Ebay is Broken

[jlstanton]

Howdy,

I'm not sure what eBay has done in the past month and a half, but the downturn is unlike anything I've had in 22 years on the platform.  Dear ebay, how about fixing all the glitches and putting the algorithm back to what it was when it worked.  You're not Amazon, and that's why it worked.  Why people prefer it to Amazon as sellers.  What you're doing now makes no sense.

I have seen my sales drop 55% in the past six weeks.  I have 3200 items on the platform with a value nearing $40,000.  My prices are the best where I have competition and very fair for when I don't (I don't exploit my being the only one).  During a four day period last week, I had 5 sales total totaling under $100, where my previous average was always over $100 a day.  Simple question, what have you done?  Please don't respond saying it's covid, the post office's fault, or that this is the typical summer downturn and that people are outside enjoying life, etc.  If that were the case, the other platforms I sell on would have similar downturns.  They don't.  If it's that I won't give you more money via promotions where I'm the only one selling an item, how about you simply say so.  Oh, yeah, you can't do that.  I can't sell to PO Boxes and a number of countries.  I've been told it's a glitch in the system.  I can't repost without these restrictions.  So, you are blocking me from a large number of customers, yet you won't fix the glitch.  How about when I sell something, you don't repost it.  How about you answer the phone.  So many things.....would be nice if you did what you did in the first 20 years instead of trying to be something you're not while wrecking peoples' sales.

Sorry to vent, but this isn't on me or summer.  This is all you eBay.  How about you have a rep call me.  You have my number.

Jack Stanton

[domin-tomas]

I hear you, I don't consider ebay to be my main selling platform anymore. I will list but I do not expect to sell and if I do I consider a bonus. I think that this year will be my last year for owning a store though because it just isn't worth keeping. Most of the time I end a listing on ebay because I sell out on different platforms.

[postingid7659]

Nobody at eBay will read this.  

Do you have sales for previous years handy?  Compare previous April to this May. 2020 may be an aberration because of lockdowns.   They delayed tax day to May 17.  That's the only thing I can see that would slow sales down some. 

But rest assured you're not alone.  In the past few weeks dozens of people have had the same complaint you have.  I am looking at listings up this week that have gotten no hits in two days, they started good and then went to nothing.   My sales for a 90 day period are less than 50% for the last 90 days compared to Jan 1-April 1.   The middle of March is when they started to taper off.  

The primary reason is the updates eBay made in that time. They have screwed up searches so people aren't finding things and it all should be rolled back.   The cheerleaders will tell you it's because lockdowns ended or because you have some negative feedbacks (if you have any, I didn't look, it's irrelevant).   But they mostly have no idea what's going on, a couple of them can read a post and not even understand what someone is referring to. 

Now I did have a good week this week, I sold three big ticket items, but I don't expect that to continue.  I just had a couple items listed that no one else had and they all happened to sell at once. 

It was nice to be confident enough to tell the 1 FB newbie when he said he could buy an item I had up for $200 brand new, to go buy a new one and leave me alone.  He's wrong, the item is long out of production and nobody has new ones, but that's his problem now.  

[jlstanton]

So, over 22 years, I have a 100% positive feedback rating as a seller (almost 4000) so that's not the problem.  I'm down 47% from this time last year, which was during the middle of lockdown (and I went down 30% during that time, which was to be expected due to Covid).  My first real hit happened when they changed me to managed payments in I believe July last year.  The algorithm changed for me.  Just had my sales drop a certain percentage and stay at that level.  I actually added 67% more inventory to offset the losses due to covid and it helped somewhat, though my sales last year were down overall despite much more inventory (all of it great for what I sell, which are records and books).  Six or seven weeks ago, I had gotten back to my pre-covid average of around $1400 in sales a week on eBay.  Then each week thereafter it just dropped.  I'm at under $300 on the last seven days.  This has never happened, even when I had $10,000 in merchandise.  It's not worth the effort any longer to post as ebay has added their idiotic item specifics (info already in the title and description of my items) which slow down the process meaning I can't post as much per hour.  This in turn cuts into my margins, which are already being destroyed by whatever it is that they're doing now with their algorithm.  I've posted a ton of records in Facebook Groups and sold 20x there in the past month than I have via ebay, despite having sales, and all sorts of things.  Ebay just doesn't seem to work anymore.  It's really sad.

[postingid7659]

If anything my sales went up during the pandemic and a switch to MP around last August had no bearing on anything.   

All was great until March and then it went dry.  I've had a couple of really good weeks since but most have been one or two items or if it's more they're all low price items.  

I'm actually doing the best picking parts at my local you pull yard and posting them here.  The right pieces bring a good profit.  

[alwaysthebest4u]

I was doing $2000 a week, mainly collectibles. The item category change on May 12 sent them off a cliff. This week $43. Used to be category for antique Christmas ornaments, now gone. All ornaments no matter what holiday or age are lumped into one big pile for customers to look through. They’re not going to bother. God forbid one forget to put word xmas in description. No one will ever find it. eBay breaking what wasn’t broke. I might be done after 20 years.

[jonathankirkland]

One important thing that people seem to quickly be forgetting is that we (the entire WORLD) is just now beginning to pick up the pieces and recover from an unprecedented deadly virus that shut down the whole world for a year.

We knew there would be a downturn from that before things get back into motion. I am sure for some, during COVID, sales were through the roof as most people were staying home in 2020.

However now that it's 2021, and the majority of people are vaccinated (speaking for the US here only), people are feeling much safer and with it being summer, people WANT TO GET OUT.

People are not sitting home nearly as much now because they want to get out of more in that nice summer weather and shop at actual stores and eat at actual restaurants.

I'm no financial expert or projectioner or anything of the sort but if I had to guess I would say sales will start to pick up steadily again in the fall. Seems that's when sales really start to pick up and then in the arly winter kick in to high gear with people doing holiday shopping.

[jlstanton]

Thankfully, I'm working as an art coordinator for a gaming company as of the past three months, so I won't need the income.  But I really hate for this to be happening.  I was going to continue listing casually as I do buy a lot of rare records and books and use the money for my granddaughter's college fund, but I just don't know.  Someone at eBay shouldn't be allowed to make decisions.  And they do need to fix the glitches.  Never had these before other than having things reposted that sold.  But it's just one thing after another and trying to change things in the middle of a pandemic didn't exactly help matters.  Not sure what I'll be posting on eBay from here on out.  I had fully expected to run it up to 5000-6000 items by the end of this year, but I fully expect to end all listings that I haven't managed to update with their item specific **bleep** if they won't let me post new items.  That way, I can simply continue to post at my leisure and eBay loses money due to my taking down those items.  I love the fact that they've given me the same amount of time to update my 3200 items (a full week's worth of work where the specifics are already in the title AND description) as they would someone with 50-100 listings.  Bravo ebay, bravo.

[divwido]

I hadn't noticed.  I sold five items today.

[jlstanton]

My sales took a dive during covid even after I added 67% more inventory.  That said, I don't go from $1400 one week (with it being a constant), down to $700, down to $400, down to $300.  I'm down 47% from this time last year in the middle of Covid.  Yes, people are traveling, but nowhere near the numbers they were two years ago at this time, when I really didn't have a downturn, or the years before that.  This week's sales are down 80% from six weeks ago.  I have zero sales today with 3200 items up.  Meanwhile, there's no downturn on Discogs or Facebook groups or Facebook marketplace.  Same items, different results.  Oh, and I have around 100 records on Discogs (outselling ebay, where they are crossposted, but I have 1000 records on ebay).  I've also outsold ebay on Facebook where there are less people in the groups I'm offering these things to (as well as offering less records).  I'd assume that all platforms for me should be doing 50% less, not just eBay.  Also, I wouldn't expect the other platforms that have between 20-30x fewer items to be outselling ebay.  But they are.  Just wish they'd fix all the glitches and reset the algorithm and actually tell us what works with them and what doesn't, but if they did that, they'd get sued pretty badly.

[jlstanton]

See, this is the **bleep** I don't get.  Why do this?  Why lump us all into the same category?  BTW, May 12th is right around when my sales took the dive.  The last seven days I'm at $230 in sales, which includes tax and shipping.  So, probably $160 or so in actual sales.  😕  I think that may actually be the problem.  I know some categories I do (books and records) did have some changes.  This makes no sense whatsoever.  None.

[oldcoin007]

Hi - I think I am getting the hang of this forum a bit. I notice the same people that continuously take up for the ebay continue to do so. However, it seems like more & more posters are seeing things differently & telling things in a new way. Yes, the ebay is not too healthy as of late. (I have to choose my words carefully here), but I think the swing is on for more & more sellers going to different sites. Certain posters claim that for every seller that leaves, another takes their place. I am not so sure this is true. I hope that more & more people start to realize just how "broken" the ebay is & move on. That may may the only way to enact change from a company motivated by greed. 

[mr_lincoln]

@jlstanton   Not every account has been affected when eBay has implemented major changes but those that are, like yours, it is extremely obvious and frustrating.  When they rolled out the 2018 GTC Mandate they killed off a second account here in 3 months.  It went from the low 5 figures (took a year to build it up to that) to 1-2 orders per month ... in 6 months I shut it down and diverted all the listings to my main account.

The next big change is the Item Specifics mandate going live next month BUT we are already seeing the impact as more Item Specific fields are on the listing form now and notifications of both Required and Recommended are appearing on the Active list in Seller Hub ... so they really have already started it.

So no, its not Covid, its not jacked up shipping prices by carriers, its not Summer slow down, it WASN'T because of income taxes back in April, etc.  Like you, I do not believe it is any of those things, I think it is eBay tweaking the search algorithm.  I see that now in my Sold Search research, I put a specific title in for a train car and I get car parts and other NON train related items returned ... so I have to keep deleting or changing words until I get what I want.

Over the years I have seen trends in the ebb and flow of sales but the valleys are always more pronounced after one of their major changes.

[jlstanton]

I just hate that with the technology we have, they are stepping back 15-20 years in time, only, it wasn't this bad back then and people found what they were looking for.  I just don't get this thing they're doing.  Not at all.  I picked up some stuff recently that I'm having a hard time deciding to post it to ebay that normally would have flown off the shelf.  Not sure I want to spend the 20 minutes to post them (that's how bad it's become, when you just don't know if 20 minutes will be rewarded in any way).  Meanwhile I still have to pay my fees, which went up slightly after the change to managed payments, with me actually seeing the money between 3 and 7 days after the sale.  It's hard to deal with that.  

[collectfest]

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@alwaysthebest4u wrote:

I was doing $2000 a week, mainly collectibles. The item category change on May 12 sent them off a cliff. This week $43. Used to be category for antique Christmas ornaments, now gone. All ornaments no matter what holiday or age are lumped into one big pile for customers to look through. They’re not going to bother. God forbid one forget to put word xmas in description. No one will ever find it. eBay breaking what wasn’t broke. I might be done after 20 years.

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I agree 100%, I am mainly a seller but I do buy antique Christmas ornaments. Wow, what a nightmare trying to find item. My purchases for Christmas has dropped to zero from about 1,000 prior to the search change. 

Good luck to you. I am sure eBay will revisit the search. It is in everyone's best interest.