eBay have announced that they’ll be retiring TurboLister in 2017 and that from June next year it’ll no longer be supported.
TurboLister wasn’t eBay’s first listing tool, up until the early 2000’s MisterLister was all the rage. eBay killed off MisterLister and introduced TurboLister, which at one point was distributed to all new PowerSellers on CD through the post!
TurboLister was replaced in 2006/7 by TurboLister 2 which is the tool you may be using today, but from the middle of next year TurboLister will be consigned to the rubbish bin and eBay’s greatest offline tool which has created billions of listings over the years will be no more.
Often much hated for it’s buggyness in the early days, and still today detested by many for it’s inability to scale and handle thousands of listings, TurboLister not only has served millions of sellers well, but it was essential in the early days to the growth of eBay.
The big advantage of TurboLister is that it’s an off-line tool. A decade ago you could create listings without being connected to the Internet (which was expensive on a pay-per-minute dial up modem connection). You could also work at hard drive speeds when adding images to your listings so everything was much faster than your Internet connection. It was only when your listings were prepared that you’d then connect to the net and upload your new listings live to the eBay website.
Today of course, there are so many look ups required for an eBay listing that the off-line benefits of TurboLister are pretty much gone. However still for those in the dodgier broadband areas of the country there is an advantage to create listings at hard drive speeds and bulk upload rather than wait for images to upload listing by listing. We’re going to miss TurboLister.
eBay are introducing their new Seller Hub which will doubtless have some wonderful whizzy new listing features that will make TurboLister look like the decades old tool it really is. Yes, even TurboLister 2 is over 10 years old and only on eBay would people seriously consider still using software from a decade ago!
eBay have to decide where to put their focus and that’s the next generation of tools: Hello Seller Hub, Farewell TurboLister.
Final Thought: Does this make my never used TurboLister 1 Installation CD more valuable?
15 Responses
Its about time its one of the most frustrating programs to use ever created “Not Responding”
After 20 years, Turbo Lister has encountered a problem and has had to close – PERMANENTLY !!!
We only use turbolister to synchronize with ebay to get the data on our listings so we can export it to excel and bulk check.
I use TL2 to prepare listings and upload images before I list them. I also use it to keep inventory which I’ve purchased from different vendors in separate files so that I can upload them at different times, and to edit off line before synchronizing with EBay. If EBay’s Seller Hub can’t do this ( and from what I saw today it can’t), why are they killing TL instead of modifying it? A question to be answered — when EBay says TL will no longer be supported, will one no longer be able to use TL, or will they just not support it if it crashes? If it’s gone and I can;t replace it, I’ll stop selling.
There’s nothing in the release to say that you’ll be able to create listings offline via the hub and upload them, like you can in TL.
So you’ll be limited by the responsiveness and speed of the Ebay system on any given day.
This will be a headache for sellers, because the Ebay system is rarely 100% functional and rarely fast, except at the crack of dawn before anyone goes online. At times it is unuseable.
Since Mr Wenig is in listening mode, why not fix the system problems which have plagued Ebay buyers and sellers for years?
If you type Ebay into a search engine, the next auto text words are “system errors”
lots of 3rd party software out there
I list around 16,000 unique items every year and have almost 3,000 templates on TL – I knew this was coming, but I’m really not sure how I can list so many items with the new system… however, I have discovered a work-around whilst fiddling yesterday.
You can still use TL off-line (do not connect to eBay) do your listings as usual and then export them as CSV files to a folder on your computer. Then use file exchange on eBay to upload them to their site – it does work and is actually more efficient then TL.
What I’d really like is for eBay to upgrade TL to make it more stable, not everyone has fibre broadband and not everyone is selling identical toasters or the suchlike.
I use a chromebook, Turbo Lister is not compatible.
i imagine your TL1 cd probably is slightly more valuable today, to the small market that would be interested.
– a market which would reside exclusively on ebay.
once you list it on ebay and achieve your higher mark-up price, dont be surprised to pay it all back due to
“didnt work with windows 10” or some other non-reason for ebay to hand your money back to the buyer.
We’re using turbo lister only to export listing data for “eBay file exchange” like titles, item specifics etc.
I’d really appreciate if you could tell me if there’s any other solution to get this data.
Thanks!
I use SixBit software and you can export to XML or CSV for editing in excel
Sixbit will also import all your live and ended listings from the last 30 days so setting it up and getting your listing in is very easy