eBay

mod-designs4u · ‎04-22-2019

Come one, come all to eBay's new CANCEL-THON sale! Step right up and search for vintage items in your favorite categories or by using your favorite search parameters. What? There's very little or nothing to see? You bet. Sellers like myself have had to waste time CANCELLING many of our listings so the automatic renewal doesn't infringe on our monthly allotment. I've already had my monthly allotment eaten up since I forgot to manually cancel some GTC listings. Now, I won't be relisting anything new and refreshing until next month. Now, I've listed some of my items on other online sales platforms. Now, in addition to cancelling listings on the 29th day I'll be cancelling listings when my items sell on other online sales platforms.

Guess what you eBay "geniuses" who concocted the idea of forcing your sellers into GTC and "cancelling" the 30 day list option...your revenue will diminish as your online sales competitors get the sales commissions. And as for eBay's sellers who all peddle the same new widgets good luck with that! You all will eventually out-price yourselves into oblivion (assuming your eBay business activity involves earning a "profit"). Unless eBay reverses the forced GTC onto its sellers I don't see a future here. This is the thanks I get for selling on eBay for the last 20 years and weathering the long history of adverse decisions affecting the vintage and art marketplace. I suppose things could be worse...I could be invested in eBay stock! 🙂

equid0x · ‎05-01-2019

@mod-designs4u wrote:
If the web link with the other search engines (whether it's Goggle or some other 3rd party "special interest" link) connects an expired eBay listing it should also allow the searcher to view the "relisted" item (whether or not the web searcher does this is open to speculation). You do have a point...the automatic relist with GTC would convert expired listings into current listings provided that the seller hasn't cancelled the GTC listings to conform with their monthly allotment. The next question is how accurate and timely will Google and other 3rd party "special interest" links be relevant to the current listings. Great point!

So far as I know... expired GTC listings keep the same listing number and therefore the link should still be good. However, if you manually cancel a GTC listing then I think you will get a new listing number on a relist.

You're saying to program the site the link the original auction ID with the relisted ID after a cancellation? Not at all a bad idea. I'm kinda surprised ebay isn't already doing this as it seems they only stand to benefit from it.

equid0x · ‎05-01-2019

@mod-designs4u wrote:
eBay has qualified Darwin's "Theory of the Fittest" theory and I understand your frustration. I'm not paying any listing fees with eBay as I only use my free 50 listings per month plus any additional free-cost allotments per month. My like-kind listings on other websites are free or cost very little (as it relates to eBay's FVF fee with the shipping cost). I've already sold some items on these other websites and have had to cancel my eBay listings (for which I would have gladly paid for the FVF including shipping). I don't understand your argument that "it's risky" to have things offered for sale on multiple sales platforms. I realize I'm not the only seller dealing with this adverse decision which is why I posted this comment in the first place.

I suspect they're probably saying its risky because you can run into out of stock cancellations which none of the sites like.

If its a low volume item I will list in multiple venues and take it down when it sells. If its a high volume item I will split the inventory across multiple venues. if I find and item to be selling in high volume on a particular site I may cancel a listing and move all the inventory to the high volume site.

equid0x · ‎05-01-2019

@odie200412 wrote:
I have had 7 sales since this happened on ebay, my other venue, 62. Read the math.

Same here. Starting June of last year I began making more sales on every other venue including my own website that I do on eBay. eBay used to be the #1 venue and by quite a large margin all years prior to 2018.

My own website outsold ebay every month of the last 6 months of 2018 and I think that's really saying something considering I hardly spend any advertising dollars to promote it.

eBay needs to take a look at the impact of their policy changes an evaluate whether these are actually good for their customers' businesses because I suspect they are not.