Community Chat, Feb 27 from 1:00 pm PT - 2019 Early Seller Update

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone! This week we announced our 2019 Early Seller Update and have set up a dedicated board here where staff will be answering questions throughout February 26th & 27th. Additionally, we will focus our Weekly Chat with The Community Team on Feb 27th at 1 PM PT on these announcements.

We look forward to hearing your feedback about the changes, new features, Seller Hub enhancements, and listing updates we're implementing. Looking forward to seeing you here!

[Anonymous]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:
Trinton, So your answer is: No, we will continue to treat one offs as if they multi-quantity. Ok Thanks.

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Hi @my-cottage-books-and-antiques, I apologize for any confusion. Since your question is not a yes or no question and by answering in a black and white fashion would not adequately cover the question I am hearing from you. Multi-quantity and single quantity listings are not currently treated the same, would have have different factors that impact their appearance in Best Match, but both will benefit from a GTC listing format.

[Anonymous]

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@dhbookds wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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@dhbookds wrote:

Maybe I misheard on the discussion on facebook....

I thought I heard her say ebay would NOT charge twice in 1 month for GTC, even tho the listings were listed on the lst day of the month....and then rolled over on the 31st of the same month.........She seemed very assured that even tho it was stated 30 days......it actually meant the calendar month.

GTC listings have never been treated this way that I know of.........it's charged again when the relist comes, whether in the same month or not........  ???

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Hi @dhbookds

Thanks for calling this out, I am so sorry.  I just found out I was misinformed on FB live.  I was originally told it could not be charged twice.  I am so sorry, we are going to look into this and provide feedback that it should just be for a month.  So sorry.  

Thanks,

Kristi

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Kristi.........hope you go back and inform your misinformer.  Not to beat a dead horse.......but had you read the board concerning these changes you would have seen much angst about being charged twice within the same month..........  THAT was/is a BIG deal for sellers........  If you had read that board, hopefully you would have questioned your misinformer closely about what he/she was saying.  We all make mistakes, but during this kind of "heat", it pays to be double sure about you, as an ebay representative, say..........

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Agreed.  I am embarrassed that I was wrong.  I had been reading the boards so I don't know how I missed this.  I even responded to a few posts yesterday afternoon and last night.  Unfortunately I am only human but completely agree I need to be more sure and double verify.  Truly so sorry.

[long_live_the_seller]

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@hioctane62 wrote:

Once ebay gets all fixed price listings to be GTC, is the second part of this plan to impose a fee to end and/or revise GTC listings?

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Hi hioctane62,

We have no plans to introduce a GTC end/revise fee. We believe that the fixed price to GTC change will improve how buyers find your items.  Keeping listings active and ensuring that listings are accurate and up-to-date are important parts of that.

Thanks.

[brian@ebay]

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@becksrelics wrote:

Hi! Offers to watchers....the second time the item is offered ...will the same watchers get the offer the second time too? Or is it only new watchers? 

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Hi @becksrelics, we don't want buyers to be overloaded with multiple offers for the same item being sold by a single seller. Each time a seller sends an offer for an item, it will be sent to different buyers. 

[Anonymous]

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@mam98031 wrote:

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@Anonymous wrote:

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• seller can not see who they sent an offer to and only sees a redacted version in their offers section AFTER they made the offer.
• it would be useful to be able to tell if the "watcher" is a competitor or a real buyer so one doesn't waste time
• one can use the feature and end up "locked out" of any further offers with a buyer because they blindly made too many offers already
• I am guessing most watchers are not serious buyers, especially when I have a B/O component on the listing.

- Correct, toady sellers cannot see who their watchers are and we have to maintain that privacy.  If it turns out sellers need to know to make a good offer we can revisit.

- understand, however as mention we aren't able to tell and it's a fairly quick process so thats why i recommend trying it out, you can see if you have actual interested watchers watching.

- true, sellers can only make one offer because we don't want to inundate buyers with too many offers, so make your first offer your best offer.  

- we actually see that many watchers are serious buyers so recommend trying it out. 

Thanks!

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Are you calling me a frog "toady"  LOL.  Just a little humor!!!

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LOL I just barely edited because I saw that typo!!  I think I was calling myself a frog haha 🙂

[Anonymous]

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@mr_lincoln wrote:

@Anonymous   wrote: If a seller is concerned with fees from this occasional situation, they can simply list towards the center of the month and would not run into any renewal date vs. insertion fee credit date conflicts for at least 2 years. Since moving to a GTC model for all listings should contribute to higher conversion and thus higher sales, sellers may find that the increased revenue they receive within those two years will offset any possible insertion fees that are charged from time to time.

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Good afternoon Trinton, I saw this post, I don't agree with any of that statement regarding higher conversion rates with GTC listings until I can examine the data used to make that statement.  So much of that kind of a generalized statement is subjective and depends on the type of Seller polled and the type of items sold and used in the study.  The ONLY GTC listing I used in the last 3 years was by accident and I promptly deleted it yet there has been steady growth on several IDs without GTC.  This may come as a shock to eBay but Sellers actually know how to run businesses and sell stuff ... all kinds of stuff ... Give Sellers the Opt out option and eBay will quickly see how many Sellers want the making broad-brush decisions affecting their carefully crafted business ...

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Hi @mr_lincoln, while we can't this data I can reiterate that a higher conversion rate is what we have seen as a result of GTC listings. You are of course empowered to make adjustments if you do not see the same results in your business model, but overall we believe that this will benefit the vast majority of our Community. We encourage our sellers to take time to see how this may impact their business before jumping to worst case scenarios.

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@shipscript wrote:

@Anonymous 

@Anonymous 

"2 - GTC listings are generally 30 days, when the month has 31 days i don't think it will charge you twice. We are double checking with developers and will come back if we get a different answer."

This isn't just about double billing, it's also about the number of free insertions. According to the 30 day cycle, there may be no new insertions in Feb, but double insertions in March.

Out of Stock Control

Another topic to clarify with the programmers....

When a GTC listing is hidden using the "out of stock control", say for a month or two, while it retains its watchers and view count, will it return to its same status in search, or will that vacation lower its standing in search due to the months of inactivity (no fresh views, etc)?

Vacation mode.

It would seem that the GTC stock control could be used by sellers without a store to set up a vacation mode.  They could do so by setting their inventory to zero in all those listings.  I do see a lot of sellers asking for short term vacation settings.

Seasonal inventory.

It would seem that the GTC stock control could be used by sellers to put their seasonal items to bed for six to 10 months awaiting the next season. Is there a time limit on stock control? It would be costly in terms of insertion fees, but we see so many sellers looking for a way to preserve the work they have invested in creating listings that disappear after 90 days. Any solutions here? Could this be used to launch some sort of extended vacation setting?

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@shipscript On how Search is impacted when an item is placed on and then taken off vacation mode, this is something we do not disclose.  I know, not a very satisfying answer, I'll ask if there is more we can disclose. 

On seasonal inventory - this isn't how the capability was designed, so I would like to go back to our Product team and discuss. This may be an alternative as you say, but the seller still has to manage the listings, either by removing then relisting or changing from out of stock to stock. But very interesting questions.

Email me and I may have more info later.

Thanks

Brian

[Anonymous]

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@vrykalak wrote:

Another concern re the mandatory GTC:

The sellers who participate in these chats are serious, expert business owners. 

Those here today are uniformly opposed to the change.

What about the 99.9...% of sellers who didn't read the Early Seller update, and are going to be gob-smacked about this change a couple of months from now?
...when eBay CS will be totally uninterested in helping them?

This is a MAJOR change. It shouldn't be "sprung" like this as fait accompli.

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Hi @vrykalak, we not only communicate our Seller Updates here on the boards, but also send out emails to sellers to ensure they are educated on changes. For this specific change, a seller would not find themselves surprised in a few months by any fees as the option to select a duration would be removed and sellers would see this when they go to relist. Sellers will have no surprises in store, as we take steps to ensure they are fully aware of the terms of the listing before they submit it.

[long_live_the_seller]

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@buyselljack2016 wrote:

Will the "out of stock" option on GTC listings with multiples be available to non-store subscription sellers.

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Hi buyselljack2016,

Out of stock is currently an account level setting that can be used with all GTC listings (single or multi-variation) regardless of whether you are a store subscriber.

To enable "out of stock" on multi-quantity/multi-variation listings:

1. Go to My eBay > Account > Site Preferences
2. Under "Selling Preferences," click "Show" next to Sell Your Item form and listings
3. Click "Edit" next to "Use the out-of-stock option"
4. Select the checkbox, then click "Apply"

Thanks.

[brian_burke@ebay]

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@xray731 wrote:

I'd like to know why GTC listings were deleted by Ebay about a year ago because they were stagnant and considered to be clogging up the venue and now a year later we're being forced into doing GTC?

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@xray731 - Please don't confuse the use of the GTC listing format with listings that have been on the site a long time with no sales activity. 

Our goal, and our sellers goal is to sell items. Items that have no activity (and I'm not talking about long-tail items like a car part for a 1954 Ford, or an antique or very unique or specialized item) that remain listed make it harder for buyer to find the items they are looking for - and there is a carrying cost to eBay to have those items listed.

GTC listed items still must be competitively priced, relevant, and use all the other best practice to sell. Items that don't meet these standards and sit for years, will not magically become wanted by buyers. It's up to sellers to manage their inventory. A couple years ago we took action since it was clear some inventory was not being managed.

Brian