I have been a member since 2001 and up until about 3 years ago, just used ebay occasionally, selling items to fund new acquisitions - having collected antique maps and prints for many years. 3 years ago, really noticed that the demand for what I was selling quite strong and at that time, was listing about 1,000 items on the 30 day BUY IT NOW.
Since that time 3 years ago, I have actively been building this 'hobby' into a serious business and now have approx 47,000 listings. I have taken on 3 staff who work 3 days a week each, purchased a lot of equipment and services to grow the business and very recently invested in moving to a new premises, signing a 5 year lease in order to really expand this ebay business.
The level of sales increased in line with the increase in stock - 3 years ago selling approx £300/£400 per month and up until April this year, had increased to an average of £7,000 - £8,000 per month. We have been paying approx £1,100 - £1,300 per month to ebay in shop & selling fees, as well as the commission we pay to paypal.
Since the imposition of the new GTC, sales have dropped by 65% and for the first time in the last 3 years, had 2 days with absolutely no sales whatsoever.
I have the ebay Anchor shop, which is the top (most expensive) shop option (which the price increased from approx £250 - £470 about 18 months ago) and therefore have access to their 'concierge' service. I have been speaking to them about this issue and they acknowledge that thousands and thousands of sellers have been effected by this new GTC policy but are 100% adamant that they will not be bringing back the previous choices we had before.
They provided lots of reasons why their new policy would benefit my business but have not managed to come up with a single way or suggestion as to what I should be doing to reclaim the sales level we had built up to and even suggested that perhaps the ebay buyers had exhausted their interest in our inventory (!!).
The only aspect that they could agree with was that previous to the GTC policy, we had to manually re-list approx 1,500 listings per day, which took a bit of time due to ebay only providing the facility to re-list a maximum of 200 items at a time. I suggested that if we actually re-list any unsold items about 1 hour or so before they are due to end (and then be automatically be re-listed under the new GTC policy), and keep doing that every 30 days, that will keep the listings fresh albeit now they have removed the 'ending in 30 days' or less option, removing any sense of urgency by the buyer.
Doing this is going to take alot of time because we also have to end approx 2,000 listings every day and then re-list them, which takes about a couple of hours each day.
I am not sure what effect it will have in recovering the sales levels we achieved and can only monitor this over the next few months.
Needless to say, it has increased the urgency to find other platforms to sell in (we have recently started selling on Amazon but still exporting all our listings, so not sure how that will work), which we had been exploring previously. Now, we have to find these other platforms very quickly.
I am really not too sure what eBay are up to with this new policy. Clearly, they must feel that they will be earning more fees and commission by implementing this policy but I cannot find a single reason how this could help sellers in anyway. I am in ongoing conversation with their concierge service to try and get a better handle on what to do to recover the level of sales we were experiencing, but after 8 conversations, there is little that is forthcoming that suggests that recovery will happen in the short or long term.
Apologies for the rather long winded rant. This has hit our little but growing business really hard and am feeling really anxious about the best way to get back to where we were.
