your listings"
I think two days is perfectly legitimate. I can't always get out or get to the post office.
reallynicestamps
·8 months agoI get blue blocks above my listings that have "Helpful' Suggestions such as
All eBay's suggestions are good for eBay.
About the deadstock-- the stuff that has been listed for years.
I am also a seller of long tail, slow moving items.
I've sold things that have been listed for twenty years!
But.
Every now and then I Close some of the older stuff.
It goes to Unsolds where it can rest for some 60 days, but before that :
I add a note of when it was Closed .
I review the pictures, Item Specifics*, description, pricing and shipping.
I relist usually as Relist, but sometimes as Sell Similar which allows me to make changes.
The dead listing now appears to be NEW SHINY SPECIAL FUN GOOD!
And will appear higher in Search.
Oh-- and I usually add Best Offer with automatic Accept/Reject parameters as part of my strategy.
I was using Promoted Listings at 2% but closed them until I read the fallout from the revised program.
*A lot of old listings have none, and those are what are found by search engines like Google.
gurlcat
·8 months agoRelist versus Sell Similar is something I'd like to see revisited here in the Community, maybe with experimentation.
EDIT: I went ahead and did some playing around with my account, made an interesting discovery and started a new thread about it.
gurlcat
·8 months ago@fivekatzantiques Two days is totally fine. That blue block area on the listings page -that is ALWAYS going to have some kind of suggestion or other. If you were to take it seriously and do 'the' (whichever) thing suggested, then it would just switch to another suggestion.
So consider this: if it's suggesting a better handling time (and 2 days is already not bad) .... that means it's scraping the bottom of the barrel for suggestions .... because you're doing everything else so OPTIMALLY!
Take it as a compliment! ðŸ¾ðŸ¥‚
fivekatzantiques
OP8 months agoFunny. I take it as annoying and offensive to be honest.
I am a top rated seller, yet because I don't offer same day shopping, and I don't offer returns I am forbidden to use the TRS badge on my listings. Additionally they are telling me they are going to take away my TRS rating, get this, because I am not selling enough stuff.
I don't see how when I do everything else right, on time, good feedback, tracking uploaded on everything, and shipping in advance of what I have posted, they are going to take away my rating for the one thing that is out of my control and that's how much of my items people buy. Nice. If I do everything right, I should be top rated seller. It's not my fault that they have catered to the buyer to the extent that people won't buy something if it's not shipped free.
I remember a very long time ago, that if you were looking for a widget and clicked on a page it showed you the listing. If you didn't like that widget, you had to back out of that page, and then click on a different page. Now, they have on your listing page, a crap ton of the exact same widget often at lower prices, or free shipping or what ever...and the buyer doesn't even have to click away from your page to buy a different widget. Needless to say, sales were better then.
eBay is constantly, over the last 20 years, been making it easier for the buyers and harder for the sellers.
Before I stated this latest account, I had down how and what I needed to do. But no, some developer to keep and justify his job decided that they needed to change and refresh the site, so everything people already knew how to do needs to be relearned totally in order to do something we all knew how to do already.
True I am not a fan of the current platform and honestly if there were another place to go, I might do that but this has the largest market share. I am not even trying to make a profit, I am trying do downsize and not lose my **bleep** on inventory I bought for my retail store before it closed.
I am not on any other site or social media in anyway shape or form, so this is it.
I just don't like having to answer the exact same questions and dismiss the exact same boxes every time. I do not use apps on my phone. I don't use the internet on my phone, yet each and ever time I log in, I have to dismiss a box that offers a discount on something if I buy it on "the app". I am not on "the app" I have never been on "the app" and I am tired of telling eBay to stuff it. It's exhausting to have to keep clicking on all these things again and again and again and again...They need a way to opt out of things once.
So you see my irritations with the site are many. I am not here just to complain, but if more sellers told eBay what they didn't like or what's not fair, perhaps the ninnys in charge would get it through their heads that they need to make some changes that sellers want not what the board of director's profit margin wants.
I just started ending some of my older listings and relisting them on one of the other's suggestions. SO far two views on one item and i have done nearly 20. We will see if that indeed works.
I am open to ideas, but i don' think much is going to change.
Thanks for your opinion.
gurlcat
·8 months ago@fivekatzantiques It was me (same person) who suggested trying that. But note, I didn't say "relist" them -I said SELL SIMILAR them. It is a distinction that matters in search results, therefore views and sales.
fivekatzantiques
OP8 months agoAh I missed that. Well I can try it both ways. However I don't see how there would be much difference. It basically renews the listing. But we can see.
Thanks for the advice.
gurlcat
·8 months agoAre you sitting down? 😠I just happened to show the exact difference between them, in a thread today:
https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Relist-still-not-as-good-as-Sell-Similar/m-p/35443554#M2656741
christworks
·8 months ago@fivekatzantiques There there. It will be okay.
eBay does not force you to do anything. It is pretty easy to just ignore stuff. I do that all the time. I wish my main concern in life was over how many times eBay shows me I can send out offers.
The reason why you are able to send out offers on newly listed items is because they are newly listed, and buyers are seeing them for the first time. That's very common. You don't have to send out an offer. I price slightly above market, knowing I'm going to send out 10% offers or run a sale.
If you are not able to send offers on old items it is likely because nobody wants them. They have been listed for a year for a reason. Do you bother to investigate to see why that is, or is it is easier to be a keyboard complainer? I can tell you that I clicked on 3 random listings of yours. All 3 are more than double the current market.
For example, this item: Star Wars - Power of the Force - Grand Moff Tarkin - Freeze Frame Action Slide
You have it priced at $10.00 + $5.00 shipping via Priority Mail (?!?!). That item is worth about $10.00, including shipping. You are offering to ship it Priority Mail. After your fees and shipping priority at likely the 2LB rate, you are going to be in the hole, depending on where it is going.
I would say your store is saving you on listing fees. You have the ability to run sales. Those are all good features.
eBay does not force you to have a short handling time. It is understandable why you might have a longer handling time. Still, eBay wants you make sales so they are going to keep nudging you. I don't see why you can't just ignore it. Life is too short to worry about stuff like that. Spend your power on fixing your listings so your prices are decent, and maybe consider shipping some other way other than Priority Mail.
tobaccocardyahoo
·8 months agoEbay makes more money when you sell something.
They do not ask me to discount anything, but they annoy me with suggestions that I pay for promotion.
Perhaps you are treated as you are because of the categories you have listed in.
Unless they have some new AI package, I doubt they know if your items are overpriced or not.