Free Insertion Listings

[commanduncomm]

Has anyone else checked to see if their free insertion listings are being taken by old listings that have not been listed in the current month nor have they renewed in the current month?

Don't confuse listings that are set for GTC as they will take up a new free listing spot every month. This is items that are completed/unsold and listed in prior months that are quoted as taking up a free insertion listing spot.

I am currently in a case where I am being charged hundreds of dollars in insertion fees because of this issue.

Premium store: 38000 active listings. 31000 have been relisted this month by manual means, 1883 listings can or will relist by GTC renewal and the rest are being canceled and relisted manually by a 3rd party vendor application called Sixbit.

Listings are canceled before GTC occurs (verified this is happening and that they were not renewed) and then relisted as a new item. Also verified that there is no date overlap (originally thought 30 day cycles would produce this, hasn't happened yet, may adjust for 30 day cancel and relist on day 31 but this is not the case here either).

Also verified all of my unsold item start dates to quarantine any double listings... only 100 or so listed in march are unsold or completed.

As my sales is roughly 300-400 a month, this isn't going to push me over either.

Zero quantity listings are turned off.

Below is where it occurring.

Here's the top few of my 29001 February listings showing to take up half of my March 60,000 free insertions. As none of these were relisted by GTC in March, nor renewed, there is no insertion for these items in March.

To figure this out I pulled all of the item ID's from the 10,000 and 50,000 free insertion listing promotion links. I then pulled all my active and unsold listings and did a crosswalk.

ID	Insertion Fee?	Active?	Active Start Date	Unsold?	Unsold Start Date	Unsold End Date
315149885534	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 05:19:22 PST	Mar-10-24 00:30:08 PST
315149885993	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 05:19:30 PST	Mar-10-24 00:30:09 PST
315149886247	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 05:19:41 PST	Mar-10-24 00:30:09 PST
315150228231	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:49:20 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:06 PDT
315150228569	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:49:26 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:07 PDT
315150228967	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:49:31 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:08 PDT
315150229148	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:49:37 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:08 PDT
315150229371	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:49:44 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:09 PDT
315150229727	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:49:50 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:10 PDT
315150229897	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:49:55 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:11 PDT
315150229993	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:50:01 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:11 PDT
315150230128	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:50:07 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:12 PDT
315150230216	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:50:12 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:13 PDT
315150230424	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:50:17 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:13 PDT
315150230564	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:50:23 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:14 PDT
315150230697	#N/A	#N/A	#N/A	Yes	Feb-10-24 09:50:29 PST	Mar-10-24 06:00:15 PDT

[slippinjimmy]

How about an example?

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@commanduncomm wrote: ... Don't confuse listings that are set for GTC as they will take up a new free listing spot every month. This is items that are completed/unsold and listed in prior months that are quoted as taking up a free insertion listing spot....

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All fixed price listings are GTC.  You have over 38,000 listings, only two of which are auction format, plus it is the 26th of the month so most of your 38,000 listings have either been listed in March or have already rolled over for March. So if you don't have a Store subscription at a level that provides 38,000 free insertions per month  in the categories that you use, then of course you are incurring insertion fees when those 38K listings roll over.

[fern*wood]

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@commanduncomm wrote:

Don't confuse listings that are set for GTC as they will take up a new free listing spot every month. This is items that are completed/unsold and listed in prior months that are quoted as taking up a free insertion listing spot.

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Do you have out of stock set on your listings?  I don't understand what listings you are talking about, because that sounds like unsold listings you ended if GTC or didn't get a bid if auction.  

[powell-memorabilia]

Correct - sold items that you keep as active, even with an available quantity of zero, count towards your total listings.  You can always remove the out of stock option on your listings.

[commanduncomm]

Edited original to reply.

[commanduncomm]

Edited original to reply.

[commanduncomm]

Edited original to reply.

[lacemaker3]

If an out-of-stock listing has a quantity of zero for the entire calendar month, then the seller should get a credit for any insertion fees and upgrade fees that were charged for that listing.

https://www.ebay.com/help/selling/listings/creating-managing-listings/multiquantity-listings-listing...

[commanduncomm]

Edited original comment to reply. Includes examples of theory.

[nobody*s_perfect]

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@commanduncomm wrote: ... Listings are canceled before GTC occurs (verified this is happening and that they were not renewed) and then relisted as a new item. Also verified that there is no date overlap (originally thought 30 day cycles would produce this, hasn't happened yet, may adjust for 30 day cancel and relist on day 31 but this is not the case here either)....

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Just one small point of clarification:   Good Until Canceled listings (i.e., all fixed price listings) roll over each month on the same date that they started; a listing that began on February 10 would roll over on March 10, April 10, May 10, June 10, etc.  Sometimes that's 30 days but often it's not.

[commanduncomm]

Fair point, however, not the case in this instance. Checked for that.

[wastingtime101 · Accepted solution]

Hi @commanduncomm . I believe I can tell you what's happening.

First, please read this discussion and the linked tech issues thread in the first post:

https://community.ebay.com/t5/Selling/Listings-created-March-1-2024-potential-unexpected-fees/td-p/3...

I looked up one of your listing examples, item 315149885534

Start Time: Saturday, 10-Feb-24 13:19:22 UTC
End Time: Sunday, 10-Mar-24 08:30:08 UTC

You listed it on Feb 10th which means it erroneously renewed on March 9th due to the tech issue discussed in the linked post. Because you were unaware of this error, when you ended the listing on March 10th you did not realize the listing had already renewed the day before and used up one of your free insertions.

[commanduncomm]

ROFL.

This MIGHT be the cause. I was going to say that this is totally true, however, I have the dates that the listings ended and relisted and I have confirmed that none of the 29001 were ever renewed. So maybe? Sounds like the closest I've seen to an answer yet.

[wastingtime101]

I guarantee you that's what happened. All listings created Feb 10th - Mar 9th are renewing a day early.

Do yourself a favor: update your Seller Hub Active listings page using the 'customize' link on the top right. Make sure you have both the start date and the end date columns checked and visible.

Look at any listing created during the dates above and you will see they are set to renew "end" a day early.

Not sure why you manually end/relist your items every month, but if you've been doing this every day, you will be able to match up those numbers starting with those items listed Feb 10th and ended Mar 10th a few hours before you expected them to renew.

While I'm hoping eBay will forgive insertion fees generated by listings that auto-renew on both the 1st and the 31st this month from that error, I cannot see CS agreeing to refund you such a hefty sum for tens of thousands of listings when you are voluntarily ending and relisting. You can try saying you didn't know about the tech error and never checked the renewal date, but you might be wasting your time.