The "Relist" feature - eBay must install a limit

[bambopbam]

It sounds like a good idea to "Relist this item if it didn't sell"  but it has now become a BAD idea and eBay must start putting limits on how many times a seller can relist the same item.   Reason is there are sellers with 10's of thousands of listings that don't sell but they keep getting relisted every 7 days. 

There is one seller who has over 200 thousand listings, but only 2242 in sales for a whopping .008% sales rate. 

That is awful in many ways.  The main reason is because other sellers become buried.  When scrolling through listings one seller should not be able to occupy 1000 pages (at 200 items per page). 

Does eBay want sellers listing the same item over and over and over... for weeks and months and years - that doesn't sell?   If eBay won't limit relisting my next suggestion is for eBay to give us a search engine that works.  A search engine that easily excludes certain items and sellers from the results.

[walkeholstea-0]

Whats to stop a seller from hitting the "sell similar" button and relisting it that way?

[mr_lincoln]

@bambopbam  I think that duplicates and word spamming listings are the culprits ... there is NO reason eBay can't build a bot army to search them out and reduce them to so many electrons ... to be blown away in the electronic wind ... poof-a-mundo ...

[emerald40]

Removing freebies, imo, would go along way to making listings much more competitive.

Or allowing freebies for new listings only, and no workarounds.  Those who do, would lose those freebies.

[papyruspapillo]

Since when are listings free? The cost of my store includes 1,000 listings. I routinely use more than that allotment, so ebay collects listing fees on my overage, as well. And when I make a sale, ebay takes its cut. The entire process is a "cash cow" for ebay. If you know of a way that I can list 1,200 items per month for free, kindly advise.

[city*satins]

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Why would eBay want to kill that cash cow?

well for buyers it's a turn off - never could figure out why anyone would want to see pages and pages of the same items from china - if ebay would just consider the buyer once in awhile and their experience shopping here it would probably improve sales.

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Masses of listings from China is another issue, isn't it?  A lot of those sellers are relisting stuff that they actually managed to sell but have multiple quantities of.

[city*satins]

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wrote:

Removing freebies, imo, would go along way to making listings much more competitive.

Or allowing freebies for new listings only, and no workarounds.  Those who do, would lose those freebies.

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No workarounds? I'd be interested in knowing what you envision when you suggest that.

The sellers who the OP apparently is objecting to aren't using FREEBIES, by the way. Their listings aren't FREE.   They're merely paid for through their store subscriptions at a block rate.    

If store subscriptions didn't include a set number of listings, why would a seller subscribe to a store?

[dhbookds]

The best thing eBay could do for the site is to significantly lower final value fees and significantly RAISE listing fees. They need to reward those who actually sell things and punish those who just list them.

Then Ebay has little skin in the game, they don't have to worry about delivering buyers/sales......they can sit back and collect listing fees.    Many think that's one reason they did nothing to modernize the site earlier. 

[div_style]

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It's not a cash cow for ebay - listings are free.

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Can you tell us which seller is getting 200,000 free listings every 7 days? 

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Go to eBay France, seller cpaphil.   Active listings: 257,919 - completed listings 1,835,574 (almost 2  million!)  Sold: 2251.  How is that good for eBay?  

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That's 2251 sales in the last 3 months.  That's more than even I sell. 

[emerald40]

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Removing freebies, imo, would go along way to making listings much more competitive.

Or allowing freebies for new listings only, and no workarounds.  Those who do, would lose those freebies.

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No workarounds? I'd be interested in knowing what you envision when you suggest that.

The sellers who the OP apparently is objecting to aren't using FREEBIES, by the way. Their listings aren't FREE.   They're merely paid for through their store subscriptions at a block rate.    

If store subscriptions didn't include a set number of listings, why would a seller subscribe to a store?

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When ebay first initiated free listings they were for new listings only.  Then some learned how to do workarounds for current listings.  Ebay could not apparently enforce it.  Wish they would learn how?

Yes, I know that they are included with store subscriptions.  Wish there were other perks for sellers other than all those freebies.  They are a drag on the buyer experience, imo.

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[chipper01work · Accepted solution]

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wrote:

The best thing eBay could do for the site is to significantly lower final value fees and significantly RAISE listing fees. They need to reward those who actually sell things and punish those who just list them.

Then Ebay has little skin in the game, they don't have to worry about delivering buyers/sales......they can sit back and collect listing fees.    Many think that's one reason they did nothing to modernize the site earlier. 

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Not really. Nobody is going to pay to list on a site where stuff doesn't sell. They need to go back to the fee structure that was in place in 2006 or one similar. The site was exponentially more vibrant back then and was not flooded with junk no one wants. Selling fees were reasonable and sellers thought twice about listing things that had little chance of selling because it cost money to list duds-as it should.