You lose all control over your Promoted Listings to Ebay in June, but retain full responsibility

[rugerskick]

https://pages.ebay.com/sell/pl/termsofservice.html

If you read the terms to the changes in Promoted Listings, all your rights as a seller are out the window IF you use Promoted Listings after the June changes.

Here are just some of the things in the above changes.

They can add or remove your specifically chosen key words.

They can change your item prices.  They can change your ad rates.  They are going to allow third parties (brands, larger competitor sellers) access to your confidential sales data without your permission.  In order that they either file a complaint and say we don't want this seller selling here, or to find a way to take more sales away from you.  You won't be able to access others sales data this way as a typical, smaller seller.

After the June changes, there is now nothing in your Promoted Listings they cannot change or modify.  There is nothing they cant simply remove now for any reasons.  They can make any changes to your listing and if their changes run afoul of any third party issues/complaints/violations, its still going to be your fault and the damage will be placed on your ebay account.  They don't have to notify you of any changes they make to anything in any of your Promoted Listings.  You as the seller are responsible for everything but they can control every aspect of your Promoted Listings.  If Ebay makes a charging error to you, if you do not catch the error within 6 days of the charging error taking place, they won't fix it and you are out that money.  If you do catch it within 6 days and write them to correct it, they have a full 60 days to make the proper payments to you.  They give themselves ten times the amount of time to correct their problem than than they give sellers to notice a problem.

Have your attorney friends look over the ebay page above and get their honest opinion. Don't just take my assessment of their page statement above.

The rational advice is to no longer use Promoted Listings.  Your listings won't be yours anymore to control, but all the responsibility and risk are all yours.  Plus you could wind up with huge bills, removed listings, and defects to your account for things ebay did to your Promoted Listings that you had no idea they did.

Everyone who does not want this to have this mpotentially happen to them needs to stop all their Promoted Listings before these June changes take effect.

[gracieallen01]

@valueaddedresource 

I wonder if anybody remembers the optin/optout episode that occurred with the Webinterpret endeavor some time back?  Wasn't there something about ebay's revamped definition of the terms (optin/optout) and what they meant - and how they were used?

[allthingssurplus]

Since Sept of last year my sales on eBay have dropped 50% and my FVF has gone to 11.5%.  Managed Payments, raise in FVF,  FVF on sales tax as well all caused drop in profits.  Our FVF in our category was for most products 4% + 2.9% processing fee.  So that has reduced my profits by 5% give or take.  With Managed Payments with the loss of cash flow I had to dig in my pocket in put $15K in the bank to maintain normal cash flow.  You would say well just raise prices.  Sounds like the right way to handle the problem.  We sell computer parts which always have a market price and raising about market would just cause my $4mil worth of inventory to sit on the shelf.  eBay is in the process of a major money grab.  Also for some crazy uninformed reason eBay feels the entire selling and buying can be accomplished on the phone.  That is not possible.  I have 4100+ listings just not possible to manage those on a phone.  Whoever in the company never really gave that a thought or has never used the system I'd put my money on both.

Now you basically say just leave.  Good point.  We have a $2.4mil online business that eBay had the lions share of that at one time.  Now we do like $300k on eBay.  We have been slowly weaning our way off the platform.  When you have been selling on the platform for 22 years its not a light switch to leave.  That is a business decision.  Keep in mind eBay is a company making business decision for short time gain which always causes long term pain.

Did I tell you the part that eBay is like 15% of our business and 90% of our problems.  SAD

[rugerskick]

I don't care what platform it is, ebay, amazon, etsy, whatever...

If its only 15% of income and 90% of your problems, you need to get off that platform and shift that 15% to the platforms that don't give you problems.  Its not worth it to stay there.  The stress and time savings that could be shifted to sales elsewhere will make up for the move.

[farmalljr]

With eBay you "opt in" by using whatever ever feature or service you want.  In the context of this discussion, you are "opting in" by using ANY promoted listings. Can you later opt out? That remains VERY unclear. 

How do you "opt in" to the user agreement? How do you opt in to managed payments? How do you opt in to PLS or PLA? You just use them. By using them you agree to the terms and have by default, opted IN. 

So many people here think you have to go someplace in your settings and "check a box". You don't have to check a box for ANY of this. You just use it, and you are opting in. Same logic here with this new announcement. Use any promotions, and you are opting IN. 

Has eBay clarified if I am wrong? Not yet.....

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@farmalljr  I agree. "Marketing Services" is just an umbrella term for a group of tools/services, such as PLA, PLS etc. No one "opts in" to Marketing Services. Simply use a Marketing Services Tool, (such as PLS) and you do so subject to the User Agreement...for now, the current users Agreement, and come June 1st, this new Agreement.

That said, I'm not worried about the terms of the new Agreement, and intend to continue to use PLS (making any necessary adaptations for the new fee calculation). But I understand some are concerned about some of the terms of the new Agreement, and that's their choice. 

[katzrul15]

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@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@farmalljr  I agree. "Marketing Services" is just an umbrella term for a group of tools/services, such as PLA, PLS etc. No one "opts in" to Marketing Services. Simply use a Marketing Services Tool, (such as PLS) and you do so subject to the User Agreement...for now, the current users Agreement, and come June 1st, this new Agreement.

That said, I'm not worried about the terms of the new Agreement, and intend to continue to use PLS (making any necessary adaptations for the new fee calculation). But I understand some are concerned about some of the terms of the new Agreement, and that's their choice. 

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Well said.  Will await further information.  Weekly chat should be lively this week!

[gracieallen01]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

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Well said.  Will await further information.  Weekly chat should be lively this week!

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How so?  Personally, I would lay odds that the response will be that they will check with 'the team' and get back to you' because they are the ones responsible for any information released, and when, and how.

[katzrul15]

How so?

Well there are about 6 threads right now on this board and countless others on other boards complaining about how the "new" listing tool is not allowing anyone to list;  numerous threads again about out of the blue suspensions over some weird new way of working to verify a Seller thru random questions you are asked on a chat feature, Marketing update that has divided the masses, especially those seasoned as Sellers as to what the true import of the document relates to............

I did not say the chat would be productive or present any answers.  I did say it should be lively.  

[ekmadonna]

Ecommercbytes has an answer to everyone's questions. Article was just posted tonight. Might want to check it out. Apparently, someone that works at Ebay answered a question on the Ebay for Business page and the answer is YES they can change ANYTHING at anytime. 

[gracieallen01]

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@katzrul15 wrote:

How so?

Well there are about 6 threads right now on this board and countless others on other boards complaining about how the "new" listing tool is not allowing anyone to list;  numerous threads again about out of the blue suspensions over some weird new way of working to verify a Seller thru random questions you are asked on a chat feature, Marketing update that has divided the masses, especially those seasoned as Sellers as to what the true import of the document relates to............

I did not say the chat would be productive or present any answers.  I did say it should be lively.  

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I must agree, those issues could make the chat a wee bit more interesting for a change. >;)

[gracieallen01]

@ekmadonna 

That is one of the impressions I garnered from the TOS for marketing in the few times I read it.  I was hoping I would be wrong, but as things stand ........  It will be interesting to see the extent to which ebay 'enhances' and steps in.

[gracieallen01]

@farmalljr 

Perhaps some lessons could be learned from Zappos 'browsewrap' for user agreement lost them protection in court.  It was in a Forbes article in 2012.

[ry91214]

I don't know about the rest of you... But with as slow as sales have been, fewer and fewer views on my listings, I'm about ready to sign up for whatever might help achieve a few sales! For the first time in years, I have been experiencing days without a single sale. Where/what do you want me to sign?

I figure there isn't much more they can take. Then when I do get a sale, the standard envelope program does its best to worry my customers and I end up spending time hand-holding them through the process. This month, I have a customer in California, who lives 1 hour away. We are going on 2 weeks at this point, as his item has vanished for 9 days, then headed to Texas. (This was Friday), we agreed to check after the weekend (Monday). Guess what, they managed to get it to Maine within those 2 days. (Further, not closer) unbelievable! I'm thankful he has been more than patient. But good luck receiving positive feedback even if he receives it. Just really disappointing to have a front-row seat to my rapidly declining income.  Probably speaks more about either my poor decision-making in thinking I could support myself using this platform or my frustration with not having the answers on how to turn this thing around. Having continual site changes that prove to be detrimental for sellers (I'm speaking of changes for Sports Card sellers) regarding listing challenges, and add to that the fee increases which only seem to benefit eBay shareholders.  I think the saying, "kicked while I am down" comes to mind. While I am venting (because nothing good will come of this) I am speaking the truth about my experiences, and many of you likely feel the same.  I have my landlord raising my rent by 8.6%, while eBay decides it is time to charge fees on the taxes. Super!

[valueaddedresource]

velvet@ebay  adsteam@ebay  - any thoughts to share on this subject?

I'm taking this answer from Facebook with a huge grain of salt, but it has added fuel to the fire and I don't think it is in eBay or seller's best interest to just leave something this important up to interpretation.

Some kind of confirmation or explanation or a dedicated chat or sticky thread would certainly go a long way toward calming nerves and helping sellers adjust (if needed) to whatever the new reality is going to be in June.

[gracieallen01]

@valueaddedresource 

I think one of the most amusing things of the facebook response is that I can't think of ebay doing anything on the site 'in the moment'.