@thomasglasshoarder wrote:
Have I missed something in the ambiguous Seller Update with no "Fixed Date" for changes? My understanding was that the change for Fixed Price listings will be that they will automatically renew every 30 days as Good Till Cancelled. That would mean whatever free monthly listings you have in your store or as a basic member, would have to be monitored closely to prevent being charged listing fees on those listings that went over your free limit. Which is all a money grab by ebay to make life more difficult for the sellers here. I have noticed in some recent Fixed Price listings this week, that the template has automatically been filled in by ebay as Good Till Cancelled, and I was able to change it back to 30 days, but I'm guessing at the end of that time ebay will auto renew anyway based on their nebulous update of "mid-March" for the change. COME ON EBAY, AT LEAST GIVE US THE DATE THIS CHANGE BECOMES OFFICIAL SO WE CAN START ORGANIZING OUR FIXED PRICE LISTINGS THAT ARE GOING TO BE ENDING THIS MONTH. ARE YOU SERIOUSLY THAT DESPERATE FOR MONEY THAT YOU ARE GOUGING YOUR SELLERS FOR MORE. FIRST YOU ADDED A FEE FOR BUY IT NOW ON AUCTIONS, THE SEEMINGLY ILLEGAL SELLER'S FEE ON SHIPPING CHARGES, AND ALL THE OTHER MONEY GRABS YOU IMPOSE ON YOUR SELLERS. Remember, without your sellers, you will have no buyers. Maybe that's what your plan is all along, to destroy ebay for the investors to make money in their nebulous and questionable financial practices. Well, you will probably find out soon as a lot of sellers seem fed up and leaving. I plan on staying for now, ending my store subscription, and running a few auctions. I was a more recent seller in the last 3-4 years, started small, couldn't see the benefit of growing here with all the questionable policies against sellers, and will maybe stay in the future only to run a few auctions.
That's pretty much it. You didn't miss anything.
Here's the negatives with GTC:
- You lose sales search placement - your GTC (when they renew) will not be placed in NEWLY LISTED items.
- Old GTC listings (considered "stale" by Ebay algorithms) will have lower search rankings on Best Match and a few other types of searches.
- Items that auto-renew may incur a fee when they do, depending on your current listing caps.
- Requires more micro-management (time!) to manage listings. A seller will have to keep up with dates of expiration and end listings early then relist.
- Sellers will lose out on valuable "Ending Soon" time if they choose to end listings early.
Solution? Sellers will need to manually end listings before they auto-renew, then relist them. Motivated sellers will be doing this. Sellers that aren't or don't know about the lower placements won't. This means that the net effect is to either spend more time working your listings or fall behind competitors that will. Ebay doesn't understand the dynamic of capitalism here - other sellers ARE your competition. When they do something to gain an advantage, you must do the same or lose out.
This policy is utterly ridiculous. There's absolutely no good reason to MANDATE that sellers use GTC when GTC is already an existing option. Sellers that want to use it have it there today. Sellers that don't choose to do so for a reason. Removing Fixed Duration Listings is a massive mistake. But Ebay is just burying their heads in the sand and singing Koombaya as if everything is fine.
The fact is, other venues with GTC models DON'T CHARGE for both listing items and final value fees; they do one or the other. Ebay is the only venue that does both. On a competing, billion dollar site, I can list 100,000 items if I so choose. Or 1,000,000. Just one store fee, and it never changes, plus Final Value when my items sell. I don't have to micromanage inventory, I don't have to worry about listing caps, and my fees are straight forward. Ebay is living in the dark ages, and this change is utterly at odds with the fee model they are using.
Waiting for the day it is no more....
