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.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Well, thanks again velvet@ebay , but...."Today, we have a team of GCX specialists who are able to advise, while the sellers maintains 100% control over changes."

Alas, I am not big on acronyms....could you tell me what a "GCX specialist" is?  And the "advise" link takes me to a "page not found" page, so that doesn't really help me.

Also, just so I have this right:

ebay thought it was a good idea to release this new User Agreement, which included extremely broad wording about ebay's power to make changes, which wording however is confined only to a program which does not yet exist , despite its failure to state that fact....and literally NO ONE at ebay thought it might be a good idea to provide a FAQ to explain what any of this meant? This despite the fact that since the program does not yet exist, not a single seller could know with certainty that the wording would apply only to this program? And despite the fact that ebay has , in the past, more than once, caused avoidable seller anxiety due to the same failure to provide a basic FAQ with layman's terms and examples? 

Seriously, velvet@ebay , nothing personal here, I know you are doing your best and I appreciate it, but is there any possible way we can convince ebay that, in the future, ebay should never, never, never release something like this without a clear, layman's terms explanation to accompany it?

I know I am not the only seller here who feels like I'm constantly banging my head against a wall trying to convince ebay to communicate effectively and pro-actively...and after 20 plus years of trying, and hearing lots of promises that were never fulfilled, well, I admit I'm losing a bit of my patience. 

PLEASE, take our pleas seriously. 

[mr_lincoln]

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Well, thanks again velvet@ebay , but...."Today, we have a team of GCX specialists who are able to advise, while the sellers maintains 100% control over changes."

Alas, I am not big on acronyms....could you tell me what a "GCX specialist" is?  And the "advise" link takes me to a "page not found" page, so that doesn't really help me.

Also, just so I have this right:

ebay thought it was a good idea to release this new User Agreement, which included extremely broad wording about ebay's power to make changes, which wording however is confined only to a program which does not yet exist , despite its failure to state that fact....and literally NO ONE at ebay thought it might be a good idea to provide a FAQ to explain what any of this meant? This despite the fact that since the program does not yet exist, not a single seller could know with certainty that the wording would apply only to this program? And despite the fact that ebay has , in the past, more than once, caused avoidable seller anxiety due to the same failure to provide a basic FAQ with layman's terms and examples? 

Seriously, velvet@ebay , nothing personal here, I know you are doing your best and I appreciate it, but is there any possible way we can convince ebay that, in the future, ebay should never, never, never release something like this without a clear, layman's terms explanation to accompany it?

I know I am not the only seller here who feels like I'm constantly banging my head against a wall trying to convince ebay to communicate effectively and pro-actively...and after 20 plus years of trying, and hearing lots of promises that were never fulfilled, well, I admit I'm losing a bit of my patience. 

PLEASE, take our pleas seriously. 

---

I would have to agree with you here @my-cottage-books-and-antiques that announcements should be written in layman's terms and not high level techno-legalese ... I "get" the need for eBay to have a document that protects them in a court of law but for the masses we still need to understand exactly what is being said ... I have to read and re-read some of it several times before I either get it or reduce the number of possible meanings to just a few ...

Mr. L

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@mr_lincoln I'm OK with them giving us the document in legalese. That's what they pay the lawyers for. But, it's like the Seller Updates....often, there is the announcement itself, and then a FAQ with it, asking and answering questions in layman's terms. This sort of thing cries out for that kind of treatment. But instead, we just get the legal jargon document, no FAQ, no effort to explain it, and not even  ---and this is basic lawyer stuff--- marked up to show here's the new or changed wording, here's the original wording---I guarantee, a marked up document already exists in a lawyer's computer, so why not release that?

But they just can't bring themselves to be proactive. We've been begging for this sort of thing for YEARS and they either promise to do it next time...and then DON'T....or they just ignore us, with the entirely predictable result that misinformation spreads like wildfire, some of which will continue to be believed years from now, long after these belated explanations have been forgotten by many people...and of course, most people will never even see these posts from velvet.

[gracieallen01]

Ah heck, the new User Agreement is probably just like announcing the new PL fees in February, with a June active date.  The new UA is probably in advance of what's coming in the Fall Seller Update.  We can speculate 'tween now and then.  Everybody needs a hobby, dontcha know?  (second-guessing is a great pass-time)

Now, where did they put that sarcasm font THIS time?

[mr_lincoln]

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@mr_lincoln I'm OK with them giving us the document in legalese. That's what they pay the lawyers for. But, it's like the Seller Updates....often, there is the announcement itself, and then a FAQ with it, asking and answering questions in layman's terms. This sort of thing cries out for that kind of treatment. But instead, we just get the legal jargon document, no FAQ, no effort to explain it, and not even  ---and this is basic lawyer stuff--- marked up to show here's the new or changed wording, here's the original wording---I guarantee, a marked up document already exists in a lawyer's computer, so why not release that?

But they just can't bring themselves to be proactive. We've been begging for this sort of thing for YEARS and they either promise to do it next time...and then DON'T....or they just ignore us, with the entirely predictable result that misinformation spreads like wildfire, some of which will continue to be believed years from now, long after these belated explanations have been forgotten by many people...and of course, most people will never even see these posts from velvet.

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques   Extremely good points ... as it relates to Seller updates, I wait at least a week to read the details and prefer to see what people post about first ... some of it winds up being entertaining BUT in many cases its a misunderstanding of what is being said in the document.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@mr_lincoln I'm kind of the opposite with the Seller Updates....I read through them ASAP, including all the FAQs, linked pages etc, ask my questions on the special Boards (if they are available) and then draw my conclusions. However, I do mostly ignore other posts until I'm finished doing my own "due diligence"....because, like you, I've learned that too often there are misinterpretations. So, reading what others say is my last step, because, while sometimes there are misinterpretations, there are also points that I missed despite my best efforts to work through the details.  

[mr_lincoln]

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques   That's a good approach too ... my approach lets people find the hot button subjects followed by the injustice of it all with the occasional "this is the last straw" threats to leave ... buttered popcorn goes good with that LOL!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@mr_lincoln Oh yes, and there's usually a lot of that. LOL  

[velvet@ebay]

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Well, thanks again velvet@ebay , but...."Today, we have a team of GCX specialists who are able to advise, while the sellers maintains 100% control over changes."

Alas, I am not big on acronyms....could you tell me what a "GCX specialist" is?  And the "advise" link takes me to a "page not found" page, so that doesn't really help me.

Also, just so I have this right:

ebay thought it was a good idea to release this new User Agreement, which included extremely broad wording about ebay's power to make changes, which wording however is confined only to a program which does not yet exist , despite its failure to state that fact....and literally NO ONE at ebay thought it might be a good idea to provide a FAQ to explain what any of this meant? This despite the fact that since the program does not yet exist, not a single seller could know with certainty that the wording would apply only to this program? And despite the fact that ebay has , in the past, more than once, caused avoidable seller anxiety due to the same failure to provide a basic FAQ with layman's terms and examples? 

Seriously, velvet@ebay , nothing personal here, I know you are doing your best and I appreciate it, but is there any possible way we can convince ebay that, in the future, ebay should never, never, never release something like this without a clear, layman's terms explanation to accompany it?

I know I am not the only seller here who feels like I'm constantly banging my head against a wall trying to convince ebay to communicate effectively and pro-actively...and after 20 plus years of trying, and hearing lots of promises that were never fulfilled, well, I admit I'm losing a bit of my patience. 

PLEASE, take our pleas seriously. 

---

I apologize for the GCX acronym and I've edited that. It's just a fancy way we refer to Customer Support. I would like to clarify though, the link I tried to provide takes you to the Promoted Listings team and does not work like a typical Customer Support channel. If you have something that needs more immediate attention it would be best to contact Customer Support through regular channels. 

While on the note about that link, I'm not sure what happened. I've redone it and it appears to be working now. Please let me know if not. 

Lastly, I'd like you to know that we appreciate the feedback and it is being seen by those higher up than me. I will continue to help and provide clarification where I can and I hope in the meantime these follow-up posts have helped to let you and others know that the new Marketing Terms of Service do not alter the terms of your PLS campaigns.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

Thanks again velvet@ebay  I definitely appreciate it.

And, hope you don't mind, but I'm going to quote you in bold and large font, because this right here is the basic statement that we've needed:

the new Marketing Terms of Service do not alter the terms of your PLS campaigns.

[mr_lincoln]

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

Thanks again velvet@ebay  I definitely appreciate it.

And, hope you don't mind, but I'm going to quote you in bold and large font, because this right here is the basic statement that we've needed:

" ... the new Marketing Terms of Service do not alter the terms of your PLS campaigns. ..."

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques   Great post, worthy of a repeat ...

Mr. L

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

@mr_lincoln Ooooh, italics, underlined, and red 

Great job!

[mr_lincoln]

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques wrote:

@mr_lincoln Ooooh, italics, underlined, and red 

Great job!

---

@my-cottage-books-and-antiques   If you like that then you should see me with crayons and a coloring book!!!

[best4less*]

Effective June 1st, all the ad fee information for STANDARD  promoted listings has been removed so the seller has no idea what that exact fee will be if sold. I constantly change the percentages on all my listings and it would show me the exact rate for my chosen percentage which is set unless I change or end it.  I have always kept records and photos so I can decide what I want to spend on these ads and I use that amount to calculate the price of my items. How can I make a decision what ad fee percentage I am comfortable with when I have no idea what the dollar amount is?  I feel Ebay is promoting a service that doesn't provide the cost and should not have the ability to charge a seller any amount without providing what that fee will be beforehand and is visible. I feel this is deceptive and not transparent. What is the point of removing that information, the  only reason I can think of  is so the seller won't notice. 

[dhbookds]

@best4less* 

doesn't provide the cost

The fee now includes fees on the total price of the item......including shipping and sales tax......  Since there is no way to know how much those additional things cost until the buyer buys........they can't quote a total fee........previous to this change......the fee was only on the item cost which could be calculated.....