I've had my Ebay store for over 10 years, with over 20,000 items. I usually have 1000 + items that I list on auction for a week. When they expire unsold I wait a month or more and then do bulk relists. They used to show up as new listings so if you went to my store you'd see them as new listings. Sometimes I'll end old fixed items and then put in new pics, descriptions and/or prices. When I'd relist them they'd also show up under the newly listed. Now, Ebay has changed that. All items relisted will assume some previous date, up to 6 months ago! They said too many sellers would abuse the system and their repeats of a few items would dominate the new liistings. Here's the letter I just sent them encouraging them to reconsider:
OK, so when I relist any item or items, auction or fixed price, Ebay will no longer put them at the top as new items. You give the items some date a month to 8 months old so they will not be seen by buyers that check our stores for new listings. This is because certain sellers have done this so much that the same items keep appearing at the "top" as new listings.
That's not how I operate my store and it really sucks. I have 25,000 + items listed as Fixed price. Another 2500 or so items I rotate into the auction and when they end, I wait 6 or more weeks and list them again. That's not abusing the system but you're messing with my system that I've used for over 15 years. The items I relist are often unique items not listed as fixed items. But when I relist them now, or even hit relist for a fixed price item that I've updated with new price, photos, and/or description, they won't show up as new. That sucks! Why not say relists can only be done once a month, or even every 6 weeks, and then allow them at the top? That would be reasonable.
Let me put it another way. With a newly listed item, fixed or auction, let's say it takes 10 minutes to find, organize, clean, photograph, list with a description and price, and then file or store the item. That's a conservative estimate. At that rate, with my Anchor store level, to list 1000 new auction items per month, that's 33 items per day. At 10 minutes per item that's 5.5 hours per day, 30 days per month! That's unreasonable! All of a sudden that 1000 auction listings per month will not happen with your new system. This sucks big time and cuts into the value of the $300 per month I pay for my Anchor store. Overall I'm paying Ebay an average of $1300 per month and you show little respect for the actual needs of big sellers. This is micro-management at it's worst.
I suggest you pass this on to the brains behind this new system to explain the reality of how it hurts sellers like me, who don't have, say, 100 items or less and abuse the system. There's no way I'm going to spend five and a half hours per day to just list auction items to reach my 1000 auction items that comes with the Anchor store. This is a bad new system and hurts good sellers.
P.S. There is a way to get around your new policy, but it takes more time, time that a small seller with say 10 light bulbs that they keep relisting over and over with slight name variations can easily circumvent, but which for me with over 2500 auction items that I rotate don't have the time for.
Your teams that come up with these new policies should really consult with experienced big sellers that are working hard every day to make a living on Ebay.
