Classic Listing Form to Be Retired

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

I think most experienced sellers realized this when ebay first launched the new listing form in beta, but on today's ebay for business podcast, Griff and Rebecca confirmed that the classic listing form will be retired at some point (no date set). 

My advice is the same as usual: There's always a learning curve with anything new (not to mention the ingrained resistance to change many of us have) , so.....either plan on using a third party listing tool or start getting used to the new form now, before the old one is gone.

But, of course, my advice and 25 cents will get you...actually, not much of anything these days. Certainly not a cup of coffee....

[chapeau-noir]

I've been using it today, and it's a bit clunky but better than it was and I'm having no problems.  I think the site is actually all borked up today, anyway. 

[allthingssurplus]

Are you nuts??  The eBay shipping system is a mess.  You can ship the most effective way for your business.  You are forced to use only those ways to ship that are to the benefit  of eBay not the pocketbook of the Seller.  Return shipping labels are at a high rate not allowing the least expensive way to get an item back in order to save money.

We experimented with the new listing system for about an hour and quickly came to the conclusion it was a train wreck.  We have near 4200 listings that we change, update and add better item specific (that actually give the Buyer a true account of the item being sold).  In time, meaning the cost in real dollars, to begin using this ill devised program will be considerable.  The eBay item specifics being forced on the Seller almost never give a good picture or correct understanding of the item.  Usually inaccurate information.  We have been fighting the bad information in our category, computers, tablets and networking, since eBay started playing with them in like 2012.  If what someone on the thread stated is true that a good deal of information in our listing will be lost when we are forced to convert, will eBay pay for the time it will take to correct all those listings.  As I have always said, and the launch of new eBay programs proves, the people at eBay that write this code have never really used the system and don't really know how it works.

This is just another ill conceived eBay program.  Upper management that approves these changed has no clue the damage these changes cause.  All they know is a team of whoever has told them this will streamline the mobile app and improve the Buyer experience.  Volume Sellers cannot do eBay on the cell phone.  Its pointless to try.  To maintain 4200 listings you need two and on occasion three monitors in order to access the various parts of the system.  You can't waste 30 mins to an hour dealing with one listing and make money.  I get eBay has no understanding of how Sellers make money.  eBay could care less about the profits of the Sellers as long as the FVF keeps coming in.  

What CEO thinks it smart to keep launching program after program and think its all going to work out.  Only a CEO that is determined to live by the principle of "short term gain for long term pain".  If that CEO sold shoes for a living using his own money he would be broke in a month.  Very sad

[siamjane8]

Sounds like from the hundreds of posts on the boards, the same on ebay YouTube channels and everything that i'm hearing in person,  talking to people..... We are all unified in our hatred of this new tool. That is undeniable eBay. ALL OF THE  COMMENTS HIGHLIGHT THE SAME MAJOR DESIGN FLAWS. The ball is in your court. You claim to be our partners.... Are you going to roll this back so we can continue to list and feed our families or not?

[lavonnasplace]

I have been a seller here on eBay since 2001 and I dislike the new seller format. I mean, why fix something

if the old form still works. Maybe eBay had too much time on their hands during 'lock-down' and had to come up with a new listing format. I feel it's more time-consuming than is necessary.

What do you all think? Shouldn't we be given the option of keeping the old format?

Opinions please?

LaVonna

[natoman777]

For eBay  it is obvious that change for the sake of change is what they are after.  If it ain't broke, break it and pretend you fixed something.  Been using new seller tool since Saturday...getting used to it.  It is NOT better than what we had before.  I list on a laptop, my wife on her phone.   It is much worse on the laptop.  Just not user friendly.  eBay will not go back to what worked better because they never go back to what worked.  Hopefully this trend of Change for change sake will not continue

[rugerskick]

I immediately chanfed it back to classic.  Form comes up about how i liked the form, gave both barrels about it.  Totally unhelpful and much worse to do a simple, quick listing.

[chapeau-noir]

@allthingssurplus  No, I am not nuts.  I used the new listing form in beta and it was an amateurish hack job and basically unusable (I had several long point-by-point posts on it in their brief comment forum and they did read it).  I can get this version to work.  I've been here long enough to know that this is about all we can expect from eBay when it comes to rolling out ANYTHING new.

[chapeau-noir]

Keep bombarding them with comments.  I doubt they'll change it back and they're not going to keep the old form kicking around - they probably don't even have the personnel to upgrade it because, similar to the old shipping page, these people are not even with the company anymore and apparently documentation isn't a "thing" here so no one knew how to fix or update it.  There's no point in having obsolete code, anyway. 

I asked them to look at how Poshmark manages their listing form - they had to mature a listing form from mobile-only to web, and they created a simple and easy to use app that works well on both. Posh does not, however, have that ridiculous 'top down' catalog attempt, and that I think is what is making this listing form such a mess.

But I can make it work, which was not the case when it first came out.

[allthingssurplus]

Am I correct that you have 141 listings?  I would like to know how much time you are expending on  just one listing making the new system work.  Keep in mind I have 4100+ it cost me $6K every quarter just to audit the inventory.  Having to repair all those listings due to the new system will be extremely expensive.  Volume Sellers cannot do business using the cell phone, its not possible.  What insane person in eBay thinks that this system will work.  I knew eBay had lost its way, now I realize they have lost all intelligence and have no business sense, just an insane desire for greed.  This comment form a Seller of 22 years and having one site, which I founded and sold my interest, doing $3mil+ annual  and another current site in the $2.5 range and thank God I cut back eBay sales to $4K per year.  This new system has the ability to put smaller volume Seller out of business.  

[chapeau-noir]

After a couple of tries, it takes me about 5 or so minutes to list something with this new system - I did this full time for a number of years (had many more listings) and being in clothing and old tech, it's a lot of finagling, but the least amount of time of any of the tasks I do is the actual listing write-up (unless it's a DVD player, then it's longer with all the IS's).  Prepping, photo'ing and putting photos through post take me a lot longer that just scribbling up a listing.  Examining my listings so far, everything seems to be the same.

All I'm saying is that I'm able to make the new listing form work - I'm not crazy about it, it's a pretty amateurish job, the previous one was better, it definitely needs work, but I can do it - I have to, since there is no going back. I've been through worse (when the entire fashion category was nearly shipwrecked with ridiculous changes in item specifics and category changes - I think that happened last year with collectible paper) - that was worse because my sales went into the toilet.

I can't speak at all for large volume sellers or all sellers, but the basics are workable.

I don't see this as greed at all, just amateurish design.  It's definitely disappointing, but somehow not surprising - I'm not sure this site attracts much IT talent.

Somewhere on here I contributed a post containing a run-down of listing when I was opted in a week or so ago - it was geared towards basic listing, and what I'd found that works and doesn't work.  It was in response to AC Green's excellent review. 

[tssullytacklebox]

chapeau-noir assuming you are using a desktop or laptop. When using the new listing format, if you were to only enter the basics for the listing (title, condition, pics, description, price & shipping) leaving out all of the item specifics, does the required - recommended specifics show up on your seller hub? If so, when you go to enter them does it revert to our current format or the new pop-up window format?

I am thinking that this could be a potential work-around to save listing time for desktop users.

[bargain-maven]

Absolutely a nightmare. It seems like it takes close to ten minutes to navigate all of the different pages you have to navigate. Imagine if a seller is now creating only one listing in the time that it used to take to create 3. So the number of ebay listings have just gone down by 70%. That would make a big difference in revenue for ebay right?

[bargain-maven]

Of course you are absolutely right. Any time you have to go on a different page to do something you are wasting time. It would be ok if it was for one thing, but the entire listing structure can't be a series of different pages that you have to navigate through. It's like posting something on IG takes far longer than it should because you are navigating five different pages. 

[natoman777]

I have been on eBay since 1999 and feel the same way as you.  eBay will NOT be giving us the option to use the older format.  Each new roll out in the past couple of years has erased the old formats.  I still miss the view for selling in which I could see many listings at one time instead of the new way. 

My advise is to roll with the changes. 

[natoman777]

Short answer... "NOT"