That doesn’t seem to agree with what the chat David had with Janniel, if that person is an eBay representative. I looks to me like it could be a clever way to get people to pay more listing fees or use an eBay Store (yet more money for them).
I’ve never gone above the 50 free listings eBay gives per month, so I guess as long as I stay under than number I’ll be fine. Question is, what about the free additional listings eBay sometimes gives out? In the last few months they’ve offered 200 additional listings at least 3 times to me. I assume if I had that many items to list, once the 30 days were up and the free additional ones got relisted, I’d incur a relisting for them unless I canceled them first.
Unfortunately, none of this answers my original question: What is iwascoding going to do about their free picture service due to all fixed price listings being converted to GTC, if anything? GarageSale allows free picture hosting for fixed price and auction listings, but charges fees for hosting photos for GTC listings. I’ll probably pay for it since it seems like a good deal, I just having seen any posting by someone at iwascoding to address this.
Currently if you try to select Good 'Til Cancelled as the duration for a fixed price listing, it gives an error informing you that you have to purchase a GTC hosting subscription (or use another picture hosting service).
Hi Schwane.
Yes I know this is the current method. In fact if you look at the details of those free offers, GTC gets a special mention
’ * Good ‘Til Cancelled listings created during the Promotion Period will be eligible for the promotion only until the listing automatically re-lists.’
EBay have told me this will change. My theory is that they have realised people list millions of items under the free offers each time the promotion is offered, so why not just leave them on the servers and avoid all that traffic on their servers.
That’s a good point. I’m sure eBay would have a lot of ticked off customers if they give these free promotions and then don’t warn people they will be charged to relist. Not that eBay seems to care much about upsetting their sellers, but that would be a big one.
On the other hand, if they continue to offer GTC promotions but don’t charge for relistings, people could potentially have hundreds of items listed over time and never have to pay listing fees or pay for a Store. Guess we’ll have to see how it all shakes out once the change is made.
The FAQ link I posted is from the 2019 Early Seller Update which announces the change. I’m pretty sure they are planning to continue to charge on every relist/renew. At least in the U.S., could be different in other countries. I also read a post from a VP at eBay that they are looking into the 30 day cycle since you could potentially get hit twice in one month (ie. list on the 1st and 31st). We’ll see. I just wish GS had an “end listing” command in applescript, I could just code my way through this lol.
would select all your items then refining the selection to only “Active Listings’ in the RH Edit Pane work?
I was hoping to have a script end my listings at 29 days but there is no applescript command in GS to end a listing programmatically. I could for sure do it manually.
Sound like a good idea though. Fortunately I do not have this problem.
I was thinking something similar.
I would be fine if GS would just add a timer to warn at, say, 28 days. I imagine that the knowledge would be used different ways but would probably be helpful to a lot of people who could then decide whether to pull it down or allow it to keep going.
@kristian is that something that could be done?
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@kristian Is the above something you could do?
Or is there something else that could work to alert the GS user that a 30-day item is about to renew?
I don’t understand why you want to cancel the listing and loose all the people that are watching your items. I have been using GTC listings for 10 years or more. The best thing you have going for you are the watchers who a considering a purchase and save your listing and aren’t ready to purchase whether it is money or just not ready to buy and you pull your item before they buy. I have listings saved for years that I go back and purchase and not have to do all the searching all over again to get what I am looking for.
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Currently the forced GTC policy goes into effect “sometime” on Monday, March 18th. Personally I do not like GTC since I rotate 2,000 listings in a Premium Store that provides 1,000 listings monthly. Obviously, you can cancel the GTC listing before it rolls over, but you lose out on searches using the value “ending soon.”
Also, to be clear, each time eBay rolls over a listing (every 30 days), you will pay a listing fee - it is most definitely not a free listing. I’ve talked with eBay staffers who clearly have not been properly briefed on the policy, it’s been a reckless roll-out sure to cause problems for a large number of sellers who do not keep up with day to day eBay changes.
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Hi Sunsync
If you look at my comment of 8 days back you will see that I contacted ebay about this and there will be a once only listing fee.
However, seeing is believing.
March 18th. That is tomorrow. I will be testing out some listings to see if it being enforced,
David
Hi,
I add another reason against the “benefit” of GTC listings.
When you use 30-days-listings and relist them after ending, new listings are much more visible in the top of search results and most of all they are marked as “new listing” into categories or searches that buyers follow. This is extremely useful, let’s do a little example. I follow a search for tag “XYZ”. If I put on sale a good that matches this tag, buyers see this as new and might send an offer or buy it now. That’s fine if you repeat it often (30-days-listings with relist). Now let’s consider if the listing is GTC. First of all, it means that this listing will appear as “new” only one time, so there is only one chance for the correct buyer who follows that tag search to meet your listing. Moreover, if the “XYZ” tag is very common and buyers do not check ebay tag search soon, they will find a ton of new listings before yours or, worst again, if they do not check ebay for some days, they will loose that new listing at all and the only solution to find your good is to do a specific search using that tag and look into thousand pages… and maybe your good is at the 17th page…
In the past, when I had 30-days listings with relist, I was used to sell much more than now that I use only GTC. My listings go buried in millions of similar-tag-listings and this is a big problem if my listing does not scale search engine (lots of watchers or clicks) or if a buyer does not do a specific search and look into thousands similar goods. This is a problem that mainly depends on your kind of goods. GTC is good ONLY if you have multiple quantity listings (= not collectables).
It’s quite clear that eBay day after day is going towards amazon policy, I really can’t explain where we are going to…
Hi fedege96
I share you sentiment here. The “NEW” listing feature is why I always post them as new listings and not “ebay relists”.
I suspect that there is not much we are going to be able to do about it except end the listing before GTL kicks in … but not a good station for buyers who might be watching the item
Are you already on forced GTC? Ebay Australia isn’t yet but will soon be there. Can you confirm that Ebay do not charge a listing fee for the GTL items under this p[oilcy?
David
Hello David,
not yet also here, but soon it will be mandatory also in my ebay site. I gave up with 30-days listings about 1 year ago because with 7000 active listings it started to be quite complicated to use the GS relist feature (I also had some issues with disappearing listings, if you recall…). So I lost hopes and decided to put my goods for sale only “one time” and avoid to waste time relisting them and paying attention to not do mistakes (like relisting manually ended listings). This really reduced the visibility of my listings, but that was the only possible solution (time saved = more time to list new items), and hearing this last ebay news, it seems it was partially a good choice.
Well, it is quite complicated and depends on your plan. Let’s do a little example. I have a premium shop subscription that until last year let me list infinite 30-days/GTC listings without any fee. Since some time, they changed my plan and reduced the number of free listings/month to 10.000 (cost about 50€/month). This means: if I use GTC listings, all active listings implicitly renew after 30-days and so they count into the limit of 10.000 listing. If I end them before, it doesn’t matter because the count of listed listings starts when you insert a new listing, independently if you end it or not before. If I start 10.000 + 1 listings in a month, I will pay that “+ 1” also if I end it before. The count considers whole new listings ì. If it is GTC and you don’t stop, after 30-days it implicitly renew and count a fee. If it is GTC and you stop it before, anyway you pay that fee, if it exceed your monthly amount of listings. I hope it makes sense.
Solution? Easy, just increase the shop level to Premium Plus! Illimitate listings without fee. Costs: about 180€/month…
I read somewhere that it was to be the 18th of March but I listed today ok without GTC.
I knew from 1st of April. Anyway I would not surprise, eBay is famous for similar delays…
There is a famous Australian Band called Australian Crawl. Think they knew about the spinning beachball in GS well before their time. Pulling my hair out.
David
Ahaha I can say the same think as soon as I receive the ebay seller email “sellers spring/autumn news”: Oh No Not You Again 
!!!