In the eBay Spring Seller Release a new feature, eBay Easy Relisting was announced. The aim of eBay Easy Relisting is that when an item is returned or the sale is cancelled, eBay will help you get the item back on sale as quickly as possible.
There are two ways that you may encounter eBay Easy Relisting, directly on the eBay site or through third party tools. On the eBay site eBay Easy Relisting is pre-selected or ‘On’ by default. If you use tools through the eBay API then the eBay Easy Relsiting default will be ‘Off’.
Those sellers who use third party tools for listing will almost certainly have inventory management in place so in this instance it makes sense for the eBay Easy Relisting default to be off. You certainly don’t want eBay to relist an item for you and as soon as your inventory management solution sees the item return into stock for your third party to also relist the product.
If you don’t use a third party tool and work directly on eBay then when you accept returns or have a sale cancelled then the eBay Easy Relisting check box will already be checked. If you fail to uncheck the box then your return or cancelled item will be automatically relisted on eBay exactly as you had it before it sold. The usual relisting and other fees will be charged.
For many smaller sellers this is a good solution as it means returns won’t sit festering on a shelf until you get around to relisting them. However the danger is that if a box is opened or a product is damaged you’ll need to ensure you uncheck the box to prevent selling an item in a condition you don’t have.
When will eBay Easy Relisting take place?
There are scenarios where easy relisting isn’t appropriate and so eBay will only offer this in the following circumstances:
For cancellations
- When the buyer has asked the seller to cancel.
- When the seller cancels the sale for “Buyer requested cancel” or “Problem with buyer’s address” reasons.
For returns
- When there’s buyer remorse such as “Buyer changed their mind” reasons, following which we know the item has been returned and a full refund has been offered.
eBay Easy Relisting in summary
If you use tools via the API
- You can set your preference for easy relisting within APIs
- The default is ‘Off’
If you use the eBay site
- eBay Easy Relisting will be ‘On’ by default in the three scenarios listed above
- If you don’t want to automatically relist an item you must manually uncheck a box as you accept and complete a return or cancellation
NB the box to uncheck (or leave checked) won’t always appear, it’ll only be there if eBay are pretty confident you’re likely to wish to relist the item. Currently there is no way of permanently opting out of eBay Easy Relisting via the eBay site, only by using third party tools through the eBay API.
Auto Relist on eBay
It’s also worth bearing in mind that if you use eBay to list, on the Sell Your Item form the auto-relist option is also preselected. If your item doesn’t sell first time around then eBay already relist until it does sell if you don’t uncheck the option.
If you create an Auction listing using the advanced listing form (the one used by business sellers in Seller Hub), the option to auto-relist is not automatically selected
Why are eBay so keen on relists?
The reason eBay are so keen on relisting items is the same reason that they’ve moved to Good ’til Cancelled fixed price items and removed shorted duration listings.
eBay’s argument is that if a consumer finds a product on a search engine such as Google and clicks through to eBay it’s a really bad buying experience to find an ended listing. By relisting auction items automatically, and by having fixed price listings that never expire until all the stock is sold, eBay figure that there will be less instances of buyers coming from search engines and not being able to purchase the product they were looking for.
Bearing in mind that anecdotally most sellers we’ve spoken to only see single digit percentages of traffic from search engines when they check their eBay traffic reports, even if these changes were to double sales from search engines that previously landed on ended listings, it won’t make a significant difference to your personal sales if you don’t auto-relist. However for eBay, if it made a fraction of a percentage rise in the number of sold items then across the whole marketplace that is a significant sales volume. It’s not going to save eBay who are predicting 0-2% growth this year, but every little helps.
