Ebay's total disregard for sellers...re: new 15 day limit on putting items on sale

[coniferclothingcompany]

I have been a seller for a few years, have done everything right according to Ebay, gone along with new policies (offer guaranteed delivery, free shipping, have 100% positive fb etc) and was a TPS Plus until the free shipping requirement. This morning I found out that Ebay has instituted a policy that an item that was on promotion cannot be put back on sale for 15 days. I sell clothing and this policy is going to significantly hurt my sales. Over the weekend I put a large part of my store on promotion and consequently had a significant boost in sales. I now can't put any of those items back on sale for 15 days. If I were to put some of these items back on sale next weekend and would get a similar boost in sales how is that a bad thing? I called Ebay and was told that buyers have complained about sellers marking items up and immediately putting them on sale. So instead of targeting those sellers and working with them Ebay institutes a blanket policy that affects all sellers. When I run a promotion it's generally 10-20% off. I do not mark up items before they go on sale. Increased volume of purchases as a result of a promotion is good for me and ultimately Ebay too. Also, there is no way to tell which items are eligible to be put on promotion. If I go to the promotions page and format a sale there is no indication as to which items are beyond the 15 day restriction. Finally, as a seller shouldn't I have received prior notice to this policy? I found out from another seller.

I have always been one to defend Ebay when others complain about policies as a great venue for selling but after they have made free shipping a requirement for TRS Plus and now this I am very discouraged. I would think I am the kind of seller Ebay wants to keep happy as I am making them money. It feels like Ebay is trying to get rid of sellers like me.

[dhbookds]

It was in the Spring Seller release.....

While YOU don't mark things up before a sale, I gather many sellers do, and then run continuous sales, kind of like the local jewelry store than runs a going out of business sale for 5 years.  That destroys credibility for all of us......

I don't know how it's going to work, but I imagine  non eligible listings simply will not be added to a sale, even if you select them...... so it's not going to be necessary for a seller to "keep up" with what has been on sale. 

[coniferclothingcompany]

While it may not be necessary for me to keep up it is a waste of time for me to go about formatting a promotion blindly picking items and then I have to start the promotion and to see what actually shows up. If Ebay is going to change a policy give us the tools to better work with it by adding something to the software that shows which items are eligible. 

And why would EBay penalize all sellers for something only some sellers do when the outcome is fewers dollars both in my pocket and ultimately Ebay's?

[dhbookds]

penalize all sellers for something only some sellers do

Because they want the same good standards in place for all sellers...........rather than have to hunt down/penalize the ones who do the wrong thing ( according to ebay lights).  I imagine sellers who up the price and then mark it down view it as simply a marketing tool......that there is nothing wrong with it and without some rule stopping it, sellers have no idea that it isn't a "best practice"...

[juststuffisell]

lol....5 year going out of business sale....love it! I have seen that with the stupid furniture & mattress stores in our town. It's like dude - go out of business already.....lol

Relative to the "fix" by ebay, that will hit people that use ebay tools for listing and selling items that auto renew. It will not impact sellers that use 3rd party software and run 30 day listings that can be relisted using a new listing feature rather than the relist an existing listing feature. I am not sure what the max terms are on a sale but theoretically, a seller could list a bunch of 30 day listings and have the "going out of business 50% off" a 500% markup item and see no impact relative to the policy change.

Mind you, that is theory only. It would not be shocking for eBay to roll out a policy designed to impact one group of sellers and to have the impact really hit another group of sellers; Shocking!

[lookng2015]

I may be wrong here (it's been known to happen) but wasn't the new requirement that you couldn't run a mark down sale on any item whose price had been changed in the previous 14 days?

How does running a sale on an item fit into that criteria if the price remains unchanged?

Not being able to run a sale for 2 weeks on an item that's already been on sale doesn't make sense.

[catcookielover]

I absolutely agree that this is a blanket policy that will hurt many  small sellers. You pay to have a store, yet you can't even put your own items on sale when you want to?  Why even have a store then?

If ebay is having trouble with a minority of sellers manipulating their prices too high before a sale, why not put price limits instead of blocking sales promotions all together?

Face it, buyers love seeing markdowns. This is going to lead to a large decrease in sales as many watchers will lose interest when the price of an item goes up after a sale ends.  

[coniferclothingcompany]

My understanding is that a new item cannot be put on sale for 15 days, and an item that has been on sale cannot be listed in a new sale for 15 days.

[coniferclothingcompany]

So are you saying there is a way around this by using 3rd party software? I have 30 day listings that I use sell similar to relist.

[terrabellabeads]

I'm with you...this is a nightmare for my business and will likely force me to have to migrate off the site.  Ebay provides 2/3 of my revenue and is my sole income, so this really stinks.

My main issue with the 14 day wait is that I often move inventory between other online venues and my physical store.  If someone buys the remaining stock of one of my items, it is possible I have more to relist in another one of my stores.  So the person who might have that sold out item in their cart wouldn't be able to get the sale price when I relist it.  I have many repeat buyers and am trying to provide them with a consistant experience, so this really disrupts that effort.

Also the waiting period prevents having a store-wide holiday or pop-up sale as items will inevitably be excluded.  This is all insult upon injury as there are still many functions in the new "storefront" that are not working yet, like display preferences.  My customers tend to revisit and want to see new items, but with the display order always reverting to "Best Match" it looks like my store has nothing new.  Impossible to know how many sales were and are being lost to this glitch. 

One last complaint (in case anyone else is bothered) is that there is no title expansion when hovering over titles in Gallery view.  The new storefronts are trying to optimize the small device shopping experience, but have completely abandoned customers who still shop on laptops or pcs.  The designers who shop my site like the gallery view to compare color & size, but without title expansion they can't see the size of the beads in the Gallery format.

I've been calling support constantly and encourage others to do so as well.  I think it is a shame that Ebay is trying to shift to product-based shopping like Amazon rather than their original market based origins.  I have been selling here since 2002 and have always appreciated the marketplace environment on Ebay.  I can't think of a single time where I have been drawn to check out a vendor's store on Amazon.

oh well...

[lookng2015]

I don't know whose bright idea it was in the new store layout to change the store search choices dropdown to the same as general search but it truly sucks. Actually it looks more like just lazing coding to me.

[mathamill]

The markdown sales mechanic is broken on eBay. It is a proven retail store strategy, brick andmortar stores have been doing it for a long time and studies show that retail buyers always respond to markdowns and sales do increase. Not sure how it works online, I have had my fair share of emails from irate buyers asking why i increased my prices when the reality is the item was on sale and the buyer waited too long to buy so the sale clock ran out before they were ready to commit. You can certainly help them out by sending them a best offer email if you were so inclined. Again goes back to the whole buyers should be responsible for reading listings etc etc, shows not much attention is paid to anything other than price which is probably why eBay changed the markdown policy and even put language in about pricing it right the first time so that you don't need to resort to markdowns. What I Iike to use markdowns for is to move older listings if they've been around too long but you can't stop people from being cheap. You should never be in a hurry to make less money.

[enjoytreasure]

I don't understand . I usted to have more than 17.000 listings on sale . These listings have several months in my store . Why I can't now make the discounts ??? I only make discounts on old stuff and always increase 1% every 20 days until is sold .

These listings are fixed price and relisted every 30 days (ebay cycle)  ....... will I need to wait 15 days every time ? I mean I can only put discounts from day 16 to day 30 ???

[luluathleta]

I completely agree.    I have sale promotions every week and on any given day of the week I have some type of promotion going with targeted items in my store.     This policy completely disregards good sellers and how it will affect our bottom line.    To take time to set up a targeted promotion, only to find out that none or few of your those items actually are on active promotion, is a complete disregard and shows lack of respect for good honest sellers by ebay.     100% proves they are not interested in the small seller regardless of their party line of "We do care.  We started and built our business off of small sellers."    Yeah right....

[luluathleta]

Actually new policy includes new listings, listings that have been on promotion and listing that you have edited.    

1. New listings can't go on promotion for 15 days.

2. Listings that have been on promotion can't go on for 15 days.

3.  If you edit a listing for any reason, it becomes uneligible for promotion for 15 days.