Abrupt Stop in Sales...........................Why?

[getitright1234]

On my other selling account I was doing find, I was selling items regularly, which kept me motivated to list more things which promoted even more sales,   Friday came and nothing but crickets, someone had turned off my faucet, unpluged my power supply or better yet but a padlock on my store.        

Hey, ebay I need my sales to come back, I miss them!!!!!!!!

[zamo-zuan]

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@softersilk wrote:

Every conspiracy theory about eBay and servers, blackouts, throttling blah blah blah - it's just paranoia.  These theories get repeated and believed but they're not true.

If your sales crash? Use the time to make them better and learn new things to get them moving.

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This is not accurate, and not good to be telling other sellers. Not only has eBay admit to not showing listings, in my topic I provide a lot of research I did when our account was being affected by technical issues that caused a drop of more than 50% for months, that no staff at eBay was able to explain, although many of them recognized there was an issue.

EBay staff confirmed that no matter what we did, it did not help, our listings still plummeted in search. The drop started on the date of the Spring update. It ended as suddenly as it began, on the exact date of the June update.

 I've also provided much information on how you could pinpoint if you are being affected by these bugs. There's very few things on sellers hub which indicate it but if your lucky you can notice it there. But if you request a business readout from the Sellers Health team, there's some statistic errors on there that 100% confirm if you are affected by the bug. Once the statistic errors are repaired, your stores impressions go back to normal.

I've seen many, many stores affected by these bugs. I have seen screenshots/given advice to stores that went from 15k/month in sales for years, to suddenly under $100 in sales for a a month, then suddenly back to normal (all on dates of eBay updates). 

To say these problems don't exist, is just plain false, and misleading to anyone who is truly affected by technical issues that affected visibility.

Imagine how you would feel if you were being affected by legitimate issues, and then have someone telling you they are just "paranoid" and the issues do not exist. Is that what business owners should tell their employees when they have to let them go because they can no longer afford to pay their wages? These people truly need support to fix these issues because they ruin lives.

What I just explained is the exact situation we were in. I was assigned the job of trying to figure out the problem, I was on the phone with eBay daily, and we did every single recommendation they gave us. None of them made any difference at all. We got escalated to different employees and not a single one of them was able to figure out the problem. It was not resolved until the technical bug was fixed.

CSR's even went further and informed me that the Utah office believes they found the common denominator of the sellers affected by the visibility bug. But they are having problems with the tech team, as the tech team tells them it's not the problem.

Besides, all you have to do in order to find 100% proof of throttling, is spend 30 minutes searching for your own listings with various product identifiers. Don't use best match - sort by price. Once you see that your listings don't even show up when sorted by price, you will have 100% confirmation of this. (Aside from the fact that they admit it in their own terms of service).

[zamo-zuan]

To clarify, I'm not sure if the OP is being affected by a bug, or if it's catalog issues, or a simple change in statistic weights in search. 

I just want to make sure there's some awareness that these things do exist and could very well be affecting the OP. 

Being a store who was affected by these things in the past, and knowing how damaging they could be for a business, I would be glad to assist sellers who are going through similar issues in any way I can, and attempt to help them figure out the problem.

[sakic92710]

As far as I'm concerned, ebay rotates sellers listings so, not are available to the eyes of buyers.  Last week, I had 0 sales on Mon/Tues; I had 10 sales on Wed/Thurs then, 1 sale over the last 4 days.  in the past 9 days, I had 2 decent days with the other 7 = 2 sales.  Something is screwy & I do blame eBay!  lol  When I add new, sometimes, there are plenty of views while everything else sits & sits for weeks on end.  Hoping the addition of new listings each day will provide more buyers to check out other available listings.   I do have a large variety to choose from so, not limiting myself to 1 category.  It doesn't seem to be working; not with eBay's limitations stalling everything.  Good luck to all.   🙂

[gramophone-georg]

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@softersilk wrote:

Every conspiracy theory about eBay and servers, blackouts, throttling blah blah blah - it's just paranoia.  These theories get repeated and believed but they're not true.

If your sales crash? Use the time to make them better and learn new things to get them moving.

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Even when they show up in eBay policy updates?

[gramophone-georg]

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@myjunqueyourtreasure wrote:
You've never sold retail in a B&M, right?

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I've not only sold it retail... I was a regional level exec with a major national retailer for many years.

Ebb and flow in B&M retail is perfectly normal. Seasonal ebbs and flows as well. 

What is NOT normal is stady sales for years, and then a sudden "drop off a cliff" that becomes the new normal with no recovery. The other thing that's not normal is that one day almost all your sales are from the west end of town, the next day from the east end, the following day from the next town over.

Heck, these aren't even normal in etail.

They're pretty much eBay exclusives.

[reallynicestamps]

@myjunqueyourtreasure

even in a B&M store, some days it's busy, others you can hear a pin drop.

Yep.

And if you want to discuss something with the shop (a complicated installation, haggling on a big order) shop at 2pm on a weekday.

I've worked retail-- selling cast iron wood stoves, postage stamps, solar collectors, patio furniture, BBQs, kitchen equipment.... 2pm is always the quiet time.

[myjunqueyourtreasure]

There's also those days where the shop gets a lot of traffic but low sales as most are "just looking thanks" = )

[onlinesportsrus]

Spoiler

We have been patient for months. Dropped from an Anchor store a couple of months ago because sales were so bad. Now we are at a sale a day. Last year 225k in sales. We are down 70% and about to go under. They keep finding new toys to play with at our expense.

[gramophone-georg]

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@myjunqueyourtreasure wrote:
There's also those days where the shop gets a lot of traffic but low sales as most are "just looking thanks" = )

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Right. Days. Not months straight just out of the blue.

[thegardeningworld]

.

[onlinesportsrus]

Hi Zamo,

We have this issue destroying our business. We are about to even lose our home. Before they started all these spring and fall updates we were doing about 250k a year in sales ( i wish that was all ours) but every since the updates we are lucky to make a few hundred in sales each week and since friday we have had about 4 sales when we used to have 20 to 30 sales a day and ebay staff will not help us and say there is nothing wrong. Is there anything we can do or any help you can give? We are really desperate. We have been on the phone with them for months and they just tell us to so this and that and nothing we do that they tell us to do has fixed it so i believe our account has these bugs because you cannot go from huge sales every day to nothing and that is happening the same on two seperate ebay business's/ Can you help? Please contact us if there is anything you can have us do. We are maybe 3 months from losing everything if we do not start getting our products seen again.

[turquoisetulips]

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@tiramisu41 wrote:

Well, @getitright1234 about 5 million people are without power, under water, or not in their homes on the East Coast at the moment. The beginning of that started the end of last week.   Just sayin'....

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True , I've had to remind  myself of that a few times lately . Made myself feel  a bit guilty  for worrying over slow sales while all those people are homeless .  tulips 

[mr_lincoln]

Raise your prices ...

[turquoisetulips]

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@onlinesportsrus wrote:

Hi Zamo,

We have this issue destroying our business. We are about to even lose our home. Before they started all these spring and fall updates we were doing about 250k a year in sales ( i wish that was all ours) but every since the updates we are lucky to make a few hundred in sales each week and since friday we have had about 4 sales when we used to have 20 to 30 sales a day and ebay staff will not help us and say there is nothing wrong. Is there anything we can do or any help you can give? We are really desperate. We have been on the phone with them for months and they just tell us to so this and that and nothing we do that they tell us to do has fixed it so i believe our account has these bugs because you cannot go from huge sales every day to nothing and that is happening the same on two seperate ebay business's/ Can you help? Please contact us if there is anything you can have us do. We are maybe 3 months from losing everything if we do not start getting our products seen again.

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I feel for you ,, I really do and I'm sorry things are so hard right now .  All I can say is try to be a bit more patient ,, the holidays are coming and for many us  thats an answer to prayer . Tulips 

[getitright1234]

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@turquoisetulips wrote:

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@tiramisu41 wrote:

Well, @getitright1234 about 5 million people are without power, under water, or not in their homes on the East Coast at the moment. The beginning of that started the end of last week.   Just sayin'....

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True , I've had to remind  myself of that a few times lately . Made myself feel  a bit guilty  for worrying over slow sales while all those people are homeless .  tulips 

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Title of this post:   

Re: Abrupt Stop in Sales...........................Why?

Sellers are here to make money to support their families, the income from those sales is  what keeps sellers including myself from being homeless.    Despite the fact, others are suffering their own/other reasons for being homeless, it should not diminish what sellers here are complaining about when we talk about our Abrupt decline in sales.   

An unexplained abrupt stop in sales is an indication, the seller has done nothing wrong, but there has been "system"/"exposure" change.   What is even more frustration is there is nothing the seller can do or has been told to do to correct the situation.   My income from eBay as well as other sellers is what keeps the food on our table, the clothes on our backs, and keeps the mortgage paid to keep from becoming homeless.   

FYI:  An Abrupt Stop in Sales means just prior to the sudden stop in sales the Sellers were doing fine or at least was reasonably okay with their sales; therefore meaning:

1.   I, We, They did not raise their prices.

2.   I, We, They did not change their product.

3.   I, We, They did not stop promoting their product.

4.   I, We, They did not stop listing new items.

5.   I, We, They did not stop responding to buyers. etc, etc, etc

..........................................................................................But, despite having not done all of that:   our sales have suddenly stopped.   This post is about trying to understand what has changed AND what  I, we,  and other sellers need to do to get our sales back on track.  

FYI,   "this" post is not about "this" selling account under "this" posting ID, it is about my other selling account where my sales were constant and  1-5 above did not occur, so what gives eBay.   What is going on?