Community Chat, Feb 27 from 1:00 pm PT - 2019 Early Seller Update

[Anonymous]

Hello everyone! This week we announced our 2019 Early Seller Update and have set up a dedicated board here where staff will be answering questions throughout February 26th & 27th. Additionally, we will focus our Weekly Chat with The Community Team on Feb 27th at 1 PM PT on these announcements.

We look forward to hearing your feedback about the changes, new features, Seller Hub enhancements, and listing updates we're implementing. Looking forward to seeing you here!

[brian@ebay]

Hi everyone! The weekly chat is now open for questions. 

[gracieallen01]

Hello Trinton,

Quoted from the '2019 Early Seller Update' page on the Seller Forum:

"Good 'Til Cancelled listings renew automatically every 30 days unless your item sells before that timeframe. We charge an insertion fee every 30-day period. Good 'Til Cancelled listings count toward your monthly zero insertion fee listings. Fee amounts are based on the terms in effect when the listing goes live and when it

renews."

1a) what decides the timing of 'when the listing goes live', to be precise? When it is submitted or when it is indexed or .... ?

1b) What decides the timing of when a listing renews, to be precise? When it is submitted or when it is indexed or .... ?

2) If a seller, with a store, wants to avoid all insertion fees, by utilizing the number of free insertions that come with a store subscription, it would mean a seller would have to end ALL of their applicable listings 7 times a year and restart them a day or two later, as there are seven (7) - 31 day months in a year.      Is this correct?

[dhbookds]

Maybe I misheard on the discussion on facebook....

I thought I heard her say ebay would NOT charge twice in 1 month for GTC, even tho the listings were listed on the lst day of the month....and then rolled over on the 31st of the same month.........She seemed very assured that even tho it was stated 30 days......it actually meant the calendar month.

GTC listings have never been treated this way that I know of.........it's charged again when the relist comes, whether in the same month or not........  ???

[mam98031]

I was having a conversation on another thread that I thought brought up some questions I had not previously considered in regards to being able to submit offers to some members that have me on their watch list or in their cart.  I'm posting this with the permission of the other poster.

@no_zero369 

@mam98031 wrote:

I understand why you do what you do and I do it as well.  However, I think this new tool is a fantastic addition for sellers.  It is a great tool to add to our small collection.  Very useful and hopefully it will also help some seller to increase their sales.

Hey mam98031, I hate to disagree with your learned opinion, but I have found this feature to be useless!  There are some key holes in the program:

• seller can not see who they sent an offer to and only sees a redacted version in their offers section AFTER they made the offer.
• it would be useful to be able to tell if the "watcher" is a competitor or a real buyer so one doesn't waste time
• one can use the feature and end up "locked out" of any further offers with a buyer because they blindly made too many offers already
• I am guessing most watchers are not serious buyers, especially when I have a B/O component on the listing.

So unlike the GD program that I think is a win-win for sellers, this program was broken from the get-go!  I don't see how it will increase sales, unless a seller gets desperate and makes a fire-sale, low-ball offer.  But the same could be done by changing the listing price, now easily done through the Seller Hub!

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

eBay has indicated in the past that Best Match looks at Sales History of a listing over time. This does make some sense for multi-quantity listings, but has never made ANY sense for single quantity listings (Most of my listings are single quantity, I sell mostly antiques, collectibles etc) While we all like selling items within days of listing them, it's a given that with many one off items, it can take many months before the right buyer comes along. Listing duration should not be a factor for such items, period. The desirability of such an item doesn't decline with time, it just needs the right buyer. Now that ebay is going to be requiring GTC, would ebay consider changing how it treats single quantity listings , so that they are NOT treated as if they were multi-quantity listings for purposes of Best Match?

[iwaroaddog]

I have two questions.

1.)  I do not like the GTC that will be mandatory on all listings with the new seller update.    If you are going to make it GTC then it should really be GTC and not "renewed" every 30 days and take a listing.   

2.)  How does e-bay decides who gets promos.  I used to get listing promos all the time but now I don't get hardly any or promos that I can't really use.

[mam98031]

---

@dhbookds wrote:

Maybe I misheard on the discussion on facebook....

I thought I heard her say ebay would NOT charge twice in 1 month for GTC, even tho the listings were listed on the lst day of the month....and then rolled over on the 31st of the same month.........She seemed very assured that even tho it was stated 30 days......it actually meant the calendar month.

GTC listings have never been treated this way that I know of.........it's charged again when the relist comes, whether in the same month or not........  ???

---

To add to this, then what happens in February, our short month?

[hioctane62]

In the live broadcast that just finished, Kristi Diemonz replied that the 30 duration of GTC would NOT cause any listings to incur listing fees the second time it lists during a month. How does that work? I mean a 30 day duration is just that, isn't it?

[d.clawed]

I get it.  eBay wants to bill as much fee income as possible to their sellers.  Sellers want to sell as much as possible while paying as little as possible to eBay.  

On the podcast I swear I heard Kristie say there’s no difference between 30 and 31 days.  She talks very fast and I’m not sure I got it correctly. Something about eBay will never charge double in a month with 31 days. Is this true? Does eBay not bill on a 30 day cycle? Can we see this written down in policy somewhere? 

If this truly isn’t a gotcha fee income grab, could eBay consider having GTC renew every 31 days? Throw us a bone here people? 

[mr_lincoln]

 Good afternoon eBay Support Team

Regarding the GTC Mandate: my vote is No.

However, since I was not asked to vote …....

I am confident that the “early” announcement that included the GTC mandate starting in March was an oversight in the fact that it would coincide with 1) April 1 and the fresh set of Insertions Listings for the over 25 million Selling IDs and 2) the 4 day block at the beginning of April (1st thru the 4th) that would result in four Double Insertion Fee Relisting months this year alone, here’s the list.

April 1 listings will be doubled in May this year

April 2 listings will be doubled in July this year

April 3 listings will be doubled in Aug this year

April 4 listings will be doubled in Oct this year

I think as a professional courtesy to all of eBay’s Business Partners (Sellers) they would waive any and all Double Month Insertion fees in the foreseeable future. This would put everyone who thinks this is just a way for eBay to generate revenue from fees at ease.

Short of waiving fees, eBay needs to develop a Warning flag that will alert Sellers to the projected first future month a listing would incur the double insertion so they can decide whether or not they want to list that day.

Short of that, eBay should let Sellers “Opt” out of this new mandate if they so choose … which indirectly would tell eBay exactly what the eBay Seller Community thinks of this latest mandate.  It’s sort of a low cost way for eBay to take a vote.

Short of that, eBay should have a 3rd Party Neutral Polling firm conduct a survey of all Selling IDs on this and probably many other functions of the site to really get an honest idea of what the majority of Sellers think and more importantly desire as, and eBay puts it this way, we run OUR business.

[my-cottage-books-and-antiques]

I'm confused about something I read in the Update's FAQ, about the GTC change. Let me quote it:   "I currently use the short-duration fixed price format with automatic relisting. What will happen when my listing ends? ----Starting in mid-March 2019, when a short-duration fixed price item is relisted, either automatically or manually, the duration will be set to Good 'Til Cancelled upon relist. When a Good ‘Til Cancelled listing ends, it will not be automatically relisted."

What does that LAST sentence mean? I thought all GTC listings relisted automatically, by definition.  Or are you guys trying to say that, if a GTC is ENDED EARLY BY THE SELLER (say, after ten days), it will not relist automatically, the seller would have to relist it manually? 

[birdsmagnolia]

Just wondering if there are any plans to allow variations to be added to existing listings? I sometimes get new sizes or colors of an item and would like to add them as a variation on an existing multi-quantity listing and cannot do so. In many cases, I would like to be able to keep the original watchers and sales history of the item. I can easily add any additional options to an item already set up as a variation listing but cannot add a variation to a listing that does not already include variations. Thanks!

[carlqsportscards]

The very, very, very, very, least ebay could do is change the duration to 31 days to avoid being charged on the 1st and 31st of the month.

These days it seems unlikely for them to even do the very, very, very, very least.

[hioctane62]

Once ebay gets all fixed price listings to be GTC, is the second part of this plan to impose a fee to end and/or revise GTC listings?