The eBay UK Autumn Seller Release has been published and as usual there is a lot to take in.
Perhaps the place to start is with a Peak Trading Promotion as it’s time limited. It offers 30% off eBay Final Value Fees for any sales of items included in new sales promotions. You need to opt in and then set up new promotions but as this includes the Send Offers to Buyers feature, if you have watchers on some of your listings you have nothing to lose by signing up.
One of the more significant changes announced in the Autumn Seller Release are the changes to Promoted Listings. eBay will hide either your promoted or your organic listing in search results and the customary positions of the 1st, 4th and 5th place in search results will go. The net result is likely to be more promoted listings appearing in search results so take time to understand how this will impact your strategy.
We were already aware of the Item Specific Changes coming into effect on the 8th of October and eBay confirm these as well as giving advance notice of more changes coming in 2020, once the peak trading period is behind us.
eBay are introducing new seller protections, but to qualify for them you’ll need to be a Top Rated Seller and offer 30-day (or longer) returns. At the same time eBay are revamping their selling policies, not to change policy but to make them easier to digest. They’ll also introduce a new consequence for sellers who break policy which will hide all the seller’s listings (instead of ending them) for a period of time.
In good news, Terapeak is coming to the Seller Hub for all sellers with an eBay shop. This is a great tool which we highly recommend. eBay are also making the Multi-buy selling tool available to all sellers, not just those with an eBay shop.
Other announcements include some insight into the enhancements being made for buyers such as Image Search and Visual search and how this could impact the way that you list. There is also advice on Brexit in face of the increased risk of a no-deal exit from the EU.
Finally as always there are links to International changes that could impact you if you list on overseas eBay sites.
4 Responses
1. DUPLICATE SEARCH RESULTS – PROMOTED LISTINGS ADJACENT TO ORGANIC – It appears a small win to see eBay finally address the duplicate organic and promoted listings in search results (though we’ll reserve final judgment until we see it in the wild).
2. PROMOTED LISTING FEES ON BEST OFFERS – However, it is disappointing we’re unable to find mention of an update disclosing to sellers whether promoted listing fees will be applied to best offers.
If we missed this somewhere please call it out, otherwise this is an egregious oversight eBay have had over 5 months to correct this (#2 in linked post below).
? https://community.ebay.com/t5/Weekly-Chat-with-eBay-Staff/Community-Chat-March-27-1-00-pm-PT-General-Topics/m-p/29653656/highlight/true#M18944
3. SELLER PROTECTIONS –Until eBay acknowledges and addresses the security payments exploit Tamebay has been reporting on affecting Homecare Essentials and other many other merchants, any so-called ‘seller protections’ updates just seem meaningless and inconsequential.
So when we sell on eBay we promote everything. Now we do however get plenty of organic sales along with stealth fee sales, you even sometimes if your super lucky get the organic listing above the stealth fee listing. So basically it just works out as for fees for eBay.
Seller protection yes whatever same old spin and gash.
If anyone for some reason uses Promoted Listings (they aren’t proven to do anything for sales, but do give eBay more money), it’s my guess they’ll no longer even display your organic listing. Only the Promoted one. So without exactly saying as such, because everything eBay does has some alterior motive, what this ends up being is yet another fee increase. Imagine that! The stealthy and deceptive moves continue…
New seller protections…
Item sent out NEW. Item returned as purchased wrong one.
Item came back used and damaged. photos taken and provided.
Ebay seller protection – We kept the original outcome because we couldn’t determine if the change in the item’s condition was caused by the buyer or not.
You couldn’t make it up. However put the shoe on the other foot. You send an item out as new, buyer claims it is not as described despite not saying why or offering any proof… and Bingo, ebay decide that the buyers word without evidence is gospel and force you to pay for return.
Gotta love seller protection.