As a "Basic Store" seller, I was somewhat optimistic that the GTC mess, would actually help my sales. I have always sold BIN with 30 day listings, and use all 250 of them. I listed all my 250 BIN's on the first of the month. I have had a store since last May.
With the elimination of 3-5-7 BIN listings, it seems my items would now have better exposure since the 3-5-7 listers items no longer bump my items lower. I guess that's a different way to look at GTC for the seller who have always used 30 day BIN listings.
I was averaging about 1.3 sales a day, for the past several months. Since April 1st, I have only 6 sales (in 11 days). Yes, I know that's a very small sample size and could change in the future. So far, GTC appears to have worsened my sales, even though I should have gotten better listing placement. It's also possible I may need to give up on my old listings, and put better items up for sale.
Since I like to list all 250 BIN's on the first of the month, May 31, will be a problem for me. Ebay considers a BIN listing 30 days, even though the majority of the months have 31 days in them. If I don't remember to cancel the unsold items before the auto-relist happens, it will cost me $62.50 (250 X .25 cents), in listing fees, if nothing sold between May 1st and May 30th. I hope I can "bulk end" these listings and not have to do each one individually. I suppose it's a small inconvenience for me, if "bulk ending" is a possibility. I just hope I remember to do it. Since GTC is being forced upon us, I think Ebay should define a "Month" as 31 days to help sellers in my situation.
Ebay should allow the people who pay for "1 year rate" stores, out of their contract, with no penalty since since their guidelines have changed, dramatically.
I haven't been offered "Bonus" free listings in about 3 months, but if I do receive them, it creates a listing fee problem. If those Bonus listings auto-renew the following month, they may not be so "free" then, since I would have already maxed-out on my 250 BIN listings. I suppose to avoid that, just use the bonus listings as auction items to avoid that possibility, if Ebay will allow it.
It's been mentioned GTC actually stands for "Going To China" - as in, all the sales. I'm not sure about that one, but I have always wondered how the Chinese sellers can sell an item for 95 cents with free shipping. After researching it a little, I found that overseas sellers receive subsidized shipping charges, from the US government. If that was subsidy was done away with help from our politicians, it seems it would help US sellers. The playing field is not level. It's pretty discouraging they can ship something cheaper to the USA, than I can, at the expense of the USA taxpayer.
Yesterday, I wanted to update a listing that was listed on April 1st. I wanted to lower the price. At the bottom of the Edit screen, it displayed a charge of 25 cents. I clicked on the highlighed "25 cents" and it came back that the 25 cents was for a "listing fee". Just for the heck of it, I hit the Edit button and made my change. Sure enough, I was charged 25 cents for making a change to a BIN listing. I called Ebay and she gave me a 25 cent credit. She said there was a "glitch" in the system, for several months, that they were trying to get rid of. She said they had until the end of this month to fix the problem. It appears the Ebay computer programmers may have been "C students", with all the glitches I have noticed, since Ebaying. Just wanted people to watch out for this, with your accounts.
My rant is over - I feel much better!
