Does ebay throttle or restrict seller listings in the following scenarios?

[aldente28]

I have this nagging feeling that sales slow down when:

- I have a bunch of pending orders to process.

- Some number of shipped packages run into delays or other problems.

- My service metrics flip for the month from the old to the new.

Am I dreaming this? It just always seems to happen. I am by no means slow all the time, but I can't think of any time listed above when I was very busy. I wonder if I'm imagining it.

[chapeau-noir]

1st and 3rd instance, no - I've had up to 25-30 pending orders (when I've been out of town and have handling at 5 days) and it has made no difference.  If I have what people want, they'll buy it.

I've never noticed any difference with service metrics simply rolling over for the month.

Also never noticed a 'throttling' insofar as revenue - I'm a quite small seller and mine has swung as wildly as $700/month to $4500/month and it has made no difference.

I try to take the long view on this stuff.

[aldente28]

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@chapeau-noir wrote:

1st and 3rd instance, no - I've had up to 25-30 pending orders (when I've been out of town and have handling at 5 days) and it has made no difference. 

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I have same-day shipping. It would be a problem if sellers got overwhelmed with orders, which may lead to a bad buying experience for buyers, so it occurs to me that if ebay can estimate shipping times based on seller habits and shipping times, they may have a system in place that slows orders down (removing a listing from search results, for example) if they think a seller has too many orders to handle, in their view, based on their data.

I just wonder. It's within the realm of things they could do, and I just have this nagging feeling about when things slow down. I could be wrong. Dunno.

[zamo-zuan]

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@aldente28 wrote:

I have this nagging feeling that sales slow down when:

- I have a bunch of pending orders to process.

- Some number of shipped packages run into delays or other problems.

- My service metrics flip for the month from the old to the new.

Am I dreaming this? It just always seems to happen. I am by no means slow all the time, but I can't think of any time listed above when I was very busy. I wonder if I'm imagining it.

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If you're a large seller, it's quite clear at the points your sales slow down.  But if you're not a large seller, you're likely not reaching your limit.

There's a number of penalties, limitations, etc that could be put on your account. 

I haven't noticed any problems based on "pending orders", but this might be an illusion, as stores do slow down once they surpass a certain point based on their ranking in the eBay algorithms. Try watching your "Sales (31 days)". If it seems like your sales stop at a certain point each day (Let's say $25k in sales over the last month) that's a very strong indicator that you hit your limit. 

It might appear that you have a lot of orders for the day and that's why you slowed down, but you might have reached that limit, and that's the actual reason for slow down. Make sure to log your sales amount whenever you feel that slow down.

Never noticed anything with service metrics. But, often times eBay will do an update, and whenever they update algorithms, things can get wonky. After a few days they settle, but this is one of the indicators of an algorithm update. 

It seems eBay tries to "keep your sales at a pace you can handle" so that explains why you might not get very busy. But often times, you can feel that limitation and handle more, and there's not much of a way to force eBay's system to give you more.

Some people may deny limitations/throttling, but they happen. If you ask a large seller, it's very likely they've experienced it before. And eBay employees have actually admit to these type of things before (one to me personally, and there's a couple examples on the forums here). 

The best way to raise your limits? Try to keep eBay's system happy. Follow their advice whenever you can. Sometimes their pricing advice is ridiculous, so you can't always do so. But if eBay's system notices you're micromanaging your store and at least trying, that will benefit your ranking the next time eBay updates the algorithms!

If you feel like you're actually having a drop or slow down in the future, please feel free to send me a PM, I'd be glad to see if I could help you out!

[coolections]

Ebay does not keep track of how busy you are so no, they do not throttle you for being busy with orders. If you have problems and get dinged by Ebay for not handling your business, then "possibly" they will lower you in search but they do not actually hide your stuff.

[aldente28]

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@coolections wrote:

Ebay does not keep track of how busy you are so no, they do not throttle you for being busy with orders.

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They have all the data. If they analyzed it, the can know exactly:

- When an order is placed.

- When I ship that order and every order.

- How many unprocessed orders I have.

- How many orders I do and don't process each day.

- How many orders I process within my handling time.

- How fast I process orders generally, that day, yesterday, and every day.

This is pretty much how their Guaranteed Delivery program works. They analyze my shipping data and data from the carrier, and they use the analysis to provide buyers with a delivery estimate. It's not a leap to wonder if they also use the data they already have to route buyers to the seller most likely to provide them with a good buying experience. This includes how fast items ship.

Again, I'm not saying I think this happens. I just wonder, based on my experience.

[chapeau-noir]

They do track all of this, but how (and if) they act on it depends on their eenie meenie chili beanie algorithm at that time  - haven't experienced these fluctuations, but as a seller I may just be too small to bother with - I do know that @zamo-zuan has tracked a lot of this over time and amassed quite a few statistics, but that's another league, so perhaps it's an economy of scale.  

Agree with tracking over 30-31 day periods.

[zamo-zuan]

Yep, eBay of course does have all the data they need in their database, and could create algorithms in it any way they want.

But we haven't noticed any sort of slow down specifically for having a large bulk of pending orders.

Now, if they don't start going out on time, seem to be late/too much to handle, then they may very well be slowing things down. Or, as mentioned, if you hit any of those limits.

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Archive-Selling/Selling-Standards/m-p/23358986#M728102

An interesting comment from a few years back. Important to note, other staff have disputed those claims. But based on experience, dealings with other reps who said similar things, and that it seems directly out of their handbook (in an interview a rep confirmed something along those lines) it seems to be legit.

[corvettestainless]

'Throttling' is a forum-only fictional term; lives alongside the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. 

This place make money in 2 ways, and 1 of those 2 ways makes 10,20,100 times the other way. Sales. Sales, sales, sales. No Sales, no money. Would be completely counter productive to 'stop' anyone from selling something. 

[zamo-zuan]

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@corvettestainless wrote:

'Throttling' is a forum-only fictional term; lives alongside the Easter Bunny and Tooth Fairy. 

This place make money in 2 ways, and 1 of those 2 ways makes 10,20,100 times the other way. Sales. Sales, sales, sales. No Sales, no money. Would be completely counter productive to 'stop' anyone from selling something. 

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As mentioned, it's quite clear to large sellers. Ask them if they've seen it.

An example of what large sellers see: Let's say their sales over 30 days at the end of the day is $25,000. You wake up the next morning, you're at $24,500. You get $450 sales by 10 AM, then almost nothing the rest of the day, ending at something like $24,947.

Next day: You're at $22,000. You get solid traffic throughout the day, even at nighttime, sales flying through all the way to midnight where you finish at $25,015.

Do you think that sort of traffic fluctuation is normal? Because you can see that over the span of months. All you need is a large enough bulk of sales to actually hit your limit, and that's why it's common knowledge among large sellers.

And check the link I sent above. An eBay rep directly stating 9 types of limitations they put on their accounts, even going so far as mentioning "qualifications to increase these limits". How would you explain that? 

Let's take a quote from it: "Ensure sellers are increasing volume at a manageable pace". Isn't that the very definition of throttling....?

Most importantly, what is the "tag" on that message? "Hiding items". Directly from an eBay rep.

[coolections]

@zamo-zuan 

That is for people like yourself that have high competition. THEY DO NOT HIDE YOUR STUFF. What they will do is lower you is search placement so since the items you sell have many pages for buyers to search, you may be on the last page thus people do not go that far looking for you.

[slippinjimmy]

None of those things should cause ANY issues.

My sales to US buyers have taken a nosedive in the last few days. I suspect it is because of two things......

- The bonus unemployment money is ending in a week.

- Today is TAX DAY and just like in normal years when it's goes quiet on April 15th many people are scrambling to get their taxes done and some may be just finding out they either owe money or are not getting the refund they were expecting.

Not too mention that buyers in FL, AZ, TX, CA, GA are starting to freak out.

[the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth]

As I have said before, eBay is like lake woebegone where all sellers are at the top of search rankings all the time. 

when you buy on amazon and there are several sellers with the same price, sometimes one seller is shown on the page, sometimes another. They probably have the same complaints. Throttling vs spreading the wealth? Does it make more sense that sellers are cycling through top search ranking or does it make sense that eBay is cutting its own sales for no apparent reason?

[zamo-zuan]

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@coolections wrote:

@zamo-zuan 

That is for people like yourself that have high competition. THEY DO NOT HIDE YOUR STUFF. What they will do is lower you is search placement so since the items you sell have many pages for buyers to search, you may be on the last page thus people do not go that far looking for you.

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We've had this dance many times.

If they don't, using the exact terminology, "hide" anything... How do you explain the eBay rep literally tagging his post about limits to "hiding items"?

EBay are the ones, in this case, putting the two terms together. If you have an argument, it's with eBay and not me.

[zamo-zuan]

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@the*dog*ate*my*tablecloth wrote:

As I have said before, eBay is like lake woebegone where all sellers are at the top of search rankings all the time. 

when you buy on amazon and there are several sellers with the same price, sometimes one seller is shown on the page, sometimes another. They probably have the same complaints. Throttling vs spreading the wealth? Does it make more sense that sellers are cycling through top search ranking or does it make sense that eBay is cutting its own sales for no apparent reason?

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Unless Amazon has changed it recently, Amazon's system was very straight forward. Whoever is FBA gets buy box ahead of non-FBA. Aside from that, lowest price get's the buy box.

Throttling, in this case, pertains to eBay cycling through sellers in terms of visibility, as to when they reach their limits.

Again, refer to the linked post, or observe the image from an eBay rep above.

It's very odd that many people argue against this, when again, it's common knowledge among large sellers, as well as eBay had mentioned limits publicly such as this.

More than one of those limits in the above post precisely match the description of "throttling". Velocity limit. Risk limits. "Ensuring sellers are increasing at a manageable pace". "Determining qualifications to increase or potential removal" of the limits. 

It's stated in simple terms. 

Nobody ever said eBay is cutting their own sales. Rather, they're cutting sellers sales. 

And that's the subject the OP was discussing. He wasn't saying eBay is cutting their own sales, he was suspecting he was throttled.

I know for a fact that several in this post have seen evidence of this for years, so again, it's so odd that despite seeing evidence, and despite eBay's own words, there's still people claiming it doesn't happen.