Community Chat, June 3 @ 1:00 pm PT - Turbo Lister Retirement & SixBit

[tyler@ebay]

Join the Community team at 1 PM on June 3rd for our Weekly Chat with eBay Staff. With the upcoming retirement of Turbo Lister, a member of the team that supported this tool will join us to answer questions about the transition. Additionally, representatives from the third-party listing tool SixBit will also be joining us to provide more information on how you may be able to leverage their product to grow your business.

If you're new to our weekly chat, welcome! Simply click the Reply button on this post, type up your question, and hit submit. We look forward to chatting with you!

[90-meter_motors]

I understand that maintaining TL involves time and resources; I can appreciate that, ebay.  And I understand TL was by no means a perfect program.  Yes, it crashes and is not incredibly robust.  I'm just curious, though, if you appreciate the possible magnitude of what will happen with sellers such as myself washing our hands of selling on ebay should we not 1) continue to be able to use TL, or 2) be provided a free replacement software solution (database/offline-based, not online) that will provide a seamless transfer of files from TL?  I have over 17,000 listings in my TL database.  With roughly 3,000 different listings active at any given time, I cannot justify the time required to start my database from scratch,  re-create listings, take all new photos, research part fitment, etc.   Margins have shrunk and shrunk over the years; we have to work twice as hard to make half as much.  I just hope you've really looked at these proposed changes from all perspectives.

[endcapperent]

How can you call a bunch of comments a chat?  This is one way - as useless as SixBit itself.  Terrible company, people and program - all utterly useless.  Like this pseudo-conversation (but like sixbit, its all you'll get - unless you fork over hundreds of dollars!  That's right you want support from sixbit (or the promise of it anyway...) you pay hundreds of dollars a year - as dumb as ebay offering asbestos or cast iron as material choices for fabric items in item specifics.   Both companies shamelessly only about $.

[mam98031]

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@birdhouse-in-your-soul wrote:
The Turbolister alternative at Six Bit is 14.99 per their Turbo Lister landing page.

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The first 6 months are free.  Unless they changed that.  I signed up last month.

@birdhouse-in-your-soul 

[weaverlili]

MINUS ALL the photos that you need to import MANUALLY !!

[mce.1]

Same here - I see the questions, but not the response's. How do I see the answers to the questions??

[china_replacers_limited]

Do you realize how much time that this is going to cost sellers? I started moving entirely off your platform. Look at these sellers letting you know how many listings they have in TL. Ebay, you should be ashamed of yourself. Seller: 14 years.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

For at least a year you've been telling us that SH does what  TL does.   It absolutely does not & now you must have finally figured that out, as you've backed off of that message for this year.   I've been a seller since 97 & using TL since 99 - over 20 years of work & I refer to & use my stored listings ALL THE TIME.   Please consider leaving it available & unsupported, as I rely on it for thousands of listings & so do many old time sellers.  

At the very least, consider extending the deadline b/c to force MP on us at the same time as retiring our primary way of listing for 20+ years, is a lot of change to attempt to deal with at once.   BOTH IN JULY!   Who thought that one out? 

[Anonymous]

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@kicksave1 wrote:

I have the same question.  Will it still work?

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Hello @kicksave1 ,

Thank you so much for your post and great question. I did respond to this similar question and you can review it Here.

[kicksave1]

As a casual seller, I can't justify spending $14.99/mo for a program.  Either just let me buy it outright or skim 1% off items that actually sell.

[silverpor]

It appears to me all ebay has to do is make our relist file bigger so after we list the item and it doesn't sell it would go into the relist file and from there we could relist any item we want with changes. You can do that now. Ebay seems to me if they can't make money off of us they will not help.

[snapy64]

I have used TL for many years and will miss it's ease of use - I am trying SixBit and it seem to work OK although I haven't uploaded yet so will see tomorrow night with that.

My problem right now is the fact that when I try to open TL eBay keeps saying oops that is not a match with my eBay account name and I can't open TL -  so I have not been able to transfer my 600 listings that are saved in Turbo Lister I was wanting to do this before the July deadline.

[thedustyloft20]

sixbit, i may have missed it, but can you provide a link to the 6 month free trial and 14.99 month program?

[backlotmovie]

It seems to me, everyone is upset at losing Turbo Lister (Free Service), and the only other alternative is SixBit, which partnered with eBay which is a PAID service.  This is not unlike PayPal where sellers could only accept payments through PayPal, and were charged a fee on top of the sellers fee.  Now, for sellers to have a service such as Turbo Lister, they now need to pay for it through SixBit.  

If sellers who were accustomed to Turbo Lister now has to pay for a service they were getting free for years, sellers may have to or they will not sell as much, because the convenience of posting more on eBay brought more revenue to eBay.  Time is money and now many sellers not only are losing more profits, but the value of time without Turbo Lister. 

Bottom line is can eBay really say this is beneficial for sellers in the long run?  Why not come up with a compatible FREE alternative, and while waiting to do so, leave the original Turbo Lister running.   It seems as if this decision is a ploy to make sellers spend more money like the fees from PayPal years ago.

[a*river*runs*through*it]

Why not let the old school TL users keep it and charge us a small monthly fee?

Many moons ago there was thread by ebay asking about all this change and IIRC it was more of a survey type thread. Many posters stated they would be more than willing to pay to keep TL running. 

I am old and change is quite difficult for the not so tech savvy.

[postcardcountry]

I gave a great deal of thought to how I might contribute to this discussion.  It has been 20 years since I used the eBay listing form - my  first sale was listed via sixbit (actually I think it was called auction assistant, it's been so long I can't remember).  I think turbo lister came along long after I started with this company's listing tool.

It is desktop software.  Your database resides on your computer.  You may keep your data as long as you want or need.  I think I have history going back 7 years or so.  You can rest items for a period, then bring them back in the blink of an eye - even two years later.  You can work on new product lines, refining listings / photos before you launch the actual listings - and you won't need to worry about what is going to happen to them if there are too many.

Pricing - It's hard to pay for something when what you have used is free.  I will tell you that I cannot remember when the last price increase was - it seems I have been paying the same amount forever.  You pay month to month, no long term subscription contract and no cancellation fee.  I have never been over billed or billed twice.]

Right now I am on the Home and Hobby Edition.  It does everything I need.  I have grown from 200 auction listings a month to an anchor store with 7,000+ listings.  I have paid the same price all through that growth.  When I hit that 10,00 listing level - well, I probably will have to jump to the next level of the software if I am going to sustain my growth.

I have looked into other listing software packages.  Each one is different, each one had pluses and minuses ie limitation on number of listings, price goes up with additional listings and there was one that wanted a commission!

I like the fact that Sixbit Software is located in the USA and it's support department is located in the USA.  I like the fact that in reality, this is a small business just like me.