With under a month to go before the only eBay Fixed Price duration will be eBay Good ’til Cancelled listings, we’ve got an answer for those concerned about being double billed for 30 day listings in 31 day months. This is an edge case and will be exceptionally rare, but it’s still a valid concern. The question is how big a problem will it be?
The question was raised by Tamebay reader Paul on behalf of a friend. Paul explained the situation as:
“The forced GTC, he has 1500 items that he lists within his free allowance on the 1st of Every Month. 30 day fixed listing. He is now worried as unless he remembers to end the listing, he would get charged 1500 x listing fee on months that are 31 days,. Is that correct?”
– Paul
So the situation could arise, IF you use your entire eBay Featured shop listing allowance of 1,500 eBay Good ’til Cancelled listings AND you list on the 1st of April 2019 AND your billing is end of the month rather than middle of the month. This would mean that as soon as May you’d be billed on the first of May for 1,500 listings (which would be your free inclusive listings) and billed a second time on the 31st of May for 1,500 Good ’til Cancelled renewals. The cost would be £75.00.
If you cancelled your listings on the 30th of May and relisted on the 1st of June then the issue would arise again on the 1st and 31st of July and again on every 31 day month in the future. Cancelling and relisting is not an attractive proposition and once you get into this routine it would be a four times a year job!
How to avoid eBay Good ’til Cancelled listings double billing in a calendar month
However there is a simple solution and that is to pick the day you launch your listings for the first time. If you incur double billing in a month it’s likely to be around five years before the situation arises again. In the very worst case this situation could arise twice in a year but that would be an incredibly rare incident (Qudos to anyone that figures out what date you’d have to list on to cause this situation to happen!)
Getting back to practicalities – no one wants to have to remember if they list on the 1st of April when they would need to cancel their listings, so eBay have figured out a suitable alternative date for Tamebay readers to launch their first set of Good ’til Cancelled listings. It’s one day early!
If you launch your Good ’til Cancelled listings on 31st March 2019, you won’t incur any double-charges until August 2024 at the very earliest and this assumes you use your entire allowance of 1,500 eBay Good ’til Cancelled listings for a Featured shop.
10 Responses
We shouldn’t be in a situation where we have to try to calculate when to list items.
eBay needs to either change the way it works, or make it much clearer than it’s not a monthly allowance but a 30 day allowance.
31 day allowance would sort it.
But my allowance doesn’t start again until April 1st so launching them 31st march would incur costs as by then my allowance of 250 listings from march 1st would have been used up.
Well done Chris. From an earlier Tamebay thread you were adamant that double charges would be made every time there was a 31 day month. You were like a Terrier with a bone.
If you started listings say, on the 27th of the month, there would be no double charges for at least 27 months.
It’s easy to see how it gets out of kilter if you consider that 12 x 30 days = 360 days.
If I have the exact monthly allowance of 1500 GTC listings in my shop I’m going to end up with listing charges at some point unless I end some listings and restart them on different dates (losing search placing in the process).
As I list items each day and not all at once and hardly have more than one of each item, it doesn’t make sense for me to do good til cancelled so I am probably going to have to keep my eyes really peeled even more so on when they end.
So hoping they will just come up to the top as though they are on a normal 30 day listing and then I can end them and then relist using sell as similar.
Or will this not happen anymore?
I get billed 16th of each month and get new listings on the 1st of each month so does this mean I get 250 basic shop ones and then 500 extra for April, May and June ending June 30th?
No more fixed price listings for me now that they’ve given me no options. Relisting all my fixed prices to auctions.