This week eBay UK announced that from summer 2015 they are going to impose a . We’ve managed to get some more detail on how this is going to work.
Timings
First off this isn’t going to kick in until the Summer on a yet to be specified date. From then on listings which haven’t sold within 18 months will be charged an additional 10p fee on top of the usual insertion fee when renewing the item.
From the go live date eBay will look backwards and identify all listings that have been on site for 18 months, but haven’t had any sales. These are the listings which will be affected, plus any listings that reach 18 months in the future without a sale.
10p additional fee EVERY MONTH
This is the important bit… The additional 10p isn’t a one off fee, this will be a rolling charge. For every relist starting from the 19th relist you’ll be paying an additional 10p on top of the normal Good Til Cancelled fee.
Avoiding the fee
Get a sale!
Obviously this is easier said than done, but there are a number of things you can do to increase your chances of a sale.
Wherever possible use multi-variation listings or Motors fitment. This will have several desirable effects:
- If you sell one of any variation on a listing then you’ll avoid the 10p charge
- You’ll get increased Best Match exposure on all variations on the listing if you get sales on any variation
- If you don’t get a sale within 18 months you’ll only pay one 10p per month charge, not one of each variation which is what will happen if they’re all on individual listings
- If you have a one off product which hasn’t sold for 18 months consider simply sending it to auction to liquidate the stock and reinvest in more saleable stock
Relist!
Cancel you listings before they hit the 18th month and relist. This will also have several benefits, a fresh listing could very well appear higher in Best Match than an 18 month old listing that’s never sold!
- Reshoot photos, revise titles and descriptions, make sure your listing displays well on mobile. Use this as an opportunity to make your listing more attractive and saleable
- Double check the Category you’ve listed in and Item Specifics, eBay mess with (aka update!) these so often they’re bound to be out of date after 18 months
Monitor your eBay Invoice and use tools to identify aged listings!
These 10p fines will start to add up. Sadly the more outdated listings you have the more unmanageable your eBay invoice will be and the harder it will be to scan it each month to catch the listings attracting fines.
We’re hopeful that tools will be made available to identify old listings without sales so that you can manage them before you start getting fined.
41 Responses
I spoke to Ebay CS today, and they told me Ebay will be introducing a filter so sellers can see potentially affected listings.
The Active Listings Without Recent Sales status mentioned yesterday comes into effect between 6-12 months , and also is sensitive to any views or watchers an item may have. So an item without sales but lots of watchers may not appear in this screen.
Ebay blatantly don’t understand the “long tail” idea. I have 15,000 listings, mostly in the £2.00 – £3.-00 area. At least 10,000 of them are over 18 months old, and I make sales from that breadth of catalog every single day. If I change nothing, my listing fees go from £250 to £1,250 a month even before selling a thing. I already pay £700 or £800 in fees a month. The problem is even if I was (and I am) so reluctant to try any other channel, and even if they put the fees up and up, I’ll still keep paying, but I physically can’t modify and change 200 listing a day. Every Day. FOREVER. I’ve sucked up every one of eBay’s changes, with or without complaint, eventually, I just roll over and get back eBaying, but this one breaks the model for me. I can’t comply if I was absolutely desperate to. I will finally HAVE to listen to people telling me to get my own site together.
Advising people on how to sell on eBay for listings that haven’t sold for 18 months seems quite pointless, if anybody finds themselves in this position then a map to the nearest car boot sale or even the local tip may be more useful.
As far as I understand it this is eBay’s way of generating a little revenue for items listed that never sell on Buy It Now but merely serve to advertise a company’s product to drive traffic to an external website or phone number bypassing eBay sales fees.
“introduce a tool”?
eBay already tells you if your item hasnt sold in 16 months.
go to turbolister, scroll right, and sort by the “ebay notes” header.
if you regularly get sales from a listing, then you dont have to worry. its not the age of the listing, it needs to be 18 months since you last sold an item from that listing.
if you auto-relist every 30 days, then you dont need to worry either. none of your listings are older than 30 days.
if you use GTC, and your item has been sitting there for the past year and a half, and hasnt had a single nibble in all that time, then you get charged an extra 10p for wasting space.
– i’ve half a dozen items fitting this description. the 10p might be the boot i need to do something about them.
if you genuinely have over a thousand listings which have been using space for over a year, without a single sale, dont bother revising them, just end them and find somewhere else to not sell them.
if I make a bid then for some reason I have to cancel what would I have to do
“The additional 10p isn’t a one off fee, this will be a rolling charge. For every relist starting from the 19th relist you’ll be paying an additional 10p”
So If product “A” has been listed for 18 months, without sale I get charged 10p, then a month later with no sale, the listing fee will be a 20p charge, then a month later with no sale 30p listing charge?
Have I read this correct?
The very USP eBay was built on they are now trying to get rid of no more used vehicle parts or used computer parts collectable coins and stamps the list goes on why not just rename the site eAmazon or eChinesetat and have done with it.
eBay is eBay because you can find anything on eBay even if its been sat waiting for you to find it for the last 3 years this is why eBay is a special place to buy from its eBays USP
Say for example you have got 100 listings that have been on past 18 months, whats the best way to give them the best chance of getting them gone?
End/Relist and cut the price hugely?
Send to auction 99p?
End completely, sell elsewhere?
Any other options?
don’t worry people..help is at hand.
i’m setting up a site specially for slow moving ebay listings.
http://www.ebaytoilet.com
sh$t your listings away!
Great blog Chris.
Quick question—if you have an Anchor shop and relist one of your 50K listings that hasn’t sold after 18 months, will you be charged £0.10 per item?
Thanks
I have studied all sides of this argument regarding a “fine” of 10p a listing if the listing has run for more than 18 months without a sale, and I actually understand where Ebay are coming from in this instance.
Yes in an ideal world people should keep their stock fresh with listings that are competitively priced but surely if you pay a standard shop fee with say 1,200 listings “free” then it is personal preference if you want to list obsolete, unwanted and/or overpriced items.
Another stupid money grabbing rule.
Ok I get why they are doing it, to keep inventory fresh and looking good. Also to get a few quid extra from sellers.
Many items do not sell because the search is garbage. its not always because the product is garbage.
This new rule yet again will see inventory disappear from ebay. the inventory range on ebay is shocking. if i need something, i know also have to search amazon and aliexpress.
So to summarise you pay your insertion fee, ebay do not guarantee viability and if it does not sell in 18 months they fine you 10p….nice earner lol
Re. the 18 month thing.
I’ve been onto Ebay CS today and am still none the wiser.
Can the knowledgeable bods on Tamebay definitely say whether only GTC items will get charged the 10p and not 30 day listings relisted either manually or via auto-relist.
Spent a frustrating half hour on the phone with Ebay and they could not tell me definitely yes or no.
Usually find more sense on Tamebay than Ebay, so perhaps someone here has got the answer to this one.