eBay

prettywoman-2012 · ‎03-25-2020

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🤕🐿

dhbookds · ‎03-26-2020

A couple of things about the UK offering: ..........the "free listings" are to new sellers who join ebay.......and are capped at 250 a month.

This: 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.

is actually the same deferment program as in the US.........

https://tamebay.com/2020/03/ebay-offers-lifeline-for-small-businesses-impacted-by-coronavirus.html

https://tamebay.com/2020/03/ebay-defferral-program-now-open-defer-payment-of-this-months-fees.html

mr_lincoln · ‎03-26-2020

@prettywoman-2012 wrote:
@mr_lincoln wrote:
@prettywoman-2012 I think the UK has less ability to economically rebound compared to the US and eBay may realize that if they don't waive the fees there is a good chance they won't get paid anyway as Europeans gut their accounts to pay their own bills and buy food. There may be a whole lot more going on behind the scenes that eBay knows compared to what we here in the US know about the UK marketplace. For myself I will wait to pass judgment on the UK announcement.

Now if the same were to be done on the other side of the globe where this whole thing all got started then my opinion would be different ... very different.

Yes to your sentence in orange. I did not think about it, but may be there is some agreement between the two governments about trying to support each-other's economy. That would answer (a) but still, would not explain (b) the discrepancy between the vast number of free listings for store owners vs. ZERO FREE LISTINGS for those without the store.
PW🐿

I am sure alan@ebay can probably confirm or advise the reasoning behind the lack of huge Free Listing Promos for Non-store owners. My take on that part would be that many new accounts that are on the Everyday rate plan still have Selling Limits in place that would make something like the 50,000 Free Listing Promo basically worthless. And then we would be hearing about that here on The Community from a lot of new Sellers.

eBay may have decided that they could quickly send large promos to store owners knowing most of them have been through the start up phase and have higher Selling Limits.

eBay may also be formulating a slightly different offering to non-store accounts and we are not aware of it.

eBay may also view the 50,000 promo as a targeted incentive sent to specific groups of Sellers (store owners) opposed to a random issuance of Listing Promotions (could be sent to ANY Seller) that they have done in the past.

Regards,
Mr. Lincoln - Community Mentor

*madison · ‎03-26-2020

Loads of big businesses are helping the UK people here, including the banks. And those big businesses that don't help will be remembered when this crisis is over..

mr_lincoln · ‎03-26-2020

@prettywoman-2012 wrote:
@mr_lincoln wrote:
@prettywoman-2012 I think the UK has less ability to economically rebound compared to the US and eBay may realize that if they don't waive the fees there is a good chance they won't get paid anyway as Europeans gut their accounts to pay their own bills and buy food. There may be a whole lot more going on behind the scenes that eBay knows compared to what we here in the US know about the UK marketplace. For myself I will wait to pass judgment on the UK announcement.

Now if the same were to be done on the other side of the globe where this whole thing all got started then my opinion would be different ... very different.

@mr_lincoln I see what you are trying to say. However, according to BBC NEWS, their Prime Minister issued a stimulus package, also, and is fully open to add more to it, as needed.🐿 PW

An excellent point but here again I would defer to alan@ebay to explain the difference between eBay.uk "the domain" UK the country (or countries) from a geographic standpoint. Alan is from that part of the world and may have a better grasp on what the connections are. While I am not an expert I know that Brexit meant the United Kingdom pulled out of the EU and I assume by United Kingdom it means England, Northern Ireland but includes Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Jersey (British Crown dependency maybe?). Then there is the British Commonwealth countries which happens to include our friends and neighbors to the north, Canada if memory serves and until 1997 (or around that time) Hong Kong.

So the reference to "the Prime Minister" issuing a stimulus package, I would assume its the Prime Minister of England but that may or may not have anything to do with countries outside Brexit and I have no clue if it includes anything for British Commonwealth Countries which would include (from I've found) United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Irish Free State, and Newfoundland.

So it gets a little messy in my view and eBay's UK "domain" may not be bound in any way to the geography of the UK or EU ...

Regards,
Mr. Lincoln - Community Mentor

bar-29368 · ‎03-26-2020

@dhbookds wrote:

A couple of things about the UK offering: ..........the "free listings" are to new sellers who join ebay.......and are capped at 250 a month.

This: 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.

is actually the same deferment program as in the US.........

https://tamebay.com/2020/03/ebay-offers-lifeline-for-small-businesses-impacted-by-coronavirus.html

https://tamebay.com/2020/03/ebay-defferral-program-now-open-defer-payment-of-this-months-fees.html

Glad someone else said it first as I was about to post the same thing.

The UK deal is 2 parts. The no fees until June is totally aimed at getting NEW sellers.

The deal offered current subscribers is a "fee holiday" which is in effect the same deferral they're offering US stores. A "holiday" is a hiatus in normal business, so same as a deferral.

bar-29368 · ‎03-26-2020

@prettywoman-2012 wrote:
@mr_lincoln wrote:
@prettywoman-2012 I think the UK has less ability to economically rebound compared to the US and eBay may realize that if they don't waive the fees there is a good chance they won't get paid anyway as Europeans gut their accounts to pay their own bills and buy food. There may be a whole lot more going on behind the scenes that eBay knows compared to what we here in the US know about the UK marketplace. For myself I will wait to pass judgment on the UK announcement.

Now if the same were to be done on the other side of the globe where this whole thing all got started then my opinion would be different ... very different.

@mr_lincoln I see what you are trying to say. However, according to BBC NEWS, their Prime Minister issued a stimulus package, also, and is fully open to add more to it, as needed.🐿 PW

As did our govt.

*madison · ‎03-26-2020

I would assume its the Prime Minister of England

--------------------------------------

He lives in England, but he's the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.

cashvaluerecovery2011 · ‎03-26-2020

The fact you have to pay for listing is already a complete scam.

bar-29368 · ‎03-26-2020

@mr_lincoln wrote:
@prettywoman-2012 wrote:
@mr_lincoln wrote:
@prettywoman-2012 I think the UK has less ability to economically rebound compared to the US and eBay may realize that if they don't waive the fees there is a good chance they won't get paid anyway as Europeans gut their accounts to pay their own bills and buy food. There may be a whole lot more going on behind the scenes that eBay knows compared to what we here in the US know about the UK marketplace. For myself I will wait to pass judgment on the UK announcement.

Now if the same were to be done on the other side of the globe where this whole thing all got started then my opinion would be different ... very different.

@mr_lincoln I see what you are trying to say. However, according to BBC NEWS, their Prime Minister issued a stimulus package, also, and is fully open to add more to it, as needed.🐿 PW

An excellent point but here again I would defer to alan@ebay to explain the difference between eBay.uk "the domain" UK the country (or countries) from a geographic standpoint. Alan is from that part of the world and may have a better grasp on what the connections are. While I am not an expert I know that Brexit meant the United Kingdom pulled out of the EU and I assume by United Kingdom it means England, Northern Ireland but includes Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Jersey (British Crown dependency maybe?). Then there is the British Commonwealth countries which happens to include our friends and neighbors to the north, Canada if memory serves and until 1997 (or around that time) Hong Kong.
So the reference to "the Prime Minister" issuing a stimulus package, I would assume its the Prime Minister of England but that may or may not have anything to do with countries outside Brexit and I have no clue if it includes anything for British Commonwealth Countries which would include (from I've found) United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Irish Free State, and Newfoundland.
So it gets a little messy in my view and eBay's UK "domain" may not be bound in any way to the geography of the UK or EU ...

Unless they're territories (like a US "protectorate") like the Falkland Islands, Commonwealth countries like Canada, New Zealand, Australia have their own governments which will be issuing their own stimulus.

*madison · ‎03-26-2020

While I am not an expert I know that Brexit meant the United Kingdom pulled out of the EU and I assume by United Kingdom it means England, Northern Ireland but includes Ireland, Scotland, Wales

--------------------------------------------------

The United Kingdom consists of England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland.

The Republic of Ireland also known as Ireland, is not part of the UK.

jobs-7 · ‎03-26-2020

Government starts handing out "free" money for people to stay at home, and the freeloaders just come pouring out of the woodwork.

I need FREE electricity, water, gas for my home, gas for my cars, free car insurance, FREE FREE FREE. GIMME GIMME GIMME!

I'm just gonna sit on my duff, collect $$$ with no bills to pay. I hope this ~~media driven hysteria~~ pandemic never ends! UTOPIA!

the_old_treasure_ship · ‎03-26-2020

The whole discussion about "free" listings has truly opened my eyes. I am surprised by the rivalry and resentment store owners feel for sellers without stores. At first it seemed unreasonable to me. I assumed many store owners were once sellers without stores, and, many of those sellers without stores are also buyers. When eBay favors one group over another it causes rivalry and resentment that is unhealthy for the entire community.

mr_lincoln · ‎03-26-2020

@picknparley wrote:
Do you know if ebay UK has the heavy Asian market presence? And what the total number of listings is on UK compared to US?
That could explain the benefits for smaller sellers there because they don't have the same volume of mega sellers.
Maybe?

I don't have any numbers on UK "domain" membership or Asian either ... although I would like to see them.

Regards,
Mr. Lincoln - Community Mentor

corvettestainless · ‎03-26-2020

In the corporate internet world here- someone with a store is a serious full time seller. They are not reaching out to the part time garage sale type sellers because they are doing this to hopefully help buyers get items that they cannot get in stores due to closing etc.

Store owners tend to sell new items in multiple quantities. Kohls, for example is closed, but if you still go to work and need newer clothes, jacket for the cold, socks, underwear etc. then you have to buy online. eBay's hopes is that they are helping the community by doing this. If it wasn't for gougers, they would have also been able to help people get TP, wipes etc.

Part time non store sellers are selling used items, collectables etc. which is not part of the solution at the moment on a global business current situation scale.

So, it makes sense.

the_old_treasure_ship · ‎03-26-2020

Everyone has a personal relationship with distress during a time of crisis. Picking and choosing who has more need is futile. Fairness is always the best policy.