The requirement that all fixed price listings now must be Good 'Til Cancelled might be fine or even be better for some types of listings such as businesses that sell high volumes of the same items over and over and just need to restock items.
However, for collectibles such as sports cards, coins, and comic books as well as many other unique items, the quantity is always 1 and each item requires its own listing. For those listings, all the benefits touted as positive for the Good Till Cancelled DO NOT apply, at least in my opinion.
Specifically from the "positives" of GTC that are touted and why they do not apply...
* An item keeping and growing watchers
It really doesn't matter how many watchers an item has as once an item is sold, it is gone due to quantity being 1. As such, having more watchers is fairly irrelevant as the item only needs one buyer not many. In addition, what I have noticed that applies at least for sports cards, is that items get the most views when first listed and when an item is about to end (in the last few hours) with most of the views in the last few hours. So forcing 30 day listings will likely get less views than 7 day listings that are relisted 4 times or 10 day listings relisted 3 times.
* Sales history
The sales history on an item with a quantity of 1 does not really matter as it will always have exactly 1 sale and the record of that sale is its history regardless of Good 'Til Cancelled or not.
* Same item ID and URL for the life of the listing
For items where the quantity is always 1, I am not sure how much this really matters either. I read somewhere that this new GTC feature was supposed to help with google searches where the searched for item is gone and thus frustrating buyers. Well, it won't help much for unique items as the item will still be gone after one sale. For me personally, I frequently change the price down when I relist items as I try to find the correct price for items that vary in condition and demand and having a new Item ID and URL is not necessarily a bad thing as the same user who saw the item previously may be made aware of a "new listing" and look at it again even though they passed on it before because the price was too high for them. I believe ebay lets the watchers know the item was relisted. At least they don't seem shy about telling me when it happens. I know as a buyer, that's how I process items that I look at, I doubt I am the only one.
I only relatively recently started selling on ebay as more of a hobby business than a business that I am trying to make a living from, so I have not seen or been impacted by some of the previous changes to the platform that many of the other sellers may have experienced over time. From what I have gathered both from reading discussions online as well as my own personal buying decisions is that although ebay has a platform that should be dominant based on the fact that they essentially created an industry, they are currently hemorrhaging market share to upstarts in some areas due to how they are changing/have changed their business model and the end result is that it is pushing sellers elsewhere with the buyers following suit once the items are available.
Specifically for selling collectibles and unique items (and probably other businesses as well), ebay's business model should focus on getting money through actual sales and creating a higher volume of transactions instead of squeezing the seller without any sale happening. Happy sellers will list more and as a result will sell more. In addition with more unique items listed, buyers will see ebay as even more of a "go to" site than it is now, thus generating more revenue for everyone.
My proposed changes to make GTC at least palatable:
If the GTC isn't going to be optional, then here are my ideas on a better implementation that I think could work better for sellers like myself as well as for ebay. Although I am sure it will never happen, my proposal would be to change the GTC listings to be as follows (at least for collectibles and unique items with a quantity of 1). Instead of charging an auto-relisting fee every month prior to a sale, how about adjusting the final value fee up slightly when a sale occurs for every month the item was listed. How about say 0.35% of the final sale price with a maximum of $0.35 for every month that the item was listed but doesn't sell with a maximum 6 to 12 months before it drops off and needs to be relisted to avoid zombie listings. As a seller, I would be much more willing to accept the forced GTC if after 30 days, my FVF for the actual sale of a $5 item went from 10% to 10.35% (i.e., $0.0175 in extra fees) and then 10.35% to 10.70% after 60 days if only charged when a sale actually occurred instead of being charged even if the item doesn't sell. This is especially true for me since many items I would like to sell are lower dollar items, so $0.35 per month would be a huge hit. I picked 0.35% rate as that would make the fee change for a sale of a $100 to be the $0.35 for each extra month as currently implemented.
Also in my proposal, because the FVF fee would change every month, the item would no longer be considered a relist every 30 days and as such the seller would not use an available listing to keep the item listed for an additional month. Thus, the seller would need to decide which is better for them:
* to cancel and use a new listing to relist the item, thus saving the nominal uptick to the FVF fee or,
* pay the extra FVF and use the available listings to list new items
Which is better for the seller would depend on the item, what the seller's margins are, and how many items they are trying to sell.
In all cases, it is in the seller's interest to items sell as quickly as possible to maximize profit. That is in ebay's interest as well as quicker sales means more profit more quickly. If the fees are focused on sales instead of listings, more items would likely be listed, resulting in even more sales. As such it should result in a classic win-win-win. Buyers find more to buy, sellers sell more, and ebay collects more in final value fees.
Instead, ebay is pushing for changes that will probably result in less unique items even being listed which will result in less items available to buyers resulting in less traffic, less sales for the sellers, and less fees collected by ebay. In other words a "lose-lose-lose" death spiral. In addition, it will push those same sellers to find other avenues to sell their products which will likely increase the market share of ebay's competitors by moving both buyers and sellers to other platforms to do their business which makes everything worse month after month.
As of yesterday, I stopped creating any new fixed price listings as I have to figure out what to do. I had been strongly considering opening an ebay store as I have a lot of inventory to sell, but this change has put a halt on that until I figure out whether it is still worthwhile.
Basic math says that even 0.1% of $1.00 is infinitely more than 100% of $0.00.
To close, I am not saying there are no benefits of GTC listings for some businesses, but to lump those selling unique items and collectibles together with volume sellers who sell thousands of the same items over and over is a mistake.
