In the latest eBay UK Seller Release, eBay said that they would make the Good ’til Cancelled (eBay GTC) from the 1st of April. eBay Australia had already made the move in what is a worldwide roll out and now it appears that eBay.com in the US went early too.
From yesterday, the 18th of March, eBay sellers started to report that short duration and 30 day listing options for fixed price listings had disappeared on eBay’s US site. The only option that now remains is eBay GTC and the drop down box to select other listing durations has disappeared.
This will naturally impact sellers in the UK and Europe if you list on eBay.com, but you might not notice that eBay GTC is your only option if you use a third party listing tool. If you try to launch a short duration fixed price listing on eBay.com and the option is still available through your listing tool, eBay will automatically convert your duration to eBay GTC when the listing on eBay.com goes live.
From yesterday, existing listings on eBay.com with other durations will continue until their specified end date or until they sell out. If these listings are renewed, eBay GTC will be the only duration option. Short durations will be reserved for listings in the auction format.
You can still launch short duration listings on eBay UK until the end of the month, at which point the only option will also become eBay GTC from the 1st of April.
16 Responses
EBAY SUCKS! Seasonal items have to be cancelled before they relist or you are stuck selling Christmas items in January. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!
can you say RETARDED? Ebay is going to lose out in this deal as this hurts ALL Smaller Sellers so if they wanted just Corporate Ebayers, they are about to get their wish. I feel betrayed often by eBay as they screw their oldest Supporters with BULLSHIT Policies and this one takes the cake. GFY eBay, Can you brainiacs figure that one out?
With the exception of seasonal items for specific events I fail to see why sellers are unhappy about the shorter duration listing. I have been selling on ebay for years and have never had cause to use any duration shorter than 30 days on a BIN. Am I missing something or is it just the “we hate everything ebay do” brigade again.
Listings can look stale if always there. If I leave an item unlisted for 2-3 weeks, I usually get new interest in it.
I have always used GTC listings so nothing new for me.
ebay keeps telling me how some of my listings are Underperforming, funny thing is that the same items are selling well on Amazon, so maybe it is not my listings.
Exposure, exposure, exposure.
That’s all eBay keep spouting.
When we signed up to them many moons ago nowhere did they say our platform will sell your products but only show them in a good light if you do exactly what we want and pay us more than the actual fees.
Imagine a builder building a big shop for a retail outlet and then when the company move in they say the following.
1) Oh we can build a door at the front so customers can walk in and buy now
2) Oh for a few more pound per month we can put windows in at the front now so people on the street can see your items.
3) Oh for a bit more money now each month we can make the windows glass so they can be seen through.
That is the eBay strategy just keep squeezing. Till we all find other outlets or reach retirement whichever comes first.
God i wish i was older.
There are pros and cons, but on the whole the pros outweigh the cons, and there are ways to negate to the cons. Here are a few examples.
GTC PROS:
You get a sales history, which boosts you in the listings and gives buyers confidence, meaning more sales.
You don’t forget to relist a 30 day listing and miss out on lots of sales for 12 months until a random buyer asks if you have a listing for “X” and you realise you don’t anymore.
There is no sales downtime between listing ending and being relisting.
GTC CONS:
Your sales history can inspire competitors to copy. (unless you reset the history)
If you don’t have a sale for a while, you get pushed down the results. (but you can restore interest by adding to a sale/promotion, or just restart as a new listing)
Seasonal things would have to be cancelled manually (really not difficult though)
This forced GTC change is not going to negatively impact larger merchants or retailers/ smaller sellers that have multi-quantity replenishable items (and of course already use GTC).
It’s the single item lower-velocity listings that are potentially most negatively impacted by this new change (and of course those sellers with single item and OOAK listings specifically).
The GTC listing intra-month sales velocity impact to Best Match isn’t deferred until 18 months though, it’s calculated on an ongoing basis and carried over every renewal period (monthly).
Thus, unless smaller sellers using only eBay-provided tools micromanage monthly timing, listing, delisting, their items, they are going to continuously sink over time (which is exactly eBay’s intent/desire)
Sellers, large or small, with “good” intra-month item sales of replenishable items would not want to “reset” the GTC listing back to baseline, since that sales velocity carries-over as a benefit the next month when it auto-renews). In contrast, an OOAK merchant listing will suffer negative Best Match placement impact on auto-renewal if it remains unsold.
My 1000s of items on eBay are for a 3-day duration as I noticed people mainly bought items that had just been listed or was going to end (or they might search specifically for it). My sales are really good but this is seriously going to impact on my business as i’ll have 27 days of that 30-day GTC with nobody looking. I have 30-day on eBay.com and don’t have great sales but that could be postage cost reasons.
Like somebody said, eBay are determined to removed small businesses so they can become another John Lewis or Argos but we already have a John Lewis and Argos online selling stuff you can buy in any town. With eBay you can buy anything….thats the USP they can’t see.
I have taken just about every listing off Ebay. I cannot afford the new GTC fees. I am on a fixed income and Ebay sales are just not there anymore. Until this GTC gets put away, I cannot afford Ebay fees. It is ridiculous to want us to leave everything on there indefinitely when the item does not get see after a few weeks. We will be paying for NOTHING! Sales are way down on Ebay. We are not getting the traffic we had a year ago even.