Farewell, Fre re-listing.

[Baltimore]

Looks like it's finally happened. It was great while it lasted, but as we know too well (especially with ebay), all good things must come to an end. Here's the message I got from ebay today:

"As a seller who has taken advantage of our automatic relist feature, we are writing you today to inform you of recently-announced changes, which take effect next month:
Starting November 6, items relisted via the automatic relist feature will count towards your monthly allotment of free listings*. Once your allotment of free listings is used up—or if the relisted item does not qualify for free listing—the standard insertion fee of 30¢ per listing will apply, as well as any optional feature fees.
Starting later this year, the automatic relist feature will no longer be available for 1- and 3-day duration listings.
The automatic relist feature currently relists an unsold item once. Starting November 6, if you are opted-in to this feature, your item will automatically be relisted up to two times.
Note: You will be credited—either via your free listings allotment or on your invoice—for insertion fees for these relistings where the free automatic relist feature was selected prior to November 6. The manual relisting policy will still apply.
When listing an item, be sure that the automatic relist option is either checked or unchecked, depending on your preference. Note that before choosing this option, you may want to check the Selling section of My eBay for any personalized recommendations to improve your listings.
As always, thank you for selling on eBay.

Best,

The eBay Selling Team"


This will definitely make me re-evaluate what items I buy and list now that I will be eating through free listings. Looks like current listings will be grandfathered in for a little bit, but after a while I'm going to have to remember to uncheck that box unless I want to use up all my free listings in the first few weeks of the month.

 

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[Drmad7]

Exactly! I read that last night. This helps me decide to split my listings between myself and a consignment shop.

 

[JustinNH]

Yeah... just a few weeks ago I told someone that they did not count towards the monthly listings. Now they do.
I was pissed when they dropped it down to 1 free relisting from 3 and now essentially it is 0.

A lot of long time ebay sellers have been getting burned out with the new changes, especially the defects. I bet this new change drops the # of listings on eBay more than they think. 10% of a sale will beat out a tiny (in eBay's eyes) 30 cent listing fee in the long run-- they should be encouraging us to sell more not list less.

 

[packerbacker]

Just yesterday I was going to relist 10 items. Then I saw I was going to get charged $.30 for each one. 3 of the items were so cheap I opted out of relisting them; it's just not worth it. Maybe I'll put all of the items not worth relisting at 30 cents into a box and, after I get a bunch, sell them as a lot.

 

[Butter Hat]

Might be time for something else to take fleabay's place. Now it seems like a high-end marketplace rather than the interesting atmosphere of yesterday where you could buy as well as sell inexpensive stuff.

 

[Paleo_joe]

Why would you want to automatically renew an item for month after month without changing it around to pick up a new pool of buyers? I guess I see the world that way because of what I sell, but I'm always revising my auctions, changing the categories, etc. to try and solve why that item is not selling. If it's not gone after a month, it's a candidate for Goodwill if I don't have but a couple bucks in it.

i was hung up on the 30 cents, but you get a lot of buyers for that 30 cents. The profit on one item might pay for a lot of 30 cent listings.

 

[Tallone]

Since I don't work for eBay, I'm speculating here obviously, but I wonder if there isn't a method to their madness. There is a cost to eBay for hosting these listings. Consider:

1) They have to provide the computer systems to handle the data load. More listings means more hardware and technicians to maintain it. There have got to be thousands (probably hundreds of thousands) of items listed for tiny amounts of money. Many of these will NEVER sell so they are just dead weight on their systems. Even if some of them do sell, eBay's "take" on small dollar items is very small.

2) Some percentage of transactions wind up in dispute which means eBay has to provide staff time to resolve the issue. Labor is very expensive. Resolving a dispute over a small dollar item will eat up eBay's tiny amount of profit on that item very quickly.

My guess is they are trying to encourage sellers to be more discriminating in their listings. Just a guess...

 

[Baltimore]

@Paleo Joe I totally agree, the only reason this affects me right now in particular is that I'm slowly moving through a huge box of baseball caps. At any given time I'll have about 50 up, each anywhere from 4.99 to 14.99, and with the free re-listing I could just let them all renew and slowly chip away at them. Every week 2 or 3 would sell and I'd have an extra $30 in my paypal for practically no effort. Now with the free listings gone I obviously can't do that anymore, so I'll probably just throw them all in a big lot with a 9.99 start auction and bid them all farewell. Honestly it'll probably be good for me, I can get rid of all the little crap and start selling some higher dollar stuff I've got sitting around.

@Tallone Makes perfect sense. It's amazing how many things don't sell on ebay, it's honestly a pretty good business strategy to get rid of some of the sea of crap. Find a way to get rid of a lot of the chaff and the wheat is easier to get to.


I didn't intend this post to be another complainey post about ebay, I honestly don't care what they do at this point as long as they don't take away my 50 free listings a month and keep the fees at a not insane level. I just figured some people might not have seen and would want to know so they could re-evaluate their buying and listing practices.

 

[Joe777Cool]

If 30 cents is going to make or break you on a sale, should you even be taking the time to sell it? I have seen people on eBay, CL, Facebook literally post the same CRAP for YEARS trying to sell it. $5 for a old broken toy that 99% of us would throw in the trash. If the 30 cent fee discourages some from selling low quality low demand items IMO it will make for a better buying and selling experience. It may also encourage people to hold more auctions and to price things better so they sell quicker.

 

[keith2004]

If 30 cents is going to make or break you on a sale, should you even be taking the time to sell it? I have seen people on eBay, CL, Facebook literally post the same CRAP for YEARS trying to sell it. $5 for a old broken toy that 99% of us would throw in the trash. If the 30 cent fee discourages some from selling low quality low demand items IMO it will make for a better buying and selling experience. It may also encourage people to hold more auctions and to price things better so they sell quicker.

10,000 listings x 30 cents = $3000. EBAY makes good money off unsold items that get relisted,why would they want to get rid them?

 

[Joe777Cool]

10,000 listings x 30 cents = $3000. EBAY makes good money off unsold items that get relisted,why would they want to get rid them?

I have no idea what the average eBay item sold price is, but if those 10,000 items all sell for a modest $10 a piece, at 10% (Final value fee) eBay makes $10,000 plus money from shipping. I'd rather have $10,000 than $3,000, how about you?

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

I have no idea what the average eBay item sold price is, but if those 10,000 items all sell for a modest $10 a piece, at 10% (Final value fee) eBay makes $10,000 plus money from shipping. I'd rather have $10,000 than $3,000, how about you?

$10,000-$3000= $7000...I would rather have the $10,000[emoji106]

 

[keith2004]

I have no idea what the average eBay item sold price is, but if those 10,000 items all sell for a modest $10 a piece, at 10% (Final value fee) eBay makes $10,000 plus money from shipping. I'd rather have $10,000 than $3,000, how about you?

i'll take the $10,000 but if they don't sell ebay would like for you to relist them four times so they can collect $12,000 in listing fees.

 

[Treasure_Hunter]

EBay's rule changes favoring buyers over sellers and their raised charges is why I rarely sell on ebay any more...

 

[Nickleanddime]

I for one was pissed about this. Its bad enough they fee you to death anymore, now their taking stuff away. Heck a lot of times even when my item relists it only relist for 12 to 24 hours anyways on a 5 day listing. Sometime they only list for 1 hour then end. I pretty much gave up on ebay time to expand my sales structure.