Just saw the announcement - via this link below - eBay gave to its UK sellers, and I am speechless (which, alone, is a rarity and not one for sale)! 😄
I do understand that eBay wants to be "supportive" of its customers, both those in the UK and those in the USA. But why is it, that store owners in the USA were given 50,000 free listings, when they already get some with their subscription, anyways - whereas we, who do not have a store, get zero free listings, nada, zilch...? I was trying to explain this to myself, ever since the announcement surfaced on ebay.com - and may have even played with the thought of opening a trial store.
Until a few minutes ago , I was telling myself, don't be upset, sales are down anyways, plus eBay is a business and it has to drive profits, so naturally, they will support the drop-shippers and other large volume sellers, who, with a few clicks, can list a large number of items. Then I saw this:
https://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2020/3/1585146206.html
Why? Why are so many of us, smaller USA sellers degraded and stepped over, while you are cuddling all of your UK sellers? I would even understand if the MEGA shark sellers would receive 40,000 and the rest of us just 500 free listings. But throwing ALL your so-called support behind just the big fish, you did not exactly send the message that you care about your lower-volume sellers, and whether they can pay their bills or not.
I have news for you: it is not your drop-shippers who are suffering the largest financial backlash from the Corona virus outbreak: rather, it is your SMALL Mom & Pop sellers, trying to make perhaps a few hundred to maybe a couple of thousand buckaroos, per month. Now they will be unable to pay for much needed medical and other insurance, medical bills, and many will have NSF funds accumulate in their bank account. Your MEGA sellers are going to be fine, as they can easily adjust to listing seasonal and high-in-demand items from their suppliers. We special-niche sellers, on the other hand, can only survive these financially troubling times, if we continue to list perhaps 5-10 items every day, so as to remain in a good placement bracket in the search. So, throwing a small bone of 300-500 free listings could have made a REAL difference.
So, why not give EVERYONE some support? I am not naive, and understand that eBay wants more people to pay the upfront fee of a store subscription to increase eBay's revenue. However, the way this is currently being handled is more than inefficient, and also sends the wrong message to eBay's long-time smaller sellers that they DO NOT COUNT for eBay, one bit (or better yet, one bot) ,
Here is some - the core - of the announcement for UK sellers:
Protecting our eBay Seller Community:
With many small businesses struggling to keep running through the coronavirus crisis, eBay UK has pledged a major cashflow boost by offering payment holidays for all our existing sellers.
From this week, no business joining eBay UK will have to pay any fees to list or sell until 31 May 2020. Existing sellers will also benefit from a 30-day payment holiday on all fees, with a commitment to consider a further holiday at the end of April.
This move marks an urgent response to calls for additional support by UK entrepreneurs. And crucially, it provides self-employed retailers and entrepreneurs who rely on bricks and mortar stores a virtual shop window to reach eBay’s 26 million customers, without paying any fees until June.
I really only returned some of my business here, because I held out some hope that the long-standing culture of detesting and devaluing your small sellers is over in which our merchandise was called yardsale garbage and we were described as "noise", sadly, by some of the previous leadership.
Please do not tell me I made a huge mistake by hoping that, this time, it will be all different.
Thanks for listening
PW🤕🐿
Regards,
