I just wanted to thank eBay for giving it's sellers the middle finger again.

[albany_sellers]

Truly, I appreciate how well you listened to the overwhelming feedback from the overwhelming amount of sellers who asked you to axe the good til canceled idea. I particularly like how you guys tried to frame it in a way to make it look like it's for our benefit.

Don't bother sending out those surveys anymore if you are going to just delete them without even reading them. It's obvious you do not care what your sellers think. Enjoy the extra money from the people who don't realize their listings are auto renewing, at least until they get mad about it and never sell on eBay again.

[ms.rodriguez*]

It's definitely a money grab. Today I was going to relist an item and saw the where ebay is lying to me and telling me that inorder to increase my chances of a sale ,fixed price can ONLY be GTC. That is a **bleep** lie and offensive to me. I would much rather have read the truth, Dear Seller , inorder to screw you more (and/or deeper), your ad must be GTC..." Now that is the truth. Honesty is the best policy but unfortunately ebay doesn't follow that motto...
So folks, list your ads for 29 days..... List them all at night and mark your calender 29 days (or 28 if you will be busy that night) and close your ads..... Then restart them, mark your calender... Wash , Rinse and Repeat ....

[ms.rodriguez*]

They are scammers... Lying scammers...

[ms.rodriguez*]

You need to pay attention. They are going to screw you everytime an item relists and you do NOT want it to relist.

[ms.rodriguez*]

I too feel that this is the worse thing that ebay has done to sellers. Worse than the 10% on the shipping. I have never seen this policy on other selling platforms.

[ms.rodriguez*]

The buyer will know when the GTC is going to end but they don't have to rush because once it ends, it will restart in a minute... So the buyer is going to learn no need to rush and click the buy it now.

[mos-jax-fl]

I totally agree. I called them this morning and told them I am not happy at all and seriously considering closing my account. They are going to lose mass sellers over this. 

[bghunter916]

Ebay don't care and have not for some time, this GTC is only to generate fee's, nothing more nothing less. They have shown they care more for Asian & large business sales more than the average typical seller that made them what they were. We have been trying to move as much as possible to prepare for retirement but we will end up using a local auction house to try to get what we can. Some new stuff we will move to Ama… Its a shame ebay has forgot who made them, their continued lack of respect for the average seller is doing nothing but chasing everyone away. I've posted this before, when they charge a shipping fee on a sale where the shipping is flat rate and the actual cost is higher, ie. $3 FR act 6$ then they charge you a shipping fee how do they figure that's fair, what do they expect sellers to do ? Then you look around and see the good ole 1$ item with 99$ shipping, **bleep**. We will be fazing out, we caught what they were trying to do with the GTC, not us. 

[vivabe]

I agree. As a  seller for 19 years I do not like this condescending and patronizing attitude. I know what I am doing. This is not because I am opposed to changes... I am just opposed to decision which are not beneficial to me.

The solution is to keep the options for 30-day fixed price and GTC.

[vintageista]

In reply to white-eagleap:
NO, it's a China market!

[bimm_corp]

I do not run a business. I am a pensioner selling off a collection of comic books acquired over many years. I have a starter store, eg. 100 free listings a month, BIN or Auction. Comic books are a very competitive category on eBay. There are over 4 million listings active on any given day, with literally hundreds of big players listing multi-thousands of items per day. The split for today is: Date BIN Auction 3-19-19 4,095,952 199,339 I will be monitoring this ratio to see if the forced GTC causes any great change is number of listings or ratio. Will update when anything pops.

[quayvar]

I couldn't agree more! I have been selling on ebay for many years, have been through many changes they have made over time, and never commented until now due to the latest seller update which only allows good until cancelled option on fixed price listings. I used to list in auction when I first began selling, and eventually moved to the 30 day fixed price listings which worked much better, and resulted in better sales for me. Over the years, I have been getting more and more frustrated with selling due to the realization that changes are continually made which are portrayed as being beneficial to sellers, but in reality the changes are actually beneficial to ebay being they just want to collect more fees to line their pockets on the backs of the sellers. Insertion fees, final value fees, fees on shipping, and PayPal fees on every item listed or sold takes a toll on making it worth selling on ebay. This latest good until canceled thing is a HUGE turn off for me, and I hope ebay gets the message, or receives a major backlash from sellers that share the same opinion on this. I feel like it's almost like dealing with the government which does not serve the good of all as they should ... not just certain groups for their own benefit 😞 You can only tax individuals so much before they give up or leave! I have submitted my thoughts through the "tell us what you think" thing, and stated that they should take notice on the comments being posted on the community discussion boards, but that will probably be ignored too. Sorry for the rambling on ... I'm just EXTREMELY unhappy about this!

[ebbrat]

I just stumbled across this GTC nonsense when helping someone list and panicked that they couldn't change duration. "Oh that can't be. I'll fix it for you." Then realized this is static and started reading. Boy, oh boy, I just can't fathom the moxie and feel for stores stuck in this mess. Soooo glad I got out of full time selling on ebay years ago.

But after reading seller's posts, I have to say - Ebay will do and has always done, what ebay wants. No amount of pleading, begging, threatening or foot stomping will have an impact. Been there; done that. Leaving the site will have no impact as there are thousands more stepping in all the time. This not geared toward the small seller, it is for big business. They have killed whole markets on the site (I was one!) and it didn't affect the bottom line. I saw that coming a long time ago.

I was pretty successful seller in the early 2000s. It was fun, it was easy and ebay was pretty helpful to small guys back then. I sold children's boutique/designer and euro clothing. There were tons of high end ebay stores for childrens designer wear and they had better prices than dedicated online stores - so biz boomed. I sold 25-30 listings a week. Life on ebay was good. They only allowed 1 free photo, but photobucket was free (not anymore) and I learned html, so no biggie. I could accept money orders or cash if I wanted to - and I did, because no paypal fees. Then they bought Paypal and mandated that venue.  TurboLister was awesome, even with it's quirks - work offline and list at leisure. Nixing that was a huge issue for me. Auction listings with BIN only had to be 20% above list. Ebay was happy as clothing is seasonal, so stock always changed. Sadly, they weren't happy enough to value this market and save it.

2005 started the downhill motivation to stay. Fees went up, up, up - especially for a store. Postage went up, up, up. Cost of goods went up, up, up. Then BIN on auction listings upped to 30%. And the final nail in the coffin - buyers could not leave negative feedback - WTH?? When I calculated the drop in profit and hours of work, I threw in the towel around 2007. There was just no point if you couldn't make a dime. Every single store with kids boutique clothing got out, never to return. And I knew a lot of these woman and at times helped manage their stores. They were devastated. Today, if you plug in the designer names of kids clothing, you may get 1 page and it sells for next to nothing. So yes, they killed this market and it never came back. Did they re-evaluate their thinking losing so much business? Absolutely not.

I'm sure I'm forgetting the plethora of other mandates and changes that killed it, as I'm sure there was more. The bottom line is, ebay won't change policy because sellers are unhappy. They have never valued sellers - ever. So bow out or decide to live with their heavy handed moves and there will be more to come I'm sure. It really is that simple.

[greg5000]

alan@ebay 

brian_burke@ebay 

brian@ebay 

griff@ebay.com 

I'm new posting to Community Boards and this is my first post replying to my own post.  I just wanted to be sure that eBay sees how many members posted helpful, in just a short period of time.

I think the statement "Companies that don't listen to their Customers will always fail"  resonated with all.

Now, with my reply to my own post, our voices resonate to Alan, Brian x2, and Griff.

[dugoldstuff]

> Ebay keeps losing traffic so they have to come up with ways to get more money without it relying on a sale having occurred. 

Excellent point, as are all your others.

As I noted in another post, the situation on eBay is analogous to the state of NY realizing that due to high taxes, it's millionaires are leaving. They have a $2.3 billion tax shortfall. Even Cuomo is worried about not having enough millionaires to fund his state. These people in high places that craft policies never seem to grasp that the people whose labor funds the operation of an enterprise (eBay) or a municipality (NY) can just leave. They can't make us stay and put up with this punishment. Then, when we're gone, they panic.

[dugoldstuff]

> Until Ebay sees the negative effect this will wind up having on their revenue stream they will keep this new policy in place  as they are now dependent on fees created to replace the FVF they used to make on sales.  As sales continue to drop Ebay has had to become creative in how to squeeze blood out of a turnip (Sellers) without a sale having occurred.  Then they continue to wonder why their growth is 1% in what should have been a fantastic 4th quarter as Sellers leave or move more and more product to other sites where most revenue is dependent on a sale happening.

Again, you nailed it. Support for your thesis:

Wed Dec 12 2018 14:25:09 Analyst Sees More Stagnant Growth Ahead for eBay By: Ina Steiner

A Wall Street analyst sees more stagnant growth ahead for eBay. CNBC reports that Morgan Stanley analyst Brian Nowak downgraded the stock over concerns of low growth in the coming year.

But it isn't shareholders' teeth-gnashing that concerns us - rather, how this will impact readers. Low growth in Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) means the pie isn't growing for eBay sellers.

Nowak said he now expects eBay to grow "low to mid single digits in 2019," according to the CNBC report.

As we've previously reported, eBay CEO Devin Wenig is trying to milk sellers as a way to boost revenue. Specifically, the "nascent earnings opportunities" of managed payments and advertising, as Nowak called them.

The article's kill shot: "Morgan Stanley sees eBay's domestic gross merchandise value growing between 0 and 1 percent in the first half of 2019 and just 2 percent for the whole year."

https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2018/12/1544642709.html